Spain - Observations

Everyone could understand me, but they were all very hesitant to speak English, which meant that my Spanish work colleague was exhausted from translating all day. Lunch is much later there, 2:30 or 3:00, and much more relaxing. As they were speaking Spanish I was enjoying the food. We had several appetisers before the meal and then we had a main course, a dessert and then café con leche, which is divine! From my limited experience, fish is very popular on the menu and my favourite appetiser was a soft scrambled egg with smoked salmon and other fish. I would never have picked that off of a menu but it was really tasty. One of the customers said to me after they took a break in the conversation, “This is a very Spanish thing to do, we are talking about food while we are eating”. What could be wrong with that?

It’s funny, because of the cost of cigarettes and the ban on smoking inside of restaurants and pubs in the UK, you just don’t come in contact with smokers as much as one used to. In Spain, it’s the Europe of old where people are always smoking, even in the workplace! My work colleague said that because they had a dictator in place for so long that Spain is behind other European countries.

At the end of the day it was recommended that I visit the Plaza Mayor because of the Christmas lights as well as the booths selling Christmas goods. When I got there, a lot of the booths were selling punk rock wigs and what we would call Halloween masks of clowns, Bart Simpson, and the like. I asked the next day what that was all about and the response was, “At Christmas time, we just get crazy”.