The recipe details for last week’s Cuisine from Spain podcast have been added to the post.
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Month: October 2006
It is by no means easy just to turn up in Spain and start a new life with no connections, and your old social network far away at home. Scared the hell out of me when I first got here.
But there are a lot of ways to find your feet, and a social life in Spain, pretty quickly. All you have to do is plan well before you arrive, or get on the case as soon as you get here. Here are some top tips gleaned from my own experiences, and those of others. So, in no particular order:
1. Enroll on a course in Spain before you leave
I walked straight into a TEFL course at International House, Madrid, when I first arrived in Spain. I instantly met 11 other people in the same boat as me. What a relief! It was an even bigger relief when the school hired me afterwards, and I had a whole staffroom of people to go out with at night! Which leads me to…
2. Get a job in a language academy
You will meet lots of savvy ex-pats who have been here for years and can give you excellent advice on those first difficult weeks in Spain (and show you where the beer is coldest 😉 ) Don’t be afraid of mixing with English speakers (some people only want to meet Spaniards), they can be a very useful asset in those early days!
3. Get a job anywhere, better still, have your company send you here!
It’s not all about English teaching. You can work in anything you want with the right amount of effort and patience. If you can get a transfer to Spain with the company you already work with, even better – there will be an office full of Spanish people waiting to bring your language skills up to par.
4. Get an intercambio
No, get three intercambios (see our Spain Glossary entry). Use Loquo.com’s language exchange section for your city. Place an ad of your own. This is the very best thing you can do to make contact with the Spanish. Do not underestimate the power of the intercambio!
5. Use the Irish Pubs
If you feel like you need to speak to someone in your own language, don’t worry about checking out the Irish Pub scene when you first get to Spain. There will be a host of ex-pats propping up the bar, who can give you great advice about finding flats, work etc.
6. Flat sharing
Find a shared flat with one or more locals. Look at noticeboards in bookshops, colleges, universities etc, ex-pat paper classifieds, loquo.com… with any luck some of your new flatmates’ social life will rub off on you!
7. Choose a busy city
All of the above will be a lot easier in a big city such as Madrid, Barcelona or Valencia.
8. Join a Spanish class
…in a language academy. Your Spanish will improve, and Spanish classes in Spain tend to be full of people from all over the world that have just moved to Spain for the long term.
9. If in real doubt, use a relocation service
Some of them are very personal and friendly, and will help you to find a flat, and to orientate you in your new surroundings. I met the owner of one, “Easy Landing“, on a plane to the UK – seems highly recommendable!
10. Find a Spanish bar to call your own
Been in a real, typical Spanish bar and felt quite at home? Make it your local. Pop in regularly for a coffee, caña, or menu del dia. The barmen/waiters will soon come to recognise you and make you feel more at home.
It’s time to start setting up a glossary of useful terms on this website, so I don’t drive the regular readers mad by repeating 10 times a week what, for example, an intercambio is. So here is entry number 1, the intercambio, which I’ll cite for the first time in the next post.
Intercambio (m.) – Language exchange
The intercambio system is designed to help people improve their spoken language fluency, and is widely used in Spain. The idea is to meet up with a real Spanish speaking person, in a bar or cafe for example, and chat for half the time in Spanish, and and half the time in English. That way both of you get great, natural practice in the language you want to learn (of course this works with any combination of languages).
Plus you get to make a new friend, and probably meet their friends too… and then you’ll be speaking Spanish all the time! I cannot recommend the intercambio strongly enough as a way to improve your Spanish, and to feel a whole lot happier about life if you have just arrived in Spain (again, there is no reason why this shouldn’t work outside Spain too – see the intercambio section in the forum to find a long-distance intercambio!).
Intercambios can be found via: notice boards in language schools, bookshops and universities; in classified ads in the local English press, and on-line small ads services such as loquo.com; asking around (if you teach English, your students will know lots of people). Demand for English speakers is high, so it shouldn’t be hard to have several intercambios on the go at once!
One more thing: a lot of people use the intercambio game in a ‘you never know who I might meet’ dating fashion. Nothing wrong with that – I actually married my favourite intercambio 😉
What Spanish terms would you like to see in the NFS Spain Glossary? Suggestions below please!
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Thanks for all your feedback
Many thanks to all who gave us some feedback on the future of Notes from Spain.
The main conclusion (yours and ours) was not to meddle too much and to carry on doing what we have been doing so far, which essentially means producing lots of podcasts and, to an extent, making the rest up as we go along! So nothing will change too much, but we certainly do intend to expand in new interesting directions.
For a start we hope to get the Spanish conversations going a bit better in the forums (maybe with the help of some competitions – if anyone wants to offer a prize, please contact me!), we want to add more video and pictures (including billboards and ad hoardings, as requested 😉 ), we are going to make it possible to put your video in the forums and, above all, we want to carry on building on and encouraging the fantastic Spain and Spanish-loving community we have in the forums.
Finally, we want to make NFS more useful, by offering useful services to visitors to the site. I have no idea what that means yet, but our aim has always been to make this one of the best Spain sites on the net, and as such the more useful it is the better. Any ideas?
One of my favourite bits of your feedback, which we shall try to follow to the letter, was that it is better to be “slightly arnarchic, unplanned and flexible. Embracing serendipity, idulging your instincts and seeing where it takes you could, as it has, be the most successful plan.” Sounds like fun to me!
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The Rain in Spain…
…falls mainly in Madrid! It hasn’t stopped raining for 12 hours. The weather reminded me of an article I wrote for a competition a few years ago, when I lived in Lavapies, which still holds very true today. Here it is, for anyone with two minutes to spare:
If only it rained a bit more in Madrid. For a start, I wouldn’t get into trouble for leaving the tap running whilst I brush my teeth. I try to explain to my Madrileña wife that it’s just a bad habit picked up in my English youth. When later she came to England she understood: with so much rain, we rarely face a water shortage.
It doesn’t rain too often in Madrid, yet how the city could do with it! If only it rained a little more, the streets wouldn’t be so apt to smell of dog shit. In a city of gardenless dog-fanatics, this tends to be a problem. The council employs men, on scooters with giant rear-mounted hoovers, to suck up the offending articles from the pavements. One day I expect a hoover bag to explode, causing a minor environmental incident.
Many of you will know Alan (AKA ‘El listo’) and Brian (AKA ‘Greytop’), from the forums, and here they are in reality! Brian talks about the good life in Pego, on the Costa Blanca, whilst Alan tells us how to turn up in Valencia with not much idea what to do, and end up having the month of your life…
Discuss in the forum
A nice blog from Mark, a friend of mine who turned up in Roncevalles and had a wonderful time walking 5 days of the Camino de Santiago. One day I’ll do it, one day…
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Feeling Spanish again…
Today is ‘Armed Forces Day’ in Spain, with a big military parade and fly-by here in Madrid. Marina and I were standing on our terrace watching the fighter jets zoom by on their way to the King and other assembled dignitaries in the Castellana, when I felt a strange sensation, a stirring of emotion… it took me a few seconds to realise what this was: pride! An unprovoked feeling of pride at seeing the Spanish planes flying overhead! This is getting worrying…
Right, we are off to the beach to make some more podcasts. We’re taking all your great feedback with us, to think about what lies ahead for NFS. Worry not though, nothing much will change, just more content, more podcasts, more videos and, hopefully, more great involvement from you lot!
“Spain and Senegal have agreed to promote legal migration to Spain in an attempt to stem an illegal influx.”
Roast lamb and a lo pobre potatoes … You don’t get more Castillian than this! Although you can find cordero asado cooked in a similar way throughout Spain, the best is found around Segovia, Valladolid, and other parts of the Castilla-Leon area, where you still see shepherds wandering through the hills with their flocks. Another reason not to miss this dish in these areas is that it is usually cooked in a wood-fired oven (horno de leña), bringing even more flavour to the dish.
Cordero Asado
Ingredients
2 Kg (4 pounds) of good organic lamb (we used leg here)
6 to 8 garlic cloves
3 tsp of thyme
6 bay leaves
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
Preparation
The secret of the success of this recipe is to get very good quality meat, organic if possible, and then cook it very slowly in the oven.
Preheat the oven for 30 minutes at 200ºC/390ºF. When the oven is ready, make three or frour cuts in the meat (look at the picture above) and insert an unpeeled garlic clove and a bay leaf into each of them. Then rub the lamb with the rock salt, thyme and the olive oil before sticking it in the oven. After 5 minutes pour a glass of water over the meat. Keep it at this temperature for 5 more minutes and then turn the oven down to a slower setting, about 160ºC/320ºF. Leave it at this temperature for at least 1h and 30 minutes. After this time check with a fork or a knife that the meat is cooked in the middle – if it still seems a little red, leave it for a while longer.
Tip 1
Note that I’ve used leg this time but it would be fine to use shoulder.
Tip 2
If you are Spain it is fine to buy leg or shoulder of either Lechal or Recental lamb, as explained in the podcast. If you ask the butcher to prepare it for roasting he will make two or three cuts down to the middle of the bone, so the meat cooks better in the middle. Note that if the meat has no cuts, or the piece is heavier, cooking times will be longer.
Patatas a lo Pobre
Ingredients
5 Medium Potatos
3 Onions
2 Green peppers
8 garlic cloves
2 tsp salt
15 tbsp olive oil
1 dessert spoon of vinager
Preparation
Start by peeling the potatos and the onions, slice them thinly width-wise and place them into a bowl. Roughly chop up the green peppers, carefully removing all the seeds, and place them in the bowl together with the potatoes and the onion. Add the salt slowly while you gently mix the potato and these other ingredients with your hands.
Now select a large, and preferably deep, frying pan. Note that a wok will do the task very well. If you don’t have a large frying pan you might need to cook this dish using two frying pans. Pour all the oil into the frying pan and allow it to get hot. When it starts to smoke add the potatoes, onions, peppers and the bay leaves. During the whole cooking process you need to stir the mixture with a wooden spoon regularly (every minute) so it does not stick to the bottom. Note that some of the potatoes will break into smaller pieces – this really does not matter as this dish is more about taste. Keep cooking at a high setting for about 10 minutes, and then turn the hob to a medium setting and add the garlic, which has been previously peeled and thinly sliced.
After 20 more minutes try one potato to check if it is cooked. If so, turn off the hob and remove the excess oil using a colander. Put the mixture back into the frying pan and add the vinager while stiring the mixture for a few seconds.
Tip 1
Serve this as a side dish for any roast meat
Tip 2
This recipe requires large quantities of oil. If olive oil is difficult or expensive to get in your area you can easyly substitute it for sunflower oil, or any vegetable oil available in your area.
Discuss this recipe in our forum.
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 