http://www.viddler.com/player/1cbe6a19/
Totally happy to have made my first Salmorejo, you can join in the fun with our full salmorejo recipe, let me know how it goes!
And I’d love to hear your thoughts on the whole ‘what is the Spanish version of a Francophile’ debate in the comments!
As far as I remember, most house buyers in the UK crave a south-facing garden. When we bought our current flat here in Madrid, Marina was quick to point out how lucky we were that if faced North. This didn’t make much sense to me until we spent our first summer here, but now it is something I’m constantly grateful for. It means we can open our shutters and let a bit of natural light in after about 11 am. Before that, as we actually face slightly north-east, we have to keep the shutters in the living room firmly down to make sure no sunlight gets in.
At night we sleep in the living room as well, on the sofabed, as the bedroom is far too hot to use during July and August. We keep the windows overlooking our roof terrace wide open, and enough air comes in to cool the room to about 25ºC by 7 a.m. (on a cool day). That’s the time I wake up, see the first rays of sun creeping in at an acute angle (it’s that north-east angle again), and quickly bring all the shutters down, in the hope that we can maintain something close to that temperature all day long. I then go back to bed for half an hour, before running round to the small spare bedroom/study (also too hot to use) to shut the window and blind there too, before the sun starts pouring in on that side of the building as well.
So in the mornings we work in the living room, in near darkness, ceiling fans spinning above our heads, and in the afternoon we sleep a little and work drowsily (no one can argue with a siesta when you’re only getting 6 hours hot sleep at night). All things being well the inside temperature maxs out around the 30º mark, and we sit it out until 8pm, when it’s cool enough to go out to the park.
Thank goodness this is a cool summer, with outside temperatures in the shade rarely topping 33º in the last couple of weeks. On a wine tasting course I went on recently, the girl in charge was explaining how alcohol content in wine is increasing as a result. I don’t remember the exact reasoning (something to do with the changing way the grapes ripen), but she basically said, “You just don’t get those crazy hot summers in Madrid any more, where you would see 40 degrees or more on a regular basis.”
It’s true, and such a relief. Otherwise we’d be moving the sofa bed onto the terrace every night. Or ourselves to somewhere a lot cooler… like the Basque Country or Asturias. Now there’s a thought…
Cory Hughes recently interviewed me about my book, Errant in Iberia, using questions sent in by Notes in Spanish listeners. You can check out the interview here: http://bencurtisbooktour.com/ – I think there is some good stuff in there about the experience of moving to another country, focusing of course on Spain.
Another book?
I think about writing a follow up to Errant in Iberia about once a week, but haven’t started yet for a few reasons:
1. The first book covers a period when everything was asonishingly and wonderfully new to me, when I was making a huge change to my life. That meant there was a huge amount of material to write about.
2. The story of ‘what happened next’ (i.e. what could be in book 2, continuing the story after our marriage) is very different to the ‘inspiring move abroad’ narrative that I wrote about in the first book.
What did happen next was that I struggled for a long time with finding happy employment here before we started our own business, and, once we did start the business, had a lot of hard stuff to deal with, like constant trips to the UK for a year leading up to the death of my mother. I also travelled less than in the first 3 or 4 years. This makes it a much more complicated book to write in the ‘inspiring life in Spain’ mould, though I think the rise of Notes in Spanish as a business can be an inspiring stroy (I like the thought of being inspiring, as you can tell!)
So basically, I’m not sure what the story would be for book 2. If the story of the first book, Errant in Iberia, was ‘escaping to Spain, discovering Spain and myself, meeting Marina,’ then a book 2 might be ‘finding it’s hard to really settle in, but building a cool business which solved lots of problems’, and again, I’m not sure how great a book that makes.
3. It takes a hell of a lot of effort to write a book, you have to want to do it more than anything else on the planet, and we’ve got a business to run at the moment!
4. Rather than ‘Errant 2’, I also get distracted by the idea of doing a different sort of book, based around the blog, like ‘Notes from Spain – the book’, full of the best posts on Spain from here, and new stuff with lots of fun lists, Spain-isms etc. Then I think, ‘why don’t I just blog that here instead?’
Thanks for listening! Thoughts welcome.
Yesterday was pretty damn good. I saw the living legend Bob Dylan live at Rock en Rio just outside Madrid, and Rafa Nadal won Wimbledon. For me Nadal is the greatest sportsman Spain has produced in the last ten years, and possibly the greatest sportsman in Europe at the moment. He’s thrilling to watch, incredibly strong both physically and mentally, and just ridiculously humble and nice. If only all sportsman were like that.
If you haven’t seen it yet, watch as Rafa wins the final point and sets off on a climb to see his family, the Prince, and La Leti. Well done Rafa!!!!
And the very best photo from the Notes from Spain Flickr Group for June, was, in my humble opinion, Celebración, by Mirall, showing revellers in Madrid’s Fuente de Quevedo, celebrating Sunday’s European Cup win:
Do check out the rest of Mirall’s photo’s on Flickr.
Meanwhile, as the Independent claims that Spain are actually the Champions of nearly everything (thanks Parubin and Margot for the link), I wonder, how much does a major win like this actually do to boost a country’s moral, and image in the eyes of the rest of the world?
Well, over at NotesinSpanish.com we try to make learning real Spanish as much fun as possible!
To make all our resources more accessible, we’ve just put together a new Intro section for those of you that are new to the site. Check it out here, and do please come back and let me know if these new intro pages were useful – I’d love some feedback!
We recently started ordering big boxes of beautiful organic vegetables about once a week. Not only does this hopefully guarentee a better quality of produce, but it also saves a few bag-laden trips back from the supermarket! Marina writes about the different companies we have tried in the forum, see this thread, 3 posts down from the top: Ordering Organic Food in Spain
Dave Hall (Pepino) has great advice for anyone thinking about bringing a dog to Spain, 4 posts down in this thread: Moving a dog to Spain. My favourite part of his advice is:
2. Traffic. I see loads of people walking dogs in the street off their leads, and it’s truly amazing how the dogs seem to instinctively know the pavement from the road (better trained than most UK children!!) My dog is well-behaved for the most part and wouldn’t run away from me, but has no actual road sense and would happily bumble stupidly into the road if something catches his eye. He wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes in Barcelona
This constantly amazes me too, they can’t all be that well trained? It must have got into the Spanish canine genetics!
Remember, for just about any question you have about Spain or learning Spanish, or just a good chat about anything under the sun, register and join in the conversation in our forum!
I am delighted when people comment on this blog, it’s what makes me want to keep writing. But recently there have been a number of abusive and provocative comments. Therefore, I would like to ask everyone to ensure that from now on comments are polite and friendly (nearly all of your comments are!)
In the future any comments that are racist, sexist, rude, abusive, or written with the deliberate intention to provoke, will be deleted. Please also remember to enter a real email address with your comments (your email will never be published). Any comments that do not have a real email address, or that come from the same IP address with different commenter names, will be deleted. Finally, only comments in English or Spanish will be accepted.
Thanks for helping me to keep this a more friendly place from now on!
Well done Spain! It’s half past midnight here in Madrid and the city is alive with horns, fire crackers and sirens! ¡Hemos podido! ¡¡¡Campeones!!! Not sure anyone will get much sleep tonight!
Full reports: English (BBC) | Spanish (20 Minutos)
With the whipping Spain gave the Russians last night, I think they really could even beat the Germans in Sunday’s European Cup Final… though you can never bet on anything where the Germans and football are concerned. It’s going to be a hell of a night for Spain on Sunday though. Can’t wait! Come on Spain!!! Sorry, I mean ¡Vamos España!
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 