Apologies for the light posting here recently, we’ve been working hard on our new Notes in Spanish Inspired Beginners podcasts. Full details here for those that want to learn more about music, por y para, shopping, and Spanish customs!
In other news… Marina and I are off to the green, and hopefully substantially cooler, north of Spain for a week (Asturias way). I’ll even be happy if it rains for a week! Bring on the need for a jacket! ¡Adios Calor!
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!
This was an important subject of debate in the forum last week. The general consensus was that although it is easy to set up a new life in Spain when you are young, free and single, it is an extremely risky proposition if you are married, mortgaged, and have kids.
In fact, if you haven’t got a year’s worth of salary in the bank, and a firm job offer on arrival, the general advice was ‘Don’t risk it!’ And certainly don’t sell your property back home to buy another one here, because if you change your mind later, you’ll never afford to buy a similar house back if you have to return home…
You can follow the full debate in the forum, but be warned, it’s enough to put a family off moving here altogether. Perhaps that’s why I was really interested in a very appropriate comment left here on the blog over the weekend, in answer to a previous question. “How long does it take to get used to living in Spain?”:
I moved to Madrid from the US 3 years ago with my husband and 2 children, one of which was a toddler. I speak fluent spanish, so the language barrier was not a factor. It was a difficult move. The “mañana” way of life, the ridiculous driving standard, the siesta hours, the over-inflated prices, the holier than thou attitude… well you get the picture, it’s very, very hard to get used to.
Once I realized that I was NOT in the US and I accepted that things are “different” it got much, much easier to live here. The amount of time it takes to realize that can vary for each individual. For me it was at about the 2 year point. I am much happier now and when I am happy, my family is happy.
I miss my home, the US, very much. But I’m not going back until it’s time to move back (another 2 years). The way I see it is: “I’m in Europe and I’m going to see this part of the world before I leave.”
So to answer the question…. It is different for everyone, but you have to make a choice. You either accept a different way of life, or you fight it until the end. Good Luck.
So it is possible for families to move here and survive/be happy, but just how common is it? Have you moved your whole family here, or do you know someone else that has? Would you risk it?
Things have been quiet here on the blog since last Wednesday, when 20 Notes from Spain forum members from all over the world turned up in Madrid to celebrate our second Great Madrid Escape weekend.
The idea is quite shocking: people who usually only ever communicate over the internet all actually get to meet in person! Marina and I picked 5 or 6 of our favourite restaurants in the capital, and we all met for lunch and dinner from Thursday to Saturday night. In the meantime, everyone took the morings and afternoons to check out what most interested them in Madrid (torrential rain permitting…)
Despite overzealous attacks on late night drinking establishments until the depths of Friday night (or early Saturday morning, perhaps), and the resulting feeling of physical doom amongst some through most of Saturday, the event, for us, was a tremendous success. Why? Because it turns out that those people one chats away to on the internet are all exceedingly nice. Ridiculously nice in fact!
If you run some sort of internet community yourself, I can’t recommend this enough: pick a place and get together some time! It makes this whole on-line thing even more worthwhile than before.
We’ll certainly be repeating the GME experience again in the future. If you are interested then join the conversation with the exceptionally nice folks in the forum now, and keep an eye out for GME updates in about 6 months time…
In other news… good luck and murphy willing, the Notes from Spain podcasts will be back regularly, very very soon…
We had a lot of fun in the forum last year watching your video blogs from around the world in Spanish. Hopefully we can get back into full swing this year now the good weather is on it’s way! (Then again, you can always make video blogs inside if it rains…)
In any case, Marina and I have started video blogging in Spanish for fun, and to celebrate the fact, we’ve got an iPod Nano to give away for the coolest video blogs in Spanish (no matter what your level!)
A quiet start to the week as I recover from some sort of stomach flu that is a) either a virus that is doing the rounds or b) damage done by two cañas I really didn’t want last Thursday night but drank anyway. I think I’ve had it with alcohol, really.
However, I need to write something on this rainy Monday in Madrid, and have two recommendations, one churlish and Spain-related, the other quite the opposite on both counts.
1. It amazes me that a few Spanish people are still occasionally finding and leaving angry comments on the posts that caused me so much trouble late last year. The latest comment, where a certain MOWGLY brings Ireland into the equation, is a classic, and can be found about 45 comments down in this post. It’s easy to find, look for the CAPITAL LETTERS.
2. Having the energy to do precisely nothing all weekend, I downloaded an audiobook I’d been recommended, ‘Lady in the Van,’ by Alan Bennett.
Can you imagine letting a loopy old lady, that you really didn’t know, maroon her battered old van in your London driveway, and live there day in day out, all year round, for years and years on end? Most people would have had her committed at once, but Alan Bennett just let it happen and wrote about it.
It’s a true story, and this is how writing about reality ought to be. If you enjoy such things, or are interested in writing, I urge you to listen to this, read as it is by Bennett himself. Find it on audible.com or in iTunes. An hour and 20 minutes very very well spent.
Is it just me, or is there an error in this story from the BBC?
(Original story here.)
Notes from Spain started slowly in March 2005, and since then, according to this wonderful WordPress blogging software, there have been 736 posts and 5,582 comments, with, I hope, plenty more to come!
Many many (many!) thanks to all of you who keep reading and joining in. Without the encouragement, feedback, and occasional abuse, we would probably have stopped long ago!
OK, so that isn’t a very unbiased headline, but there is something so unappealing about the Partido Popular these days, that I really didn’t want them to crawl their way back into power again.
For deep analysis of the voting, see the BBC, or the front page of any major Spanish news site (El Mundo has pretty charts). Suffice is to say that although the PSOE once again failed to get an absolute majority, they did better than last time.
One final word, then no more politics on this blog for some time:
What I’d like to see the PSOE do over the next 4 years
– Find a new approach to the internal terrorism problem, and solve it once and for all
– Improve the lot of, and respect for, immigrants
– Find a way to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse when the construction trade tumbles
– Ban smoking in bars and restaurants, in line with so many other western European countries
What would you add to the list?
Every now and again I like to publish a classic comment from readers of this blog. The best this week comes from a Spanish reader who I’ll be sorry to see go. Here is the comment (originally posted here), in Spanish (apologies for lack of translation, it would loose its spice):
“…piedad, no te enfades, no captan tu ironia, para eso habria que tener al menos medio cerebro.
Con la disculpa de que aman España y les interesa el Español, en este sitio, que el principio estaba muy bien hasta que a su dueño Ben le dio por el sensacionalismo barato, hay una pandillita de xenófobos, acomplejados, envidiosos y amargados muy interesante. La mayoria tiene un complejo de superioridad-inferioridad con respecto a España que es digno de estudio psiquiatrico. En fin, salvo algunas honrosas excepciones como Edith, aqui hay mucho xenofobo, prepotente e ignorante, pero seguro que no te estoy contando nada que no sepas.
Obviamente, este es mi ultimo post aqui. Que os vaya bien a todos.”
Sorry to see you go 😦 And sorry if you or others feel the blog is lapsing into ‘cheap sensationalism’. For me it’s about writing fun posts every now and again, that lead to great discussion. Saludos.
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 