While Marina and I are away for the week, we’ve turned over the blog to veteran Notes from Spain contributor and guest blogger Gary Child, who was recently let loose for a fortnight in Barcelona. In this final instalment, how to survive in Barcelona…

Mr. Sinatra’s most famous offering begins with the lyric, “And now, the end is near…”, and so it is for me. I have just finished my last intercambio of the fortnight and there is one grammar session and two conversation classes between me and the flight home.

The fortnight has flown by and “…regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention…”.

But I will anyway. I booked the course which included a fiesta and so lost a day’s tuition. No biggy. The thing I did that I won’t do when I repeat the experience is to book so many intercambios. Two a day is wa-a-a-ay too many when added to three ninety minute classes. No, next time, the standard course of two sessions in the morning and probably three intercambios in each week will be enough. You get all Spanished out.

But “…I did what I had to do, and saw it through without exemption…”, thank God I had two cancellations.

Of the seven people that I have met there are two with whom I have an arrangement to meet for a drink and a chat at New Year when I’m back in town with my beloved. Strictly social though, no classes and no formal intercambio.

I love Barcelona and I have been here often enough now that I feel no compunction to traipse round all the usual tourist gaffs unless there is someone with me that necessitates ‘tour guide’ mode. I have always tried to do something on every visit that I haven’t done before. This time it was to be a visit to Tibidabo, but with all the intercambios I just couldn’t face the hassle. Maybe next time, maybe not.

I stay in a shared flat with a charming English lady to whom I was introduced via the language school. I have also stayed with her on weekend breaks with my son, and though student accommodation may not be appropriate when traveling with Mrs C, we will make a point of calling in when we are in town. It has become a home from home, a pied-a-terre in BCN, and it is sufficient for me that I come and live in the community for a couple of weeks, learn a bit and relax a lot.

I suppose it must fall upon me to write a little about the city at the end of this series.

If you’ve never been then do make the effort. It has taken me the best part of five years of visiting a couple of times or more a year to get round all there is to see and, as no series of articles on the web would be complete without a list of dos and don’ts here’s mine: Read more »

While Marina and I are away for the week, we’ve turned over the blog to veteran Notes from Spain contributor and guest blogger Gary Child, who was recently let loose for a fortnight in Barcelona. In this fourth instalment, Spanish overload…

So, I’m half way through the second week of my fortnight’s Spanish course in Barcelona. The mornings continue to be excellent, 90 minutes grammar followed by 90 minutes conversation. Different teachers this week but, looking at the logistics of organizing a new crop of students each week and jigging the groups to match the teaching talent, this is neither surprising nor, it transpires, a detriment.

This week we have Rosina for grammar and Daniel for conversation. Both are good at what they do and the lessons are well planned, with good photocopied resources, and well executed.

WOAH! Heaven forfend that this should turn into some kind of clandestine OfSTED report on an unsuspecting language school somewhere in Barcelona - back to the gossip…

In a previous post I explained how I intended to dip the pm session in school. After a long weekend – the 15th of August is a national holiday in Spain – my batteries are re-charged and I decided to give it another shot. The star-crossed lovers have shuffled off (to quote Bill twice). Things are better, so I’m still on board.

Yesterday was a hard day: Read more »

While Marina and I are away for the week, we’ve turned over the blog to veteran Notes from Spain contributor and guest blogger Gary Child, who was recently let loose for a fortnight in Barcelona. In this third instalment, The Joy of Intercambios…

It is peculiar to this day and age that everyone has the potential to put themselves in contact with complete strangers, and enter into a mutually beneficial relationship, at the click of a mouse. I refer to the intercambio and not the numerous nefarious activities which, allegedly, take place with the assistance of modern technology.

My mother would have a fit. I can hear her now:

“You’re what!? You’re going to travel to a foreign country, full of foreigners, and meet a complete stranger, a foreigner, in a bar, a foreign bar, in a foreign city you barely know? What for? You’re just going to talk? Talk!? Don’t come running to me if you end up in the gutter with your throat slit, your wallet gone and your passport being sold on the black market..!”

Just as well I didn’t tell her then, eh?

Intercambios, I have discovered to my great delight, are a wonderful thing. So much so that I have elected to dip my arranged classes in the afternoons and do intercambios instead. Invisible Ruben and the star crossed lovers wont notice I’m not there, which leaves the lovely Laura having a one to one with the teacher. Everybody wins.

There is, apparently, misconception that intercambios are what you do when you move to live in a country for a period to learn the language. I suppose I was concerned that this might be the case. But, no, it seems that the Spanish are keen to speak to a wide sample of us native English speakers to experience the whole breadth and depth of our mispronunciation and mangling of our mother tongue.

So much so, in fact, that I have needed to be careful to try to make sure all respondents get a slice of the cake, so to speak. What’s the best way to go about arranging intercambios? In short I have no idea but what follows has worked for me: Read more »

While Marina and I are away for the week, we’ve turned over the blog to veteran Notes from Spain contributor and guest blogger Gary Child, who was recently let loose for a fortnight in Barcelona. In this second instalment, Notes from the Language School…

I do not do mornings well. For this reason I need to be up and about for a good while before I am ready to interact with the rest human race, more so when this is going to take place in a foreign language.

When in Barcelona to study Spanish for my annual fortnight, on school days I am up at about 7.15. The school is a 20 minute walk from where I stay but, as the arthritic knee I mentioned previously doesn’t work so well until I get it going, I get the Metro to school and walk back.

Two flights of stairs down, a 90 second ride and three escalators up puts me on the terrace of a bar outside the school by just gone eight o’clock. My daily routine will see me order café Americano and a glass of hot water to pour in to create a longer drink.

I arrived this year in my usual spot and within ten minutes was approached by probably the oldest hooker in Spain. She certainly is persistent, having now been graciously declined by yours truly for the second consecutive year. Read more »

While Marina and I are away for the week, we’ve turned over the blog to veteran Notes from Spain contributor and guest blogger Gary Child, who was recently let loose for a fortnight in Barcelona. In this first instalment, something anyone living in Spain strives to avoid: sorting out anything medical…

Domingo. A day of rest before I start my fortnight’s intensive Spanish course in Barcelona. Or so I thought. I was awakened earlier than I would have liked by the arrival of a text from home that just said “Ring me”. Naturally, panic set in. Rather than ring and clock up a bill bigger than the national debt, I texted back, “On Skype in 5 mins”.

I have to confess it was a long five minutes. Had there been an accident? Was the dog ill? Were the grandkids okay in Mojacar with their mum and dad? Had the roof fallen in?

It was none of the above. It turned out that I had left my medication on the work surface in the kitchen. No biggy for me, but ‘her indoors’ seemed concerned that with the sunshine, the relaxed atmosphere and the two weeks complete lack of stress, I might have a problem with my blood pressure. ‘Don’t be silly’ wasn’t working and so I agreed to set out on a quest to source an alternative supply of little asprin and felodipine, lest she had to repatriate me for terminal snoozing.

So to la farmácia, my first intercambio of the fortnight.

Little asprin, no problem. Ibuprofen for arthritic knee, no problem. Felodipine? Nowhere to be seen. Of course it would have helped had I spelt it correctly on the paper I handed to her with my list of requirements. They even went on ‘Google for Chemists in Spanish’ and could find no trace. I returned to the flat convinced I would sort it out but, of course, I couldn’t spell it so couldn’t find it either. Still, I could always go back to cilazapril. It gives me a cough but it would do for a fortnight.

Back to the farmácia for cilazapril, but still no luck. I would have to see a doctor for a ‘receta’ for cilazapril. I was told that there was a Sala de Urgencías two blocks away and my heart sank at the prospect of spending the rest of the day hanging about to be seen.

And so to my second intercambio, with los médicos… Read more »

Ten years ago today, on August 30th 1998, I left the UK for Spain. It was a move born to a great extent out of desperation. I was nearly 26, living in London, with no real job or income, and no reasonable plans. After making a few random applications, I had been offered a place on a TEFL course in Madrid two weeks previously, decided to go for it, and from there one thing after another just fell into place. A friend told me at the time that I was very brave, all I knew was that I was plain terrified.

Ten years later it’s fun to look back and see what Spain has given me:

A wife, new friends, a beautiful new language, endless travels and new landscapes and, through a hell of a lot of hard work, a business we love that keeps me and la wife out of an office job and covers the mortgage. I certainly couldn’t have predicted that last one!

Obviously a lot of those things could theoretically have been achieved if I’d stayed in the UK, or gone anywhere else, but it certainly feels like I was meant to come here, and that some of these things might not have happened so well had I not wound up in Spain.

An interesting part of living so long in a new country is that you become bi-cultural, but in a weird way which I’ll try to explain. I totally lost touch with the finer aspects of British popular culture years ago (who the hell is Russel Brand?), but still feel nostalgic if someone mentions British childhood favourites like the Magic Roundabout.

Conversely, I know lots about Letizia Ortiz and enough about David Bisbal, ZP, corruption in Marbella and the speed of Spain’s trains, but am completely lost when Marina laughs at jokes based on TV characters from her Spanish childhood (who the hell is el hombre de Pescanova?!)

So when I say I’m bi-cultural, I mean I’m culturally British up until the age of 26, then mildly imbued with Spanish culture from that point on. It’s a bit odd.

It means that when I’m back in the UK I get a kick out of the familiar homely tones of BBC1 or Radio 4, but am lost as to half of what they are talking about, as if I’d gone to sleep in the late 90’s and just woken up to a completely different version of the day to day UK. On the other hand, having not been born into it, much of Spanish popular culture (just about anything on daytime TV), really doesn’t ring the right bells, of hit the right spots…

None of this matters of course, it’s just a minor disconnect on both sides of Ben - English Ben, and Spanish Ben - that sometimes leaves me mildly… … Spanglish.

Other random thoughts:

Marina says that Spain has made me a worse driver, I agree. After 10 years of seeing how no one else pays complete attention to the all the rules of the road, it’s hard not to let standards slip oneself.

At home, Marina and I talk to each other in a terrible mixture of English and Spanish, often switching mid sentence, and occasionally mixing in our own made-up cross-breed words (“I’m feeling a bit agobiated”).

To my continued surprise, I really like Morcilla (blood and rice shaped into a sausage).

If England played Spain at football, I’d be with Iker’s team in a flash.

I sometimes feel at least 50% Spanish.

Spain has done me very very well, and as usual I’d encourage anyone thinking of making a similar (in fact, any) bold move in their life to go for it. Big changes need bold moves. When I made mine I was young, free and single, and that undoubtedly made it a hell of a lot easier. If you are none, or only some, of the above, you can still take a step into the unknown, just think carefully about what backups you should have in place first.

Anyway, enough of all that, here’s to another 10 years in Spain, and a whole lot more after that!

For more on my escape from London, my first three years in Spain and meeting Marina, don’t forget to read “Errant in Iberia”!

This is pretty cool, I’m sitting on the AVE from Madrid to Barcelona, Macbook on the table in front of me, hooked up to the orange 3G Internet Everywhere usb modem, landscape shooting by at nearly 180 mph, and all this tech stuff just works!

It was worth bringing all that crap after all!

Doh! Just went into a series of long tunnels, there goes that internet connection…

The above may appeal to the odd Geek out there. Marina and I are off for a few days to the Costa Brava to practice our Catalan and, as usual, can’t afford to leave the tech behind!!

Last week’s horrendous, tragic plane crash in Madrid led us and many others living in Spain to take firm decisive action: to turn off the TV, ignore news websites, and stop buying the papers.

The news media had gone (and continues to go) too far again. Within hours of the accident we had all the information we would need. The plane had lost control, crashed near the airport, and all but a few very lucky people (now 18), had died.

Yet the ‘news’, playing to the famous national ‘morbo‘, or morbid fascination with all horrendous events, has been camped out outside hospitals and the main convention centre morgue where bodies are being identified, trying desperately to secure images and, worst of all, interviews with emotionally destroyed relatives.

Occasionally it seems (OK, I have watched a minute here, a minute there of the news, all I can take), they strike gold and discover the story of the guy who tried to get off the plane before the second fatal take off attempt but wasn’t allowed, the text message sent to a friend about ‘problems with our plane’, and more emotion-twisting horror than your average viewer can take.

And still it goes on, 4 days later. Part of the reason it is so hard to watch is that it so closely mirrors the news coverage of the Madrid train bombings, a few years ago, when we were all glued to images of twisted train wreckage and dead bodies for days (or weeks) on end, trying desperately to understand how something so insanely horrendouns could have happened.

According to a conversation overheard in a doctor’s waiting room, all this Spanish morbo can be traced back to a lady named Nieves Herrero (nicknamed Nieves Horrores), who started the trend in the 90’s with a daily morning TV programme called ‘Cita con la Vida’ (A Date with Life), that scoured the country to broadcast the most upsetting, awful social and personal tragedies Spain was hiding in its quiet villages and city suburbs.

Here’s a quote from Wikipedia’s entry on Nieves Herrero that perfectly captures the current Spanish media behaviour, and the average night on Spanish TV:

“She was heavily criticised for the coverage given to the famous Crimen de Alcácer, making a live broadcast from this village the same night that the bodies of the girls were found. In the programme, they took advantage of the emotional state of the families of the victims, interviewing the parents about how they felt at the time, and converting their pain into a public spectacle to be broadcast to the whole country.”

The country became addicted to ‘other people’s awful lives’, the media discovered there was plenty of tragedy to go around, and no watchdog ever stepped in to say just how much horror they could get away with showing. The result is that you will see bodies, devastation, and emotional hell that you would never see in 100 years on the good old BBC.

But let’s face it, this morbo is not just a Spanish problem, it’s just more out in the open here. In the end, revelling in other people’s misery is a very modern, developed world phenomenon. I think it plays to either one of two basic human positions:

1) “Thank god my life isn’t that bad”

……or, perversly, (and please tell me if I’m wrong),

2) “If something that bad happened in my life it would probably give me the shake up I need to change things dramatically forever, and kick me out of the everlasting everyday mundane.”

Whichever the case, for many Spaniards this latest round of media morbo has been a step too far. Is it possible that one day an audience that just can’t take any more will switch off for good? Will we ever see the demise of this endless aggressive probing into emotionally-debilitating modern human horrors?

Comments welcome as always.

Like most people when they first move to Spain, when I arrived in Madrid nearly 10 years ago, I found it tricky to adapt to the crazy timetable during the first few weeks. I was eating at 1pm, but everyone else turned up at 2… or 3…. I ate dinner in empty restaurants at 8.30, the Spaniards came in as I was paying my bill.

Still, within about 2 weeks I worked out what was going on, and did as the locals were doing. Friends wouldn’t meet until 10pm on a Saturday night? No problem! Soon got used to that!

But recently something perplexing is going on. These days I get up at 7 a.m. and work from about 7.30 until 2. A quick rest after lunch, then more work until 6ish, when I am obliged (under new household laws designed to control my computer addiction and give me back some of my old life) to stop work, close the lid of the laptop, and pay more attention to my wife.

All fine… until we meet up with Spanish friends in the evening. By 11pm I’m shattered! By midnight, as the assembled locals start looking if anything even more lively, I’m sending pleading glances to Marina, hoping she’ll take the hint and announce it’s time to go home. By 1 am I’m downright pissed off!

I think I have three options to beat this very Madrileño problem:

1. Get up later (unlikely, and not very Spanish)

2. Start taking a 45 minute siesta on days we are going out (hmmm… tempting)

3. Take up coffee, in heavy doses.

How do you deal with the long end of Spanish timekeeping?