Berry Panic

The difference between the pace of Spain and the pace of, say, New York, is always surprising. You’d think that after a couple years living in Madrid, the glorious pace of Spanish life would be old hat, but certain habits die hard. Habits such as, walking fast not because there is a rush but simply because you’ll get there earlier, ordering the check in the same breath as the coffee, and heading for the door as soon as the first goodbye is uttered. And so, with a checklist of to-dos ticking in my head one day after work, I began the dash home. The urgency was to get to the store around the corner from my apartment to buy a baking pan before the store’s 8pm close. (Note here for those in the US: Spanish working hours are a bit different than the American 5/6pm punch-out.)

It was a worried rush – those berries had been sitting in the fridge for days and they needed to be baked into a pie… or else. Berry panic, I tell you.

Hurrying up the street, careening around the corner, smack into the store where… yup, everything was calm. It was 8:10pm. There were plenty of people browsing kitchenware. (You know this type of store, the kind that whispers in your ear that you need a crazy egg cooker or specialty garlic peeler.) Old jazz was playing, three salespeople on the ready.

I have been to stores where they turn you away ten minutes before closing time unless you plead your case and promise to be out on the dot.

I head directly to the baking area. To my right is a couple looking at wine glasses. Stems or no? White or red? This or that? Taking their time. And finally I look up and take a breath. There was absolutely no need for a rush. The store door was wide open, the staff calm, there were plenty of other shoppers who would surely take longer with a purchase. So I grabbed a baking dish and then, rather than head to the counter to pay, I begin to browse.

I walked out of that store at 8:30pm, and much calmer than when I entered. Allow me to repeat… 30 minutes after closing time and there were still people wandering around the store. I also walked out with much more than a baking dish. Literally. Though, no egg cooker was purchased – some things can be learned in due time.

Doing Sunday

One year – to the chagrin and some horror of people who know me well enough to not have chagrin or horror at such a thing – I stayed home on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t go to any parties, I didn’t go out to dinner, I didn’t even watch that car wreck of a ball drop. I may have even gone to bed BEFORE the clock clicked midnight. The next morning, quite pleased with myself, I jump out of bed: It’s a new year! It snowed two feet last night! The world is for the taking! I donned my boots and set forth into this beautiful new existence that comes with the first day of a new year.

It turns out, the New Year was closed.

Not only did every house on the block belong to a bankrupt film set, but the streets were unploughed, the sidewalks yet uncovered. I walked. I drank in the solitary beauty of a world in which everyone is asleep. And then my marvel turned paranoia and I needed reassurance that I was in Massachusetts and not a twilight zone.

Luckily, Porter Square Books, a delightfully independent store with good books and good coffee and good food was actually open – and the person who took my coffee order did not seem vexed that my arrival validated her need to work so early on New Year’s day.

And finally, here’s my point. (A point to bringing up wintry New England from a Madrid-based computer in May? Yes.) The point is that New Year’s Day in Boston* is like every Sunday in Madrid.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but still. Many of us in the United States use our weekends to get things done. “Doing errands” is a true American pastime. And so, a culture shock for an American in Madrid is the inability to do anything that resembles an errand after 2pm on Saturday and anytime at all on Sunday.

This scenario is armed with a plethora of positives. In Spain, one is forced to slow down on Sunday, those with family in the area (and that would be many) spend their afternoon together, there is plenty of time to sit at a sunny terraza with a drink and the world’s best potato chip. There is time to just be. I’d say that’s rather good for the soul, wouldn’t you?

For me, Sunday bestows the time to attempt at shaping these words into some coherent form. And yet, make no mistake that as I write this, my dry cleaning remains uncollected for the second week in a row, my refrigerator is resolutely bare, my shoes need cobbling, and there are a million odds and ends that I need to do and buy but cannot. I cannot because it is also Sunday for the people who work in those stores.

And so, Sundays in Madrid – while there is still plenty to do (lest the Spanish tourism office take offense) – are delightfully quiet. And they often remind me of that New Year’s Day in Boston when I had the world to myself. If Sunday is the cousin of New Year’s day, perhaps it’s an opportunity to set some resolutions, to look at the world and our lives with a renewed enthusiasm that flows through the next six days.

Why not? There’s nothing else to do.

*and by Boston, I mean Cambridge and Somerville.

Read Your Lips

I am scared of the telephone. No joke. The landline rings in my flat and I make myself busy. I start doing the dishes. There is no way to pick up the phone when your hands are all soapy. The phone is the devil to a person learning another language. If I pick up a ringing phone there will be some fast talking Spaniard on the other end – and they are just as difficult to interrupt as they are to understand. Once I do manage to slip in and ask them to speak more slowly, they just start the entire conversation over again at the same speed… because, let’s be realistic here, I am picking up a ringing phone in Spain. Where they speak Spanish.

Watching dubbed television is equally ridiculous. When the mouths form shapes that do not match the sounds coming from the TV, it’s impossible to follow. But so much is dubbed here in Spain that I should get over it -- just like my fear of the telephone. Spain is going to keep on dubbing American TV shows and the phone is going to keep on ringing.

Sometimes I bump into my Madrileña roommate in the hallway and we will have a conversation while I am not wearing contacts or glasses. I can’t see her lips moving, so I must concentrate. I unconsciously move closer and closer to her in an effort to see her face. Now, Americans find this lack of space between two people horrifying, but the Spanish would probably prefer to converse when I can’t see, because it means I am an appropriate two inches away from them.

Getting out of one's comfort zone is always a good thing and clearly my zone exists as far away from the telephone as possible. But today I got over one of those ridiculous hurdles and actually, willingly (well, okay not entirely willingly) picked up the phone to make a call in Spanish. Ironically, for an eye doctor’s appointment.

We’ll see if it was a success when I go to the given destination at 9pm next Tuesday.

Wait…9pm doesn’t seem like an appropriate time for an eye doctor’s appointment, does it?

Spaces and Selves

A friend from Boston came to visit some months ago, and I was hesitant about whether she'd fit into my new Madrid apartment. My US condo was spacious and comfortable -- perfectly laid out to reflect "me" and respond to my needs. I loved it. Visitors tended to fall asleep on my couch with the afternoon light streaming through the windows, but I took this as a compliment to the space's calming influence rather than a sense of boredom. So, needless to say, I was dubious about my friend's reaction to my Spanish quarters of 50 sq meters. Now, she's a kind girl as well as a small girl, so I wasn't expecting her to drop her bags and look around aghast.

But I wasn't expecting her to love it either. To my surprise, she thought the apartment perfectly reflected me. She would have been able to easily pick this poor, small, shabby apartment that tried to sneak by without a kitchen, right out of a lineup. (It did boast floor to ceiling windows and a central location.) Granted, I had brought a rug and some small but prized frames with me to Madrid, and there were some books present. But I was surprised.

And so, months later, I think of this surprise as I lay on a new bed in my new bedroom in a new barrio of Madrid. Supposedly, my whole living situation has changed. I'm sharing with roommates after a long stint of choosing to do otherwise. This is quite different. This is a change.

But my room looks quite familiar -- and will undoubtedly look familiar to this friend when she pays another visit. And it makes me wonder -- based on these very physical indications -- is change really possible? We may change our surroundings. We may change our appearance. We may change our job and even our daily routine. Our tastes evolve. We can choose to change how we spend our time, and we can choose to take our past history into consideration and change how we react to people, places, things.

And yet, we keep dragging our selves with us wherever we go.

The Good, the Bad, & the Adapted

An adapter is a connector for joining parts or devices having different sizes, designs, etc., enabling them to be fitted or to work together. (Random House) In the taxi on the way to Barajas airport, I closed my eyes.  Simply leaned my head back and rested, even though the scene out the window was beautiful – the sort of thing for which an American should keep her eyes open.

But one gets used to things.

Madrid is flat but there are always mountains and hills in the distance.  And the color is this auburn orange dotted with Cyprus, olive, and dusty pine – colors that sit well under clouds that can’t decide which hue of grey to be.

It’s not something I’d ever think would become ordinary to me.  But I’ve plugged my American self into a Spanish adapter, and such is the day to day – just like the more mundane things over the past year: Spanish keyboard, hanging laundry to dry, lunch after 2pm.

Acclimation cannot simply be a bad thing.  We grow accustomed not only to the wondrous of life but also to the not so pleasant.  This is particularly helpful in circumstances that we cannot change.  For example, my grandmother, a painter, is losing her sight – an irreversible situation that calls for adjustment and acclimation.  Useful adaptation.

Nevertheless, I’d like to choose when to adapt.  I’d like to choose not to become blasé about the highlight reel.  What does it mean that we, as human beings, are such good adapters that we steer our existence to the middle ground by making the beautiful ordinary and the ugly palatable?

These days, my life is filled with adapters.  I’m talking now about those little electrical devices that I am always leaving behind – at the office, in hotels, on airplanes.  My hairdryer is from Spain, my laptop from the US, and my phone from the UK.  And, yes, I also live in constant anticipation that my appliances are going to explode at any given moment.

So, here’s a tip – to keep your computer and your self from browning out: Don’t leave items plugged in and unattended.