Tapa Thursdays: Caracoles

May 23, 2013 by · 5 Comments

Spain is a country in which some foods are seasonal: pumpkins are ripest around Autumn, chestnuts are peddled on the street at Christmastime and strawberries show up on the market in February or March.

Then the signs start showing up: HAY CARACOLES. Snails here.

For someone who’s a texture freak when it comes to food, I slurped down my first little tentacled creature during my first Spring in Seville. And I wanted more. Like shrimp, I’ve learned to love them and giddily wait for la temporada de caracoles.

What it is: This little bugger, a common snail in English, has been eaten since the Bronze Age, and in Spain they’re prepared by cleaning the mollusk while it’s still alive, and boiling them over low heat with garlic, spices, salt and cayenne pepper for nearly two hours. You can get a tapa for around 1,80€, a plate for 5€ or even buy bags of live snails on the street near market and make them at home.

Where it comes from: Snails are eaten all over the place, but the caracoles that you’ll commonly find in Seville are found near the Atlantic coast and in Morocco.

Goes great with: Alright, it’s getting trite now…everything just tastes better with beer. The Novio and I often meet after work for a beer or two and a tapa of caracoles.

Where to find them: Bars all over Seville (as well as Córdoba) will serve up tapas of caracoles during the springtime. My picks are Casa Diego in Triana (Calle Esperanza de Triana, 19. Closed Sundays) and Cervecería La Tiza in Los Bermejales (Avda. de Alemania, s/n. Open daily).

Like caracoles? Have a Spanish food you’d like to see featured on my bi-weekly tapas feature? If you’re interested in learning more about mollusks, read more on my guest post on Spanish Sabores.

Filed Under: Andalusia Tourism, culture shock, Featured, food, gastronomy, guiri atope, Spanish Traditions, Tapas, Tapas Thursday · Tagged: ,

Jaded Expat: Four (and a half) Things I Dislike About Living in Seville

March 5, 2013 by · 46 Comments

Truth be told, Seville was never on my list of places to study, let alone live. My plans included free tapas along Calle Elvira, views of the Alhambra from my window and weekend ski trips to the Sierra Nevada. But the Spanish government had other plans for me, sending me to work as a Language and Culture Assistant in the town of Olivares, 10 miles west of the capital of Andalusia.

In retrospect, it was a disappointment that initially had me thinking twice about my decision, then became perhaps the best choice I’ve ever made. Indeed, it has worked out in wonderful ways: learning Spanish to impress my new Latin amante and take on pesky bank tellers, finding a career choice that I enjoy and leaves me time to blog, facing my fears of living without my family to run to.

aaaand I shall call this photo “Spain, you wack sometimes.”

But my vida in Seville is more than sunshine and siestas, tapas and trips to the beach. My life is Spain is still life: I have a job that requires my presence, bills to pay, and enough headaches with bureacrazy to make someone’s head spin. Just like anywhere else on earth, I have irksome moments. As much as I love living in Seville, there are elements that make me roll my eyes and utter an Hay que ver (alright, ME CAGO EN LA MAAAAA) under my breath.

The Weather

When I initially moved to Spain, I toyed with the idea of returning to Valladolid. The promise of living with my host family in exchange for English classes seemed too good to pass up, and I have a soft spot for Vdoid and all of its castellano goodness. Then I remembered that I was there during a drought, a far cry from the stories I’d heard of the city of Cervantes turning into a tundra during the winter and early spring months.

Vámanooooh pal South!

While Andalusian winters are much more mild than their Castillian counterparts, the summers are also unbearable. Come May, the city turns into a hide-and-seek from the sun game. temperatures spike from a blamy 22° Celcius to 35° in a matter of days, which also means that I can’t sleep at night, I take multiple showers a day and gazpacho becomes the basis of my diet. Air conditioning is non-existent on buses, whereas the Corte Inglés department store is an enormous ice cube that, upon spitting you out and onto the hot pavement in Plaza del Duque, gives you an automatic cold. Just like in Goldilocks, the weather is either too hot or too cold, and rarely just right.

The Transportation

Seville is a sprawling metropolis, at least by Spanish standards. While one can get across the city in about 30 minutes by bike, traffic and frequent bus stops make it an absolute pain to moverse in public transportation. While I usually take my bike or my own two feet everywhere, there are rainy mornings or extremely hot afternoons where I have little choice but to swipe my transportation card.

Seville has oodles of bus lines and a new app that lets you see waiting times and investigate routes as well as one metro line and one light rail. If you’re in the center, you’re well-connected. If you live a bit further away, like me, your options are much more limited, and I often have to pay for a transbordo, or transfer, to be able to get to places like the gym or the Alameda. I’ve since opted to pay for a Sevici pass, which is a city-wide bike share, paying 25€ yearly instead of the 1,40€ charges by bus or metro. Still, the big bikes are clumsy and not always maintained, and acts of vandalism are rampant. There are days where actually moving around the city seem like such a big ordeal that I prefer staying at home.

The Bureaucracy

Ah, yes. The pain of my expat existence. Nothing is ever easy for a little guiri from America, from registering for a foreign ID card to even picking up my mail; it seems that Spain keeps coming up with ways to drain my wallet and make me spend my mornings waiting in line, testing my patience and willingness to be in a relationship with Spain. Is there any doubt as to why my fingers unintentionally write bureaucrazy?

Case in point: my recent tryst with getting a driver’s license. I learned to drive in 2001, and since then have not a parking fine to my name in America. When I rented a car with some friends to drive to La Rioja, the GPS guided us right into a roadside check and a 100€ fine. My suegra proclaimed that getting a driving license was absolutely necessary, and that she would even float the bill (Mujer is a saint, de verdad). Still, I spent two whole weekends in a driving course, had to deal with both my first and middle name being wrong on the theory exam, and am forced to learn to drive stick shift. Turns out, non-EU residents who have lived in the Eurozone for two years or more and required to take both the theory and practical exams. I swear, it never ends. Ever.

Then, or course, there’s the post office: I live not 200 meters from a post office and another 800 meters from another. Still, I was assigned to an oficina de correos that takes me 20 minutes to walk to, and inquiries into how to switch have been met with head shakes and shoulder shrugs. Worse still, any non-certified mail not claimed within 15 days of the original delivery date is returned to sender. I’ve lots checks, books and information packs because of this rule, in many cases can’t be avoided because of my time out of  the country during the summer and Christmas.

The enchufe starts early. This kid will probably be the amo of all of his friends when he gets beer here at age 16.

As an off-shoot, there’s the concept of enchufe, too. An enchufe is an outlet (like where you’d plug your computer in), and it refers to the business deals and underhand deals. Iñaki Undangarín, much? This concept has been both a benefit and a curse to me, giving me jobs and taking me out of the running for others, allowing me to have a great time at Feria (or not). Like in America at times, it’s all about who you know.

The Social Circles

The saying goes that sevillanos are the first to invite you to their house, but then never tell you where they leave. In my experience, making friends with sevillanos, particularly females, is quite difficult. I’ve thankfully got a great group of American female friends, but I’ve found that breaking into social circles in Seville is tough. The Novio has been close with his best friend since they were six – o sea, my whole lifetime. I have many friendships that are still close and have grown even as I moved away and they got married, but I have many more non-Spanish friends than Spanish ones. Plus, a majority of them have come from the Novio and not my own cultivation.

Another pitfall to moving abroad is the inevitable goodbyes when someone moves away – even the Spaniards! When my friends Juani and Raquel moved to Chile a few months back, it was like losing our social coordinators and my little sister at the same time. I remember the dozens of friends I’ve made here who have since moved on or moved back to their home cultures and often wish that they could have stayed. My group of friends often ebbs and flows as the years pass by.

My guiri girlfriends

What’s funny is that many of these gripes would be the same if I were living in Chicago – the bitter cold winters and heaps of snow, the expensive CTA system and highways choked with cars during peak times, and the hoops that would no doubt need to be jumped through if I moved back. It’s the kind of thing that I seem to warn bright-eyed guiris about when they first come to live or study in Seville: they’re often fascinated that I’ve been able to make a life here after so much time, but it’s not like study abroad. I’ve experienced grief and loss, heartache and even strep throat, found out I’m allergic to OLIVE BLOSSOMS in one of the world’s foremost producers of olive oil and had many tearful goodbyes.

My friend Kelly, a wise-cracking Chicagoan-turned-sevillana puts it well: if these things happened to us back in Chicago, we wouldn’t bat an eye. Not break ups or headaches would have us on the first plane back to what we know. Life is life here. It’s just Spain being Spain.

Besides, where else is it socially acceptable to drink sherry at noon, stay out until 4am on a school night, have crushes on Gerard Pique despite an extreme dislike for FC Barcelona and use Spanglish as your tongue-of-choice?

Do you have any headaches where you live, or any stories to tell about what you don’t like about your city?

Filed Under: bureaucrazy, culture shock, expat life, Featured, guiri atope, Guiri Gripes, Guiri Survival Tips, living abroad, papaleo, reflections, Seville · Tagged: , ,

Am I the only one who doesn’t like Barcelona?

February 6, 2013 by · 73 Comments

I am a person who believes in second chances. You can ask my dear friend, Phil (hi, friend!).

And when it comes to cities that I didn’t like the first time around, I’ll always willing to make another trip. So many of my travels could have been spoiled by rain, strikes, food poisoning and culture shock, but some cities and I are just not amigos, even after multiple visits.

Barcelona is one of those cities. Three second chances later, and it’s still not grown on me.

In all fairness, I love the whimsical architecture, the Mercè festival, the oceanfront. But the positive aspects seem to end there.

I find Barcelona too busy, too big, too expensive and not well-lit. It’s not friendly in the same way that Valencia is (another Spanish city I could take or leave), nor did I ever stop feeling like a tourist. Having my family with me was stressful as I repeated, “No, Mom, I can’t read it; it’s in Catalan and I don’t speak Catalan,” or tried to ask directions, only to find the person I’d asked spoke no English or Spanish. Apart from the sites I like, such as Parc Güell or the Gràcia neighborhood, I felt like I wasn’t really savoring a second chance in a city – and I swear I tried!

I hear loads about the cuisine, but being based in El Born, couldn’t find much that wasn’t chain pintxos and tapas, or menus riddled with poorly translated English – always a sign the service and prices will suck. What’s more, I come from a family of picky eaters. We had pizza, two consecutive meals at a pintxos bar and burgers.

And what is with not a single place being open for coffee before 9am, save Starbucks?! Even the 24-hour McDonalds wasn’t open when we left early one morning for the Pyrenees!

I’m also not into the Catalan ‘tude. Spearheaded by Artur Mas, a campaign for Catalonian independence has transformed the city into an alien landscape of sorts, which independence flags hanging from balconies, disturbing images of the rest of Spain and its people and Mossos, the Catalan version of a cop, all over the place. Mas was in a meeting in Palau Sant Jordi near our apartment, and the Mossos only let me pass when I told them I was American and didn’t care much for politics. The kicker? They want to be recognized as an EU sovereign state but still stay in the BBVA Spanish soccer league?

I also had to laugh when our host called to ask us how the trip was going. Considering we’d invariably come during three back-to-back holidays, I told him we’d had to escape the country on the whole and go to Andorra. Qué lujo, he responded, and I told him about my plan to travel to 30 countries before 30. His response? That Cataluña is another country, even though it’s illegal to secede from Spain.

What is great about Barcelona is its proximity to the Pyrenees, Girona and Costa Brava. Navigating through my cell phone, we took quick breaks to Andorra, Girona, Besalu and Monstserrat. Getting out of the city meant having my head cleared and experiencing a part of the country whose tourism is highly developed and thriving. Returning, I tried to see Barcelona a bit differently, but I just ended up pouting like a three-year-old when I had to pay more than 1,20€ for a beer and use my cell phone as a flashlight for opening the door to our place in El Born.

Have you ever given a city a second chance? Were your thoughts swayed? Is there a destination you’re not keen on returning to? Watch for the response to this post from Aga, part of the traveling duo of Aga Nuno Somewhere. She’s a big Barcino fan and is chomping at the bit to give her thoughts on the city!

Filed Under: Barcelona, Catalonia, Cataluña, culture shock, Featured, Gaudi, guiri atope, reflections, Spain, Spain Travel, the north, Travel · Tagged: ,

Thanksgiving Turkeys and Triumphs

November 20, 2012 by · 22 Comments

Can I admit something, at the risk of sounding like a bad American?

I never liked Thanksgiving as a kid. My mind keeps going to the hours of preparation at my grandmother’s house, clipping off the ends of green beans and trying to ignore bickering. I’d eat far too much, fall asleep watching football and feel groggy for days straight. Aside from the long weekend, I didn’t see the point of spending a whole day eating and watching TV, all in the name of spending time with family and glorifying a bird.

Then I moved away from America, to a land where cranberries, pecans and even turkeys are scarce (after all, pavo is the Spanish way of say a buck).

All of the sudden, Thanksgiving became a good excuse to get together with those closest to being my kin.

Our Thanksgiving celebrations in my ever-changing group of friends has never been just about us Americans and our traditions – we teach Spaniards about the hand turkey while drinking the garnacha-based wines (which, according to Ask.com, are the best matches for turkey!) and chattering a half a dozen languages.

Yes, I am thankful for my amoeba of culture in Seville – something that is just as much Spanish as American with a smatter of German, Mexican and everything in between.

But this year, I promised Kike a turkey, cranberry sauce and everything that my grandmother made him as breakfast last Christmas in Arizona (he no longer scoffs at my weird breakfast choices – mine is the type of family that eats waffles for dinner and cold leftovers for breakfast). He played his part by bringing back over a few cans of pumpkin and gravy mix and urged me to call on a turkey from a neighborhood carnicería. I began gathering recipes and making a rudimentary plan for how I’d make a full-on Thanksgiving dinner with one oven and two hands.

Then his dumb job sent him abroad nine days earlier than expected, effectively missing Pavo Palooza.

Still, the turkey show must go on, I thought, and I extended the offer to his mother and friend Susana again, not wanting to have to eat turkey bocadillos alone until Reyes.

I was not without challenges, from the lack of a microwave to last-minute changes in the menu due to no  fresh green beans, sage and evaporated milk in the supermarket or even a can opener from the American goodies I brought back with me. There’s a reason I’m the go-to giuri for plastic forks and wine at our parties.

Menu:

Pumpkin Pie. Stuffing. Cornbread. Carrots and Garlic Green Beans. Mashed Potatoes. Gravy. Cranberry Sauce. Turkey. Tinto and Beer.

Turkey: 18,40€

Groceries not at home: 51,59€

New can opener: 5,15€

Total: 85,14€

Even the Brits I work with suggested that I start preparing a schedule ahead of time, and I did: cleaning, pie, vegetables, cornbread and stuffing on Friday, turkey and potatoes on Saturday. I was up before the sun on Saturday when I realized that the evaporated milk I’d refused to buy out of principle was going to be necessary for the pie I was too lazy to make the day before.

I wrote on Kike’s Facebook wall for our anniversary, stating that he would have enjoyed watching me fight with a ten-pound bird more than consuming it. For four hours, I set my alarm every half and hour to give the turkey a little broth bath, nervous if I hadn’t gotten all of the gizzards out or I didn’t let it cook enough inside. When my guests – Carmín, Alejandro, Susana and Inma – showed up right on time, I offered them beer and wine, and they marveled at the sudden transformation of an anti-housewife as I shooed them out of the kitchen. The only person I’d let in was Luna, my friends’ two-year-old daughter, who chowed down on cornbread and checked the status of the turkey.

In the end, the meat was cooked, no one cared that the stuffing was a bit cold and I didn’t end up with too much leftovers. We spent the afternoon laughing, telling jokes and finding places in our stomach to fit more food in. Wanting to do everything al estilo americano, I had to teach them the gravy volcano, explain that they’d probably fall asleep after consuming the turkey and look for American football games on YouTube. I felt lucky (thankful, if you will) about having friends and family who were open to trying out my holiday and easing the ache I sometimes feel for being so far away.

What Kike has got is mala suerte, heaved my beloved Doña Carmen. This food is making me think twice about American cuisine!

Filed Under: America, coming home, expat life, family, Featured, guiri atope, Guri Atope, holidays, housewives, living abroad, Thanksgiving · Tagged: , , , , ,

Seville Snapshots: Bartering at the Plaza de España

November 19, 2012 by · 2 Comments

The first (and one of very, very few) feeling I ever had of notoriety was from one Cassandra Gambill, who started following my blog way back before I knew theat people were actually reading. Naturally, I was thrilled when she chose to come to Spain a few years ago and blog about, so I gladly accepted her submission from her most recent trip to Seville.

Rediscovering Sevilla after a brief trip south in 2007, I had to rectify my image of this Andalusian town. When I had originally visited, preparations for the subway system left the city dirty and dusty. Whenever I saw photos of iconic Sevilla, I couldn’t recognize them as anything I’d seen, including the beautifully tiled Plaza de España.

Even though the day was overcast when I finally made it back to Sevilla, I immediately appreciated the grandeur and color of this sophisticated square. Speaking of color, there were plenty of local characters who also made the place a feast for the eyes and ears. In this corner alone there were lovey-dovey locals, backpacking-toting tourists, a scarf-and-abanico vendor, and a wandering woman hoping to plant rosemary sprigs on unsuspecting sightseers.

——–

Going on her third year in the Spanish capital, Cassandra Gambill is now working towards a Master’s in Bilingual Education at the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares. Her motto? Where there’s a will there’s a way, and where’s a puente, there’s a trip in the making.

 

You can follow Cassandra via her blog and twitter:

Blog: www.geecassandra.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/geecassandra

Filed Under: Andalucia, Andalusia Tourism, El Centro, Europe, fashion, Feria, guiri atope, money, photo post, Sevilla Center, Seville, Seville Shots, shopping, Things to do in Sevilla · Tagged: , , , ,

Things I’ve Gotten Better at Since Moving to Spain

November 13, 2012 by · 26 Comments

Coming from a family of teachers (and officially calling myself one on paper), my mother always taught me the value in learning outside the classroom. Though she counts on her fingers, lady’s a wiz with fractions, teaching my sister and I as we baked Christmas cookies. She taught us animal care by taking us weekly to the barn to groom and feed our first family pet, Pudge, and made us join Girl Scouts.

Any wonder who was my biggest supporter when I decided to move to Spain?

I was recently talking to my friend Gonzalo, one of the Novio’s compañeros from the military academy who lives in Zaragosa. He told me that his parents were amazed at how I’d come to Spain alone and with very little Spanish…and then stayed.

Call it the evolution of a species if you like: adapt or die.

I’ve learned to live without peanut butter, accept that baking here is nothing like it was in Nancy’s kitchen, and spend copious amounts of time on Facebook and Skype in the name of staying involved back home. But, with all of this, I’ve also learned a thing or two and have improved skills that I never thought would be necessary.

Parallel Parking

Recently, my friend Sandra of Seville Traveller and I were attending the Evento Blog España. The rain was pouring down, so we took her car to a nearby barrio for lunch. I watched as she maneuvered her compact car into an even tinier parking spot in a garage littered with cars, scooters and the like.

I’m American, from a place with wide open (parking) spaces, often the diagonal type that are simple to pull in and out of. Coming to live in a place like Spain means that I’ve had to adapt to their bumper kissing, doble fila and maneuvering Kike’s enormous vehicle when it’s my turn to drive. Something to work on? My tendency to panic when driving in a place I don’t know.

This, of course, has not been without oops moments – two years ago, Kike’s tank of a car got a big scratch from my carelessness when pulling it into a parking space, rather than backing it in.

Eating fish

Nothing says Midwesterner like my love for beef and grain. I accidentally consumed fish before realizing that I actually liked it. Since I had never learned names of fish and seafood, I often ordered sea creatures – as well as tripe stew, kidneys and coagulated blood – without knowing what I was really eating.

I’ve also learned how to clean it properly, from pulling the ink sacs and backbone out of a chipirón to lifting the bones of a white fish. It reminds me of a picture of my sister and I during a fishing trip in Wisconsin when we pinched our noses and stuck out our tongues as my father cleaned and grilled the perch we’d caught – it seems I’ve come full circle.

Travel has also made me an adventurous eater, in that I’m the first to try whatever is on the menu – even bugs, weird organs and live oysters.

Cutting Onions Without Crying

When I met Melissa, she told me that part of our monthly rent would go towards things we’d need in the house: cleaning supplies, olive oil and onions.

Onions have also crept into my diet just as fish have, but the hardest thing was learning to cut them without crying – I used to have to wear sunglasses to stay dry! Now, I usually cry while cooking the onions, but that could just be the smoke.

The secret? Doing it fast and cutting on a slant.

Sticking up for Myself

When studying for the DELE exams last November, I had Kike read all of my writing prompts. His conclusion is that I’m really good at reclamaciones, or complaint letters. I used to be the girl who would gulp down food that should have been sent back, or turn on my heel and not stand up to the funcionarios when they turn me away.

That all changed when a taxi driver took me the wrong way and wanted to charge me for it. I asked him to leave me at a cross street, but he insisted it was a shortcut and that would take me to where I needed to go. When I asked him to leave me off and let me walk the rest of the way, he tried to charge me the full amount. I insisted on him stopping the meter, leaving me a receipt and taking down his licence number. With that, he charged me just half and let it go.

I’ve learned to be proactive and not let people or silly rules walk all over me. Not the Vodafone salesman can turn me away when I start running my mouth about how they never signed me up for the insurance I had paid for on my bills, or to a nurse who was verbally abusive to a friend (we filled out a claim in the much-advertised LIBRO DE RECLAMACIONES). I’ve also told a few little lies to the people in extranjería to help speed up the process of getting paperwork done.

In Spain’s current economic situation, people are trying to squeeze as much out of every person as they can, which means that foreigners sometimes bear the brunt of their bad service and overcharging. Being assertive won’t cost you anything.

I still think I’m a little lost guiri whose luck just happens to never run out. Living abroad is a test in patience and resilience, yes, but it’s a lot about stepping back, taking a deep breath and remembering that it could happen the same way in your country.

What have you learned to do better during your time abroad? What do you want to improve on?

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Filed Under: bureaucrazy, culture shock, expat, expat life, Featured, guiri atope, Guiri Survival Tips, la vida loca, living abroad, moving abroad, papaleo, Spain · Tagged: ,
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