I'll begin with the country and end with water. I could see very clearly Spain's Catholic history, and its recent fascist past. No one j-walked; we all waited for the light (it drove me crazy, like San Francisco). Hours were strict, and we were received on the minute when we had appointments with city officials and the like. The style of dress is simple, and somewhat modest. The food was so plain; some soups and salads had flavour, and we did have a delicious meal up in the Pyrenees, but one could argue that they are their own nation: so isolated from the lower altitudes. Most of the time, however, one received bread, wine, water, some fried seafood or vegetables, and then a slab of meat with french fries on the side, with little done to either other than the heating preparation. Life seemed simple and planned.
I did enjoy the long, late lunches, however. Spain sits on the ultimate end of the European time zone, so this means that when it's 2300, places as far away as Macedonia are sleeping, it's still light (albeit barely) in Spain at this time of year. This causes an hours shift: lunch is eaten between 1300 and 1500, and dinner isn't until 2100 usually. Spaniards don't sleep in the summer, though, because work starts between 0800 and 1000 still. Because of this, you'd think that night life would be awesome, but the only nights that were worth going out were Saturdays, because everything is quite dead any other night of the week.
Some random differences:
--When written, the number nine has the monkey tail (yes, I invoked that pre-school term), which loops back under the circular part. It looked weird.
--Cars were not nearly as small as I imagined they would be, but they were small. Some, though, seemed just like their American counterparts: some Volkswagens, BWMs, Audis, Mercedes, et cetera.
--Parallel parking was akin to Boston: 'I'll park in this tight space by continuously hitting the two adjacent cars until I fit.'
--Cabs scared me driving, because they drove with some heightened sense of purpose, which was completely unnecessary.
--No one apologises when bumping into someone on the street, nor do they watch when entering onto the sidewalk (from buses, buildings, et cetera) for other pedestrians. Population density--there are lots of people in very little space in Europe?
--Recycling is so easy; the city has great bins everywhere, which people really, actually use. I know that I did. =)
--There are a bunch of ska kids, who are at odds with the skinhead neo-Nazis. I thoroughly enjoyed remembering my childhood whilst sitting with a couple of said punks.
--Mullets: the hairstyle is alive and well in Spain. Apparently, it's some kind of political statement, and on small children, it's a statement from their parents, but I don't believe it. I even saw a species of mullet that was DREADED.
--I saw just about two morbidly obese people; everyone else looked healthy. It's nice being able to walk streets that are full of people who have been taught how to feed themselves.
As for water, I think the fact that water costs as much as, if not more than, wine attests to a lot. Water is scarce in Spain, as well as most of southern Europe, and I could feel it. I grew up in the middle of the woods, surrounded by swampland, drinking water from a well in my front yard. I vaguely remember times when neighbours had to dig deeper wells, or times that I couldn't use as much water, but these were few at most, and, as mentioned, vague, therefore long ago.
I drank the tap water, which didn't taste incredible, but didn't make me sick at all. I drank it, however, in moderation, such that I wasn't peeing every two hours, because there wasn't a bathroom available except at lunch and end of day. Water, though, is apparently more like a drink that people, well, drink, and not like we treat it in the United States. I've never had anything in any of my water bottles save water; I would never walk around nursing apple juice all day (although I don't think that I'd complain). Juice!
There was no juice in Spain.
Okay, so I'm being hyperbolic. There was juice in the grocery stores, but it was water (which I had on me) or tinto de verano at meals, so I ended up drinking a lot of wine. I didn't hate it, because tinto de verano is tinto wine cut with sparkling water something, and it tastes sort of like juice, a bit, maybe... I miss juice, people.
Water in all of its aspects is saved. Shower-heads are not permanently affixed to the wall, and if there isn't a clip provided, then one has to hold the water to wash. Usually, I'd wet up, turn off the water, wash my hair and body, rinse, shut off the water again, condition and what have you, and then have a final rinse. Showers aren't in tubs, either, and they leak all over the floor, nomatter what. I did miss sitting in a warm shower feeling my fingers for once, but I like saving water and being all different cultural.
Ahem: you save more water by not eating one pound of meat than you do by not showering for an entire year.
I'll cite that if you complain. Veganism came up in a few lectures, but this group isn't necessarily the eco-granola water-saving bunch as much. It makes me wonder what motivated people to study in a water dialogue. Maybe I'm just being egotistical about it all, but water is, at the end of the day, something that interests me very much.
It killed me how pervasive bottled water is, and how people can be so--ignorant?--about it? 'It tastes better.' Well, so does arable land for places of the world who have not even potable water. Waste of resources, end of story.
The Expo itself centred upon water, and I did enjoy a few of the pavilions, and wish that I had paid more attention and seen more. Apparently, Zaragoza chose water as the topic to snub Valencia, which is trying to steal all of poor, rural Aragón's water to build and maintain golf courses and other touristy attractions. As we travelled the land of Aragón, too, I saw awkward irrigation and poor farmers. I saw empty, caved-in earthen shacks in fields overgrown. I began to understand how important the management of the Ebro water basin in this land is.
An interesting contrast occurs when one tries to Google US water basins or the like.
Water is managed differently, too. Basin authorities span regions and even country borders in order to manage the water effectively (although our sources on this were government and city officials, who are obviously somewhat biased, and I do wonder the truth about all that we were told). Something like this, although I'm sure that some are in place, in the US seems less likely to flourish due to different state laws and personal property rights. In a county in which most people's wealth is foolishly concentrated in their house and property, people are not likely to give up any bit of this, lest of all land and anything underneath.
This, though, is a different story for a different time. I will say in closing that Spain did not feel at all like a Mediterranean society, with the exception, maybe, of that in Barcelona. I did not feel connected to this great sea that provides the social and cultural definition for so much of the region.
Turkey is so different, and yet still the same.
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