La Vida Loca

My favourite fiancée and I were in Madrid this last weekend. We spent some time with a couple of great friends of ours, Megha and Erika, and while it was far too short, it still ranks as a great weekend with some good fun, good food, good weather and some great company. I will not ramble on too much about Madrid, as you can read all about it in this lady’s great blog (we want more Burns!).

However, I will share my random ramblings and thoughts on good old Spain. I spent my year abroad at University in Barcelona. My decision on choosing a university came down to the same criteria I used when selecting Liverpool Uni for my degree – somewhere I could watch a decent football team (no jokes!), somewhere I could have fun, and somewhere I could travel to Leeds easy enough if I wanted or needed to. I narrowed it to Barcelona or Madrid, and I was accepted at Barcelona Uni.

It was a great year. Plenty of ups and downs, but I thoroughly enjoyed the year. By the end of the year, my Spanish had developed well despite a virtually entire group of ex-pat friends. What’s new? I guess it makes most sense that we make friends easier with fellow foreigners who are share similar experiences to ourselves, and I am no different.

I came away from Barcelona at the end of 2001 wondering if I could live and work in Spain. I had one year left of university and I was ready to plunge into the world of real work and life. I had the same doubts as I have now to be honest, and our weekend in Madrid emphasised that more than ever. I love the thought of the lifestyle – generally quite relaxed, good weather, working hours that suit my style and a strong social and family ethic. Opportunities in sport and salaries even more so are pretty major negatives however. I also wonder whether the lifestyle would be counter productive to me professionally – I can see myself lacking motivation and drive with such great distractions. That is not to say that I want us to live in a miserable or boring place, we would go to Edmonton (so I am told!) if that was the case, but I feel that I may well struggle in a number of Spanish cities. That said, both HJ and I have considered a short spell in Barcelona again – you never know!

Spain is a charming place and having been there so many times for family reasons, it will always have a place in my heart. Many of the people lack manners and the customer service is not great, but for some reason, it never bothers me like it does here in Switzerland as they seem to have a certain charm at the same time. We had a comedy taxi driver this last weekend – he was smoking, while being on the phone three times in a 15 minute journey, and was chatting away to us. A total character.

I recall a particular Spanish-ism from my days back in Barcelona and I was reminded of it this weekend gone when I stumbled across a shop called a ‘Guitarreria’. No prizes for guessing what they sold there. It is common in Spain that they add ‘eria’ to a noun and it basically means a shop for whatever precedes it….cafeteria, pizzeria etc. It took me back to my Barca days when I childishly chuckled to myself every time I walked past the Ferreteria. I glanced in the window every day searching for a little Ferret to be sat in the window only to be disappointed with it actually being a hardware store.

There are still plenty of places in Spain we have yet to visit. Everybody I speak to raves about Granada and Seville to name a couple, and my lady has plenty of good stuff to tell me about San Sebastien. Annual or twice-yearly trips to Barcelona are a given, as is a return to Mallorca where I have not been for years, but there are plenty of gems in Spain that we have yet to see. It’s just a matter of time.