My friend Jacob asked me recently about cultural adjustments. What things are weird? How am I dealing?
The boring but truthful answer is that the biggest culture shock came the first time I went to Europe. I was fifteen and staying with a Spanish family about twenty miles down the road from where I live now (crazy coincidence, eh?) and it all made me wide-eyed.
This time, having spent lots of time in Europe before, and even having been to Spain before, I was expecting nothing less than warm sodas, pizzas with corn and tuna on them, shelf-stable milk and bidets in the bathroom.
But it's true that there are some things that surprised me (for example, air kiss etiquette is muy importante here and it takes a while to observe all the subtleties of that delicate custom).
But for the sake of conversation here are a few things I miss from the States:
- Websites being trustworthy - Spain is just not the biggest tech geek country out there, not by a long shot. If a business has a website at all, it's usually something someone threw up a few years ago and hasn't touched since. They don't really always get the whole "update regularly" part of the build-a-website kit. It isn't unusual to find websites still reflecting special events from 2006.
- A sandwich with more than one ingredient. The Spanish are big on sandwiches. Ham, chorizo, and so on. But they really like them with bread, one slice of meat, and butter or mayo. No lettuce/tomato/onion, and certainly no Ruebens or anything messy and clever like that. Meat, bread, butter/mayo, done.
- Dryers. As in, clothes dryers. Warm, fragrant, SUPPLE clothes. Do you know how stiff things get when they air-dry? Ugh.
haha! what about clean public restrooms stocked with soap! paper towels! toilet paper!
ReplyDeleteYES! exactly. I could have written this myself. But I would add the afternoon siesta closing time, which still frustrates me. Oh, and not having menus and just having to come up with your order from thin air.
ReplyDeleteOkay what Ms. Jamie said. The bathrooms at my high school have ONE thing of toilet paper and it's located at the far end. I guess we can't be trusted to have it in the stalls.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you know how to say flush the toilet, "tirar de la cadena"? I encountered a literal expression of this, an actual chain to pull (tirar). Oh my.
I guess I am cutre because I'll still ask for tap water. Just call me Señora Hortera.
@maven - they're nice and clean here for the most part, but paper products are a privelege, not a right
ReplyDelete@cass - yes! the order from thin air thing...I don't mind doing it, I DO mind not knowing what the price will be before I order something! A 5 euro plate of olives...no gracias.
@kaley - long live tap water! I will never stop loving it.
Well, I have to disagree on the butter/mayo on sandwiches. I'm from Spain and I really haven't seen any of my friends/family put butter on their sandwich. You're right in that we just put jamon and cheese or chorizo and cheese, but usually nothing else goes on it. Mayo is added when you have a "vegetal", which includes some lettuce etc...
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