Dr. Mario

It’s no great shocker for me to admit that I am fluent in Spanish. I don’t know quite when that jump was made – from really really good to fluent. Certainly sometime in the last 2 years that I’ve been living and working in Madrid. Sure, there are still words that I don’t know or grammar tenses that trip me up. But for all intents and purposes fluency is now mine. (After all, those who can claim to know every word in their native language are few and far between… and almost certainly lying.) This can be evidenced by two most recent vocabulary acquisitions – engedro (when used for definition b), locayo, and esbirro. But although I know that I’m fluent it’s not something that I ever think about unless I’m working on my resume.

Then I was talking to my friend yesterday about a recent trip to the pharmacy. I stopped by on Monday to ask the pharmacist about a potential complication that I’d read on the prospectus of one of the medicines I’d bought last week. I just wanted to see how prevalent the complication was, what he recommended, etc. As I was relating this story to my friend she interrupted me and said, “ Did you ever think you’d have to have that kind of conversation in another language? It’s not exactly the type of vocabulary they teach you in school.” And I realized she was right. Somewhere along the way the leap was made from opening a bank account, buying groceries, heck even debating American foreign politics to discussing the finer points of illness, medicinal interactions and long-term health. If I had tried to plan that conversation, my query, ahead of time I probably would have chickened out and made Nacho do it for me. But this was just another stop in my long list of Monday afternoon errands. And it went off without a hitch.

The Writing on the Wall

Si tu Dios es judío, tu coche japonés, tu pizza italiana,
tu gas argelino, tu café brasileño, tu reloj suizo,
tus cifras árabes, tus letras latinas...
¿Cómo te atreves a llamar a tu vecino extranjero?

I was out and about (unfortunately sans camera) last week when I came across this message painted on a wall in the Lavapiés neighborhood. It can be translated as the following:

If your God is Jewish, your car Japanese, your pizza Italian,
your gas Algerian, your coffee Brazilian, your watch Swiss,
your numerals Arabic, your letters Latin…
How dare you call your neighbor a foreigner?

Lavapiés is perhaps the most heavily immigrant-populated neighborhood in Madrid – Wikipedia states that around 50% of the population in non-Spanish. And I would venture to say that the bulk of people who visit the area, frequently for its authentic “ethnic” food, are of the more open mindset, so it’s not that the sentiment is falling on deaf ears, but rather on those that are already singing in the choir… perhaps it would be a better message for the residents of my neighborhood… I wonder how long the graffiti would be allowed to stay up were it painted on a wall on Calle Serrano?

On another note, translating the message got me to wondering… why do we capitalize nationalities (and languages for that matter) in English but not in Spanish?

Carrots

Don’t ask me why but the other night Nacho and I were singing the theme song to Married with Children. You know how it goes…

Love and marriage, love and marriage.

They go together like a horse and carriage.

That’s when I realized that something was off with Nacho’s singing. He was unintentionally putting a more modern spin on the song. After all, who drives carriages these days? A better fit was Nacho's song...

Love and marriage, love and marriage.
They go together like a horse and carrots.

Language is such a funny thing.

(Thanks to google for the image, not the editing though - that was all Nacho-inspired.)

Thursday thoughts

If I only I had my camera with me here at work… then I’d post a picture of the current state of my office refrigerator. It’s stocked full of tantalizing bottles of Lambrusco. And a big cake. Clearly someone is celebrating. And celebrating in Spain means alchohol. Even if it’s at the office. Even if it’s at noon. I might have to join in. Even if it’s not for my department…

A Horse of a Different Color

I just got back from a Girls’ Week trip to London with my mum and sis. We’ve all been to London a half-dozen or so times so this trip was less about sight-seeing than it was about shopping, eating, and theater-going. In fact it has been almost exactly 10 years since my first trip to London – a girls’ weekend with my mum when I was studying abroad in Madrid in the fall of 1999.

This blog initially sprang out of the need for an outlet for the unceasing comparison-making habit that I picked up upon returning to Madrid to live. But one of the first realizations that I ever made about how different seemingly similar “western” countries can be was when I arrived in London that fall after 2 months in Madrid.

We were strolling into Leicester Square, hoping to score some last-minute tickets for a musical that evening, when I was unexpectedly overwhelmed by the sheer number of non-white people around me. It wasn’t something that I’d ever considered before – the homogeneity of Spain. Although I went to a college which is approximately 1.5 times more “racially diverse” than the nation as a whole, my hometown in suburban St. Louis has nearly 3 times fewer ethnic minorities than the national average. So perhaps after spending my summer back home the makeup of the Spanish population simply wasn’t noteworthy to me. Certainly I had never “noticed” it prior to my arrival in London, where I was abruptly surrounded by people from every walk of life – Africans, Asians, Indians. After 5 days there such a mélange was once again the norm for me and upon my return to Madrid I began to notice what I had not before.

According to Wikipedia, London had an immigrant population of around 29% in 2001. The population of immigrants in Madrid back then? 3%. Yes, that’s right. Three percent. Reading that makes me think that I probably should have noticed something was up regardless of my hometown demographics. Heck, that 3% makes my 9%-non-white hometown look like a true melting pot.

But things have changed drastically for Spain these past 10 years. I was not struck by such a difference this time around. Certainly the cultures represented in the UK and in Spain are different. (My sister in Edinburgh complains about the lack of good Latin American cuisine. I have yet to find really good, cheap Thai food.) But the diversity is there. Or it’s getting there.

Also according to Wikipedia, over the past ten years the immigrant population in Madrid has risen to almost 18% of the total. Six times as many immigrants in just a decade. Unfortunately for me the bulk of those come from 3 major geographical regions – Africa (proximity), Eastern Europe (entry to the EU), and Latin and South America (language) – and southeast Asia is not one of them. For the time being I’ll have to save my Thai-food cravings for the trips to the UK and my sis will save her picante cravings for visits to Madrid.

(On a random side note, perhaps connected to this jumble of information, is the recent discovery by my burrito-craving sister that Taco Bell is running a trial in Europe before expanding into the market. Where did they locate their lone store? Madrid.)

Roadtrip

Last week I once again travelled north to visit our construction site in Pais Vasco. I don’t really mind these days out of the office, but I admit that some times I am overly focused on getting there and getting back. This time I decided to enjoy the journey a bit more and stop at one of the sites that I pass each time I venture that way. This is like the sign that beckoned me…


A 10th century necropolis tucked away in the hills. On my previous visit I asked one of the guys at the construction site if he had been up there. He didn’t even know it existed and he’s from a town about 6 miles away! So that piqued my curiosity even more and made my stopping absolutely necessary.

I climbed up into the hills, through a little village full of stone buildings, past a shepherd with his flock until I reached a second sign pointing me along across a field – no real road in sight. But at just 200m I figured I (and my non-4 wheel drive rental car) could handle that. I got about 400m along to the top of a ridge when I stopped.

There was no necropolis in sight.

I climbed out of my car and peaked around the area. Nothing. Could I really not SEE it? Had the ridge I climbed put me on TOP of it? I still don’t know the answer. I searched the internet when I returned to Madrid and the only reference I could find has no pictures of the structure…

Disheartened I made my way back down the hill to the main road. On the way I snapped this shot of my “office” for the day.


I suppose all was not lost.

Bald and funny

Last week one of my coworkers was kind enough to give me a ride home from the office. As we made our way through Madrid’s late afternoon rush hour we somehow started chatting about stereotypes – particularly those stereotypes associated with the people of a different country. You know the kind I’m talking about… everyone from (insert country) carries a gun, goes to bull fights, is a drunk, wishes s/he were American, is rude, etc… But my friend threw me for a loop when he said,

“I know not all Americans are fat, burger-eaters. Just like not all Spaniards are bald joke-tellers.”

Huh? Am I missing something? I’ve lived in Spain off and on for going on 5 years and never once would I have thought to describe the typical Spanish in such a fashion… Am I alone on this? Is this really the image the people outside of Spain have of the Iberian men?