I am going to try and devote a blog each month to telling stories from my various travels because as we all know foreigners, and their odd behavior, are always good for a laugh. Some of you may have heard this story but I think it is an important one as it was an indelible part of my first abroad experience.
Most of you know I lived in Spain for about 7 months in 2003. While those 7 months were some of the best of my entire life, they also forced me to learn a good deal about patience and allowing “nature to run its course.” I had always considered myself a hard-headed guy, stubborn to a fault I guess. But upon arriving in Spain I soon found out that I was but an amatuer when it came to obstinance. Let’s just start with this concept: Despite all of the pressures of globalization and the market economy, these people still insist on shutting their business down everyday from about noon to 2:30 so they can get a nice lunch and nap in. Just think about the balls of a practice like that.
Although it took a few weeks to really settle in to this, once I did the stories kept piling up. First it was the rental car company that literally shut the store down in the middle of our transaction. We were trying to rent a nice little Fiat, when the manager advised us we would need to come back in an hour as the parade was coming by and he did not want to miss it. Enterprise this was not. Later it was arguing with a police officer that the man running around masturbating in front of women was a problem even though as he said, “he was not hurting anyone.” I even spent a good deal of time attempting unsuccessfully to convince Spanish friends that George W. Bush did not in fact win 99.8% of the vote to become President. Good times.
As the end of the trip neared these types of run-in’s were happening daily. At the grocery store for instance I was not allowed to touch the produce. They had women who stood at each display and I pointed to the one I wanted. Great service you’d think. The problem was once I chose it I could not put it back so often I would be given the apple to find a massive bruise on the other side. The wierder part was that once in the checkout lane the clerks sat in chairs scanning your stuff but refusing to bag it. The first time I learned this it was awkward. I just kept standing there wondering why the hell this lazy Spanish chick wouldn’t put my avocados in a bag. She just gloured at me, the stupid American. It was quite a stand-off until I finally caved in and began bagging.
But it was in last few days that I was told a story that I think summed up this trait quite well and in a way exemplified my experience in Spain.
I was in Madrid eating lunch with a former boss of mine who happened to now work in the American Embassy. My boss, who was a good guy, was not the type of American you would picture living abroad. This is a nice way of saying he was kind of a control freak. Anyway, his wife and he had just given birth to their first baby and because they knew they were leaving Spain very shortly, they wanted to commerate their stay and their baby’s birth there. They decided to name the child Kyleigh and give her Madrid as a middle name. Cute idea right? So they go to file the birth certificate with the correct government agency and are quickly questioned by the city worker.
“Wait, this is not correct. Madrid is not a name,” he quickly declared. They went on to explain that they knew but they were trying to pay homage to her birthplace and have something to remember their experience by. How naive they were to think this would work. So the argument goes back and forth with the city official declaring that this was not right, that Madrid was not a name, and that he cannot put it on a birth certificate. Finally, after about 20 minutes he seems to give up and my boss and his wife think they have won the argument. They underestimated Spain though, because one thing about Spaniards is they always get the last word.
Two weeks later the birth certificate arrive in the mail and said: “Kyleigh Madrid (I advised them this is not a name and they ignored me. I do not agree with or endorse this)”. As my dad would say, they got Spained.
