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Either the Spanish enjoy their meat rather rare, or they think Americans do (or maybe the Dutch? or Germans?). MC and I have ordered steak in some form or another (entrecot, solomillo—it’s hard to figure out what to order because I don’t even know cuts of meat in English) five or six times now and, of course, every time the server has asked us how we would like it cooked. I’ve never caught the exact words they use to ask, but we figured out pretty quickly what they meant. Unfortunately, we haven’t been sure how to answer in Spanish and so far every time we’ve gotten steak, they’ve basically just led a cow—still mooing and chewing its cud—out from the kitchen. It’s a little awkward.
Fortunately, because I’m all smart and stuff, after six weeks of having to ask the server (in Spanish!) to take the cow back into the kitchen and slaughter it and possibly give it five minutes on the grill, I realized I could ask one of my Spanish teachers (who was born here and actually knows the language) how to order steak. So for anyone who is considering a trip to Spain and would like to be able to order cow that’s already dead and cooked a little, I humbly submit the following:
In Order from Rarest to Most Well-Done:
• casi vivo (almost alive)
• poco hecho (a little done)
• vuelta y vuelta (turned and turned…basically rare)
• al punto (medium)
• muy hecho (very done / well done)
So upon further reflection and in consideration of the fact that they’ve got three different forms of rare, I think it is probably the Spanish that like their cow served living tableside, and not their assumption of American carnivorous tastes.
Vuelta y vuelta seems to be the default for non-Spanish speaking patrons. So basically, if you blankly stare at the waiter when they rattle off something after you order, you’re probably going to get a bloody hunk of meat. I must say, however, that because of my ignorance my tastes have changed a little since we’ve been here. Too afraid to ask the server to take the meat back and cook it a little more, I’ve just eaten what I’ve been served, and I think the Spanish might be on to something with this whole eating meat a little closer to its natural state thing. I figure that since I’m willing to eat beef carpaccio, I can eat rare steak, and honestly, we haven’t had a bad piece of meat since we’ve been here. So the above list is for your benefit if you’re making a trek to Spain anytime soon, but you might want to try the staring blankly strategy—so far it’s worked for us!
-cuptastic
I love Spanish ordinal numbers…
Driven by exorbitant train fares to—and a lack of available hotel rooms in—Sevilla this weekend, we made a last-minute decision to go to San Sebastián (Donostia), a small seaside resort town in the northeast of Spain, in the heart of Basque Country, instead (Donostia is the Basque name for it).
And to augment Cupalicious’ previous post: man, were we pleased with our impulsiveness.
View of the main beach from the northeastern hill.
Arriving around noon, we checked into our small but cozy, clean and cheap hotel room (which had great service, by the way, along with an exposed original stone wall in the room—cool) and set out to get some of the acclaimed Basque cuisine we’d been hearing so much about (the Basques are pretty fierce in all their cultural exploits: linguistic (Basque), political (ETA), culinary…they have ancient, secret and competitive gastronomic clubs where the all male members get together and cook up some wicked good super-hors-d’ouvres known as “pinchos”). We wandered around the maze-like warren of narrow streets of the old city before stumbling into their Plaza Mayor and finding a cafe with seats in the sun. Though we ordered what we thought was going to be sufficient to assuage our growling hunger, the small kebab of 8 pieces of grilled veal, the single croquette and plate of 5 fried calamari rings—though delicious—failed to fill us up. Especially after I accidentally dropped two of my 8 nibbles of veal on the ground while trying to de-skewer them. Oh well, the flavor of what remained was satisfying, the ambiance was nice and after a pair of cañas, I didn’t care. We ended up filing the void with a healthy helping of ice cream, which made it all better.
Note to Bruce: ice cream shops for miles. MILES! One right after another, and all with really good ice cream and supersized portions! Like these “smalls”…
We then took advantage of the 85°F sun-drenched day and went to the beach. The water was ice cold, but the sand was perfect, so we conked out there for a couple hours, subjecting the unsuspecting fellow beach goers to our shockingly white, Midwestern-winterized torsos. No complaints from us though, other than the fact that obscenely large northern / eastern European women should avoid the compulsion to bask topless. Good. God. Why are the boobs you don’t want to see always on display while those you wouldn’t mind gawking at are kept under lock and key?
Dinnertime found us in a great little tavern with the third-best steaks we’ve ever had, along with more ice cream and a nocturnal stroll on the pedestrian trail running along the seawall, crashing waves and all. Not a bad day all around.
Sunday was markedly colder and cloudy, which was fine, as we wanted to do some hiking around the hills of the city, which would have been brutal the day before. We ascended the eastern hill that borders the scallop-shaped bay, and explored the ancient fort and chapel at the summit. There was a great little museum inside the fortress with interactive films and exhibits documenting the history of the town, including a small 30-seat 1920’s style movie theater showing classic film of the city from the old days (the place has been a summer retreat for the well-to-do since Queen Cristina set up a summer home in the late 1800s, making the place a posh resort). That chewed up most of the day, and the remainder before dinner was spent strolling about, taking in the scenery. The second-best steaks we’ve ever had were consumed later that evening, topping off a very relaxing weekend.
So, long story short, and to echo Al’s thoughts: next time you’re in Spain, go to San Sebastián. It’s got everything: beach, forested hills, great food, ruins, cultural activities (theater, opera, holidays, etc) and ice cream. Lots and lots of ice cream. It’s the type of place we could take our dads and they could adequately occupy themselves while we sat on the beach with our moms wasting the whole damn day drinking and talking.
Pix on flickr.
-bdmc
San Sebastian was just gorgeous. Go there. Now. Or if you want to wait until 2045, we’ll have our summer retirement home there and you can stay with us.
We stayed in a great little hotel in the old part of the city that was very close to the beach. The food was fantastic, the people were friendly and the city is beautiful. I am absolutely in love with San Sebastian. MC is in the midst of writing a post, so I’ll let him give more details, but I just had to shout my love from the rooftops for a few moments…
-cuptastic
As a departure from MC’s obsession with the way in which Spaniards walk (it is pretty insane, however we’ve received new evidence that it’s a Mediterranean issue and not a Spanish issue), we have a new topic to discuss: what the rest of the world thinks of Americans!
(I can hear the collective groan all the way over here)
I’ve had a couple interesting experiences in the past few weeks that have shed some light on the rest of the world’s opinions about the US and have actually made me feel a little bit better about international relations.
First of all, I, apparently, do not look American. Last Thursday, a Swiss girl from our school came up to me in a bar and asked me a question in German (after which I stared blankly at her for about a minute and a half thinking ‘oh, please, please, please don’t let my Spanish be that bad!’), and once we got the languages figured out MC asked her why she automatically spoke German to me. She replied that she wasn’t sure where I was from but that I don’t give off an American vibe, and she thought I might be German. So apparently I’m either Dutch or German depending on whether I’m sitting or standing. (I was standing when the Dutch tourists approached me and sitting when the Swiss girl approached). We were talking to her for a while when she said, completely unprompted, that she thought of America as a country of extremes. We have the fattest people in the world and yet so many people with anorexia or bulimia; we have such huge differences in political beliefs among citizens; so much of what the rest of the world sees comes from Hollywood so it’s rife with all kinds of extremism; and even our landscapes are extreme in the sense that our country is huge, our climate is varied and we have such extreme topography from the Grand Canyon to the Rocky Mountains to Death Valley all the way to Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp. She then said that it was very strange to meet someone from the US who is just normal and like any average person from Switzerland or France or wherever. I wasn’t quite sure how to take that, but I think it’s a good thing. Mom? Dad? I’m officially average! And I’m out spreading my American averageness to the rest of the world!
A few days later in class, my teacher wrote “America,” “Holland,” “Portugal,” and “Russia” across the top of the board. (My class consists of, at the moment, girls from Russia, Holland, and Portugal, a boy from Georgia – that’s Republic of, not the US state – and a guy from England. That day however, it was only us girls in class). He then turned and said to me (in Spanish, of course), “Al, what are Americans like?” To which I choked a little on my water and replied, “What are Americans like or what does the rest of the world think Americans are like?” Basically, we were learning adjectives, so each person had to come up with a bunch of adjectives to describe people from their own country. Of course, as we got into the exercise, the other girls became more willing to give their own adjectives for what Americans are like. Among them were fat, loud, tall, patriotic, friendly, open, religious and proud. As we went on for each country we discovered a lot of really interesting things. My impression had always been that most Europeans are pretty patriotic, but at least in Spain and Portugal, that’s not completely true. The other thing that I’ve discovered is that WWII is still at the forefront of a lot of Europeans’ minds. I’m in class with girls that are in their early, early twenties who bring up WWII all the time when talking about relations between European countries. Once WWII was brought up during this discussion, the Russian girl said to me that she thought Americans were very proud because we had defeated fascism. (To which my first thought was, “actually most people seem to be more upset about the whole not defeating communism thing than helping defeat some fascism in Europe,” but decided to keep that to myself). I said that it’s very different in the US because we didn’t suffer like Europe did in WWII, so to us it seems like a long time ago. I think the men and women of that generation were proud to serve their country and proud of helping Europe, but we’ve had so many wars since then that the threat of fascism seems like something from another world and a completely different time period. (Okay, so I wasn’t so eloquent – I had to speak completely in Spanish!) I then went on to say that the current mood for a lot of Americans is actually shame because we’re embarrassed about the situation in Iraq and our imbecilic president and we feel like the rest of the world hates us. The response to this was overwhelmingly positive – according to all of my classmates and teacher there is too much history to just think of the current president and the mess we’re in. They know that a lot of Americans disagree with the war and when they think of America, they think of the people they’ve met from the US who have all basically been friendly, open, tall, and patriotic.
So in summary:
1) I don’t look American.
2) America seems like a big, extreme country to the rest of the world.
3) The rest of the world doesn’t hate us! Yay! (Edited 28.04.08 – Okay, I may have spoken a little soon on this way. The rest of the world doesn’t hate us, per se, but we do have a bad reputation. poop.)
-cuptastic
This post finds us once again revisiting the beguiling walking habits of Spaniards. As you can see from previous posts, this is truly a major point of concern for us; one which we are driven, if not to rectify before leaving this glorious country, at least to understand in greater depth.
Today we made a big leap toward the latter, as we had the revelation that the seeming unconscious tendencies of Spaniards to walk in quite possibly the most annoying ways possible are exactly that: unconscious. Rather, they are the result of natural selection induced by the Mediterranean climate and the physics thereby associated.
Allow me to rise out of my overly complex Hawking chair and speak frankly: basically, we figure it works like this: Spain is freakin’ hot for most of the year, right? What don’t you wanna do when it’s hot out? Move, right? Well, at least not rapidly. So that means for the last, I dunno, 10,000 years, Spaniards have been moving slowly so as not to break a sweat and stain the armpits of their very classy silk blouses, making today’s Spaniards really, really slow.
Now, if you recall from your 8th grade science classes—you know the ones that introduced you to physics through the then-seemingly-cool metaphors of the Spinning Bicycle Wheel and the Mousetrap Car (ok, Mousetrap Cars are still cool)—things that move tend to build up inertia and continue to move in the manner in which they started moving. And the faster things move, the greater their inertia, and hence, the more likely they are to keep going in the same direction (this is, of course, a very dumbed-down, graphic designer’s explanation of physics, and assumes that there are no forces acting to counteract the initial force). At any rate, the converse would be (other than a classic shoe), that slow moving objects are more easily diverted from their paths. Hence, rapidly moving Americans are able to maintain a steady course and speed down the right sight of the sidewalk, whilst slower moving Spaniards are subject to the same forces that cause the Spinning Bicycle Wheel of yore to wobble and fall over. Thus, slowly ambulating Spaniards are more prone to non-linear courses of travel, thereby resulting in their continual incursions into our comparatively straight vectors.
This phenomenon is exacerbated by the physics of mass and gravity, which, we have come to realize, helps explain the tendency of ambulating Spaniards approaching from the opposite direction to suddenly veer into us and attempt to pass on the right, while those traveling in the same direction will pass on the left with as little physical clearance as possible. As an additional result of the aforementioned Mediterranean natural selection yielding ever-more-slowly moving Spaniards, said Spaniards are also generally smaller folk, as smaller folk tend to not get as hot. That also means that compared to larger objects, they’re less dense. 6-foot-plus Americans, on the other hand, are, in the case of Al, very hot, and of me, very dense, which means that together, our collective mass exerts a fairly strong gravitational pull. The smaller, less dense Spaniards are helpless in the face of these physical forces and since their slow-moving speed precludes them from having significant inertia to avoid being affected by our mass, they are thereby drawn to us in one capacity or another.
To put it plainly, we’re just too damn attractive and they just can’t help themselves.
Now, if we can just figure out how their sense of scale became so distorted as to think that a mother, her child and a stroller can fit through the personal space between Al and me (which, although we ARE Americans, is only about 3–6″), that would complete our scientific analysis of the crowd behaviors of the Spanish. I’m sure additional time in the field will yield further clarification. Stay tuned.
-bdmc, Ph.D.
This past weekend was spent in the relaxing Mediterranean resort city of Valencia, due to our twin desires to A) see the third largest city in Spain, and B) get the hell out of our wretchedly dirty apartment and take a real shower where we weren’t afraid to accidentally bump our naked butts in to the wall and come down with some bizarre skin rash.
We caught the train on Friday after class, and although it was advertised to take 3.5 hours, for some unknown reason it actually took 5.5, putting us into Valencia at roughly 2:30a on Saturday morning. Upside: we weren’t in the smoking car!
On Saturday we rose around noon and headed over to the Mercat Central, a sprawling public market offering aisle after aisle of vendors selling all sorts of fresh produce, meat and seafood, all in a cool 1920’s modern style wrought-iron and stained glass building. After a “most satisfying repast” at an outdoor cafe in the courtyard of the market, we took advantage of the density of the old city, hitting all the major sites in only a couple hours. These included visiting: the Lonja, a 16th century neo-Gothic mercantile exchange built by the local silk merchants; the Cathedral, including surmounting the ridiculously tall Micalet, its Moorish minaret re-appropriated as a bell tower; the Ceramics Museum; the city’s oldest Horchateria, and strolling along the Rio park, which is the old course of the diverted Turia River, repurposed as a central green / park area. And since most of the monuments are only a few steps from each other, we ended up passing the same group of Italian tourists 4 times in different parts of the city. Weird
After such an exhaustive tour, we opted to take advantage of the general cleanliness of our hotel room and ordered room service and watched a movie. It was actually really good, except for the damn exchange rate. I swear, it gets worse and worse every day. What’s going on in the States that’s screwing that damn thing up so badly for us (I mean aside from that whole War on Terror quagmire thingy)?!?
Sunday was another gorgeous day (in contrast to the rain, wind and general misery experienced by Madrileños this weekend…hehehe), so we took off intending to go to the Aquarium part of the City of Arts and Sciences, a super-modern complex designed by Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava which looks like a cross between the Death Star and Sea Lab (I tried to take some pix of it, but the scale prohibited me doing it justice. It’s wicked cool.). We never actually made it to the Aquarium, however, because as we were leaving the hotel, it dawned on us that our return train to Madrid was of the 6-hour regional variety, departing from a station on the other side of town. Though we originally decided this would be a good idea, as it saved a couple of euros, we figured out that between the cab fee to get to the station and the misery of sitting in an uncomfortable short-haul seat for 6 hours (or more, based on past precedent), it wasn’t worth it. We subsequently had to go back to the train station and fix our tickets to get on the 6:50a train this morning. That chewed up the time that we had planned to spend at the Aquarium, and as we were walking up to the ticket counter (which took about an hour of walking around the complex to finally find…damn construction), they were shutting down. Oh well. We took it as a sign that we should go to the real Aquarium—the beach.
We sat on the rocky retaining wall of the jetty by the beach admiring the vistas for about an hour, after which, we opted to continue sitting by the beach, but instead of on a hard rock, we sought out a comfortable chair. In a bar. With cold, cold beer. This locale also offered us a good 45-minute game of “Guess the Nationality” of the boisterous crowd of Aryan-looking tourists across the way from us (we settled on Dutch).
Later on Sunday evening, as we were walking back to the hotel after a fantastic meal of paella in this dope little 8-table restaurant right next to the Cathedral’s bell tower, we were talking and realized two things:
1. despite the two bottles of wine we enjoyed over dinner, we were not in fact, drunk. Rather, our perpetual immersion in Spanish has rendered us linguistically handicapped. We’re not drunk, we’re just losing our English.
2. Valencia is a really cool city. It’s similar to Savannah, GA, but less rednecky and more cultured. It’s a beach town / college town, but with the size, cultural opportunities and industry to offset the potential limitations of your average beach / college town. It’s kinda like a tuxedo-print t-shirt. It can be formal, but it’s here to party.
-bdmc
Our house back in the States finally closed on Wednesday and the new owner took possession immediately (we’re still debating whether she really has ownership yet though…you’re welcome, Tom).
It’s a little surreal to be completely homeless. We had four great years there, replete with a near-total overhaul of the joint to the point where we knew each and every nuance of her ol’ bones; we were on a first-name / know-your-drink basis with the bartender of the local dive bar (conveniently located two doors down) and super-chummy with a squad of great neighbors (G.E.S. Forever! Rap Tor Lux Lucis! (coat of arms forthcoming)). But fate couldn’t be escaped and it would have happened eventually anyway. At least this way we got to blow the dividend check on world travel (hey, it’s better than our alternative strategy of a truckload of coke and taking over Client #9’s, uh, service providers…) Honestly, once the offer went in and we got past the inspection, it was pretty much a done deal in our minds; the closing was just a formality.
We have, however, been on the look out for the perfect replacement place, and we think we’ve found it:
Just kidding. That’s the Palacio Real in Madrid, one of the umpteen palaces throughout the country at the king’s disposal. This one is so big (it’s the largest in all of Western Europe) that it even has its own distinct climate zones: it was cold, windy and raining in the courtyard 5 minutes before this shot was taken outside the side door. Ahh, the power of an unlimited monarch.
-bdmc
The other day our teacher gave us some homework (los deberes in the vernacular), which included writing a summary of our ideal day, so that we could practice our time words and reflexive verbs (good lord, I feel like such a child…”Let’s use our time words!”). Anyway, she was extrapolating on the explanation and said (in Spanish), “For example, for me, I get myself up, I have breakfast with Brackpeet, da da dadda dah…”
When she noticed the entire class giving her a quizzical look she restated the sentence, this time with more enthusiasm (and yeah, that whole “speak louder and they’ll get it” thing isn’t limited to obnoxious Americans). For further clarification she turned to me and said (again, this is all in Espanish), “Or for you, it could be Anheleena Holee…”
Me (in English): Oh. OHHHH. “Angelina Jolie”! Si, Si, Si, I get it now (in a chorus with the rest of the class).
Wait, that means you must have been talking about “Brad Pit”.
You mean “BRAAAD PIIIITT”?
Teacher: “Si. Brackpeet!”
Me: “No (gesturing with my hands to emphasize the two words), Brad. Pitt.”
Teacher (now in frustrated English): “Oh, ok, fine: ‘Braaaaaaaaad Piiiiitt’”, augmented with an arm pump and an ‘Oh yeaaaaah’ (both uttered in the most nasal Midwestern American accent possible—the kind that makes Al sound like a dulcet-toned angel), and a glare at me that said, “See! Look what you made me do! You made me sound like a dumbass in front of the whole class!” She then blushed, gathered her materials with overwrought theatrical gusto and humorously stormed out of the room.
It was hysterical.
So today, we’re reviewing the homework and I used the wrong verb to describe watching TV and she corrected me, to which I responded, “you watch TV how you like, and I’ll watch it how I like,” tongue planted firmly in cheek.
Much to the glee of my classmates, she subsequently refused to answer any of my questions for the rest of the class.
At the end of class as the students were packing up their things she was asking who would be leaving this week and after confirming with the two who were, she turned to me and asked, “This is your last week too, no???”
At least I got 5 weeks out of the program before they caught on…
-bdmc
I’ve been pretty absent from the blog lately, mostly because MC spins a pretty good yarn and I don’t bring the funny quite like he does.
Also, I’ve had my nose buried in Spanish books because I have my second test on Friday and it seems as if it won’t be quite as easy as the first one.
We are, however, doing a tour on Thursday of the royal palace in Madrid and possibly going to Valencia this weekend, so I’m sure we’ll have some stories to share. The royal palace was the place where I had my first “holy carp!” historical moment. I was fourteen and it was my first trip to Spain. We were doing a tour of the palace when I looked down at the floor and it occurred to me how many people, famous or not, had walked in the same exact spot where I was walking. So many Felipes y Carloses, Hapsburgs and non-Hapsburgs had stood exactly where I was standing. I know, it’s sort of a duh moment, but you have to remember I was fourteen. And, it was the moment that got me really interested in history. So I always enjoy touring the palace and I’m excited for MC to see it for the first time.
We’re also in the midst of planning a trip to Valencia, so we’ll let you know if that happens. I have never been to Valencia and two very important people in our lives studied there, so we’re excited to finally see it. And, of course, I will let everyone know how my test goes on Friday. I know none of you will be able to sleep until then. Just try not to think about it.
Oh, and I would like to thank MC for giving me his disease. I went running this morning and for almost the entire run I was translating American songs into Spanish. Thank goodness I’ve been listening to Andrew Bird and not Hall and Oates.
-cuptastic
I don’t know why, but for the last four weeks, I’ve had nothing but crappy mid-80’s / early 90’s pop songs stuck in my head. And I don’t even listen to mid-80’s / early 90’s pop songs. Not only that, but while they’re up in there, I keep trying in vain to translate them to Spanish…to no avail.
Some examples:
• Rich Girl by Hall & Oates
• some crappy song by that Canadian girl with the French name…Avril something
• Paradise City by GnR (not exactly the worst thing ever, but after 35 times of only the first verse it gets a little old; thanks to Peter for that one)
and many more…
It could be because we don’t have any radio or tv here to distract us, or it could be that Spanish reflexive verbs are slowly driving me crazy and these are the symptoms manifesting themselves.
“Tu eres una chica rica y se has ido demasiado lejos, por que no es importante…”
Ayudarme por favor….
-bdmc
