Burkas and Golden Almonds

When most people travel they head for major points of historical interest. We try to make time for the "important" places but often we find ourselves visiting shops as well  to explore local household products, cuisine, etc. A recent trip to the UK (England, Wales and Scotland) proved no different. While we did hit hot spots like The British Museum, castles and more, it kicked off with a visit to the world's ultimate super store, Harrods.

Mike and Jacob were appalled that Lily and I wanted to go to Harrods first but we couldn't help ourselves. After a breakfast of baked beans, the girls headed off to the Knightsbridge tube stop while the boys headed to the "Dr Who Shop". I anticipated that we would spend an hour admiring the pretty cheeses and cupcakes and then meet the boys for a more serious exploration of the Tower of London. Turns out I was wrong.

We went through the golden doors of Harrods and into a cloud of perfume. Initially it looked and smelled like any other high-end department store in Chicago but we noticed an immediate difference. The shop was filled with women in beautiful, embroidered black burkas and on their arms were well tooled designer handbags. Peeking out from narrow slits in the fabric covering their faces were the discerning eyes of very sophisticated consumers. The suit-wearing English salespeople scurried to help them with their every need. Lily and I were ignored. Clearly the cachet of being American is OVER! For years I have read about the influence of Middle Eastern oil money and the shopping of fasionista Muslim women, and it is not a myth.

A golden almond $45/lb

When we went to the ladies room a woman in a burka had removed her veil and was facing the mirror. Lily and I could see her reflection and we could not take our eyes off of her. I embarrassed but I couldn't help it. She was beautiful and had so much more mystique than any woman I had ever seen before.

Since my last visit (about 14 years ago) Harrods has reoriented itself to cater to a broader audience. The beautiful cakes, bread and seafood still there but now one can buy dates, Halal meats, persimmons and halvah. There are still rows of chocolates but now beside them are candied almonds, apricots and Turkish delight. Harrods has followed consumers needs from other parts of the world as well. One can now find a beautiful array of sushi, caviar, vodka and more, which I am guessing does not end up in the bellies of Haggis-loving Scots or Yorkshire pudding-ingesting English.

Stuffed animals galore

Mike and Jacob met us in Knightbridge. The "Who Shop" had been a bust so they wanted to visit Harrods too. We ended up spending the rest of the afternoon exploring the store again, including seeing the amazing stuffed animals, the pet shop (real dogs and cats!), Harry and Hermione's wands, a $50,000 TV and sooooo much more.

We never made it to the Crown Jewels but they are static while Harrods is a reflection of a small part of the changing world that we are an itty-bitty part of.

Sushi

Meeting the Neighbors

Today I had an opportunity to meet a few of our neighbors. Although we have lived here a month many people from Barcelona evacuate the city during August so until now our building has been quiet and largely devoid of life. Happily the people I met were kind, helpful and even spoke a little English. Helpful turned out to be the operative word today.

A couple of hours ago I heard a weird buzzing and then Jacob’s voice saying, “Help. Help! Help!! Moooommmm I need help!!!”.  This was a little odd since he had just left to buy bread. I couldn’t find him in the apartment so I went to the apartment hallway and yelled for him.. “Jacob?” He replied, “Mom, I’m stuck in the elevator”. He was right, he was stuck between the 3rd and 4th floors and there was nothing I could do to get him out.

I ran down to the ground floor but our ‘portero’ (doorman) was gone for lunch/siesta. It was 2pm and he was not scheduled to return until 4:30…this is Spain after all.

I then heard motion in the hallway and ran back up to recruit help. I cornered a young woman (Sophia) and explained the situation in my terrible Spanish. She tried to calling the elevator company but couldn't get a call through. I then heard another person who I chased down. This was Alberto. He was also very helpful. Together Sophia and Alberto found the cell number of the portero and stayed with me and Jacob until help arrived.

Throughout the experience Jacob remained calm. Lily was able to slip his iPod through a crack in the door and he happily laid down on the floor and started playing games.

After about 30 minutes the portero was found. He used his magical key to pry open the doors of the elevator. The elevator was still stuck between floors so Jacob climbed, said “thank you” to his rescuers and headed out to get his baguette. He was very hungry.

I then spent a little more time getting to know Alberto. Turns out he had studied in New York and Milwaukee, and his son had just recently been in Madison. Sophia and I exchanged pleasantries as well before waving goodbye.

I am not happy that Jacob got stuck but I was very pleased to have finally met some neighbors. If we have another emergency maybe somebody will invite us to dinner.

Sometimes It Is About the Destination

The past few days we have had a great time with the Sieber-Schaefer family. They were our first guests and we had a fun time doing some of our favorite (so far!) things. Yesterday we decided to visit the town of Sitges about 40 minutes south of Barcelona. Before embarking on our journey we had read the guide books and many websites and it seemed like a straightforward journey. Cab to the train station, C2 or R2 train to Sitges. It didn't seem very hard.

Nick in his Sitges inspired outfit.

We arrived at the train station and waited in line to buy tickets from the automated machine... Whoops, there are two train lines and we needed the other machine. Stood in line again and then become confused by the machine. Thankfully a smelly man who spoke English offered to help for one euro (nice business plan!). We finally had our tickets in hand.

We headed towards down to the platform and were confused if the train already in the station was the right one. Yes, no, yes, no, yes.... After some ambivalence we hopped on, convinced it was the right one. After about 15 minutes we realized we were going in the wrong direction. Crap! We now had to jump off, take another train back to Barcelona and finally get on the RIGHT one.

This kind of thing happens to us with regularity here. It sometimes feels like a full time job to just go with the flow. I know intellectually that we need to slow down and let things happen. I also know that it is a good life lesson for the children to learn that all is not lost when there are bumps in the road. But sometimes  I just want to get there DAMN IT!!

Thankfully Sitges was lots of fun. We rented a paddle boat with a slide, admired scantily clad Europeans, had a massage and indulged on gelato and caipirinhas. The return trip was flawless and we all arrived home happy, sandy and tired.

I know that people say it is "all about the journey", and generally I agree. But sometimes, especially on hot days with a load of junk and eight people, it is about the destination.

P.S. Lily says that I should make sure that people know that the boat was a car boat with rainbow wheels and flowers. Very pretty!!

New Undies

I need new undies. 

Mike and I joined our local gym and it has a nice locker room where I shower after a workout. After a few visits I realized that I have the dowdiest panties in the place. Initially I thought it was coincidental that on each visit the women around me were wearing fabulous underwear but as I walked around I realized that ALL of the women we in on it…even the older, wider, droopier women. I have never spent much time considering underwear and have always purchased what I considered to be the relatively “progressive” bikini style. I will admit that it was “Jockey for Her” or “Hanes” in the healthy 100% cotton, but bikini nonetheless. The women here are all wearing panties in nice colors and lots of lace.

In the US there seems to be an endless supply of self-help articles, books and talk shows that provide tips for keeping the romance alive and passion kindled into even the longest of marriages. Public displays of affection are an indulgence of the young and long married couples rarely touch in public. In Spain it is a little different, at the park and pool couples with children are engaged with each other and not just their brood. Walking through the neighborhood one finds many elderly couples walking arm and arm. In Spain romance appears to still be alive and flourishing. Is it something in the water or is it the panties?

In the spirit of travel adventure I am now working up my courage for a trip to my local “Intimissimi”.

Getting Legal

In order for us to live here legally we needed not only a visa but to register with the Department of the Interior and get a resident card. We were required to register within 30 days or arriving which was complicated both by the fact that we would be in England for 10 days in the middle of August and that the woman at the University who usually helps people was on vacation for all of August. We had been told it was quite complicated and we had the name of a local lawyer who could help for 600 Euros.

After doing a lot of online research which presented a lot of conflicting information and having a couple of fights about it, we decided to just to go to the office and try our best and see what happened. We had two addresses for where the office should be and decided to take a taxi to the closest one first. This was the wrong place so we took another taxi to a second office. This was a more major complex and there were lots of armed police people hanging around.

We stood in one line to figure out where in the complex to go. Then we stood in another line where we were told we had filled out the wrong paper work, given new forms, a number and told we could make an appointment 3 weeks into the future, or come back at 1pm (90 minutes into the future). We filled out the new forms and headed to lunch. At 1pm we were told to wait in a special area for our numbers to be called. At 1:15 our numbers were called and we were given new numbers and told to sit in a different area. At 1:30 we were called and sent to the desk of an agent who started the process.

All was going well until the agent realized that the letter from the University with Mike’s research appointment information was in English, this would not work. Things we not looking good but the woman took pity on us and said that if we could get a letter faxed that she would take it. Mike hurriedly called the HR person who agreed to translate the letter and send it back by 2:15. The problem was that the office closed at 2pm. The agent told us to return at 2:30. We were skeptical but went with it.

We also had a problem that our passport photos from the US were too big and that we needed Xerox copies of our marriage certificate and kids birth certificates. We ran across the street for new photos and copies. We returned just as the office was closing at 2pm. Our lady wasn’t there but we were put in a waiting area and told to stay there until 2:30pm. We were the only ones there and all of the employees were leaving. Like always we were confused. Finally at about 2:30 our lady came back and waved us in. In the whole office it was just us and our lady. For the next 90 minutes she worked it all though and in the end we had our NIE numbers and were legal.

It was amazing. We felt like we had slayed the bureaucratic beast.

First Daze

As I wrote earlier Mike described our departure like being going up the stairs to the water slide. Our traveling was like going down. Right after a big water slide there are a few seconds when you are a little dazed, you have water up your nose and your bathing suit is falling off. That was exactly how we felt.

When we arrived in Barcelona we were met by the property manager who showed us around and gave us keys. She gave us lots of technical information about the apartment which we should have written down. We were so tired and now we don’t remember a lot of it. We keep asking ourselves, what is this key for? Where is the button for the hall light?

Our first day were we exhausted but managed to unpack our suitcases into our rooms. Our apartment came with furniture but nothing else. No towels, sheets, plates, pots, pans, toilet paper or cute cup to put our tooth brushes in. We are incredibly fortunate that we have some old friends with an apartment (totally coincidentally) next door. They graciously allowed us to stay in their place wh
ile we provisioned ours.

The next few days were filled with provisioning  and sleeping at our friend’s place. We also started to deal with some of the administrative logistics. Steps by step over the first four days we bought and bought and bought. Basic groceries like oil and flour and eggs. Basic household like dish towels, mugs, garbage cans and soap. A few extras for fun like stuffed pandas and cute napkins with birds on them. We went to Ikea, Carrafour, Corte Ingles, Casa Viva and many other places I don’t know the name of. We just kept asking simple questions to find things, saying “gracias” a zillion times and handing over our credit card. We were able to buy a few things from a family who had left Barcelona to return to the US. We tried to be conservative but for a couple of days we bled Euros.

We bought so much stuff at Ikea (or just more crap depending on your perspective) that we needed to hire a man with a truck to bring it all home for us. Everything we bought came to our home via walking, taxi or a random man with a truck, and up the elevator to our apartment. I am sure our “portero” (doorman) thinks we are bonkers.

As we provisioned our apartment it felt a little like the creation story. On the first day g-d gave us keys. On the second day g-d gave us towels and plates. On the third day g-d gave us sheets and toilet brushes. And on the fourth day g-d gave us INTERNET. After four days a man came and set up the internet and telephone in our apartment. As pathetic as it sounds we were all quite relieved.
It was not the physical things that made us feel comfortable moving into our place but the virtual internet. Our fourth night in Barcelona was spent in our own apartment. It wasn’t perfect but we were all relieved and excited to “be home”.

A couple of days after arriving Jacob got quite sick with a headache, sore throat and a fever as high as 103. I kept going back and forth about taking him to the clinic. If we had been in Madison with our family pediatrician only five minutes away and speaking English it would have been an easy choice. Here I would need to figure out where to go, take a taxi, be totally confused with a sick kid in a clinic waiting room, be confused again, get important instructions that I didn’t understand and get home again. It’s not like I was living on the Mosquito Coast with medical care hours away, but it definitely was not as easy as in Madison. I kept telling myself that if he got worse or was not trending towards getting better I would take him. Luckily he did not get worse and over the next couple of days he got better. I know I will have tackle medical care this year I just wasn’t quite ready on our third day.

On our secod day here we joined the gym/pool. We are very lucky that we live about one block from a very large fitness facility that includes a gorgeous, huge pool with a retractable roof. Joining the gym took quite a bit of time and in our first days we seemed to always get things screwed up. Mike got admonished for not wearing flip flops, I got admonished for wearing sunglasses in the pool, both Mike and I got admonished for wearing sunshirts in the pool…although it turned out that the problem was that our shirts were not tight. For about five days our entry cards didn’t work. BUT, as the days rolled by we figure it all out and now we are swimming just about every day. It is a joy to cool off with a quick dip. Other fun features of the pool include big mattresses with a long round sausage shaped pillow for relaxing poolside, lounge chairs made of mosaic tiles and an area with lounge chairs where all the buff, tanned and mostly hairless men hang out. Mike and I also went to work out and I have been to water aerobics and he has been to spin class (really just a video of a man yelling at you in Spanish for 45 minutes).

We also had our first social engagement. Our friend Edith who lives in Seattle had friends living here. Edith made a connection via email and I had emailed and Skyped with this family while were we still in Madison. I contacted them (Andrew and Esther) and we met for breakfast. It was so much fun for us to compare notes and learn more about their lives and travels. Their children are older than ours and they are more experienced ex-pats. I feel like we are hiking the same trail but they are a few miles ahead. They were generous with their advice which we appreciated.

Along with all of our provisioning we were trying to just deal with being in Barcelona and also having a little fun and a few adventures. We went to the beach, we walked around the Gothic Quarter, we explored the mall (it is air conditioned) and we went to a big outdoor flea market. We are also enjoying the quirkiness and adventure of learning about living in a new culture. We have been learning about:

• Fish spas –where you put parts of your body in water and little fish eat off your dead skin
• Beach café seating – Maybe it is my imagination but I think they only put beautiful people on the perimeter (like the fancy cars in the driveway of nice hotels).
• Cute little dogs – Lily is desperate for one.
• Hanging laundry – What happens when you drop your bathing suit onto the patio of the family five floors below and then send down a paper airplane asking for it back (still waiting!)
• Being a voyeur – The apartment across the street has a very pregnant woman and a man who wear knee socks and likes to take off his pants at the end of the day. We can’t wait to see the actual baby.
• Making cookies – Trying to find baking soda and vanilla at the supermarket (they are not with baking needs or spices) 
• Receiving a delivery – Having to talk with the flower shop all in Spanish over the phone to receive beautiful flowers from a friend 
• Using clothes softener – To soften our line dried cloths. The problem is figuring out which product goes in which slot of the washing machine. After our first week we were feeling more settled and ready for our real adventure to come. 
• Chinese markets – The small crap markets (do you sense a theme?) that sell thing inexpensively like a dollar store

Getting Out of Dodge

Our days before leaving Madison were hard and crazy. We had packing to do for our trip as well as the cleaning and packing up of our house to prepare it for our tenants. Mike described it like climbing up the stairs to the tallest water slide at the water park: it is hot and hard and filled with anticipation. We had decided it would be too hard to leave our house for a year early in the morning so we opted to spend our final night at the Hulan’s house. It was a good choice. By 6pm we had cleaned and packed our house, it was finally time to go. Lily was very upset to leave one of her particularly large stuffed animals. It was as if she had transferred her fear and anxiety to “Peppermint”. When she started to cry, so did I. Thankfully a little TV and dinner at the Hulan’s house improved all of our moods. Our final hours of Madison daylight were spent with ice cream cones watching the sunset over Lake Mendota at Memorial Union.

Our alarm went off at about 5am. I rolled over, took a deep breath and snuggled up to Mike. In the minutes before we got up we talked about what had brought us to this day. I asked, “When did we started all this?” He said, “In 1996 when I applied to graduate school.” He is right. While it took a lot of logistical work to make our sabbatical happen, the real work was Mike’s PhD and the past seven years of teaching and research.

We had packed four large duffels, four roller bags and four backpacks for our year. I was very anxious about whether or not it would all fit in a car, taxi, etc. Our first step was getting it all into Chuck Hulan’s car for our trip to the airport. It worked. We left Madison at 6:45am.I was sneaky and left my iPhone on so I could take a couple of aerial pictures of Madison as we took off. Our first stop was Maine for Mike’s family reunion.

Our travels to Maine went smoothly. It was clear that all of our luggage (now fondly known “all our crap”) would not fit into a standard rental car so we upgraded to a minivan. It was a bummer to have to spend the extra money, but it just is “the cost of doing business”. We had a great time in Maine. I had been complaining all summer about having to go to Spain via Maine but being there gave us a few days to relax and decompress before diving head first into our new lives. We swam, walked, talked, rock climbed, ate lobster, played and even slept a little. I borrowed Mike’s mother’s car and drove about three hours to Walpole, Maine to see an old friend. There were about 36 members of Mike’s mother’s side of the family at the event. It is a wonderful group and people and amazingly everybody is kind and smart and a pleasure to be with.

During the week Lily had an intermittent belly ache. I chalked it up to stress but by our last night she was in quite a bit of pain. We made the difficult decision to take her to the emergency room (a 45 minute drive in the rain). We were sad to not spend this last evening with family but Lily’s tears pushed us. The doctor initially agreed with our diagnosis but then it turned out the Lily had a UTI. I felt guilty for thinking it was in her head when she really did have something cooking.

Finally the day of our departure arrived. Our first step was to drive five hours to Boston. Check! Our second step was to return our rental car and get all our crap to the international terminal. Check! Our third step was to get through security and have our final meal (pizza and sandwiches). Check! Our fourth step was to fly to Dublin. Check! Our fifth step was to get four exhausted through the Dublin airport in less than an hour. Check! Our sixth step was to fly to Barcelona. Check! Our seventh step was to get ourselves and all our crap through immigration. Check! Our eighth step was to get all our crap into a taxi (it all fit hooray!!). Check! WE HAD FINALLY ARRIVED!!