Friday, February 19, 2010

 

Brugges 1, Valencia CF 0 & Another Bar Added To My List

In general people here in Valencia will stay at home to watch important football matches if they are shown on regular television stations. Only when the games are on the pay channels do fans come out in numbers to see the games. Last night I had to rearrange my schedule at the last minute in order not to miss the Brugges-Valencia contest in the UEFA Europa League. I was able to make my dentist appointment an hour earlier so that >I could watch the game at a bar next door to the clinic.

It was one of the thousands of bars in Valencia, a bar de puretas, or old man bar, as a Spanish friend calls them. I sat in the back at the bar and look over a sea of bald spots and gray hair before my eyes reached the big flat-screen on the wall. I have really been cranking up the pressure in my bid to learn Spanish in these past few weeks so I noticed that I was understanding just about all of the chatter from the game announcers, even above the noise of the bar. Not that understanding football-speak is my goal in learning Spanish but it serves as sort of a measuring stick as to how well I am progressing in my studies.

Although this bar is only a few blocks from my apartment it seemed like I was in Comanche territory as they say in Spanish. It’s just that I see almost all of the games in one of three bars in my neighborhood: La Tasca de Russafa, L’Almudin, or my new favorite, Bar Canadá. I think my true goal here in Valencia is to visit every bar in the entire city. I think I have at least 950 to go after drinking in over 1,000 thus far.

As I have said on countless occasions, I stop in at a bar or café at least once a day. I like different cafés for different reasons. In some I like to read and they provide a quiet, uninterrupted chance to pass an hour plowing through whatever it is that I am reading at the moment. Other bars are for food. I have been on another quest to find the best tortillas de patatas in the city. I already found it at El Mercat but I can keep trying. Other bars I go to because they have nice terraces when the weather permits (it hasn’t recently). I have a network of places all over the city that I visit on a fairly routine basis while others in my neighborhood I stop in almost daily. I think if I had to say it bars are what I love most about living here in Valencia. I like the community they provide—the food and drink are secondary considerations at best.

Labels: Football, Valencia Spain

9:37 AM

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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

 

The Last Time I…

I had to go inside of a bank today—something I haven’t done in ages. It was a strange experience all around and for a number of reasons. It sometimes seems that there is a bank on every corner here in Valencia yet it took me about a half an hour on my clown bike to track down the bank I was looking for. This particular branch of the bank has these creepy airlock-type doors through which you must enter and exit. A creepy robot voice told me to place all of my metallic times in lockers provided. I found the table with the paperwork I needed. I heretofore didn’t realize that ingresar is the word the Spanish use for “to deposit.” I looked around for a pen, didn’t find one, and then had to exit again to dig a pen out of my pack which I had deposited-he ingresado in a locker. When I came back through the airlock the metal detector went off again but I think the guy behind the desk saw me and opened it.

As I was leaving I was trying to remember the last time I actually walked inside of a bank. I have done everything online or by phone for at least the last eight years or so. Then I got to thinking about other things I haven’t done in a while.

The last time I drove a car: August 2006

The last time I was stuck in traffic: A long, long time ago. I hardly ever drove when I lived in Seattle so I never remember being in traffic there. I don’t remember being stuck in traffic since I lived in the Washington D.C. metro area and I left there in 1992. I don’t know how people deal with traffic on a daily basis.

The last time I ate at McDonalds: Hell if I know but at least over 10-12 years ago

The last time I went to a baseball game: August 2006. Do I miss baseball? Not really, since moving here I have thrown myself into football 100%.

The last time I lived without a bicycle: Never, not including the two or three days after my bike was stolen before I

The last time I made a paella: Two weeks ago after the Levante-Betis football game

The last time I used a clothes dryer: Not since I moved to Spain. This is one of those modern conveniences that I think I can easily live without from now on. In the summer if you hang stuff up on the roof it will be dry in a little over an hour. During the winter you can hang it on a rack inside your apartment.

Labels: Valencia Spain

1:17 PM

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Monday, February 08, 2010

 

Valencia

Since moving here it has been my experience that many Valencianos feel that they live in the best place in Spain and therefore the best place in the world. I certainly don’t waste any time or effort disputing this and certainly not with Valencianos. The local residents of many areas of the world probably have the same feelings for where they call home. I guess that I just haven’t met many indigenous residents in the many places I have lived in my life. I knew only a small handful of people born and bred in Seattle and they all thought highly of it. Most of the people I meet are often other transplants, immigrants, drifters, castaways, and fugitives.

Valencianos truly believe they have the best weather, food, and lifestyle in all of Spain. Spanish people may complain about their country but nearly all of them feel that they have the best lifestyle. Spanish people may travel and venture out to life in other places but almost all of them are in a hurry to return home again. As one Spanish writer has said, “Spanish people don’t immigrate; they just go on a long weekend.” I have never met a Valenciano who was really interested in leaving Valencia for more than a few weeks and even when they leave for a relatively short vacation they prefer to carry a lot of familiar food with them. It’s as if the bad food they will encounter in their travels is tantamount to breathing contaminated air.

Even if I were in a mood to argue their point that Valencia is the best place to live I’d have a hard time coming up with a strong argument to the contrary. I live without central heating and without air conditioning with only a couple of weeks of discomfort in winter and then perhaps another uncomfortable week in summer. There is something like 300 days of sunshine here and sitting outside on a café terrace is an almost daily pleasure. It just a lot easier to agree with people when they say Valencia is agreat place to live.

Labels: Valencia Spain

9:39 AM

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Wednesday, February 03, 2010

 

RIP old bike.

Bike, Trains, Buses, and Walking

My bike was stolen last week. I have never lived without a bike before. Back in Seattle I had three bicycles: a city bike, a lovely Bianchi racing bike, and a top-of-the-line K2 mountain bike with full suspension and disc brakes. I bought my Orbea Eibar hybrid bike only a couple weeks after arriving in Spain a bit over three years ago. I forget what I paid for it new but if you were to calculate how much it cost me per kilometer I rode it then the price would be infinitesimally small. I rode the living shit out of that thing. I think what pains me the most about the theft is that someone probably bought it from the thief and won’t ride it.

Bike theft in Spain is an absolute curse. The police don’t seem to care a bit about this issue and bike theft seems to be a pretty safe way to make a decent living here as there don’t seem to be any legal consequences for this crime—if it even is a crime here. I think that the authorities really need to do something about this if they want to encourage more people to ride bikes.

Only a couple days after the heist I bought a real piece-of-shit little semi-folding bike from an ad I saw on louquo (Spain’s answer to craigslist). My new clown bike wouldn’t be too bad except I can’t raise the seat because the former owner pounded a pipe into where the seat post should go instead of replacing the seat post. Besides the utter lack of dignity of riding around town on this pipsqueak of a bike, it probably isn’t even safe. I ride it like I am in a breakaway in the Tour de France. It has little tires and the brakes barely work yet I fly around on it like I’m being chased by an Al Qaeda assassination squad. In engineering speak the speed at which I subject this bike to is called “terminal velocity”…literally. The aerodynamics of this bike are also hampered by the big orange wig I wear and my huge clown shoes.

A friend gave me one of his old racing bikes that needs a bit of fixing up and I hope to have that working by this weekend. It’s not exactly what I am looking for but it could be a good bike with a little care. I hope I don’t have to invest much money in this experiment. It needs new tires and inner tubes at least and I don’t know what else. I am still looking for another bike, something similar to the old one as thin racing tires aren’t a good match for the bike trails around town, especially on a rainy day. Here in Valencia they insist on using these small tiles for the bike trails and the ruts between the tiles can be treacherous in wet conditions, even for fatter tires.

I have never walked so much in my life. I have taken several metro trips around town and into the outlying areas. I have also chased down a few buses. I carry bus and metro cards on my wallet. They bus system in Valencia is excellent and would be even better if I was more familiar with the routes. It seems that you can get just about anywhere in town by only walking a couple of blocks. Public transportation is inexpensive here as well as highly efficient, something I consider to be the hallmark of a progressive society.

The walking part has been the hardest for me. I really hate walking mainly because it is just so damn slow. Something that has taken a bit of the sting out of my walks has been listening to audio books. I just finished listening to Jon Krakauer’s new book, Where Men Win Glory: The Pat Tilman Odyssey. I also listened to this while standing on trains that were too crowded to pull out a book. I am thoroughly hooked on audio books for any situation in which reading isn’t possible. I think my audio book days are about over because I should have enough time tomorrow to get the racing bike fixed up well enough to ride.

Labels: bikes, Valencia Spain

11:11 AM

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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

 

Opera in el Mercado Central de Valencia



This is from La Traviata but I'm not too familiar with Verdi so I can't say for sure. I wish they would come to my market here in Russafa. If this doesn't bring tears of joy to your eyes then you had better have a doctor check that out for you.

Labels: music, Valencia Spain

9:48 AM

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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

 

Putting Everything in Context

Fundamentally, no word really means anything in isolation, almost all words derive their meaning from the totality of language (and silence, as an alternative to speech...) in which they occur, and that includes the other possible word choices one could have made instead of the word one did choose. It´s a very dynamic, active model and every language approaches the communication of reality in a different way.
-Txiri

I found this wonderful quote on a forum on the wonderful resource called wordreference.com. I will fall back to the old adage, “I couldn’t have said it better myself,” which is what we say for almost everything we aren’t clever enough to come up with on our own. This entry was in a forum about the Spanish expression “desde luego” which I learned—after living here only three freaking years—means “of course.” In my defense I have to say that I know several other ways to say “of course” and “desde luego” is probably the least literary manner to say this, and up until now most of how I express myself in Spanish is a result of the vocabulary and expressions I come across while reading. While I still believe that reading is the best and quickest way to ingest information, I am advanced enough in my Spanish foray to include other learning devices.

I watch a couple of Spanish series on television, more as educational tools than entertainment but it’s nice when the two go hand-in-hand. As I have said many times before, I can justify any sort of silliness if it is helping me to learn the language. This can even mean watching Ace Ventura dubbed into Spanish, yes, Ace Ventura. I still think that reading is the fastest way to learn new vocabulary and grammar but listening comprehension is also necessary. I don’t think that TV and movies are a very efficient method of learning simply because there often isn’t a lot of dialogue, especially in a lot of movies. I would certainly prefer to listen to recorded books but I won’t to complain again here about the vast shortage of recorded books in Spanish.

TV shows have, in general, much more dialogue than movies and are therefore a better way to improve listening comprehension. My latest learning tool is the American TV series How I Met Your Mother dubbed into Spanish as Como Conocí a Vuestra Madre, a show I probably would never watch in English but I have been very entertained thus far with the Spanish version. I’ve learned a lot of new vocabulary (I have www.wordreference.com open on my laptop when I watch the show), some of it is probably too slangy and hip for me to use but other words I hope will be useful (putilla = slutty could be a good one). I can’t believe that I have lived in Spain for three years and had to learn from Barney on Como Conocí a Vuestra Madre that the innocuous reflexive verb meaning “to brush,” cepillarse, can also mean “to do someone.” It’s not like I even had to look up the alternative meaning as the context made it very, very clear that it was something of a sexual nature.

Even the words and expressions I don’t plan on using, because of their slang or too hip nature, I am grateful to have learned simply because they add to my overall fluency in Spanish. Your vocabulary can’t ever be too big.

Labels: language, Valencia Spain

8:52 AM

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Monday, December 07, 2009

 

Visca el València*

Valencia held on for the win last night against Bilbao despite a late and very dubious penalty call. The shot hit the post for a bit of frontier justice. I don’t think I could have watched Valencia CF suffer another draw because of a late-game foul like last week. At least last week’s penalty was deserved. The win puts Valencia ahead of Sevilla with 28 points. David Villa scored his 11th goal in twelve games. I have been saying how fun it is to watch Valencia play this year but I wouldn’t say that about last night’s match. The team looked fairly rudderless without David Silva who will miss about a month. I hope the team can get it together without Silva before the next game.

This Saturday Valencia hosts Real Madrid and a win could give us a tie for second in La Liga (with Real Madrid) behind Barça. Valencia did manage a draw against Barça earlier this season and a draw against Madrid wouldn’t be horrible. Valencia certainly is capable of winning against Madrid and any other team in Europe, for that matter. The team has fantastic players with five of them on the Spanish National squad. In the area of management is where Valencia is lacking. I just don’t understand how you can lose money on a European football team is a city as big as Valencia and with a team with so much tradition.

Barça doesn’t suffer from the problem of poor management. The team has more money than god and fills their huge stadium every single week. There only seem to be and handful of teams in La Liga here in Spain that are legitimately capable of beating Barcelona: Madrid, Sevilla, Valencia, and perhaps Villarreal and Atlético de Madrid, and these teams have to play the game of their lives to win. Barça does occasionally lose to lesser teams but it’s a fluke.

*Hooray for Valencia in Valenciano. This is a line taken for the hymn of Valencia Club de football. Feel free to sing along:

És un equip de primera
nostre València Club de Futbol
que lluita per a defendre
en totes bandes nostres colors.

En el Camp de l'Algirós
ja començaren a demostrar
que era una bona manera
per a València representar.

Amunt València, Visca el València, és el millor
Amunt València, Visca el València del nostre cor.
Units com sempre els valencianistes et seguirem,
en cada estadi per a que triomfes t'animarem.

En la capital del Túria
és el València qui vist de blanc
i defén la camiseta
ple de coratge per a guanyar.

En Mestalla continuaren
sempre esforçant-se per a triomfar
i les glòries arribaren
i en competència continuaran.

Amunt València, Visca el València, és el millor
Amunt València, Visca el València, del nostre cor.
Units com sempre els valencianistes et seguirem,
en cada estadi per a que triomfes t'animarem.

Amunt València, Visca el València, el campió!

Labels: Football, Valencia Spain

9:32 AM

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Monday, November 30, 2009

 

Perhaps this is a bit of over-kill but we need to do whatever it takes to make cycling more popular in Valencia.

Simple Solutions for Big Problems
Valencia has everything that you would want in a town if you ride a bike: great weather, no hills (I happen to love steep climbs but I’m probably in the minority), and there is a great system of bike paths. With all this going for it the city only manages to attract 1.6% of commuters to travel by bicycle. What Valencia lacks to make cycling more popular are two things: bicycle safety and a positive image of cycling among the local populace. It seems to me that changing these two negatives is the easy and inexpensive part of the bike commuter equation. Improving bicycle safety—and by this I mean protection from automobiles—and upgrading the image of cycling could also be done fairly quickly.

The first thing that is required if you wish to foster a favorable cycling community is to ensure safety. Valencia has a great system of bike trails that separate cyclists from motorists but the system is hardly all-encompassing. If you know the system well it is possible to go just about anywhere in town on a trail but you will still be left to fend for yourself in the street for at least part of your ride. Riding on sidewalks is no longer permitted and police seem more anxious to enforce this law than they are about making car drivers act like part of the human race. Even if you take the bike path from one end of the city to the next you must interact with automobiles at every intersection.

Just last week a cyclist was killed while crossing a street at a green light for pedestrians. At many intersections the green light for pedestrians is mirrored by a yellow caution light for cars entering the crosswalk area. We all know that for many drivers a yellow caution light means hurry up because the light will change to red soon. I have had dozens of close calls with assholes in cars who are going in excess of 60kph through a pedestrian crossing while people on foot and bikes have a green light. In the States many cities have incredibly heavy fines for motorists entering a crosswalk while people are crossing. This needs to be enforced here in Valencia. Maybe the cops who are hassling bikers for being on the sidewalk could help out to calm brutish drivers. My life-long experience as a cyclist has made me an incredibly aggressive biker and I’m always eyeing oncoming traffic—especially when I have the right-of-way.

Drivers here basically do whatever the fuck they want, at least that’s the way it seems to me. I don’t see much in the way of traffic enforcement. People regularly run red lights and absolutely fly through yellow caution lights. Zebra crossings are ignored and I think that they only reason I garner any respect at all as a cyclist is that drivers don’t want to mess with a healthy adult male on a bike. Better enforcement along with a television ad campaign cold make life a lot better for cyclists in Valencia. The fines that are levied for infractions could pay for the TV spots.

As far as the image of cyclists here, I think most people view cycling as something only suited for children or people too poor to buy a new BMW. Cycling certainly isn’t seen as anything even remotely sexy. Once again, I think an effective TV ad campaign could change this attitude in a very short period of time. If marketing people can get people to believe that the brand of dishwashing soap they use will make them sexier, I think that they can make the same sort of sell for biking to work.

Labels: bikes, Valencia Spain

12:22 PM

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Barça 1, Real Madrid 0

If you live in Spain this game, this “classic” as they call it, is a huge deal. When I first arrived in Spain three years ago I remember that they were running TV spots advertising the Madrid-Barcelona game on the national TV channel La Sexta. “Only 100 days to go before the big game” and then they counted down the days until the apocalypse. Teams in the Spanish league play each other twice a season and last night was the first match up of these two perennial Spanish powerhouses. The hype on TV wasn’t as thick this time because the game was on a pay channel but it was still incredibly big news all over the country. Miss it at your peril!

I certainly wasn’t going to miss it. The problem was that because the game wouldn’t be shown on regular television everyone in Valencia would be out searching for a bar that shows games on the pay-per-view. As many bars as there are in Valencia—and there are thousands of them, thank god—there are even more football fans who wouldn’t miss this game to go to their own weddings (Ladies, check the football schedule before making nuptial plans). We decided on a place just a few blocks from my apartment that seemed a continent away. Almost all of the other people in the bar were Latin Americans and just about all of them seemed to be rooting for Barça. I can understand why most Valencianos will root for Barça against Madrid; it’s sort of a solidarity of language and culture as Catalan and Valenciano are just about the same thing. I don’t really have a theory as to why the Latin American would pull for Barça. I suppose I lean more towards being a Barça fan, too although for me the ideal result of this game would have been a draw, giving both teams—both of them above Valencia in the standings—only one point, thus limiting their advancement over my team. Even in Valencia it’s lonely being a diehard Valencia Club de Fútbol fan.

If I were a bar owner in Spain I would petition that all football games be played on the pay-per-view channels which sends everyone and their grandmothers out into the streets to find a bar playing the match. The little corner where we watched the game is home to three bars, all of which were packed to the rafters with fans. During the half I walked across the street to look into the two other bars. One of the bars was filled with sub-Saharan African fans. A few of them were wearing Real Madrid jerseys although I don’t know if this reflected the general sentiment of that group of fans. The other bar is a pool hall with a giant projector screen and seemed to cater mostly to Spanish fans.

I wiggled my way back to the bar where we were watching, ordered another bottle of beer, and waited to see what would happen after the scoreless first part. After making our way through a mediocre plate of patatas bravas (fried potatoes and a staple in every bar in Spain) we ordered a plate of grilled cuttlefish which was quite good. I need to practice making this dish more at home. It is sort of a pain in the ass to clean cuttlefish and squid but it is worth the effort if the end result is as good as the dish we had last night in Bar Sabina.

Barça prevailed in this game and also took the lead in La Liga. Valencia CF hangs on to fourth position after a bitter draw against Mallorca on Saturday.

Labels: Football, Valencia Spain

10:03 AM

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

 

View from my bike.

Confessions of a Valencia Bike Commuter

I have been doing a lot of bike commuting these past two months in and around Valencia. Because of the fantastic weather we have been enjoying and the spectacular scenery, I have to say that my commuting rides are an absolute joy. One thing that I love about cycle commuting is how you can manipulate your arrival time by simply moving your legs faster or slower. If you are running a little late you can stand up on the pedals and hump for all you are worth and adjust the speed-to-distance ratio until you have reached a favorable formula. If you find yourself a bit ahead of schedule you can slow down and relish the sights along the way. This might mean gazing at the beautiful Torres de Serrano while cruising the path through Turia Park, or checking out a sidewalk café in a village outside of town. One way means more exercise and the other a greater appreciation for the local sights; I think you call this a “win-win” situation.

Labels: bikes, Valencia Spain

8:09 AM

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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

 

La Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias



I was pedaling home last night from the other side of town when I passed over one of the bridges at La Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias which is called the technopolis area of Valencia because of the ultra-modern architecture. I wouldn’t say that I take this sight for granted but most of the time I ride past it at a full-on sprint—not the best vantage point to soak in the views. If you do take a few seconds to consider this sight on a warm and perfectly clear evening in November you’d have to say that it is hard to beat.

Labels: Valencia Spain

9:55 AM

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Sunday, November 08, 2009

 

Saturday Commute





I have been teaching English on Saturdays at a super-fancy private high school in Rocafort, a small town about 12 kilometers outside of Valencia. The pay is great. I wish that I could pick up another couple of gigs like this one and I would be doing really well, not the I have much to complain about as far as money goes these days. The teaching is a lot of fun and I think that I am pretty good at it. I have spent a good part of my life learning languages and I have learned a thing or two about how to go about it. More on that later. The best part about this new job is the bicycle commute from home.

The ride takes me about 40 minutes or so depending on traffic lights, train crossings, slow Joes in the bike lane, etc. I ride down to the Turia river park until I reach the Turia metro station, from here I ride up out of the river and follow the bike path past El Corte Inglés and Nueva Mestalla (the new football stadium for Valencia CF under construction with no plans for finishing because of money problems with the team). This bike path goes all the way to the Empalme metro stop where the metro goes above ground for the rest of its course.

From here I ride through the village of Burjassot and then Godella. Although these villages are now connected directly to Valencia—by metro and by car—they have retained a village feel. People here speak a lot more Valenciano than you hear in the city—not that I ever hear anyone speaking Valenciano in the street in Valencia and especially not in my immigrant-laden neighborhood of Ruzafa. It is just really nice out there and I haven’t passed a single café that I haven’t wanted to stop in to have a coffee or a beer. Another great thing about my commute is that the weather has been absolutely spectacular these past five weeks that I have been working at the school. It is perfect outside again this morning as I write this. My windows are wide open and there isn’t a cloud to be seen.

On the way home yesterday I noticed some guys playing baseball in a nice field in Turia Park. They were playing real baseball—fast pitch hardball—and they were good. The third baseman made a Brooks Robinson grab to make the final out of the inning and as they were changing sides I asked one of them where they were from. The Spanish De dónde sois? seemed to throw him for a second (Latin Americans don’t use this vosotros form). He made some sort of wise-ass answer.

I asked him if they played here every week and got sort of another wise-ass answer, not insulting but the kind of thing you’d expect from young guys during a sporting event. Then he asked me where I was from. I told him Seattle and then he asked me what my team was. I told him the Mariners, of course. One of the worst teams in baseball I said. He said that we had some great players. I agreed and said that we used to have the great Freddy García (I had guessed he was Venezuelan by his accent). Of course then the tenor of his responses changed completely and he named a couple of other prominent Venezuelan players who had played as Mariners. A couple of other guys joined n the discussion and then they invited me to come to their next practice. I told them I was a little old and slow to play actual games but that I wouldn’t mind throwing a ball around and taking a few swings.

It was such a beautiful day that I rode through the city center on my way home just because I was shooting a video of my commute and I thought it would make it a little more interesting. It was November 7, 2009 and the temperature at 14:30 was somewhere around 24 degrees. I was wearing shorts and a short sleeve shirt. I see a very mild winter on the horizon.

Labels: Valencia Spain, video

9:45 AM

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Wednesday, November 04, 2009

 

A corner fruit and vegetable shop.


I’m Done but I’m Not Leaving the Frying Pan

I have been thinking of that story about frogs which may be apocryphal for all that I know, the one that says if you put a frog in water and then raise it to a boil it won’t notice the gradual rise in temperature and it will cook. The same sort of thing has happened to me as far as integrating into Spanish life. I think that I am thoroughly cooked without really ever noticing. I think I am a goner as far as ever being able to go back and live any sort of normal life in the USA, but it's not like I ever had one of those anyway, a normal life, that is. I am quickly coming up on my third year in Valencia. It seems like the blink of an eye and a lifetime all in the same thought.

It’s not like I take my life here in Spain for granted, quite the opposite. I marvel at so many things every single day. The problem is that I am used to the state of marvel and I don’t know if I could live without it now. Just try and take it away from me and there could be trouble. Take the corner green grocers here (but don’t take them from me if you know what’s good for you). These fruit and vegetable shops are found on almost every block here I Valencia and I have grown quite fond of them. I can’t help but look into every one that I pass as I cycle around the city. I compare produce and prices and I am always on the lookout for good tomatoes or anything else that looks interesting. Right now we are entering the mushroom season. When I get a bit of free time I will make a risotto with these great mushrooms called revollones.

I have taken my Spanish a little for granted and haven’t been working on it as diligently as I normally do. I did find an audio book of Ken Follet’s The Pillars of the Earth in Spanish. Although it is read in one of those funky computer voices, the story itself is marvelous for an audio book. It is just great story telling and I understand about 98% I would say. I don’t know how I have learned so much of the vocabulary necessary in a story about a medieval stone mason but I have somehow, I even know the vocabulary for all of the esoteric tools—I doubt I know the names for many in English. I have just begun doing a language exchange in which I teach English and Spanish and in return my Moroccan friend teaches me French and Arabic. My French is pretty good these days as it seems to have improved simply because my Spanish has improved so much. I am reading Alex Garland’s The Beach (La Plage) in French and it is pretty easy going. I wish I could say the same for my Arabic.

Whenever someone asks me ¿Cómo estás? I usually tell them that I don’t have a lot to complain about. These days I should say that I don’t have a damn thing to complain about. If you are thinking about ditching everything and moving to Spain I have a few words for you. Jump right into the pan; the water is perfect.

Labels: Valencia Spain

10:11 AM

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Sunday, October 18, 2009

 

Catadau, Spain

Once again it’s all about food as I arrived in this village in the hills south of Valencia. We were seated at a table with twenty other folks, mostly senior citizens and we were passing around vials of different substances as we tried to guess what they were. This is pretty standard procedure at a wine tasting session and I did a fairly good job of identifying the spices—cumin, pepper, nutmeg—but I was stumped by the clove and the extract of oak. The wine we tasted was nothing special and all we could think about was how unfavourably it compared with the bottle of Rioja we shared earlier with an appetizer of cured ham and bread.

It was an informative presentation and everyone was having a good time. I even got a few laughs with the Robert Hughes quote about how we drink wine not for the subtle flavors but for the effect. Another presenter began a discussion on how several different types of cheeses are made but then I got lost when he switched from Spanish to Valenciano. It was time to move on and see a little more of the fair.

Catadau was having a festival of “ecologically-conscious” foods but it was mostly just an excuse for producers to hawk wine, sausages, olive oil, dried fruits, olives, breads, and everything else that ends up on a Spanish dinner table. We had bookended going to the festival between the wine and ham snack earlier and a more ambitious dinner we had planned for later that evening so I didn’t go too crazy on eating. I also was travelling light so I had to refrain from buying some of the beautiful sausages on sale.

I am always amazed to find that the folks in these little towns live just about the same way as city dwellers. They live in apartment buildings, which means a fairly high population density, which means you can walk everywhere. Before heading back up the mountain to my friends’ house we stopped in for a drink at a nice little bar in Catadau. It was still an hour before the start but a lot of people in the bar were anticipating the evening’s match between Valencia CF and Barcelona which was being played at Mestalla. As it turns out Valencia wasn’t able to convert several dozen good opportunities into a goal and had to settle for a draw. Any team in Spain would be thrilled to walk away with one point after playing Barça but I felt that Valencia had totally out-played their rivals from Cataluña.

I came by bike this time, at least from the metro stop at Font Almaguer. From there it’s about 13 kilometers to the village and the first leg of the ride is humping over a nice long hill. After that you coast the other half of the way down the other side into the river valley. We have had wonderful weather for cycling this fall and I have been out quite a lot. In fact, earlier in the morning I rode to my new job at Rocafort outside of Valencia, another 45 minute ride. I was running a little late on this morning which means I had to really scream through the little villages along the way

From Rocafort I jumped on the metro with my bike in tow on the #1 line which goes to Castellón. I bought a metro pass for 13.60€ for ten rides within the ABC zones. I have become quite a consumer of the Valencia metro system which means I have a wallet stuffed with passes for the A, AB, ABC, and ABCD zones which each have a different price.

The weather now reminds me of the Midwest but these days of mid October in Valencia feel like the first few days of September back in the US. There is just the slightest hint of cool weather in the morning and at sunset with daytime temperatures still reaching 25 degrees. You can’t ask for better weather for bike riding and my only complaint was that I had to carry a change of clothes for the weekend and a heavy pair of hiking shoes. I don’t really like bike touring as I like to ride fast and light. I have been wanting to do an extended bike tour of Spain but now it looks like it will have to wait until spring as I am too busy now.

I think that I would like to go to Granada by bike. I haven't been there before and it seems like it would be a good trip on a bike. Going north to Barcelona is too flat for me; I really miss riding in the mountains and I have lost a lot of my hill climbing power as the ride to Catadau showed me. If I do it I think I will stick to the absolute minimum as far as gear is concerned. I see people bike touring with ridiculously large loads of gear and I just wonder what they could possibly be carrying that is so important. I'm thinking a change of clothes and a credit card would do it for me. If I need anything I could just buy it and then give it away when I mount up the next day

Labels: Valencia Spain

10:28 AM

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Saturday, September 26, 2009

 

Mediterranean Autumn

Life on the Mediterranean isn’t bad at all during these days of early autumn, especially if you are a cyclist. The weather is perfect for just about every human activity. It’s almost impossible not to stop at every outdoor café for a coffee or a beer. I have traded in my flip flops for my cleated cycling shoes and I have upped my mileage (kilometerage? Spell-check certainly hates that metric alternative) from lazy beach rides to long exploratory missions into the vast network of villages surrounding Valencia. The environs of Valencia never really interested me much before; they were simply obstacles to pass on my way into the countryside. More and more they have become the destination as I find that they have their own attractions of history and architecture.

As I explore these areas I am quickly become one of the foremost experts on the bike trail network of Valencia. I am constantly amazed by the depth and breadth of the bike trail system here. Name just about any two points in the Valencia Community and you can probably get from one to the other on a bike path. The problem with the bike paths of Valencia is that not enough Valencianos use them. It is really a shame how few people effect their transportation needs via bicycles. Even during this perfect weather you don’t see many people on bikes. The local government needs to do more to sell the whole idea of bike riding to the general public. I think a lot of people’s rejection of the bicycle as a means of transportation is their belief that automobiles are the right and privilege of middle class life. For this same reason many people prefer to drive in heavy traffic rather than use the effortless and staggeringly efficient mass transit network.

I can get around town and even out into the surrounding areas of Valencia much quicker on my bike than is possible in a car. When you factor in parking there isn’t any contest. I can even beat the metro on my bike when you include walking to the stations and waiting for trains. Riding at a fairly leisurely pace I rode from my apartment in the center to Valencia to Rocafort (about 20 kilometers) in less than an hour. I doubt if I could match that by taking metro. I turned around and rode back although I had every intention of just boarding a train at some point along the route. It turned out to be too nice a day for me to get off my bike so I pedaled all the way home again—not bad for a guy who was too sick to get out of bed only a couple of days previous (I had been stricken with the dreaded Swine Flu. Newsflash: it’s not some sort of deadly Andromeda Strain, people. It’s the flu.).

I didn’t have much time for tourism on this particular trip but I’ll get around to it soon as this will be a regular destination for me I the months to come as I plan on being out in that area three times a week. I had my camera with me but I didn’t bother to take a single snapshot which says a lot about my lack of commitment in the photography department.

I am always struck by how life in these outlying villages is just about the same as life here in the city: People live mostly in apartments; there are bars and other businesses on every block; people generally walk everywhere; and public transportation is excellent. I could move to one of these small towns and my lifestyle would hardly miss a beat. I would probably have to start speaking Valenciano but just about everything else in my life would be the same.

Labels: Valencia Spain

3:23 PM

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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

 

The Secret of My Success*

One of the most revolutionary advances in my attempt to master Spanish cost me exactly 1.25€ at a mini Chinese Wal-Mart. I bought a pair of cheap ear bud headphones with a five meter cord that I can plug into the television in my new apartment. The TV in my old place didn’t have the jack for headphones. The sound quality on TVs without some sort of surround sound system isn’t very good and I had a hard time understanding programs and movies. I go to the neighborhood movie house to watch movies because the sound quality allows me to understand the Spanish a lot better than when I watch stuff at home. It was startling for me when I first plugged in my new headphones; it was like my Spanish had instantly improved by about 35% percent or so. My life will never be the same.

Watching television recently I have been a little disappointed in my ability to understand. I simply avoided a lot of shows simply because I understood so little that I didn’t think that watching them was a good use of my time. I have always been very satisfied with my reading ability in Spanish and also with my conversational level. I don’t have too many problems in either following or contributing to a discussion. Television was always my weak side, my lado flaco. As it turns out, I didn’t have a language problem; I had a hearing problem.

My new apartment also has cable TV which means that I have at least a few more viewing options including two channels in French. With the headphones I can also watch French television without too much straining. I am actually amazed at how well I understand this language that I have left to languish as I have worked so hard to improve my Spanish. I suppose that learning French is just collateral damage from improving greatly in another Romance Language. I’ll take all the help I can get, especially if it means I don’t have to do anything.

I have always known that I hear movies better through headphones. I’ve noticed this when I watch a Spanish movie on my computer—I just never had the ability to use headphones with a television before. I am going to make a statement which few people would admit and even fewer would be proud of: excluding football, I have watched more television in the past few days than I have in the past two years or so. I am watching shows that used to really kick my ass, linguistically speaking. I have always had a hard time following some of the Spanish sit-coms. I used to understand only about 60%, if I had to estimate. Now I am watching Aquí no Hoy Quien Viva and La Familia Mata and even dubbed American series while understanding almost as if they were in English.

For the past few months I have felt like my Spanish has been languishing in a sort of purgatory of my own inability to focus on doing what I know it takes to improve. With my two recent moves in the sweltering heat of August it’s possible that I wasn’t working on my Spanish as diligently as usual, but it seems that I haven’t been spinning my wheels as much as I thought. Now if I can only figure out a way to plug in a set of headphones when I go to a bar to watch football!

*I use “success” very subjectively in this case. What I consider to be a success is probably someone else’s definition of an abject failure.

Labels: Valencia Spain

9:57 PM

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Thursday, September 17, 2009

 

I’ll Take the Stairs

This past month I have thought more about stairs than I have in all of the rest of my life previous to my two recent moves. I moved from a building with an elevator which I used quite often, even though I was only on the second floor. From there I moved to a fourth floor walk-up. After about my third or fourth trip up those stairs—while carrying a heavy load—I started to really think about stairs. After about ten trips I decided to count just how many stairs there were. To reach the doorway of that apartment from the street meant humping up 75 steps, and this was in the hottest weeks of August (do you really think that a building without an elevator is going to have air conditioning?). I didn’t bother with my daily fitness rides as I thought that I was getting more than enough exercise trudging up and down those 75 steps.

I almost immediately started moving into another place a few blocks away. This was another apartment without an elevator on the third floor—64 steps. So now I was hauling a heavy load down 75 steps and then up 64 steps, if anyone cares or is counting. I cared and was counting. The coup de grâce came when a van pulled up in front of my new place and we had to Sherpa up all of the materials for the remodeling of the kitchen and the bathroom. That took about 6-7 trips up and down those 64 stairs. I had just returned from a rather long bike ride so after the moving my legs felt like cement. I began thinking that there would be lots of days now when my legs would be turning to cement.

The other day I was invited to an after-hours party at a friends’ apartment. It was late and I really wanted to go home but I really wanted to see their place. It turns out that it is on the fifth floor, 105 steps and no elevator. We talked about what it means to live at the end of a considerable amount of stairs. You don’t think lightly about dropping down to the street to run an errand. You have to plan almost every exit like some sort or arctic expedition. Still not quite accustomed to life without an elevator, I was going for a bike ride the other day when I realized when I got to the bottom of the stairs (I lock my bike in the downstairs hallway, thank god) that I had forgotten my water bottle. Fuck it, I wasn’t going back upstairs so I had to search out different places to get water along my ride. A friend asked me for my new street address the other day. I had forgotten to take notice of the street number on several occasions so I decided that I would descend solely for the purpose of obtaining my address. I made a point of taking out the garbage and recyclables in the apartment. You need to kill at least three birds with the stone of 64 stairs staring you in the face—if that even makes sense. As I was making my way downstairs I thought how humorous it would be if after all that I forgot once again to take notice of my address. Fortunately for me my lazy gene is stronger than my stupid gene and there is no way that lazy was going to allow stupid to forget to get my address.

I started paying close attention to all of the other older buildings in the neighborhood (and most are older) to see which ones have added an elevator. Installing an elevator in an old building is quite an expensive undertaking and can cost upwards of 15,000€ per tenant. Most people will tell you that this is money well spent as it will raise the resale value of a flat considerably. A lot of folks just wouldn’t even consider moving into a place without an elevator. I was never one of those people but my first three apartments in Valencia had elevators so I started to take them for granted. Not anymore. I wouldn’t say that I would refuse to live in another building without an elevator but I just moved here so give me a little time and a lot of stairs and perhaps I will change my mind. Let me just say that from now on, given the choice between taking the stairs or riding in an elevator, I’ll take the elevator.

Labels: Valencia Spain

9:44 AM

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Monday, September 07, 2009

 

Going to Godella

This was one of those days on my bike when I should have received a free t-shirt that said I spent 4 hours on my bike and all I have to show for it is this picture of a tower. I didn’t get a t-shirt but at least it wasn’t as hot as it has been lately. I didn’t even bring water along as I left my bottle on a park bench a couple days ago. It's not like you can't find water everywhere along the route. I was exploring the area to the west of Valencia along the metro line that goes to Burjassot and Godella. What I really need here is a handlebar-mounted GPS like the one a friend of mine had on his mountain bike in Seattle (otherwise known as tech geek capital of the world). To my credit I did spend about ten seconds trying to find a map before I left the house. Maps are for wimps with less of a sense of direction than the uncanny knack I have for finding my way around.

I made it on the bike trail as far as the station at Empalme and then I couldn’t find another bike path. I started to go along the tram tracks until I thought better of it. Just as I was climbing over a railing with my bike a tram came by at about 60 kph that would have made riding along the rail line interesting, to put it mildly. There should be warning signs along the tracks saying something like, “Don’t ride along the tracks unless you want to die.” It just seems logical that they should have built a bike lane right alongside the tram lines. I’m guessing that there is a bike trail that goes further west from Empalme; I just wasn’t able to sniff it out.

I finally made it as far as Paterna where I came across this wonderful tower measuring 19 meters tall. It is a typical defensive tower built by the Arabs of which there are dozens of examples around the Community of Valencia. The exact date of its construction is unknown but probably from the 13th century (but rebuilt in 1967). While I was taking pictures of the tower I asked a passerby how I would go about getting to Godella. If I could just find the metro stop at Godella I would know my way around from there, more or less. He tried as best as he could to explain but it was obvious that it would e difficult to get there from Paterna on a bike. After humping up and down a couple of sizable hills I aborted the mission to Godella and started looking for a way back to Valencia.

I will probably try again next Sunday but this time I’ll bring my hydro-pack and a map.

Labels: bikes, Valencia Spain

10:53 AM

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Wednesday, September 02, 2009

 

Moving Out

I received one month’s notice that I had to be out of my apartment. I moved three blocks away but it was a very long three blocks, especially the last twenty-five meters or so that consisted of five flights of tight stairs. If the stairs aren’t enough to kill you then try doing it during the last two weeks of August. I think this was the hottest it has been in my three summers in Valencia. Lucky me. Thank god the nightmare of moving is over…at least until I move again this month to another apartment that is up four flights of stairs. At least it should start to cool off a bit before I start humping stuff over to my new, new place.

I was thinking about renting a burro to help with the move. I figure that a burro would be perfect for negotiating flights or narrow stairs while hauling all of the junk I have accumulated since I came to Spain two years and ten months ago. I looked in the yellow pages for burro rentals but all I found out was that burros are somewhat of a rare species in the land of Sancho Panza. Could burros become extinct? Is there a burro wildlife refuge somewhere in the world? If there is a world burro wildlife refuge I would go there for a visit because I think that burros are cute. Ever since I was a kid I have wanted my own burro…and a chimp…a chimp with a huge sombrero.

So I have been in moving hell and it is only half over. I moved into one place and then got a much better deal on another place that is really nice. Where I am right now has what you call “old world charm” which means it is as old as dirt and without any sort of nod towards modernity. The bathroom is about the size of an airplane toilet. The kitchen is really small and kind of on the side of crappo. One thing that is a true marvel here are the set of knives. I have never had such amazing kitchen knives in my life. I need to work on that. Just to break in the new kitchen I made some tomato sauce and pasta for dinner.

Another cool thing about this place that I took in the short interim is the great stereo. I am listening to some great CD called La Guitarra Clásica Española which is a collection of classics played by Narciso Yepes.* The other CD I am listening to is the Afro Cuban Allstars which is always a lot of fun to listen to. My new building seems to be filled with South Americans so I will fit right in blasting this music at all hours of the night.

This apartment is only three blocks from my old place but almost literally worlds apart. The old place was super modern as were most of the other buildings in the vicinity. The people living there were mostly younger to middle aged Spaniards. In my new hood it is mostly immigrants—South Americans, Moroccans, Sub-Saharan Africans, and Chinese—either immigrants or old Spaniards who have probably lived here all of their lives. No wonder Spanish people supposedly live so long: you would live a lot longer too if you have to deal with walking up a few hundred steps every single day of your life. If you get down to the street and realize that you forgot something you can also purposefully forget you stairmaster class at the gym.

The place I will be moving into is from about the same era as the building I am in now—built sometime in the 1930s or early 1940s—but it is a lot more modern and hip looking. It still doesn’t have an elevator but there is a storage room on the ground floor where I can keep my bike locked up. The new place will also be a block or two out of the heart of Ruzafa where I have lived these past two years. A big plus in the new building is that all of the construction for the new metro line has been completed on the street so I won’t have to listen to jack hammer pounding from eight in the morning until seven at night. The new sidewalk project in Ruzafa has been wearing me the fuck out with all of the noise, detours, and dust. I am all for these new changes of widening the sidewalks, eliminating a lot of street parking, and making some streets for pedestrians only, it’s just that I have already paid my dues at the old flat.

*I just met someone named Narciso, a name I had never heard of before but since I have seen it many times.

Labels: Valencia Spain

9:50 AM

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Friday, August 28, 2009

 

Annie

I don't need to explain to you why I am posting a couple of songs form Annie. No one is making you watch these videos.

Labels: music, Valencia Spain, video

1:46 AM

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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

 

Socialism 2009

I would guess that most Americans view socialism as a bleak and oppressive form of government something along the lines of 1984. That view may have held some credence in 1984, back when the Soviet Union was still terrifying the right wing in America. Even back then the right wingers had it mostly wrong. They could not see the communist block for what it was: a decaying and impoverished idea that had long since failed and was on its way out. This 1984 mindset among conservatives of that era is what blinded American policy. Among other American foreign policy failures was our inability to see the collapse of the U.S.S.R. as it was happening, let alone predict it in any meaningful way. Our belligerent attitude towards Cuba has propped-up the Castro regime for over 40 years. This entrenched way of looking at socialism has continued to pollute the minds of many Americans when it comes to issues like socialized medicine. Forget about the fact that all of the world’s successful health care systems have heavy socialized tendencies; just the word “socialism” is enough to send about half of the country into a fit of apoplexy.

What people don’t really understand is that socialism in democracies is just a way for communities to act as a collective entity in order to carry out societal objectives. In every American class on basic economics we are taught that the free market system will provide for every need of the citizen without having to rely on the government—just for a minute forget about the fact that in a democracy the government and the people are one in the same. We have seen only too recently that what’s good for General Motors isn’t necessarily what is good for America. Americans also need to understand that if they don’t like the workings of a particular company they have little say in the matter—unless they happen to be major share holders.

Drive around just about any American city and the first thing that you notice is that most new growth is simply driven by the needs of individual retail outlets. Suburban sprawl is the norm in most U.S. communities with little or no sort of central planning. Growth simply means adding more and more strip malls, fast food chains, and big box stores. Residential areas just tacked on to these growth spurts like some sort of vague afterthought. The people of these communities have next to no say in the matter of how their cities take shape. If anyone says that this is the way urban planning should work I seriously doubt that they have seen any other way of regulating growth. In this model the government (read: the people) have about the weakest voice in the process. The government is at the complete mercy of the proclaimed exigencies of the business community. Merchants claim that this strip mall version of America is the best way to do business and that any sort of regulation will hurt sales. Who are the people to argue with the leaders of Home Depot, Target, Walgreens, et al? Of course, none of the people from these firms that are making these decisions actually live in these communities but so what? They know what is good for all of us.


We just had the European Grand Prix here in Valencia this past weekend and it gave me a good excuse to explore a newer area of town that I don’t see too often. In the two and a half year that I have lived here I have seen explosive growth in Valencia which was initially spurred by the America’s Cup sailboat races and then the Formula 1 Grand Prix which was unveiled last summer. There is a large expanse of land ripe for development in this area of town and private builders have been seizing land as fast as possible. The local government has been several steps ahead during this race to develop the port area. The infrastructure that is already in place is quite impressive and shows the work of very far-sighted planning and not just a view towards the next quarter’s profits.

You can call it socialism; at least that’s what the ruling government party is called (although the PSOE is not in power n Valencia). What it shows to me is a government that is out to provide what is best for the citizenry and then cater to the needs of business—not vice versa. Long before the private sector enter this area, city planner had already mapped out mass transit networks, pedestrian routes, bike paths, parks, and sensible growth patterns. When you look at this area it seems like it will be a very nice place to live and do business. You would be amazed at what a little socialism can do.

I defy anyone to show how this form of intelligent central planning is somehow anathema to human freedom or individual expression. This is what American conservatives say about European socialism after all. Socialism is a system in which the individual is crushed under the boot heel of the collective…I don’t know what…the collective monstrosity of government, I suppose. Socialism in their dim view is National Socialism, Nazis, and the horrors of the former Soviet bloc. In their way of thinking anything that in any way obstructs the path of unbridled private enterprise is a form of tyranny; it’s as if they equate free markets with freedom and that any attempt by a democratically-elected government to impose the will of the people on industry is contrary to the American way of life. American conservatives believe that any government-imposed restrictions or limitations on business are a blow to personal freedom.

So what have the European social democracies sacrificed as they have embraced more socialist policies than we here in the USA? Perhaps Spaniards pay a lot more in taxes than Americans but they have a much better health care system and much less income inequality. AS far as individual rights are concerned, it would be easy to argue that the Spanish enjoy a lot more in the way of personal freedoms that Americans. None of these countries in Europe are truly socialist which ultimately means that the workers own and administer the means of productions, they have simply sought to collectivize the effort in certain areas of society, such as mass transportation, health care, education, police, fire protection, road building, and defense. You’ll notice that the USA also has socialized education, police, defense, and fire protection. Just don’t say that around a conservative unless you want them to drop dead of heart failure (let’s hope they have good insurance).

I just don’t see how a community can look out for the best interests of the citizenry unless it is through a collective effort planned by the government. How else can you do it? Look around at the suburban sprawl that chokes the life out of countless American cities and tell me that there isn’t a better way to build cities than simply relying on the self-interests of the business community with no regard to what the people want and need. If you are looking for an example on how to manage growth, you could do a lot worse than Valencia.



So the sinister socialism that the stupid hicks are protesting against in the American town hall meetings turns out to be European countries that provide bike paths and mass transportation for their citizens. Surely Americans won’t allow that evil to take root on our soil. What will come after bike paths, good bus systems, and free health care? You just know that they will come after our guns. Could you imagine a country without assault weapons? Ugh, I shudder at the mere thought of it. So keep screaming at the top of your lungs like the moronic primates that you are, people. And by no means travel to Europe to actually see for yourself the horrors of Holland and France or any of the other hellhole dystopias the Right has been warning us about for decades. Why should we change when we already live in paradise? Instead of Candide we have Rush telling us,"Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes" (all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds).

Labels: politics, Valencia Spain

2:01 PM

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Saturday, August 08, 2009

 

The Canon of American Food (part 1)

The big difference that I see between Spanish and American societies is that we are constantly reaching for the next rung on the socio-economic ladder. We are taught to be unsatisfied with what we have. We should have more and better things: a bigger house, a nicer car, better schools for our children, and countless other figments of our consumer imaginations. This isn’t to say that the Spanish are not seeking upward mobility, but they seem content to take in the view from whatever may be their current vantage point. Americans often feel that life will somehow be infinitely better if they can only replace a few durable goods or alter a few hereditary traits. Perhaps we are just showing the symptoms of an accelerated culture, a society Spain will soon become as their own economic future brightens. It may be that American society was more like Spain before we became the world’s leading economic power.

Nowhere is our disaffection with our own lives more evident than in the way we feel about our bodies. If you have ever been to more than one garage sale you know that one constant bit of merchandise will be discarded bit of trendy exercise equipment. What most of these failed body builders don’t seem to realize is that their lack of fitness isn’t because of something they aren’t doing—exercising or dieting—it’s because of what they are doing—basically living completely unhealthy lives. One of the best pieces of exercise equipment ever made are good walking shoes yet walking seems to be an activity that we leave behind in middle class American life. It is almost as if there is a stigma attached to walking; it’s like hanging clothes on a line to dry—it’s just not done these days unless you can’t afford an alternative. Walking is for poor people.

Drive everywhere, park as close to the entrance as possible, pull into the drive-thru, and at the end of the day you reach the safety of your attached three-car garage. It’s as if we define success by how few steps we have to take in our daily lives. It almost seems as if the biggest reason to get rich is that being wealthy means you can take lots of shortcuts in life and get everything done faster. In many cases doing something in a hurry is completely contrary to assuring any sort of quality.

Think of food as an example. What is worse than fast food or industrially prepared food? America’s move into prosperity went hand-in-hand with an acceptance on our part of a diet that is just awful. Frozen, freeze-dried, canned, boxed, prepared, and drive-thru are not good things when it comes to your sustenance. If you don’t have the proper amount of time to prepare food the way it was meant to be then perhaps you should reconsider the rest of your daily schedule—you probably need to cut out a few inessentials in the pages of your day planner. Instead of trying to make enough money so that you can eat in great restaurants for every meal it would be a lot easier to learn how to cook a few things.

Somewhere in the rising tide of American prosperity we seem to have lost anything remotely resembling a national cuisine. With the country’s newfound wealth in the post WWII era we abandoned our kitchens. I wasn’t alive back then but it seems like cooking became something old fashioned and a task not worthy of the middle class. Cooking was from for grandmothers with one foot still planted in the old countries. Whatever culinary traditions we had back then were quickly buried in the rush towards what people thought was modern society. The next generation of American food was ushered in on a TV dinner tray. What did we give up in order to have a frozen Salisbury steak in less than 20 minutes?

We were a country of immigrants with a vast amount of culinary wealth to draw upon. We haven’t lost any of this diversity in food but we have failed to develop a tradition of American cooking, whatever that might be. We have taught our children the American history we feel is necessary to become a responsible citizen but we haven’t inculcated them in just how they should go about their daily lives. If we were to develop some sort of national cuisine I feel that this would improve the bonds between us as American.

I see this as an incalculably large factor in the national character in many countries, especially in the Mediterranean basin. Food plays such an important part in the daily lives of Greeks, Italians, French, and Spanish, to name just four nations. Not only have their long culinary histories played an integral part in shaping their national identities, but the food they eat gives people an identity. This may be true in America among part of the populace, people who cling to their ethnic roots, and there are regions in the country that have very traditional dishes and cuisines, but it isn’t a part of our national character which I think is unfortunate.

“What is do Americans eat?” is a question I am constantly asked—a simple enough question but one that is difficult for Americans to answer; not so for the Spanish, the French, Italians, or Greeks. Their national cuisines are shared by all with no regard for class or social status. Food is their common denominator, their lingua franca, and as important to their feelings of national identity as our stories of the founding fathers. They are defined by what they eat. Their meals frame the structures or their days. The importance of food in their lives would be difficult to overstate. Food can be simple an inexpensive but they see to it that meals are a daily celebration. I see this as one of the biggest differences between out cultures. I also think that the care and respect given to food in these cultures has enriched the lives of the people in ways that it is difficult for Americans to understand.

If you are looking for an example of a lifestyle to emulate you could do a lot worse than the Spanish. I think that one of the biggest factors in how they have perfected middle class existence is the way in which they treat food in their society. Food dictates the rhythm of daily life in Spain from the time they wake up I the morning until they go to bed at night—or early in the morning as the case may be. Meals are an all-inclusive ritual practiced daily by all Spaniards with little regard for class or income. A lot of Americans still view wine as some sort of luxury (unless they oppose it outright on religious grounds). This just isn’t the case in most European countries. In Spain wine is seen more as a birthright than a luxury. There is much more wine to be found at extremely modest prices in Spain than in America. The average Spanish person wouldn’t dream of paying what most Americans spend on a bottle or glass of wine in a restaurant.

Maybe I haven’t been in Spain long enough to know better but it seems like shopping for food is something that can actually be enjoyed here. Instead of just another household chore to suffer through, people here seem to view grocery shopping as a challenge in which they must pit their wits against merchants in order to get the best ingredients at the most favorable price. Where Americans are used to going to a single supermarket for all of their foodstuffs, the Spanish are more likely to shop in big, open-air markets, corner green grocers, neighborhood bakeries, as well as the bigger supermarkets. I don’t think I am unusual in that I tend to shop only for one meal at a time. Either I have something in mind to cook before I leave the hose or I leave the menu open and take a look at what things look good on that particular day.

“What am I going to eat?” is a question we all ask ourselves every single day. As Americans I think that we need to define just what it is we eat. After all, we have some of the best agricultural land in the world and a bountiful supply of some of the best raw ingredients for cooking. We can begin by making a list of the top American dishes which will provide an easy answer when we are questioned by foreigners about our diet. I will only include dishes that can be prepared with ingredients found all over the country and that reflect the natural bounty found in America. These are every day dishes that are inexpensive, delicious, and uniquely our own.

1) Fried Chicken

I always used to say that if I ever lived within a couple of miles of a Popeye’s Fried Chicken I would weigh about 400 pounds (I tip the scales at 350). The same thing goes for Ezelles Chicken in Seattle. That place was always such a pain in the ass to get to that even a lard-ass like me could rarely be bothered to venture up the hill to get some of that glorious, mouth-water, super-savory chicken. I can’t even finish writing this now as just the thought of fried chicken is making me deliriously hungry. Spain isn’t the best place to find fried chicken, I’m afraid.

Ingredients
• 1 broiler/fryer chicken, cut into 8 pieces
• 2 cups low fat buttermilk
• 2 tablespoons kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons Hungarian paprika
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• Flour, for dredging
• Vegetable shortening, for frying

Place chicken pieces into a plastic container and cover with buttermilk. Cover and refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours.
Melt enough shortening (over low heat) to come just 1/8-inch up the side of a 12-inch cast iron skillet or heavy fry pan. Once shortening liquefies raise heat to 325 degrees F. Do not allow oil to go over 325 degrees F.
Drain chicken in a colander. Combine salt, paprika, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper. Liberally season chicken with this mixture. Dredge chicken in flour and shake off excess.
Place chicken skin side down into the pan. Put thighs in the center, and breast and legs around the edge of the pan. The oil should come half way up the pan. Cook chicken until golden brown on each side, approximately 10 to 12 minutes per side. More importantly, the internal temperature should be right around 180 degrees. (Be careful to monitor shortening temperature every few minutes.)
Drain chicken on a rack over a sheet pan. Don't drain by setting chicken directly on paper towels or brown paper bags.

2) Cajun Red Beans and Rice

I love beans of all kinds. They have been the main staple in my diet over the course of my entire life. They are laughably inexpensive yet full of protein and vitamins. I loved that story from Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat where Danny and the gang steal food for the woman’s children who had previously survived on a diet on beans and tortillas. As soon as they started eating the exotic fare the bums had rustled up for them they began getting ill. I could easily live on beans and tortillas.

I probably feel the same way about cooking beans as Miles Davis did about playing a jazz improvisation: you never do it the same way twice (I think that I just said that I was the Miles Davis of beans?). I use a pressure cooker when I make them now that I have discovered this marvelous invention. Instead of taking several hours I can now make a pot of pintos in 18 minutes.

Ingredients:

4 cups red beans
3 quarts water
1 cup chopped onions
1 cup chopped celery
4 bay leaves
1 cup chopped sweet green pepper
4 tablespoons chopped garlic
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 teaspoons dried thyme - crushed
1 pound andouille sausage - cut into 1/4 in.pieces
1 good ham bone and small chunks of ham
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon pepper
Tabasco
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 stick margarine

Soak beans overnight and rinse.
In a 10 quart pot combine beans, water, ham bone with ham, onion, celery, and bay leaves.
Bring to a boil; reduce heat.
Cover and cook over low heat, for about 1 & 1/2 hours or until beans are tender.
Stir and mash some of the beans against side of pan.
Cut sausage into bite-size chunks and brown in a frying pan. Add garlic, green pepper and a bit more onion to this. Add this to the beans.
Add parsley, thyme, salt, Tabasco, margarine, and pepper.
Cook uncovered, over low heat until creamy, about 30 minutes.
Remove bay leaves.
Serve over white rice (thank god for rice cookers).

To be continued…

Labels: canon of American food, Food, Valencia Spain

10:15 AM

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Wednesday, July 29, 2009

 

Siete Minutos

My standards aren’t very high when I go to see a movie in Spanish. It’s basically more of a language exercise than entertainment, but it’s not like I don’t want to be entertained in the process. I go to a little movie house in my neighborhood called Cinestudio d'Or which shows a double feature for 2.50€. Cheap tickets are a definite plus when you are thinking about seeing a movie that you know probably won’t be very good. It’s not like I think American movies are any better and I never pay to see them. I just like sitting in a theater and being forced to listen to Spanish for a couple of hours. Going into a nice, air conditioned movie theater is sort of nice on a very hot afternoon especially if you bring in an ice cold can of beer.

7 Minutes begins with a pretty unoriginal premise and then goes straight to the clichés we all expect from “romantic” “comedies.” I like to put both of those words in separate parenthesis because they are rarely romantic or comic. This movie does little to change my mind on the subject. Why every writer and director wants to be like Woody Allen is a mystery to me seeing how he hasn’t made a good movie in over a generation. At least this movie didn’t have some talentless fuck from the recent cast of Saturday Night Live or one of the other small stable of actors that Hollywood puts into every “romantic” “comedy” they crank out every year like strings of lousy sausages.

I hate being a critic, at least about individual works. I certainly don’t mind slamming the entire movie industry. I enjoyed this movie simply because I liked the fact that I could understand about 93 percent of it. ¿Bastan 7 minutos para encontrar el amor de tu vida? (is 7 minutes enough to find love?) refers to the speed dating session a group of hopefuls attend at the opening of the movie. Like just about all American movies of this genre, it seems that Spanish directors also feel the need to pitch their idea with a silly gimmick. Whatever (lo que sea is how I think that is translated into Spanish), at least I made it to the end, which is more than I can say for the Turkish movie dubbed into Spanish that was the second half of the double feature.

Besides the language lesson, watching Spanish movies—good and bad—strengthens my cultural literacy here in Spain. The cold beer was great after a long bike ride earlier in the afternoon. Besides, I just like going to the movies.

Labels: movies, Valencia Spain

8:21 AM

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Thursday, July 23, 2009

 

Summer Menu

If you had to plan an ideal menu of Spanish and Mediterranean cuisine it would probably come close to what we had this past weekend at the country home of a couple who recently left my hectic neighborhood of Ruzafa for the peaceful hills of an agricultural community south of Valencia. It’s a startling contrast whenever I spend time at their place where I will spend days without hearing a car horn or a jack hammer—two instruments that are major contributors to the soundtrack of life in the city. We have always eaten well when we spend time together but these last few days were exceptional. I haven’t visited them in months and it was like we were making up for lost time in the kitchen and on the patio grill.

I had bought a huge supply of tomatoes which are on sale all over Valencia in the usual summer gold rush manner. I hauled almost four kilos of them along with me for the weekend. Upon arriving I almost immediately started making gazpacho. This is a dish that belongs in your refrigerator all through the summer months. It is also easy to make and open to a lot of personal interpretation and adaptation. It’s impossible to mess up and the only cooking required is when you drop the tomatoes in hot water to remove the skins. The important thing to remember about gazpacho is that after it has been left in the fridge to chill you will want to take it out and adjust the seasoning. My huge batch went from bland and uninspired to delicious after I added quite a bit more olive oil, garlic, and salt after leaving it overnight to chill.

One of the things that I most missed about Mediterranean cooking when I left Greece many years ago and returned to the United States were grilled sardines. I don’t think we have the tradition of eating these little fish except in canned form. It just so happened that my friends had just visited their local fish merchant and picked up about three kilos of very fresh sardines. Although the people along the Mediterranean think rather highly of sardines they aren’t willing to pay much for them. They cost about 2€ a kilo. The modest price of this variety of fish means that they sell quickly which insures that the quantity you buy is always fresh. Anyone who has done a bit of angling knows that fresh fish are harder to scale than older stocks; a small price to pay when preparing sardines—and cleaning three kilos of sardines is quite a bloodbath. I rarely ever cook sardines at home, mainly because I don’t have a grill and also I don’t want to drive my neighbors away with the smell they make while cooking. Grilled sardines are one of the few reasons I ever bother to go to a restaurant in Valencia. Of course the odor isn’t a problem when you have a grill on the patio of a country home.

We cleaned the fish and then sprinkled them with very coarse salt before placing them on a double-sided grilling rack over a hot charcoal fire. High quality charcoal is something my friend takes very seriously so he buys it in huge 40 kilo bags from an Argentine who supplies a lot of backyard barbequers in his area. When the sardines come off the grill you simply splash on a bit of olive oil and you are ready to serve. I don’t even bother with lemon. These sardines are about 20 centimeters (8 inches) in length so they have a healthy backbone. With smaller sardines I just eat them bones and all but on these the meat separates easily. After a swelteringly hot day the heat had waned considerably and we were able to eat outside on the patio. Other factors in our favor were the Mediterranean summer dining rules which allow you to begin an evening meal at 1 am. This was going to be a tough meal to top and it was only Friday.

I’m the kind of guy who brings along his own chicken when you invite him over for the weekend. Friday afternoon I had cut it into pieces and seasoned it with salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, paprika, and garlic. I drizzled olive oil over all of it and put it in a covered glass dish in the refrigerator. On paper this doesn’t sound like the most imaginative dish I the world but it is amazing the results you get with a good charcoal fire. We had this chicken for lunch the next day and it was slow grilled to absolute perfection. The gazpacho came out well, if I do say so myself. A slice of bread and a glass or two of wine (who’s counting?) and we had another great meal.

There is a wonderful community swimming pool just a few blocks down the street so I headed down there a bit after lunch. As much cycling and running as I have been doing lately haven’t really prepared me to take my position on the podium of World’s Underwater Swimming Champion, a post I held for many years—at least in my own eyes. I could barely make one lap of the pool (25 meters? perhaps less) underwater without drowning. I used to be able to make it twice this distance. I am just out of practice as I haven’t been snorkeling since I moved to Spain and it’s been a long time since I really worked to improve my underwater swimming skills. If I ever want to be a Navy SEAL I had better get cracking.

None of us were even thinking about diner that evening until late into the night. Of course, there was enough gazpacho to withstand a month-long siege but we didn’t have anything else planned. I made an appetizer with some of the leftover sardines. I just mounted them on a thin slice of bread in the Spanish manner of montaditos. Along with a glass of white wine we were off to a good start to another fine meal.

My host whipped up a dish that should be in everyone’s repertoire: pasta aglio olio: pasta in a sauce of olive oil and garlic. This Italian standard has been mastered by every resident of that peninsula and has made into way into the diet of just about everyone else living on the Mediterranean. It is as simple as it is delicious. Boil pasta (tagliatelle in this case), heat a good amount of olive oil, add minced garlic, and toss the pasta in the oil. I make it with red pepper flakes as well. We served this with fresh basil and Parmesan cheese. People tell me that this is a late night dish in Italy, usually served after you have been out all night dancing or whatever. We call it “drunk food” in American where we are a little less moderate in our intake of beer, wine, liquor, shots, tequila, more beer, another round of shots, etc.

As he made the pasta he also started a huge pot of fish stock to be used with Sunday’s traditional Valencian rice dish. The stock contained two heads of rape (monkfish?), some galenas, a truly terrifying version of shrimp, and langostinos. A good stock is crucial for a successful Arroz a Banda that we would be making for tomorrow’s afternoon meal.

I feel stuffed just writing all of this down and I still have another big meal left to describe. I have previously posted a video for Arroz a Banda so I will spare us all this meal. I would like to say that he changed his recipe a bit this time around and added cuttlefish to the dish. I think that it is safe for me to say that I ate rather well last weekend.


Gazpacho

Labels: cooking video, Spain Food, Valencia Spain

1:05 PM

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Thursday, July 16, 2009

 

Ten Reasons To Be In Spain

1) Sometimes a guy just likes to take a leisurely stroll down a quiet cobblestone street while being pursued by a herd of homicidal bulls. That guy isn’t me because I was born with certain birth defects which preclude my participation in these events: a dominant cowardly gene and an excess of common sense. There is no known cure.

2) 82.3% less news about Michael Jackson (and there was plenty about him in Spain).

3) This may seem astonishing to many of you but as a male of the species I really don’t find nude women on the beach to be repugnant. I think that I could live without the naked, fat, 60 year old foreign tourists but you have to learn to take the good with the bad, the ugly, and the “Oh my God I wish I had never seen that.”

4) As far as consumer mentality goes, Spain has helped me to realize that life isn’t better just because you have a choice of 95 breakfast cereals at the supermarket. I don’t even like cereal.

5) Like almost all Spaniards, I have learned to have a healthy respect for food. People here won’t even eat a bag of potato chips without first decanting them into a nice serving bowl. I have learned that Menú del Día translates into English as “Two hour lunch with a nap afterwards.”

6) Vacations in Spain are an art form. We don’t even have a word in America for puente which in Spain means to milk as much out of a day off as humanly possible. A café in my neighborhood run by a Chinese family put a sign in their window that said they were taking off two hours early on a Saturday night to celebrate Chinese New Year. Most Spaniards needed three days to do that holiday justice.

7) 86.3% fewer serial killers than in the USA.

8) Two ice-cold quintos (small, 1/5 liter bottles of beer) for 1€ at a bar in my neighborhood (I have never claimed to be a complicated man).

9) I can buy a pig’s head at my butcher. I have never bought a pig’s head but I like having the option.

10) Honestly, I can’t be bothered to find out about anything in Spain I don’t like. You'll have to give me more time here for that.

Labels: Spain Humor, Valencia Spain

11:09 AM

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Monday, July 06, 2009

 

Summer Lunch Menú del Día

Of course by “lunch” here in Spain we don’t mean lunch but the big midday meal they eat no earlier than 2 o’clock and as late as five or six on the hottest days of summer. And “lunch” is also being redundant as Menu del Día always refers to the midday meal. In most small Spanish restaurants they have what is called a Menu del Día which is a fixed price lunch where you have several choices between the three courses you are served, along with beer or wine and coffee. I have some very good friends visiting today so I am planning our Menu del Día.

As much as I like booze I don’t like to drink alcohol during the day. If I’m forced to drink anything I prefer it to be something light—maybe a glass of white wine sangría which will go well with this menu.

Papas Aliñas (Andalucía Potato Salad)

This has instantly become my favorite dish: potatoes marinated in olive oil and vinegar. This recipe comes from Andalucía as you may recognize by the way it is written. Up north we call potatoes “patatas” but in Andalucía—as well as everywhere in the Americas—Spanish speakers call them “papas.” You start by boiling small new potatoes in salted water until they are very tender. Before they cool completely peel of the skin with your fingers. While the potatoes are still warm pour on a bit of olive oil and then refrigerate. Hard boil a few eggs and refrigerate. Slice an onion thinly, marinate in wine vinegar and chill. Mix these three ingredients while adding more oil and vinegar. Add fresh, chopped parsley. What you are left with is a very satisfying potato salad.

Insalata Caprese (Tomato, Mozzarella, and Basil Salad)

I like to stack the these three ingredients on top of each other like pancakes and then serve with a balsamic vinaigrette thickened with corn syrup. I don’t remember where I learned how to do it this way but it sort of dresses up this simple classic. Nota very Spanish dish but at least its Mediterranean. Any excuse to use all of the great tomatoes I have is welcomed.

Pollo al Ajillo (Garlic Chicken)

Heat olive oil and add a couple of crushed, unpeeled cloves of garlic. When the garlic has browned add skinless chicken and cook on both sides but not too thoroughly. Remove chicken and reduce the heat. Add 3-4 cloves of finely chopped or pressed garlic to the oil and place the chicken pieces back in the pan. Make sure there is not too much oil in the pan (a couple of table spoons is about right). Add a cup of red wine to the pan and simmer. I like to serve this dish at about room temperature in the summer.

Labels: Spain Food, Valencia Spain

7:25 AM

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Friday, July 03, 2009

 

Youtube: The Spanish Grandmother I Never Had

I didn’t have a grandmother around to teach me how to cook. Growing up we were taught in my family to be very self-reliant. Need some washing done? Here’s the machine, here’s the soap, get cracking. Hungry? You know where the kitchen is. I moved into my own apartment when I was 17 and that pretty much sealed my independence. Most of my early culinary education came through the exigencies of my meager budget in college. I ate lots of bean and potatoes. These are still my two favorite food staples. Along the way I have picked up a few recipes here and there, usually a reflection of where I have lived and traveled: South America, Greece, all over the States, a lot of vacations in Mexico, and now Spain. My kitchen is like the food court at the U.N.

Most of what I learned about cooking has been through trial and error—just about the worst educational tool in my opinion. I’ve had few actual teachers. The internet has changed that problem. Now whenever I am attempting a dish for the first time I will find several recipes at different web sites and then I will scour Youtube to actually see the dish being prepared. With this method I have been exposed to some of the best cooking teachers you will ever likely find anywhere. The best cooking videos out there will walk you through a dish so well that even on your first attempt you will be able to proceed with utter confidence. Adiós trial and error. Don’t let the kitchen door hit you on the ass on your way out.

Just the other day a friend of mine returned from an extended trip to Andalucía. He was raving about a dish he found there called Pollo al Ajillo (garlic chicken). Perhaps it was his mouth-watering description or maybe I was just hungry at the time but I vowed then and there that this would be the very next thing I cooked at home. We had other topics to discuss that evening besides Pollo al Ajillo so I never got the specifics of how to prepare the dish. No problem, I have my Youtube grandmother at home to walk me through it.

My first attempt at Pollo al Ajillo was very acceptable. My Youtube tutor for this Spanish classic was very thorough and clear on every step in the process. I actually started to make one of my crappy videos to document it but my battery died in my camera. I have at least a half a dozen rechargeable batteries and it turned out that they were all dead. I guess I didn’t learn that whole “Be Prepared” thing from my years as a Boy Scout. I learned a lot of other cool things in Boy Scouts so I’m not going to beat myself up over not having any charged batteries lying around the house.

I talked to my friend later about my cooking venture and he suggested another way to make it by flouring the chicken before you fry it in the oil with garlic. Fortunately, I had the good sense not to cook all of the chicken yesterday in my first go at this dish—not because I was showing restraint but because my skillet isn’t big enough to hold an entire chicken. I will try it again today but this time with breaded chicken pieces.

I suppose it takes a certain amount of skill in the kitchen to be able to judge whether or not the instructional cooking video you are watching is worth its salt. If I am making a classic Spanish dish the first thing I seek out is authenticity. I don’t think that I am being a food snob when I say that keeping to the Spanish traditional way of making a dish is important to me—at least it is important when first learning something new. After you have mastered the original recipe then you can feel free to improvise but you need to build the foundation first. So don’t serve me scrambled eggs with potatoes and tell me it’s a tortilla de patatas.

I suppose that Youtube isn’t as good as having a Spanish grandmother to walk me through all of these great recipes, but it’s probably the next best thing. Unfortunately, Youtube doesn’t have a little dog to play with as do most Spanish grannies.

Labels: Spain Food, Valencia Spain

11:18 AM

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