On density

I used to think I was a city girl.

I grew up in busy suburban Boston. As soon as I was old enough, I made frequent forays into the city. I found the constant movement gave me energy. There was always something new to see, always something happening. When I was 16, I spent almost a month on the Blackfoot reservation in Montana, and enormity of the open sky really messed with my head. It was beautiful, but it felt almost too empty. I couldn't get back to the city's perpetual motion machine.

Still, Hong Kong brings city living to an entirely new level.

I learned recently that matter inside a collapsing star is sometimes referred to as "superdense." As far as I'm concerned, Hong Kong is inside that proverbial black hole. I've lived in one other Asian city, Kunming, which much more closely follows the Chinese-megacity model, sprawling enormously but not really more dense than any other city. I've spent time (though never lived) in New York, Hanoi, Osaka, and Beijing. None hold a candle to Hong Kong. (And let's not even start on where Berkeley fits in here.)

The feeling of superdensity seems to come from a combination of towering buildings, restaurants stacked on shops stacked on malls stacked on parking lots, and the constant movement of thousands of people in small spaces at all times of day. The sheer mass of humanity makes walking anywhere a challenge, a seething obstacle course. Even the air is thick this time of year.

City girl or not, superdensity of this city takes some getting used to. It means that nobody here thinks twice about being jostled or bumped or accidentally hit. It's inevitable, unavoidable, and after a few weeks I stopped apologizing when I was the bumper or turning around in surprise when I was the bumpee. I've also found it especially odd that people in a crowd here don't seem to move out of the way when you're heading toward them or when you're walking behind them. I've learned "excuse me" in Cantonese (the only phrase I've managed so far, since it also means "thank you"), and that helps a bit, but I still find the feeling of making eye contact with a person in your path who still does not step out of the way to be unsettling. I've taken to walking through crowds with my arms out in front of me, essentially swimming myself a way through. It's certainly humid enough for that.

(An aside: When I moved here, people warned me that Hong Kongers walk slowly in the summer. Just a few minutes outside in the suffocating summer air is enough to understand why. Walking back to the MTR from restaurants at a slow pace certainly delays the inevitable bloom of sweat, but so many people walking slowly at once certainly magnifies the effects of the city's crowds.)

The way that city dwellers solve the density problem is New York times ten. New Yorkers famously make little eye contact and are slow to react to others nearby in trouble. Here, I take the MTR (the public transit) to work each morning, and the train cars, which are packed shoulder-to-shoulder and which I find to be especially small, are blanketed in utter silence. No chit-chat, no music, no ringing phones, not even that one guy yelling to his brother across the car.

My boss, a lifelong Hong Konger, says it's a matter of respect. It's the same reason people can be neighbors for years and years here and never have a significant conversation. They're giving their fellow citizens a chance at a fictional bubble of privacy, he says, social space where there is no physical space. It takes some getting used to, but I like that; I guess I am a city girl at heart.

The oddly familiar: adventures at a Hong Kong grocery store

The results of a successful grocery store shop

Before I left for Hong Kong, I wrote about the many uncertainties surrounding my tenure here, and in the first few weeks I've answered several of those questions. English is everywhere; 98% of toilets are Western style; and although I drink a double-shot espresso every morning in the office, any local restaurant invariably goes the traditional tea route. But until recently the grocery store question remained unsolved. 

I've been staying this month in an apartment in Jordan, a neighborhood in Kowloon (the peninsula part of the city) famous for Korean food, and there's a grocery store belonging to the "International" chain just downstairs. Here's what I found when I went for my first proper shop, based on what I'd normally try to get at home:

Yogurt/butter/milk — Long-time readers of this blog will remember the remarkably terrible time I had with dairy products on the mainland in 2006, specifically a delicious Oreo milkshake in Lijiang that left me with the most horrifying food poisoning that I hope I'll ever encounter. Since then, I've always been suspicious of Chinese dairy, but so far in Hong Kong I've had no problems. Dairy is easy to find but exceptionally expensive here. Still, I've been able to have yogurt for breakfast, milk in my coffee, and cheese in my eggs with no problem.

Peanut butter — I was surprised at how easy it was to find the stuff here. I expected it to be rare and expensive, but it's neither. I've taken to making elementary-school style PB&Js to bring to work on my intern salary...

Deli meats — ... mostly because my standbys, salad and sandwiches, are impossible, given health concerns for westerners consuming raw veggies and the utter absence of deli meat anywhere. See you in the fall, turkey-on-wheat.

Bread — But bread hasn't been as much of a problem as I anticipated. In 2006 Kunming I remember buying "French bread," strangely spongy and sweet hunks of shrink wrapped sort-of-kind-of-baguette, to go with my hard-won peanut butter. Here, there's a whole bread section. It may not be Berkeley Bowl, but it's something.

Veggies — I'm determined to keep them in my diet, something I struggled with in Spain. That means lots of stir fries. So far, I've found no carrots or cucumbers. Red peppers are priced sky-high. So I've been leaning heavily on pea pods and broccoli, plus local celebrities bok choy and baby corn. Let me tell you, non-canned baby corn is a game changer: it's tender, sweet, and flavorful. And bok choy in a breakfast scramble isn't half bad!

Dumplings — As you might imagine, the frozen dumpling section of the grocery store is considerably expanded. I haven't tried frying up the selection I bought, but it's awfully promising. If it were up to me, I'd eat dumplings all day every day, so expect to hear more about this soon.

Breakfast — As I said, I've been favoring yogurt or been seduced by the red bean or barbecued pork bins sold on every corner along my commute. But the breakfast selection at International is still quite good. All sorts of cereals, muesli, oatmeal. The cream of wheat section is a bit of a departure, though. Cream of wheat is quite similar to traditional Cantonese congee, and the flavors, which start from shrimp and get more odd-sounding to my western ear, are proof of cross-cultural marketing success.

Dessert — I'm a long way from home, but at the same time... the dessert aisle of International is filled with Dreyer's products, straight from good-ol' Oakland. Having spent so much of my year this year reporting a story about Dreyer's (news of that forthcoming!), it feels like a little homecoming to see my hometown boys in the freezer and be reminded of how far we have both come.

Hong Kong is...

I've been in Hong Kong for nearly 10 days now, and that means I've had time to shake the jetlag and start to look around. My first several days were very quiet, involving mostly relaxing in my tiny, lightless AirBnB (not helpful for jetlag, admittedly) and making tentative explorations into the neighborhood for food or to look for an apartment. There's lots more to come, but here are some beginning descriptors for Hong Kong:

1) Humid. This one has to come first, and it should really be every odd number on this list. Of course, I was expecting heat and humidity. This is southeast Asia in the summer. But to give you an idea of how bad it is, my glasses fogged up within 30 seconds of leaving the airport on my first morning. There have been easier days than that since then-- once I was able to sit in the shade for 25 whole minutes on my lunch break and not sweat!-- but things are rough here. An average day is between 85 and 90 degrees F and between 70 and 90 percent humidity. People waxed poetic about the nature here before I came, but I've never spent more time inside in air conditioning in my life. I think it's just not to be.

2) Dense. This one is another no-brainer, but again the experience is an entirely different animal than the anticipation. The city is actually pretty small in terms of area. The main areas can be crossed by public transit in 30-45 minutes. But in terms of density, Hong Kong seems more intense even than New York. In the same way that my first time traveling in the open spaces of Montana affected my thinking, being surrounded by such towering buildings and constant throngs of people requires mental adjustment. I feel like I could spend the entire summer just trying the various restaurants within a block of my apartment. Having everything piled on top of one another makes the whole city feel overdetermined--that's literature nerd for "brimming with various different meanings"--and ripe for all sorts of storytelling and adventure.

3) International. When I arrived, one of the questions at the forefront of my mind was: will it be ruder to assume that people speak English or that they don't? This hasn't been a problem in other parts of the world where I've traveled. In English-speaking countries like Australia or Ireland, the answer is obvious. In other countries, even northern Europe where people tend to speak flawless English, the answer is still generally to err on the side of "not ugly American." In a place with as complex a history as Hong Kong, it didn't seem so cut and dry, but the answer is obviously. In elevators, grocery stores, little out of the way restaurants and cafes, virtually everyone here speaks functional-level English. Some speak it more fluently than others, but I've only encountered two people with whom I couldn't communicate--and they spoke Mandarin, so we managed okay, just the same.

This is undoubtedly a city still heavily informed by its colonial past, and it's not just about language. Local food shows signs of Western influence, from the custard tarts that originated in Portugal to the toast with condensed milk that is popular for breakfast. Announcements on the MTR (public transit) are in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. Restaurants and people from all over Asia abound, and I'm never the only Western person in a room (although usually the ratio is about 2:100.) This is by far the most ethnically diverse Asian city I've visited.

4) Efficient. I have long believed that you can tell a lot about a culture based on how they wait (or don't) in line. In my experience, Asia is divided culturally in terms of line waiting, with orderly-patient Taiwan and Japan on one side and elbows-out-chaotic India, China, Vietnam on the other. Hong Kong falls squarely in the Taiwan-Japan camp. The MTR is spotless, comes every 1-5 minutes, and includes marked areas for people to queue and chaperones for the morning rush hour to make sure everyone is behaving properly. Even in the heat and humidity, people wait at bus stops in orderly lines for long periods. I've seen no pushing, shoving, yelling, or elbows, literal or metaphorical. The urban planning here is pristine.

There's one exception: the MTR stations are like enormous octopi under the city, reaching their tentacles out for literal miles underground. I can't figure out why that is: a weather consideration? A traffic-management technique? But it is literally possible to walk for 15 minutes from the metro entrance and still not reach the platform. If one is new to the city, say, and not familiar with a particular station, it makes accurately guessing how long it will take to reach a given destination particularly tricky.

5) Intriguing. As I wrote in my last entry, I'm incredibly intrigued by Hong Kong's gray-area-between-the-worlds status. It's a city comfortable with its colonial past that now dramatically mistreats its own migrant workers. It's a place where West and East coexist fluidly, but where an (ahem) particularly klutzy American breaking a coffee cup in a cafe is met with a full 20 seconds of utter silence. It's technically Chinese and defiantly independent, political, passionate. The only city in China that could publicly memorialize the Tiananmen Square protests on June 4-- and did, to the tune of 60,000 attendants. I can't wait to see more.

 A moment of silence in memory of those who lost their lives at Tiananmen in Causeway Bay

What to expect when you're (not sure what to be) expecting

... to go somewhere new, I mean. I don't want anyone to read a single line further and think that I'm pregnant.

I am, however, on the verge of a big life change. Tomorrow at 7 PM I will board a plane to Hong Kong. I'll be spending the summer there working for a well-known international magazine's Asia bureau. For legal and Googling reasons, I should probably not say which magazine this is--it definitely isn't Thyme magazine, I'll tell you that--but just in case you figure it out, I should also say that all thoughts I write in here are my own and do not reflect the opinions of my employer.

Anyway--

Since May of last year, which is when we last left off, dear reader, I sure have had quite a lot of adventures. I ran a crowdsourcing campaign that successfully funded a trip I took from Helsinki to Beijing by train over seven weeks. I blogged about that elsewhere, for the funders of my trip, but am in the process of turning that blog and the experience in general into a book proposal. I moved to California and worked harder than I ever have in my life over the course of my first year in journalism school. I ate a lot of burritos and forgot about how it feels to wake up to the sound of rain. And I applied for, and was accepted to, this internship. My job this summer at not-Thyme magazine will be to work on their breaking news blogs. I'm pretty excited about it. I also intend to pitch the editors for the chance to do my own reporting; I'm even more excited about that. Lastly, but certainly not least, I'm planning to eat my weight in dim sum. It's possible I'm the most excited about that.

Here's the odd thing: I don't actually know what to expect when I get off the plane on Wednesday. I've now traveled to more than 40 countries. I've lived abroad in both the west and the east. But Hong Kong exists in this sort of odd gray area between the two, a mix of colonial history and post-colonial innovation, whatever it is that happens when two very different worldviews and political systems butt up against each other like tectonic plates. It's an incredibly exciting place to get to be, but it means I have no way of guessing what my life will be like there.

How Western will it be, how similar to my life in America or in Spain? How will I feed my coffee addiction, with fancy espresso or terrible Nescafe? Will I be able to find peanut butter and yogurt in the grocery store? How much will I be able to speak to people on the street in English? What percentage of people I interact with will be expats? Will I eat most of my meals with a fork?

How Eastern will it be, how similar to my life in Kunming or my other Asian travels? Are we talking squat or sit toilets? Can I drink the water? Do shops close on Buddha's birthday? Will excitable tourists ask to take their picture with me? How much will I use my Mandarin? Will I have to cook all my vegetables? Is there a market I can go to to bypass the grocery store altogether?

These data points, which by now I use almost automatically to orient me when I arrive in a new place, are uniquely not-quite-plottable in Hong Kong. I can't really anticipate where on this plane my life for the next three months will land. And actually, I find that--discovering that hidden vegetable market, ferreting out wherever the best/most acceptable coffee is, figuring out what my breakfast routine will be, going to the grocery store in search of peanut butter--pretty damn exciting. I hope you'll come along for the ride.

Guest Post: Dodging Turnips for the "Spain Scoop"

Things have been so crazy around here that I forgot to tell everyone that I had a guest piece up a few weeks ago at the "Spain Scoop," which is one of my favorite English-language blogs here in Spain. (This is my second piece for them; long-time readers will remember that I wrote about a trip to Jaen last year, as well.) I'll post the beginning here; to see the rest, head over to their website!

True Manhood by Dodging Turnips--Move Over Viagra

Just when one thinks they have heard of every wild festival in Spain, another bizarre event is tossed to the forefront.  About two and one half hours, southwest of Madrid, is the mountain village of Piornal.  In snow laden streets, men are chased by turnip throwing demons.  Those who survive reasonably intact, are newly virile. Move over Viagra. Our guest expert, Alissa Greenberg, tells the truth on turnip tossing. - See more at: http://www.thespainscoop.com/festivals-spain-scoop/#sthash.NDzoB0fK.dpuf

True Manhood By Dodging Turnips – Move Over Viagra

- See more at: http://www.thespainscoop.com/festivals-spain-scoop/#sthash.NDzoB0fK.dpuf

By Alissa Greenberg

The morning of Jarramplas dawned clear and cold. It had snowed in the Sierra Gredos overnight, and a wintry paradise of delicately-frosted trees and families building snowmen greeted us as we approached Piornal, the highest village in Extremadura. Despite its population of just 1500, every year on January 19 and 20 Piornal hosts a festival that rivals the adrenaline of Pamplona's running of the bulls and the happy chaos of Tomatina in Valencia. We had come to investigate.

In the village, a festive atmosphere permeated, with every bar overflowing and swarms of teenagers in matching T-shirts running and shouting through the narrow alleyways. All along the main street, houses were covered in protective boards or netting. Turnips were piled in drifts along the sidewalk. Yes: turnips.

The short-version explanation is that each year five or six Piornalego men are tapped to act as “Jarramplas.” One by one, each dons an elaborate, multi-colored patchwork suit and horned helmet, then walks the streets of the village as the entire community pursues him, throwing turnips. (To prevent serious injuries, the suit and mask are reinforced with fiberglass.) The longer version is not that much longer: no one knows exactly where the tradition comes from, although prevailing wisdom suggests it started centuries ago when a cattle thief plaguing the village was punished with a bombardment of vegetables. These days, playing Jarramplas is considered a great honor and test of manhood. A waiting list stretches until 2030. 

We arrived in Piornal's main square just before 4 PM; people were streaming into the small, snowy plaza from all directions. The church bells began to sound, and there was a shout--“He’s coming! He’s coming!” A drumbeat sounded in the distance, and then: complete chaos.

To read more, click over to the Spain Scoop

Just when one thinks they have heard of every wild festival in Spain, another bizarre event is tossed to the forefront.  About two and one half hours, southwest of Madrid, is the mountain village of Piornal.  In snow laden streets, men are chased by turnip throwing demons.  Those who survive reasonably intact, are newly virile. Move over Viagra. Our guest expert, Alissa Greenberg, tells the truth on turnip tossing. - See more at: http://www.thespainscoop.com/festivals-spain-scoop/#sthash.NDzoB0fK.dpuf

Just when one thinks they have heard of every wild festival in Spain, another bizarre event is tossed to the forefront.  About two and one half hours, southwest of Madrid, is the mountain village of Piornal.  In snow laden streets, men are chased by turnip throwing demons.  Those who survive reasonably intact, are newly virile. Move over Viagra. Our guest expert, Alissa Greenberg, tells the truth on turnip tossing. - See more at: http://www.thespainscoop.com/festivals-spain-scoop/#sthash.NDzoB0fK.dpuf

True Manhood By Dodging Turnips – Move Over Viagra

Just when one thinks they have heard of every wild festival in Spain, another bizarre event is tossed to the forefront.  About two and one half hours, southwest of Madrid, is the mountain village of Piornal.  In snow laden streets, men are chased by turnip throwing demons.  Those who survive reasonably intact, are newly virile. Move over Viagra. Our guest expert, Alissa Greenberg, tells the truth on turnip tossing.
By Alissa Greenberg
The morning of Jarramplas dawned clear and cold. It had snowed in the Sierra Gredos overnight, and a wintry paradise of delicately-frosted trees and families building snowmen greeted us as we approached Piornal, the highest village in Extremadura.
Despite its population of just 1,500, every year on January 19 and 20, Piornal hosts a festival that rivals the adrenaline of Pamplona’s running of the bulls and the happy chaos of Tomatina in Valencia. We had come to investigate.

- See more at: http://www.thespainscoop.com/festivals-spain-scoop/#sthash.NDzoB0fK.dpuf

True Manhood By Dodging Turnips – Move Over Viagra

Just when one thinks they have heard of every wild festival in Spain, another bizarre event is tossed to the forefront.  About two and one half hours, southwest of Madrid, is the mountain village of Piornal.  In snow laden streets, men are chased by turnip throwing demons.  Those who survive reasonably intact, are newly virile. Move over Viagra. Our guest expert, Alissa Greenberg, tells the truth on turnip tossing.
By Alissa Greenberg
The morning of Jarramplas dawned clear and cold. It had snowed in the Sierra Gredos overnight, and a wintry paradise of delicately-frosted trees and families building snowmen greeted us as we approached Piornal, the highest village in Extremadura.
Despite its population of just 1,500, every year on January 19 and 20, Piornal hosts a festival that rivals the adrenaline of Pamplona’s running of the bulls and the happy chaos of Tomatina in Valencia. We had come to investigate.

- See more at: http://www.thespainscoop.com/festivals-spain-scoop/#sthash.NDzoB0fK.dpuf

Vuelva Usted Mañana, Or: Adventures in the System

 *

Monsieur Sans-Delai made a proposal to install improvements in a certain government department which I shall not name, since it is highly regarded. In four days we returned to learn whether our plan had been approved. “Come back tomorrow,” the doorman said. “The Chief Clerk did not come in today.”
“Something very important must have detained him,” I said to myself.
We went out for a walk in Retiro Park, and we met – what a coincidence! – the Chief Clerk, very busy taking a stroll with his wife beneath the bright sun of Madrid’s clear winter skies.
The next day was Tuesday, and the doorman said to us: “Come back tomorrow, because the Honorable Chief Clerk isn’t seeing anyone today.”
“Some very important business must have come up,” I said.
And since I’m an impish devil, I sought an opportunity to look through the keyhole. His Honor was tossing a cigar butt into the fire, and had in his hand a puzzle from the Daily Mail which he must have been having some difficulty in solving. “It is impossible to see him today,” I said to my companion. “His Honor is indeed very busy.”

 *

That passage is from"Vuelva Usted Mañana" -- in English "Come Back Tomorrow, Sir." Written by Mariano Jose de Larra in 1833, it is a Kafka-esque satire of the unique culture of bureaucracy that mired Spain at the time, depicting the narrator's attempts to help a foreigner (the cleverly named Monsieur Sans-Delai) navigate the complexities of Spanish working culture.

Despite the exaggerated nature of satire, the personal demons de Larra was battling (he committed suicide three years later at the age of 28), and the passage of time, there is still quite the kernel of truth to be found in "Vuelva Usted Mañana" almost 200 years later. In general, my experience with bureaucracy in Spain has been just as thorny, surreal, and infuriating as that which de Larra describes, like the worst DMV--for non-Americans, Department of Motor Vehicles--you can imagine. (I should pause here to say that I have heard similarly nightmarish scenarios about foreign people living in the US. I know our government can be just as bad.) Here, the worst offender is definitely the Extranjeria, or Foreigners' Office.

Foreign non-EU nationals living in Spain need a residency card called a NIE, and the process to obtain one is hilariously complex. After filling out all the correct forms in triplicate and obtaining the right-sized photos (white background, no hats, no smiling) and documents, one must pay tasas, government fees that, for reasons that I'd guess are connected to anti-corruption, can only be paid at certain banks and not at the office itself. One goes to the bank, pays the clerk in cash, and receives a receipt that one then returns to the office as proof of payment. Sounds simple, right?

Well, first of all, when I renewed my NIE this year in Toledo the process had been designed so that you needed to pay two tasas, presumably to different entities. So far okay, just pay them both at the same time at the bank next door, easy peasy.

Except that the bank next store was open for exactly an hour each day for people without accounts who wanted to pay tasas; except the NIE process was such that one needed to pay the first tasa and come back to the office to get the documents needed for the second... then rinse, lather, repeat; the whole process had to start again, for no reason I can imagine.

I waited my turn in that taupe-walled purgatory full of crying babies and sullen faces, then gave my documents to a woman who hardly made eye contact as she read through them and asked questions so clipped she seemed to be swallowing the last three words. She gave me the first tasa and instructed me to come straight back to see her when I had finished.

The line was out the door when I paid the first fee, but I was lucky enough to make it in during the allotted hour next door. By the time I got back to the office, it was 1:00. I was starting to worry: the office would close in under and hour, and if I did not complete my paperwork it would mean disaster, as I was leaving to return to the US for the summer in five days. This would be my only chance.

The door was frosted glass, but I did the equivalent of the narrator in de Larra's story peeking through the keyhole: I peered in through clear, non-frosted edge of the door and saw that the desk was empty. 
"Do you know when the woman in that office will be back?" I asked the security guard.
"She went out," he said.
"Out? Out where?" I asked
"Sometimes she goes out. To smoke, or you know. She's just out."
"When will she be back? She told me to come see her, and I know the office is going to close soon."
He shrugged and turned to the next person in line.

I waited 20 minutes, cursing the empty chair. Finally, the woman appeared again. I got the second tasa, then sprinted around the neighborhood trying to find a bank that hadn't already closed (many banks close at 1:30 PM for lunch) and that would accept my non-account-holder money. The first two were closed, the third was members-only. At the fourth I hit pay dirt, paid my tasa, and sprinted back with 10 minutes to spare. 

"Sometimes I think they make the process so complicated to weed out people who can't handle it," another would-be immigrant said to me as we waited to drop off our paperwork.

 *

“Permit me, Monsieur Sans-Delai,” I said to him half in jest and half in earnest, “permit me to invite you to dine with me on the day you have spent fifteen months in Madrid.”
“What do you mean?”
“You will still be here in Madrid fifteen months from now.”
“Are you joking?”
“Certainly not!”
“I shall not be able to leave here when I please? The idea strikes me as very funny indeed!”
“You should realize that you are not in your bustling, businesslike country.”
“Ah, you Spaniards who have traveled abroad have acquired the habit of speaking ill of your country so that you can feel superior to your compatriots.”
“I assure you that during the two weeks you are planning to devote to these matters, you will not even be able to speak to a single one of the people whose cooperation you need.”
“What exaggeration! My energy will rub off on all of them.”
“Their inertia will rub off on you!”

 *

The narrator's blase attitude to the lack of "bustling, businesslike" behavior is entirely true to life. Much like Americans are resigned to the unpleasantness of the DMV, most Spaniards I've met have been annoyed by but resigned to the pace at which things get done in this country and the attitude many people take towards work schedules-- the same attitude that allowed the woman at the Foreign Office to take unscheduled breaks without telling anyone where she was going or when she would be back.

Take my roommate, Judith: at the beginning of this year, she needed to send some important documents via a private firm similar to Mailboxes Etc. I was present during at least a half a dozen attempts Judith made to catch the proprietor of the store while she was working, all during what were supposedly business hours. Each time we would arrive at the store to find the door locked but the lights on, the "open" sign mocking us. A couple days Judith even called beforehand to make sure the store was open. She was assured that someone would be there to attend her, but by but by the time we arrived the worker had stepped out. Where? It was anyone's guess. Judith was annoyed, of course, by all this-- as any human would be. But she was not surprised.  It's just how things work here, she said.

I even found myself repeating the same mantra during the aforementioned adventures within the public healthcare system. As the schedules changed with no warning, required document lists seemed to alter overnight, and I was told over and over "come back tomorrow with [x] and see [y], instead," I felt first frustration, then a heavy resignation. "It's just how things are" is a dangerous attitude in some ways, but it can be a comfort.

 *

Very early the next day we went out together to look for a genealogist, which could be done only by asking one friend or acquaintance after another. Finally we found one, and the good man, stunned by our haste, declared frankly that he needed some time for this; we pressed him, and he finally told us as a great favor that we should come around in a few days. I smiled, and we left. Three days passed, and we returned. “Come back tomorrow,” the maid told us. “The master is not up yet.”
“Come back tomorrow,” she told us the next day. “The master has just gone out.”
“Come back tomorrow,” she said on the following day. “The master is taking his siesta.
“Come back tomorrow,” she answered the next Monday. “Today he has gone to the bullfight.” At what time can one see a Spaniard?
Finally we saw him.
“Come back tomorrow,” he told us, “because I have forgotten the document.”
“Come back tomorrow, because the final copy needs touching up.”

  *

After all that trouble, I was supposed to wait for a document in the mail assigning me a date for a second appointment at the Foreigners' Office. Since I didn't have an apartment in Talavera yet, I put down the address of my school. However, throughout the summer, the document did not arrive to the school. It didn't arrive in September or October, either. This was a problem because not completing the process and receiving my residency card meant no health insurance  (the application for which was a separate long, boring adventure in Spanish bureaucracy in itself) and no ability to travel abroad. I called the office in Toledo every day for 10 days, and it either rang indefinitely or was busy for hours on end.

I could have ended up like Monsieur Sans-Delai, stuck in an endless parade of "tomorrow-itis", waiting for a resolution that would never come. I thought perhaps I would never get my card at all. Perhaps I would be stuck forever fruitlessly fighting the women working in the Health Center to assure them that I deserved insurance despite my difficulties. Maybe I would simply never be able to use my credit cards or travel outside Spain this year. I was even convincing myself that maybe that might be okay. Who needs a doctor or to spend Christmas with loved ones? 

Luckily, I discovered that there is one cure for "mañana-itis" Perhaps you'll have guessed it; I certainly should have. The key is Knowing Someone.

I had reached my wits end, getting busy signals and non-answers and "call back tomorrows" until... it came to light that the parent of one of the students at school knew someone in the Talavera branch of the Foreigner's Office. One day I was trying desperately to get anyone to answer the phone in Toledo; the next day I had all my documents stamped and was missing only the physical card, which would arrive the next week.

That day went by in a blur. At 9 am I arrived at school; I was informed at 9:30 that they had managed to get me an appointment in Toledo the next week, despite the missing document; at 10 that I needed to provide my passport information to the school administrator immediately; and at 10:30 that we would leave at 11:15 to meet the friend-of-the-student's-parent during her coffee break at the Talavera foreign office. At breakneck speed, the principal of the school whisked me around town to pick up my passport, take the requisite passport photos at a novelty photo machine, pay the tasa (only one this time), and then... somehow by 12:30 I was sitting in the Foreigners' Office, all problems resolved, never having had to return to Toledo, uncertain what was happening, but assured I could come and pick up my new card before traveling abroad to Luxembourg the next week.

A deep breath and a mental shrug are the only viable reactions to such things. With that level of confusion comes a kind of zen peace. Accepting the sheer opacity of Spanish bureaucracy means understanding that these things are out of your control, and sometimes you just need to let yourself get swept along in the tide and hope someone who knows better is working in your favor.

 *

I shall confess to you that I do nothing today that can be put off until tomorrow; I shall tell you that I get up at eleven in the morning, and take a siesta in the afternoon; and that I spend seven and eight hours at a stretch loafing at a table in a cafe, talking – or snoring – like a good Spaniard. I shall add that when the cafe is closed I drag myself slowly to my daily appointment (because out of laziness I make only one), and that I can be found glued to a chair smoking one cigarette after another and yawning continually until twelve or one o’clock in the morning; that many evenings I do not dine because I am too lazy, and that I am even too lazy to go to bed!

 *

In the last paragraphs of de Larra's story, he offers this list of some of the nicer aspects of Spanish life. Perhaps it's not how he meant them, but for me the passage serves as a reminder that it's not all bad here; in fact, far from it. It highlights for me some of the lovelier luxuries of the Spanish lifestyle and the motives and values that help make them reality. The pleasure of a siesta after school, a two-hour coffee outside under the trees in a cafe terrace, a long lunch on Sunday with friends, a leisurely walk down the Calle Mayor, a late-night beer in a tapas bar-- they all come from that same impulse to relax, to keep a less-hurried pace. If the price of all that is "Vuelva usted mañana," well... I suppose it's a price I'm willing to pay.

*

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*The passages in this piece are excerpted from the website  www.spanishliteratureintranslation.com. To read the full story, click here

Deep thoughts at the frutería

One of my favorite things about living in Europe is the commonness of butchers, greengrocers (known in Spain as fruterías), and small markets. I always prefer to spend my money at small businesses, and living in Spain makes that easy. One of my favorite things about my apartment this year in Talavera is that I live in a plaza that includes a mom-and-pop butcher shop, a frutería with an extremely chatty owner, several South American bodega-style shops that sell a little bit of everything, and a supermarket for whatever is leftover.

Today, while stocking up on produce, I overheard the following conversation (which, I may say, would never happen in a supermarket.) I assure you that it sounded even more lyrical in Spanish.

Customer: How are the clementines today?
Greengrocer: Sweet like love
Customer 2: But how sweet is love, really?
Greengrocer: Love is the sweetest thing! It's us who add the salt.

And that, friends, is your deep thought for the day.