Red as a Lobster

Well I'm as red as a lobster today, after we went to the "Natural Pools" yesterday. The river down from the mountains near town has carved out a series of swimming pools from the rock, so we spent the day jumping in from the rocks and sunning ourselves.

Unfortunately, I'm not really built for sunning myself. I remembered to put sun screen on my nose, my shoulders, and the tips of my ears, but it's not much exaggeration to say I'm pink everywhere else. And Ana's got no idea what sunburn even is, so I don't get much sympathy from her. (The first time I sunburned, she kept poking it, because she thought it was cute that I turned pink. Oy.)

Likewise, Ana's not built for jumping from rocks. But she did a great job standing on top of the rock and thinking about jumping: she probably thought about it for a couple of hours up there. I guess that means we're a pretty good team.

Today, we went "out for vermouth." For a couple of weeks now we've been surprised that when we go out for vermouth, no one ever drinks vermouth, but today we asked. It turns out it's a Spanish expression, like going to brunch. Before lunch, we went from three different bars and had a drink (usually non-alcoholic) and a snack at each of them. Everyone here seems to do it: in our big group there were two strollers and a rolling tricycle thing: I kept being surprised that we were making everyone move, but that's how it works here.

Meanwhile, we're packing up. We said goodbye to everyone today, which was sad, but as one of our friends said, we'll meet again, when they're rich or we come back. We're headed to visit Santiago tomorrow, and then up to A Coruna, the capital of the region, for the next two days. From there, San Sebastian, my family, and Shan and Travis!

Oh, and Ana found coffee!

The Feast of the Noble Sardine

Since the first week we met our Galician friends, we have been hearing about a mythical city in New Jersey, where you cannot swing your leg without kicking a Galician. We were drinking after the fiesta last night, when we were once more reminded that if we go up to the first person we see there and so much as mention Palmeira they'll treat us like kings.

The city? Newark.


We've encountered no anti-American sentiment at all, as far as I can tell. (Of course, I don't speak Spanish.) Enough Galicians have migrated to the United States that everyone has friends and family there, and we've met a couple of men who have returned for vacation. Palmeira--the next town over, and where we've done most of our going out--has a monument in honor of Galician emigrants. And in fact, not only first-generation emigrants but their kids can vote in Galician and even the Spanish general election.

I'm used to New York, where nearly everyone arrives from somewhere else. Here people leave, but they come back, for the summer, for vacation, or to visit. It's not much of a surprise, I suppose, but it seemed like one.

I'm rambling a bit, because it's 4 am here. We just got back from the Fiesta of San Juan, which is celebrated all over Galicia with bonfires and free sardines. At the beach we went to, the sardines were cooked three hundred at a time on long pits of embers. They were packed densely (like sardines!) on the grill whole, flipped once by hand, piled high in big platters and delivered three at a time to people waiting in line. Ana and I had seven or eight apiece: you picked the meat off the bones, let the juice drip into your bread, and toss the head (either to the gulls or to the trash, depending on your loyalties). They poured full cups of wine out of unmarked bottles, too. The white had a particularly young, tart, slightly bubbly taste, like a mean cider. (One problem here: almost all of the wine we've been drinking, outside of our wine bars, has been sold from someone's house or out the back door of a vineyard, without any indication of varietal or even where we might go to buy another bottle. So even though we were fascinated by this wine, we'll never find it again.)

One of the bonfires had been designed to look like a windmill, with white paper sides and four blades made out of wood that really turned, at least until it went up in flames. Cervantes--probably--was also a Galician. The night ended with a huge crowd of Galicians at the bar on the beach, one of whom kept deciding that I could actually speak Spanish (or Galician--Ana couldn't understand him either). All I ever made out of what he was saying was "Sancho Panza, Sancho Panza."

Between the fires and the Quixote came wine and coke and bread and sardines, but I'm not going to get it into more order than that.

Soccer

We've now learned the Wi-Fi passwords for enough cafés in town that we can pretty easily check our email by walking through. More specifically, we can check our soccer blogs. We've been spending a lot of our work time in cafés and our recreational time at one of a couple of little bars, so we've been following the World Cup pretty thoroughly. And I love the enthusiasm of the Spanish announcers, but I don't follow what they're saying.

So we've been thoroughly reading The Shin Guardian and Zonal Marking when I need to procrastinate. That and playing games on Ana's iPhone--somehow thousands of miles away my vices are pretty much the same. I guess I should have known that, given that I spent last summer learning the rules of cricket. I didn't manage to find any cricket strategy blogs, though.

I've been thoroughly enjoying watching these games. The American in me objects to the flopping, but I was watching the NBA before I left, so I've gotten a little used to it. And, unsurprisingly, Spanish games are fun to watch here.

But, for now, I have to go back to writing about horses.

Sunday, June 20, or Sincere and deep appreciation for the smoking ban in New York Bars

In case anyone was worried, I managed to get myself out of my rut just by talking about it, and am now doing much better.

The second best place in town put a sign in their window that they are looking for help in the kitchen. I didn't get a yes come work with us on Friday when I went to talk to the owner, but I'm going to try again tomorrow. I need to convince them that it won't hurt them or bother them for me to work there for the next week before we leave on Tuesday, since they are really looking for someone to help through the busy season of July and August. Part of the reason that they are looking for help is that one of their daughters who works in the kitchen and as a waitress is looking to move to New York, so she was really excited to talk to me, but it might have hurt me a little bit in the eyes of her father.

So, an update on our antics from this weekend.

Friday night was once again rib night except that they didn't have ribs, instead they had grilled sardines. They were just sprinkled with a generous amount of salt and thrown on the grill whole, they hadn't been cleaned at all, and they were delicious. I probably ate 6 sardines.

Saturday we did an all day cookout with our hosts in a public picnic area right by the beach. In case you were wondering, the rumors are true, Spaniards drink their wine with Coca Cola (that is, when they drink wine instead of beer). The trick is to do one part wine with 2 or 3 parts coke. It basically makes it like a lambrusco, very sweet and bubbly. They were drinking cases of house made wine bought from the illegal wine restaurants that we went to last weekend (then the wine was cut with club soda instead of coke). Young red wines apparently need something to make them drinkable. For food we had pork ribs, beef ribs, chicken and empanadas (there were zero vegetables). I'm convinced that the meat here really is just tastier than the meat in the US, everything was so fatty and tender and amazing. And for our evening meal (it was a 2 meal cookout), one of the guys put on his wet suit and went diving for razor clams. He probably brought up 4 pounds of razor clams and they went directly on the grill, and then were doused in lemon juice. There are few things as tasty as seafood that fresh, it was mind-blowing. Matthew and I went swimming in the freezing cold water, and then took a nap on the beach. All in all, it was a pretty amazing day. But we were just getting started....

We were dropped off at home at about 10:45, and told that we would be picked up at midnight again, we were going clubbing. So we showered and dressed nicely (we figured better over than underdressed). Of course we were overdressed, but oh well. At midnight on the dot we got picked up, and we headed over to the bar that has the friday night ribs. I was surprised, but thought maybe that it just turned itself into a club on Saturday nights. Oh no, I was wrong, that was just our meeting place. The rest of our group didn't arrive until 12:30, and then everyone had a round of drinks. We didn't head out until shortly after 1, and we were headed for Boiro. Apparently, last night was the biggest clubbing night of the year because exams ended this week for university students. We went to 4 different clubs. Matthew and I had an over/under bet that we would be home by 4:10. We have rarely been so wrong on over/under bets. We were still at bar #3 at 4:10. The sun was coming up when we finally made it home at 5:34. And we were the first car in our group of 3 cars to head home. At 3 of the places, I felt like I had trouble breathing and my eyes were burning because there was so much tobacco smoke (laced with a smidgeon of marijuana smoke) in the air. Other than saying it was a shit show of a night, I don't really think I can adequately describe it. Oh and we heard Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" 4 times over the course of the night. Today, Matthew and I slept until 1:30, went out to eat, and then came back home and took a 2 hour siesta, and we still don't feel totally recovered. And we reeked of smoke, it felt so gross. (Sorry that this paragraph rambles, it was a rambling kind of night).

But the Brazil vs. Ivory coast game is starting downstairs, which means it is time for me to sign off and go watch a soccer game.

Rut

For reasons I don't understand, I've been in something of a rut. There was always a concern over what I would spend my time doing while Matthew worked, but I took the cross that bridge when we get there attitude. Well, now I'm at the edge of the water, and it feels like there is no bridge in sight. I thought finding work would be easier (I'm offering to work for free!), but no luck there. Not that I've searched this week. Le sigh.

Whats even sillier is that we really had a great weekend and week. We went for ribs on Friday, went to another regatta on Saturday (and our boys got 3rd place!). Afterwards we went to the serious wine area in the Rias Bajas and we drank wine and ate food at 2 "illegal" wine houses. They are private homes that have vineyards but produce more than they can consume, so they put tables in their garages and sell their wine to the public, along with tasty tasty food. They are illegal because they aren't licensed places. And then on Sunday, our friendly adoptors took us to Finesterra, the western most point in Europe, which prior to the discovery of the new world, was considered the end of the world. We saw plenty of sites on the day trip, inlcuding Galicia's longest beach, the only waterfall in Europe that falls directly into the ocean, the two longest horreos in Galicia (traditional graineries), the "Museum of the German," which might require its own post. And then on Wednesday, Matthew and I went to Restaurant Solla and had a delightful 14 course meal, which ranks as one of the best meals we've ever had.

All of this is to say, I shouldn't be in a rut. We are having an excellent time. Its Friday night, which means its rib night again. And I was just informed that we are doing an all day bbq tomorrow on the beach. And it is a beautiful day in Puebla today. Probably the warmest day since we arrived. I've got to get out of this headspace. Ugh, sorry to be airing my dirty laundry on the internet, I just needed to get this out.

The pictures of most of our adventures from the past week can be found at:

Puebla del Caramiñal, Spain, June 2010

Tuesday, June 16

I've been trying not to complain on this blog, because it seems like such a monumental missing-of-the-point. There's no point in traveling just to grumble about what's better at home. And, really, it doesn't take much to make Ana and I happy: just a cup of coffee in the morning and a well-cooked piece of meat at night.

Which leads us to the problem. Ana and I are coffee snobs. I hope we're not obnoxious about it, but we're certainly persnickety. Ana likes to point out that for awhile we had seven coffee makers between us. We're down to five now, but I'm scheming to replace the missing two. We only buy fresh-roasted beans; when we're in New York we grind them ourselves; and we try to buy from local roasters so we know what we're getting. That kind of snob.

Galicia is not that kind of place. We're in a town of 10,000, so we wouldn't dream of finding a local roaster, but even the supermarket only sells what amounts to two kinds: a one-euro box--the one before last was labeled in Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek--and a three-euro bag. There's not even an equivalent to Starbucks, Illy, or Nespresso available. The cafés here all have high-end commercial espresso machines with attached grinders, and grind your coffee to order before they brew, but they use bottom-shelf supermarket beans.

We know because we asked.

We've been sort of on a mission to find good coffee before the month is up. We asked at the cafés; we asked at the mercado; we even double-checked at the supermarket. Then we asked the real estate agent; we asked her son and daughter; and we're considering hiking over to the tourist office and asking there, too. Everyone here, it turns out, uses the same low-end, stale, prepacked coffee.

So yesterday, when we took a five-hour journey across Galicia in order to go to a cool restaurant in Pontevedra for lunch (two buses each way, one cab, and a 2 mile walk), we were thrilled to get a reasonably good café con leché. It was bracing rather than caustic, with a pretty good head of crema on it and just enough milk to keep your teeth on. So, aided by a bottle of local red, I got up the courage to ask Ana to ask the silent, black-clad waitress if she would, por favor, ask where Chef buys his coffee beans.

We were just getting up the nerve to ask if we could buy some from them, when the waitress came back and proudly showed us the box of pre-packed Nespresso pods.

We're considering emailing a Galician food writer and asking him.

Friday, June 11

Life has been boring around here. Ana has been knocking at restaurant doors, while I've been banging my head against this article project. Sooner or later, one of us will break through and do something worth celebrating, and we'll go celebrate, but in the meantime, it's been a rainy week.

That's not to say it's been a bad one, of course. Even gray, our coastal town is beautiful, and we made a great gumbo-esque seafood soup. There's no spice in food here (since everything comes straight either from the farm or the ocean), so we had to use five or six different types of pepper along with garlic and chorizo to get any kick to it all, but it's been a filling three meals, with one more in our refrigerator. (Ana and I have come to two more serious relationship issues, though. She likes to have soups thin enough to sip through a coffee stirrer, while I prefer to be able to eat them with a fork. And she prefers red grapes. I find this horrifying.)

It's another rib night tonight, so I'm warming up my Spanish. I'm fluent, so long as people only ask me how I'm doing.

Pictures!

Quick link to where I am posting pictures...

http://picasaweb.google.com/ana.d.ortiz/PueblaDelCaraminalSpainJune2010?feat=directlink

I'll create a new album for each city, but most of the pictures I take will end up there. Yes, I know that there are currently 8 pictures in that album, but picasa only loads 5 at a time, it takes a long time, and both times I've done it, it doesn't take one of my pictures. Hence 8.

Wednesday, June 9

Its been raining pretty consistently since Monday, which has its ups and its downs. I've read a book and half, and Matthew has started working again on a regular basis, but it makes me really reluctant to go outside at all.

I've gone to a handful of restaurants around town to ask about working part time, and so far I haven't gotten any yeses, which isn't fun, but I need to keep trying. Part of the problem is that there are relatively few actual restaurants in town, its mostly bars that also serve food, so the dedicated kitchen space is even tinier than would be expected. In a lot of these places there really is only room for one or two people at the most (and if there is room for two, they already have a second person). There is one nice restaurant, and it was the second place I asked, but they have a new hire fresh out of culinary school, so again no.

But lets talk about food! We have been trying to split our meals between home and out to ensure that our money lasts, so there aren't quite as many notes to talk about as there might otherwise be.

The most interesting part for me has been that with every single beverage that you purchase, some small amount of food is also given to you. Every cup of coffee, every bottled water, every seventy-five cent glass of wine comes with an appropriate snack. None of it impressive food, none of it comes from the kitchen, but the economics of giving food away with every drink boggle my mind. Not that I'm complaining, part of me will always be a college student who loves free food. We've had bread slices with thinly sliced ham on top (with wine), canned sardines in olive oil with a slice of bread (wine, and they were pretty tasty), chorizo slices with bread (wine), muffins (coffee), chocolate (coffee), and olives (beer and water). The weird time was when I had water and Matthew had coffee, so we got one muffin and a small plate of olives. These same places then charge for a basket of bread when you order other food. The ribs that Matthew mentioned a few posts ago also theoretically work like this, but because they are coming off a grill hot, they don't actually go one for one with a drink. Plates of stacked high with ribs just get put on a table with a round of drinks. Or sometimes between rounds.

For our first meal in Puebla we basically walked into the first restaurant we could find, which happened to have the most beautiful view in town from the second story terrace. We had the traditional pulpo a la feira (fair style octopus) and padron peppers (tiny local green peppers sauteed in olive oil and a substantial amount of salt) and a total flop of a dish called jamon al adobo. We ordered three dishes expecting it to be tapas style fare. Tapas sized fare, I should say, after all, we are in Spain. The prices were in Euros about what tapas cost in dollars in the US (I know thats complicated, but thats how I'm thinking about things money wise), so 4-8 Euros a plate. When the waiter asked us if we would mind pulling over another table, to make sure all of the food would fit on the table, we were a little taken aback (we were at a table for 2). Sure enough, the portions were enormous. Matthew and I are big eaters and we were only able to make it through half of each of the plates. The octopus was a little rubbery, but actually very tasty, the peppers would have been better with beer than with wine, they were that salty. The ham was dry and basically covered in ketchup. The only redeeming part about it (in my opinion) was the french fries that came with it. They were hand cut and they were crispy most of the way through, with just a little bit of softness on the inside. I think Matthew disagrees with me, but I was very impressed.

After that meal, we were totally baffled by what we should expect. Are things that you order full size? How can you tell ahead of time without sounding like a tourist (or an idiot)? Our confusion was promptly cleared up by the realization that the snack comes with every drink is the "tapa," otherwise you are just ordering entrees and appetizers. Our hosts thought we were silly, and we had to explain that back home there were restaurants that serve food tapa style which just meant tiny and expensive plates that you have to have 10 of to have a full meal. Then they were like, oh silly americans.

Ok, I had much larger ambitions for this post on food, but it has already taken me longer than expected, so it is time for me to move on. Surprise, surprise, I will have to do another post about food while we are Spain.

Café con Leché

So we're sitting in nice cafe ("Locus Amoenus") drinking cafés con leché. Ana ordered a little Galician firewater in hers, since she still hasn't found a restaurant that needs a free salad expert. It'll come soon enough, but it's not real fun having people tell you no all the time.

Each coffee you get here comes with a sugar packet that's almost the size of a playing card. Apparently they're serious about sweetening things here. And since we ordered doubles, they gave us two of them apiece. There's probably a third of a pound of sugar on our table.


In other news, Galicians don't eat vegetables. Fried peppers and fried potatoes are just about the only vegetables we've found outside of the supermarket, and we're in the middle of farm country. We add an occasional bean to our diet of ham, cheese, egg, and olive oil, and we may be the healthiest eaters in town. Of course, when it comes to quantity, we're worse than everyone else. People here smoke rather than eat.

OH! We're in the middle of one of the best wine regions in the world and everyone here drinks beer. This is a land of infinite contradictions. Keeps the wine cheap, though!

Monday, June 7

It is sometimes an advantage not to quite understand the food culture of a place. At around eleven o'clock last night, Ana and I found a vendor out on the plaza selling bags of hard donuts.

I'm not sure if this thing is stale or if it's supposed to taste like a biscotti, but I'm very happily dipping it in my coffee as I wait for the world and my brain to wake up.

-Matthew

Sunday, June 6

Matthew and I were on a little bit of a vacation our first week in Spain (we could only be bothered to find the internet once since arriving), so I'm going to be doing a little backtracking to cover our arrival and our first few days.

As anyone that I talked to in the past month knows, we both had a long and exhausting journey to arrive to the little slice of heaven we are currently calling home. Pictures retelling my journey!!

El Paso Airport (they are Pin-yatas!)

Dallas Love Field (no picture)

Dallas Fort Worth Airport (no picture)


Milwaukee Airport

Laguardia Airport (no picture)


Shuttle between Laguardia and JFK


JFK Terminal 7, before security, waiting for Matthew to arrive from Boston


JFK Terminal 7, after security, with Matthew


Madrid Airport (which is really cool). Our flight from JFK was delayed an hour, which means we missed our connection in Madrid. The next flight was 5 hours later, so we got a free meal at one of the airport restaurants (thanks Iberia!). Our connecting flight was also delayed by almost 45 minutes. All in all, a much longer layover in Madrid than planned.


Santiago Airport. The customs guy was not happy with how heavy our suitcases were, so he made us totally unpack everything so he could go through it all, which does not make for a happy Ana (there was nothing to find). When we finally got out of customs, it was 6:04, and we get to the bus stop and realize that the bus left at 6. The next one is at 7. This bus then took us to the bus station where we took another bus to Puebla. We got there at 7:08. Our bus left at 7, and the next one was at 8. Delays, delays, delays...


Bus to Puebla, finally almost arriving...

But it was all worth it because it means that we get to live here for a month.



PS The dates as subject lines are the days that they are written, obviously not the day that they are posted, since we don't have daily access to internet.

Saturday, June 5

Ana and I are slowly adapting to the Galician schedule. Yesterday we took two siestas. (Ed: This has become increasingly common.)

Out here, in the far west of Europe's main time zone--Vienna is in the same time zone--the sun starts to set at about 10:00, so we can have an early dinner at around 9:00 and then walk beside the ocean while the sun goes down.

We've been more or less taken under the wing of any Galician that we've asked a question. Thus far, we've crashed an art opening and gone to free rib night at a nearby watering hole that seems to attract everybody under the age of 35 in the vicinity. (As well it should. We're both seasoned barbecue eaters--though Ana suffers under the woeful misconception that animals other than pigs can be made into barbecue--and these were about as good as any ribs we've had. They were just grilled, not even slow-cooked, but the sear on the outside and the juiciness of Spanish pork outside made for an incredible treat. But I should stop before my Tennessean credentials are revoked.)

Today, we head off to a 'regatta'. Ana somehow managed to get us invited onto the boat before the race kicks off, so we're going to ride in the 'dorna' (a small, one-sailed wooden boat) to an island, watch the regatta (we think), and then go have a picnic.