Old World Charm [NOVEMBER 27, 2005]

Well, another Thanksgiving has come and gone and for all of us Americans away from home, expats and travelers alike, thoughts inevitably flock back across the Atlantic. Sure, we make do with what we have here in our newly adopted countries, but some stuff will always just seem strange to us. During the holidays, above and beyond all other times of the year, these differences seem to shine the brightest. Holidays or not though, it’s plain and simple. No matter how long you stay in a foreign land and adapt, certain things will always appear to be exactly as that land’s moniker had promised when you initially set off – foreign.

It’s the small things that first come to mind. Such simple objects as the can openers and milk cartons that they’ve got over here are still as perplexing as particle physics to me. I have no idea how my girlfriend manages to successfully extract those juicy mushrooms from inside that cold heartless tin she just bought at the supermarket without requiring a Band-Aid or tetanus shot afterwards. And don’t even get me started on the milk cartons they’ve got over here. I always stare in amazement as she delicately tears open the top corner of the box without spilling its content all over the kitchen table. Keep in mind, these oddities aren’t just Spanish phenomena, but are commonplace all over the continent. They’ve been a nightmare for me from Athens to Prague to Madrid.


You expect me to open that milk and use that can opener?

Another one of the small things that, as an American in Europe, I’ve had to get used to is ...(How else to put it?)... how small things actually are. Everything is smaller here in the Old World. From the cars to the swimsuits to the streets to the female waistline, nothing is as large as its American counterpart. The word "supersize" hasn’t entered the lexicon over here yet. That inevitably means that everything that was normal in America back in the day is still normal here. Most people still buy a 330ml (10oz) can of Coke as opposed to the Big Gulp or liter of soda most people back home do. Cafés still sell coffee in one size or, if you’re lucky, in the good ol’ variant of small, medium, or large. There’s none of that Yuppie tall, grande, or venti crap over here. And if you’re looking to get a jumbo Party Pack of potato chips at the corner store, sorry but you’re out of luck. There’s only one size here – small. You need to buy two bags or go for a single and throw in a pack of nuts. A little variety never killed anyone.

But it’s not only the food that’s smaller. All the systems of measurement are too. Now I know that the US is practically the only country on the planet to use the antiquated Customary Unit system, but I still can’t get used to this whole Metric thing and I’ve been trying for over four years now. Every time I step on the scale, I’m surprised at how light I am (2.2 pounds is equal to 1 kilogram) and every time I go to the doctor and he scribbles down my height, I’m surprised at how short I am (1 meter is equal to 3.28 feet). Nowadays, when a European asks me how tall I am or how much I weigh, I usually just reply, "Normal," because if I get into the entire Metric conversion thing, I’d probably end up telling him I have as many kilograms as a grizzly bear and as many meters as that Chinese guy who plays basketball for the Houston Rockets.


Now THAT is a compact car!

The thing that really confuses me when it comes to the Metric system, though, is the temperature. I don’t care how many times someone tells me 44C is stiflingly hot, it still sounds like 44F to me and, in my book, that’s cold. I never know whether to take my coat with me or a light windbreaker when I step outdoors. And the fact that it’s usually so unseasonably warm down here in Cádiz doesn't help either. I used to just stick my hand out the window and try to figure out the temperature that way but it doesn’t really work that well in our current apartment. So, I’ve recently resorted to just going to the front door, popping it open and sticking my head out. If it ain’t cold and the sun’s a-shinin’, then that winter coat is staying right where it is.

Then there’s the appliances. That’s one thing I really do miss about home and it really became evident over the holiday. We tried to buy a turkey for Thanksgiving and shove it into our oven but it didn’t fit. Of course, like everything else here, our baking machine was too small. Granted, we only own a toaster oven but my girlfriend and I are still better off than a lot of Spaniards we know. For some reason, a lot of people here don’t believe in ovens. Anyway, we had to make do with a chicken this year but it still came out deliciously, although the carving (You ever try to carve a chicken into presentable slices?) left a little to be desired.


My TV and oven competing for the "Biggest Appliance of the Apartment" trophy

Another appliance that is lacking all over the continent, at least as far as I can tell, is the dryer. I always used to think that the term "washer & dryer" went hand in hand but apparently not so here. Who needs a dryer, the local wisdom goes, when you have a perfectly good roof or window to hang damp clothes out of? And while you’re waiting for your clean underwear to dry out the window and watching TV on that small set that’s as big as your oven well... Don’t even get me started on how much I miss that big screen back in Philly.


Who needs a dryer when you've got a window?

But it isn’t all that bad I suppose. When you stop and consider it, there are a lot of advantages to having smaller things, like they do here in Europe, as opposed to the luxury large editions we have in the States. I hardly ever see any SUVs hogging the road and the small cars here are both fuel efficient and environmentally friendly. The fact that appliances are smaller here and therefore consume less electricity means that the bills are never too high and, again, help guarantee a less polluted environment. Now that I think of it, although I’m stuck in a foreign land with Thanksgiving behind me and Christmas right around the corner, there must be all kinds of advantages to doing things the way the Europeans do. Far too many to mention here...

Doggone It! [NOVEMBER 13, 2005]

I never thought that I’d find myself walking down the old, winding streets of a three-thousand year old city carrying a bagful of shit in my right hand. Not only that, but I scoop up the still steaming shit (only the fresh ones will do) from the ancient sidewalks myself and, even worse, I do it practically every day. How low can one man sink? I hang my head as I write this because I’m sure some of you will think I’m finally revealing that twisted fetish you all knew I had, but I assure you I’m not – It’s just that I am now a dog owner.

I’ve never been a big animal lover. Sure they’re cute and I’ll stroke the occasional domesticated critter, but pet ownership was just never for me. I put this down to two things: One, I’m violently allergic to cats. Two, my pet rabbit, Fluffy, jumped off our balcony and plummeted two storeys to his ultimate demise when I was but a wee lad. The authorities at the time, a.k.a. my older brother, concluded that it was suicide brought on by depression as a direct result of my pet ownership abilities (or lack thereof). Whereas I eventually got over Fluffy’s untimely hara-kiri, the cat allergy has stuck with me throughout adulthood and, as a result of these physical and mental issues, so has the aversion to having animals live under the same roof as me.

All this changed, of course, when I started dating my girlfriend. She loves dogs. All Czechs do. They have a saying in the Czech Republic, "If you don’t like dogs, you don’t like people." Frankly, I’ve met plenty of antisocial misanthropic Czechs who absolutely adore mutts but, hey, I’m just a stupid foreigner so who am I to point out these obvious non sequiturs. The one thing that I did have to get used to was that she was a dog owner and so was everyone else in her family. The only relative I have who owns a dog is my retired uncle who lives in the mountains and loves hunting. But that’s what love and relationships are all about. Compromise.

When my girlfriend and I first moved to Spain, she had to make one of the hardest decisions in her life, or so I’ve been told by other dog owners, and leave her faithful friend behind in Prague so that she could travel across Europe with her adventurous boyfriend. This, I’ve been told by dog owners again, proves that she must love me.

After we returned from Prague this summer though, we finally brought her dog with us. The two would be separated no longer. We thanked my girlfriend’s sister for looking after the Labrador Retriever for the past year, put her in one of those airplane dog cages (which set me back over 150 bucks!) and flew her down to sunny Cádiz.


Just chillin' out at home

Ema, the Lab, has been living with us for about two months now. At first, I didn’t want her here at all. A dog in my home? I thought. That means barking at ungodly hours of the night, chewed up slippers left and right, and surprise deposits of urine waiting in the living room corner. But Ema’s been great. She’s completely house broken and trained. The only time I’ve ever heard her bark is when my girlfriend says "Bark!" in Czech. In fact, Ema doesn’t really do anything at home... unless you take sleeping into account. The thing is, she really isn’t that old so I don’t see why she’s passed out and snoring on the floor half the time. I guess blindness will do that to a dog.

That’s right, I said Ema is blind. It’s quite ironic actually. Labrador Retrievers are world-renowned for being used as seeing-eye dogs. Our Lab can’t see another dog’s ass even if it’s an inch away from her face, although she has recently learned how to sniff out that kind of thing a lot better. I guess one day, when we can afford it, we’ll buy Ema a Labrador of her own so that she won’t bump into walls anymore.

In the meantime, we’ve been having a grand old time here in Cádiz. The first few weeks were a bit strange for all of us and took some getting used to but we’ve gotten over those initial stumbling blocks. Just a few words of advice, though, for any dog owners out there who decide to bring their blind four-legged friend – especially if they come from a landlocked country like the Czech Republic – to the ocean. Be prepared for prolonged fits of canine coughing after your first visit to the beach. Your blind dog will think that the big wet thing that just soaked her paws is not the Atlantic but a lake. She will therefore begin to lap accordingly.


You gonna throw it again or what?

Another thing to be careful of is throwing the ball. Everyone knows dogs love chasing after tennis balls and it didn’t take me long to find out that Ema was no exception. Sure, it takes a blind dog a bit longer to find what she’s looking for, be she still gleefully goes on her merry way and doesn’t give up until the ball is firmly fixed in mouth. Throwing a ball to your blind dog on the beach is no problem, but whatever you do – DO NOT THROW IT DEEP INTO THE OCEAN! Ema jumped into the Atlantic the first time I launched that fuzzy green sphere in there and began wading aimlessly towards the horizon. Being blind and all, she had no idea where the ball was so she just kept wading... and wading... and wading. Further and further away. Thank God my girlfriend and I eventually caught her attention by throwing a few stones and yelling at the top of our lungs. If we hadn’t, Ema would be halfway to New Jersey by now.


Look closer... there's a blind dog among the vessels

So far, these brief anecdotes form the limits of my dog experience. I’m told there’s a lot more to expect though. Apparently, she menstruates only twice a year and, either before or after it (I can’t remember exactly), she tries to jump on any erect male that crosses her path. I’m told it’s pretty hard to stop her but I think preventing a blind dog from sleeping around can’t really be all that difficult. I’ve also been warned that she occasionally goes through bouts of farting but I haven’t had the opportunity to smell that yet. Oh, and she’s recently started this whole shedding thing. I thought the dog was going bald when it first happened but I was soon assured that it was all completely natural. My girlfriend, as a result, has had to sweep the floor two or three times a day for the past week but I don’t really see a difference. Ema still just sleeps away in her quiet little corner, waiting for an opportunity to chase after that mangled green ball that sits next to her water bowl.


Doggone it! It's right here you sightless mutt!

As for me and the whole idea of living with a dog, I must admit... It’s really not that bad. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t think of anything nice about walking down the street carrying a bagful of warm excrement or praying to God that Ema doesn’t "take care of business" in front of the busy outdoor café. But every time I come home and that tail of hers starts wagging like mad simply because she’s so happy to see me, I stroke her smiling head, scratch her behind those velvety ears, and wonder why it’s impossible not to love her back.

Something Smells Fishy In There [NOVEMBER 6, 2005]

Humanity has come up with some pretty strange celebrations in the name of tradition. Some cultures dip their newborn babies into water, others have them circumcised before they can even blink, and still others order their young men to join the military (and become killing machines) before they can truly be considered adults capable of respecting others. But these are all but unique traditions. Things most people go through only once in a lifetime. The most exquisite of traditions aren’t the ones that we see but a single time throughout our many years, but the ones that happen again and again, year after year. And there’s no time of year when these types of traditions get stranger than at the end of October and beginning of November.

Christianity has All Saints’ Day, the Brits have Guy Fawkes Night, and we Americans – along with most of the Western world it now seems – have Halloween. I thought we had the world beat with Halloween. I mean, how can any culture possibly have a stranger tradition than that one? A bunch of kids go around their neighborhoods asking for either a trick or something sweet and, if they’re lucky, they get the fright of their life after Dracula pops out of the closet. Keep in mind, the Count is popping out of the closet of some stranger’s house and telling little five year olds, "I VANT to SUCK your blood!" If that happened on any other night of the year, the police wouldn’t go long without a disturbing complaint from a frantically concerned parent. But, on that one night, mom and dad tell their frightened little one, "Oh Honey... It’s nothing to be scared of...." Even E.T. got to walk around the town during Halloween and no one was the wiser! There can’t possibly be a stranger yearly tradition somewhere else in the world, now can there?

Well, curiously enough, there is and it happens every year here in good ol’ Cádiz. It doesn’t happen all over the city as Halloween does in towns back in the US, but only in the central food market. Why this is will make perfect sense once I explain what exactly it is that goes on during the festival of Tosantos (As the people of Cádiz pronounce Todos Los Santos, or All Saints).


Welcome to TOSANTOS - You're in for quite a treat!

The official Cádiz food market, Mercado Central, is a large one-storey building that occupies an entire city block in the center of the city. It has provided the residents of Cádiz with meat and produce for hundreds of years and continues to do so till this day. Sure there are supermarkets elsewhere, just like in any other modern city in Europe, but if you want the good stuff or the hard-to-come by fish and pork fillets, you go to Mercado Central. The market itself is divided into three sections – fruit and vegetables, meats and cheeses, and fish. This past Monday all three were closed as the mongers within labored away in preparation for their big night. They were dressing their food.


Was that butcher made out of...? Don't even ask.

That’s right, I said dressing their food. And I’m not talking about a bit of parsley on the side. Mama always said don’t play with your food but I guess the matrons of Cádiz have never heard of it.

My girlfriend and I first entered Mercado Central that evening through the produce section. It was almost too comical to believe.
There was a tourist groups of nuts (walnuts if I remember correctly) visiting a scale model of the Egyptian Pyramids and surrounded by camels made of potatoes.


These Spaniards have got to be nuts

Another produce-peddler had changed his juicy citrons and kiwis into an elaborate crossing-the-border scene as illegal African emigrants tried to scale the fences which guard Spanish enclaves in North Africa. Next to them stood the council table of the United Nations as Bush, Chirac, and others discussed what could be done to alleviate the problem.



A better life awaits on the other side................ But should we let them in or not?

Another vendor forgot about dressing and arranging his melons and simply sculpted them, putting what I normally see carved on pumpkins back home in Philadelphia to shame.


A fruit-man by day, sculptor by night

But fruit and vegetable decoration isn’t that strange, right? After all, we have carved pumpkin too. Well, that’s where the meat and fish sections of Mercado Central come in. The night of Tosantos, the fruit pushers aren’t the only ones that have fun, the butchers and fishmongers get in on the action too.

The pigs were what first caught our eyes.
There were pig families dressed in elegant clothes dancing in front of television cameras.


Tonight on the Ed Sullivan Show

There were couch potato pigs eating ham – of all things – and watching us walk by.


Nothin' to do but hang out...

Even the family of the animated film, The Incredibles, showed up wearing what must have been their newly designed pig secret identities.


Is that THE INCREDIBLES in Cádiz? .............................. And they even brought the baby along

There were big pigs, little pigs, fat pigs, thin pigs, pig heads, pig feet... you name it. And, keep in mind, when I say pigs, I mean REAL pigs. The heads and hooves and whatever else is left of the animal when the butcher is done his business. Most of us don’t usually see these things because when we buy meat in a supermarket, we buy it in a nice little vacuum-dried container wrapped with sterilized cellophane. Who’d even think that our porkchop came from that same animal dancing about on the counter in the cute little outfit?

The pigs may have been disgusting and crowned Tosantos as the officially strangest "end of October/ beginning of November" tradition, but one sight at what lay in store for us in the fish section gave the festival the most repulsive crown as well.


You gonna come in or just stand there all day?

Dead rotting fish lined the walls of Mercado Central’s inner most sanctum. I was accustomed to seeing fresh tuna, still jumping shrimp, squid of all shapes and fish of all sizes on display at the stalls there. But nothing prepared me for the grim picture of decaying sea-life that awaited us that day. As my girlfriend’s camera clicked away, I pushed my way through the thronging crowds (mostly families with young kids) and soon found myself, along with all the Spaniards around me, laughing at the witty comments posted by each fish and admiring the creativity of that particular fishmonger.


Go Fish-Racer, GO!


Jeez, can't a fish have a little privacy every now and then?


Fish in their natural habitat: Singing in a choir on the Cathedral stairs



Looks like the Little Mermaid finally got that wedding she always wanted

I know... I should have cringed at the grotesque pig heads and been repelled by the dead fish dressed in wedding dresses (not to mention those in race-car helmets), but the happy-go-lucky attitude of Cádiz is just so damn contagious I forgot completely about how disgusting it all was. That night alone, we were no longer foreigners. We were one of them...

Only after we had done our rounds through Mercado Central and my girlfriend had her fill of pictures, did the repulsiveness of it all finally strike us. We held our noses – the mingling stench of rotting fruit, fly-infested pig parts, and days-old fish heads had by then become too much to bear– and finally walked away from Tosantos, confident that no matter how strange Halloween may be, nothing could beat what we had just witnessed.