Leaving Spain tomorrow.
I’ll deeply miss:
– beautiful views
– slow mornings and intense evenings
– walking 10+ km each day
– absence of terrible heat. Normal human summer weather and not the atrocious 8-month-long heatwave where I live
– carrots that taste as they should and not as if they were a relative of plastic
– sweet cherries at €2.30 a kilo. Not a pound. A kilo! It’s $5.99 a pound where I live.
– real ice-cream
– good coffee
– low prices
– sociable people
– books I want to buy
– no insects
– stylish old ladies
– architecture
– indescribably beautiful manicures for €14
– anchovies that are not only edible but actually enjoyable
– ease of buying very comfortable footwear that doesn’t make one look like an elderly duck
I will not miss:
– the perennial “our kitchen is closed and won’t open until 8 pm”
– everything reeking of smoke
– high salt intake
– scarcity of public toilets
– the suspicion that somebody vomited rainbow and Palestinian flags everywhere
– unattainability of eggs cooked overeasy. Or any eggs that aren’t scrambled into cardboard state or poured into scary “potato tortillas”
– shelf milk. I did try it and Lord have mercy
– absence of kids’ menus
– inability to straighten my hair and having to go everywhere with an out-of-control Jewfro
– laundry problems
– sadness and emptiness of malls
– ugly windmills destroying the landscape
– inability to buy a book for Klara
– terrible salads that seem utterly unconnected to the amazing produce
– old men walking around holding hands with very young black boys
– extremely emotional cab drivers
– no Uber except in Madrid
– no Ukrainian flags anywhere
– terrible little Chinese stores on every corner
– being deprived of soup
Clarissa's Blog 
“old men walking around holding hands with very young black boys” WHAT?!?
LikeLike
Rent boys.
LikeLike
“Rent boys”
Now I’m wondering how much the migration crisis is supported and maintained by sexually frustrated older Europeans… I’m remembering the ‘batik witches’ of Sweden (late middle-aged women who had sex with young male ‘refugees’ in order to ‘heal’ them).
Sweden – frustrated later middle-aged women
Spain – frustrated older men
There has got to be a dissertation in there somewhere for an ambitious and unsqueamish social science grad student.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s absolutely a factor. Before, Foucault and Goytisolo types had to travel to Algeria to buy sex with boys. How much more convenient is it to organize home delivery and not even need to move to get your fix?
LikeLike
It’s absolutely a factor. Before, Foucault and Goytisolo types had to travel to Algeria to buy sex with boys. How much more convenient is it to organize home delivery and not even need to move to get your fix?
LikeLike
I understood that much, I’m just shocked that’s something that happens out in the open in a Western country (not that Western men are above it, just that they generally go to countries where their wives can’t see and the police don’t care.) May I ask if these boys are at least possibly of legal age?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I didn’t see anybody who looked underage, so that’s good.
LikeLike
Then calling them boys is quite misleading, isn’t it?
LikeLike
As someone who has lived in Spain and travelled all through the country, I’m saddened to see that your experience, in your opinion, was unsatisfactory. That being said, I don’t believe your experience accurately reflects Spain as a country. It seems misleading and uniformed. As a world language professor, I encourage you to be more mindful of cultural relativity and to approach foreign cultures with a more open-minded attitude when visiting abroad.
LikeLike
This is a perplexing comment. She teaches world literature, she’s lived on two continents, I don’t think she needs lessons in cosmopolitanism. Also, the post starts with a list of about 20 things she likes about Spain!
LikeLike
I have dedicated my life to getting people interested in Spain’s literature and culture, so I’m not going to try to prove my love of Spain. I’ll only remark that sometimes it’s a good idea to use one’s sense of humor when reading.
LikeLike
What a beautifully exhaustive list. Also, have you also seen police control everywhere?
Ol.
LikeLiked by 1 person
No, not when we were there. Did something happen?
LikeLike
Policemen body searching people in some parks. Illegal migrants. Policemen stopping cars in some streets and controlling IDs. Policemen doing social work with homeless people. It was like that in the past, but I witnessed it with more frequently and more intensity this year.
Lavapiés/Embajadores neighborhoods.
Ol.
LikeLike