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To market, to market we go
One thing that I think that Madrid does quite well, and is certainly lacking in Canada, is markets. In general, it is not like in Canada, where you can go to Shoppers Drug Mart or Dominion to get all the food and stuff you need (though I can’t lie, I terribly miss Shoppers Drug Mart at times). I remember thinking in the beginning, why do the Spanish need so many papelerías (stationary stops), but it makes sense if there is no Walmart.
In the food department, though there are big supermarkets (MERCADONA is amazing), the regular food market still exists, which means going to a different stall for chicken, seafood, fruits and vegetables, tea, etc. I think that it has a personal touch that Dominion somewhat lacks. For example, when a product is bad, they will tell you not to buy it, because they have customers that keep coming back to them, which is obviously based on trust. Though the market is pretty slow at times, I think that by creating this relationship of trust, they manage to survive.
In my market, Mercado de la Cebada, I go to the same pollero (chicken seller) and frutero (fruit seller) all the time, and they now know me well by face, if not by name. My frutero was actually interviewed for a Madrid metro newspaper, which was pretty exciting for a celebrity groupie like myself, naturally!
The market got a bit awkward with one of the workers at my fruit stand, who has been giving me free bananas all year long. Como la ingenua que soy, I thought he was just being nice, but the phrase “un plántano del frutero” (the frutero’s banana) has turned me off plántanos for a little while. As long as he doesn’t start giving me pairs of apricots, I shouldn’t have any issues with scurvy!
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La Dolce Vita
I love Roma for having:
bougainvilleas, city sunsets, gnocchi, big hunks of red meat, picturesque vespas in alleyways, taxi drivers that buy me wine (and a classy 2 glasses of wine at that) and espresso for no good reason, chianti on the spanish steps, cappuccino on the house, pretending I am in an old Italian movie in Piazza Navona, Wilco, and a whole bunch more that is not pictured…
Italia, and I think Rome more than any other Italian city I’ve been to, makes me think that maybe I was born into the wrong decade, and should have been born in the 1950s, Dolce Vita type era… I know that Italia has and has had its complications, but Rome is such a big dirty city, I really love it, and were I not totally incapable of saying a single word in Italian correctly, I could easily live there. I love walking endlessly in beautiful piazzas and streets (which conveniently have tables from bars in the middle), eating disgusting amounts of gelato and pizzas, cappuccinos, the (innocent) random encounters, and the amount of indulgence that “when in Rome…” seems to make justifiable…
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important spanish expressions
Some of my favorites
- me la suda (it makes me (guess what part) sweat)
- me la trae floja (it leave me (guess what part) soft)
- (you can use both these expressions to say it doesn’t matter to me … I don’t understand why people think it’s so funny when I say them.)
- pesado - this literally means a tiresome person, but they use it all the time here. the best example I can think of to illustrate a pesado is Dwight Kurt Schrute, though students often fit the bill… I think we need to adopt it in English.
- joder - joder is fuck in Spain Spanish, and they use it a lot… in fact, the first time I picked up on it it was being said by a 7 year-old. to get it right, which i think i occasionally do, you have to do a really throaty ghhhh at the beginning…and I usually say it in an exasperated tone.
- no me jodas - don’t fuck with me
- putear (no me putees) - don’t fuck with me, though puta means hooker, so I think that the literal translation should be “don’t fuck me like a hooker)
- me suena / no me suena - it rings me, as in it sounds familiar.
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things that are great about spring in madrid (pictures)
- it’s warm enough for picnics in the park with sundresses
- lilacs (though those are great about spring anywhere)
- she & him concerts with roommate vanessa (who maybe looks a bit like zooey deschanel?) X2
- hey, stepbrother and leeland
- my balcony views X2
- my students
things that are terrible about spring in madrid
- stepping on a glass beside my bed which shatters into my foot
- going to a hospital that doesn’t accept urgencias and then to another to have them pull out the glass and get stitches
- not being able to walk for 4 beautiful days (at least i discovered the amazingness that is ‘community’ by watching all 20 episodes within 2 days)
- mega video’s time restrictions
- able to walk again (it’s healing wonderfully actually), so naturally it’s been cold and rainy again
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For Semana Santa, I spent a few days in Paris. Sometimes I prefer to visit a city that I’ve already been to than a new one. I guess I like to pretend that I could belong there. I pretend that in Paris, as long as I don’t talk (my French consisting of ‘est-ce que je peut allez aux les toilettes’, pizza toppings, and ‘est-ce que je peut get this gift-wrapped’) I can pull it off. (I do get told I look ‘French’ sometimes, whatever that means.) In a city I’ve been to before, I don’t feel a ton of pressure to do the very touristy things, and spend just hours and hours wandering until I feel like my feet are going to fall off.
As well, though I don’t often feel especially homesick, having coffee with Marta late at night makes me remember that I maybe do miss being in Toronto and able to do that with my mom.
Here is my list of the fun, mainly having to do with decadent-ness, I enjoyed in Paris – picnics in the jardin de palais real (nicer than the Tulleries in my opinion), cinnamon crepes, kir royal, macarrons from Pierre Hermé (oh what a place for my first macarron), the Eiffel tower, musée de petit palais, yves saint Laurent exhibit, photogenic parisiennes, the most well-dressed men I’ve ever seen in my life (purely sartorially speaking), café culture.
