If you don't already know that I live in Spain, you must be one of the numerous PR's that infiltrate my inbox daily to offer me wonderful opportunities like reviewing fabric conditioner. For the rest of you who've actually bothered to read my blog, I am now in my 7th year in this wonderful country.
I came across another expat blog recently who does a weekly blog hop, now normally I avoid blog hops, link-ups and memes like the plague, but she does raise some interesting topics and I need to write about something other than being up the duff.
This week Tales from Windmill Fields has asked expat bloggers like myself to write about 5 things they wish their adopted country had, and 5 things they'd really rather they didn't.
Whilst there are many times when I am desperately homesick, there is equally a great many things that I love about this country, however this is a given opportunity to rant and whine (my two greatest skills) about some of the down sides of living abroad.
So without further ado...
Things I Wish Spain Had:
1. Better Communication
After a recent farce involving 3 days without water and a very uncooperative water company, I would have said 'a sense of urgency', but on reflection to give Spain some urgency would take away her very essence, the reason that makes Spain, Spain. Spanish life is gentle, it is slow, it does take an eternity to get anything done, but once you get used to it you quickly find it's a nice way to live. Certainly my stress levels are a fraction of what they were in the UK and a gentler pace of life means that by and large people are much nicer to each other.
However, that said, I would love to have slightly more communication. Much of my life here is based on pure guesswork, Joseph's school term dates, when great whopping great bills will be taken out of your bank account, times workmen will turn up, deliveries etc... Much of this has been resolved by the 'stick your head over the balcony' method, where I've seen that hmm Joseph should have been at school this morning, and oh there goes the delivery man who's clearly rang the wrong bell again.
2. Decent Takeaways and Taxis
Now I am speaking from a rural Spain perspective here, I'm sure that big towns and cities are awash with various pizza joints etc that will delivery tasty fare to your doorstep. But nestled within the rice fields I deeply miss that Friday night takeaway, will it be Thai, Chinese, Curry? Actually, none of them. Likewise with taxis, our nearby resort does have taxis available in July and August but forget it for the rest of the year, someone always has to be the designated driver.3. A better selection of fresh vegetables
I know it probably sounds odd but Spain doesn't have half the choice of fresh vegetables that the UK does. The plus side of this is that the food is generally grown locally so there are less food miles attached to it, but I miss things like mange tout, mini sweetcorn, baby vegetables, pak choi, anything remotely organic. We have tried growing stuff ourselves with varying success but mostly we just eat boring carrots, broccoli and cauliflower.
4. The Sunday supplements
Obviously you can buy British newspapers in Spain but the highlight of my Sunday morning used to be drinking coffee, delving into a Full English Breakfast and fighting off my hangover by trawling through all the Sunday supplements. You only get the main paper here, and I'm buggered if I'm paying €3 for the bits I can read for free on the internet.
5. Gas and Air
Sorry, I slipped back into pregnancy fodder again, but with the due date looming the thought of epidural or nowt fills me with dread.
Things I wish Spain didn't have...
1. Toll Roads
I'll try to keep this brief because I can be easily led into a full scale rant about this. We have a national road called the N340 and a motorway, the AP7, which do exactly the same thing, ie run the length and breadth of the country down the coast. One is free but runs through all the towns and villages along the way, the other is a toll road. The toll road is dead, whereas the national road that runs through towns and villages causes much pollution, traffic accidents, pedestrian deaths, road wear and tear etc. and is extremely busy.
The clever traffic people have come up with a solution though—build another road. One that does exactly the same thing as the AP7 and the N340, and call it the A7 just to really confuse everyone. Spend a gazillion euros the country can't afford, knock down people's properties that might be in the way and build bypasses around the villages where traffic congestion is at its worst.
My solution would have been to take the tolls off the sodding motorway, but what do I know eh?
2. Mosquitoes
Is there a valid reason for their existence? Really? Surely there are enough other flies and insects for the geckos and lizards to eat.
3. So many pieces of paperwork
To do anything official (and plenty of seemingly innocent things) here you need to be armed with a filing cabinet's worth of pieces of important paperwork. Most of these important papers seem to contain exactly the same information but have a slightly differently worded title.
God forbid that you try to do anything official without every single one of these pieces of paper, because after queuing for several hours (sometimes in completely the wrong building), you be given short shrift and told to go home and fetch such and such a document, or go to another official building to queue for hours to get another important piece of paperwork that will say exactly the same thing but have a different rubber stamp on it.
4. Ex-Pats
OK, so possibly shooting myself in the foot here. But there is a certain type of expat, the type that complain about everything and anything. They only ever mix with their own kind, where they'll spend most of their days getting leathered, gossiping and having scandalous affairs with each other, before falling out with everyone and starting an expat war.
These are usually the kind who read the Daily Mail, complain hugely about the immigration issues both here and in the UK whilst claiming every kind of benefit going in the UK and not paying any taxes for their illegal work here.
5. Micro Cars
Bits of fibre glass held together with a few screws, these are usually driven by the elderly on roads where the speed limit is 100 kph. They of course, drive at 30 kph, weaving in and out of the hard shoulder at will and generally causing tailbacks and reckless scenes of dangerous overtaking from souped up Seats that think nothing of overtaking 20 cars at once.Wikio
