Dime store complaints

In the land of no pasa nada, life can seemingly be enjoyed devoid of stress and worry. Staying out all night is not shunned, but turning in before dawn is; letting your dog defecate in the streets while you look the other way with no intention of bagging it is basically the status quo; and sporting a mighty, flowing, Grade-A-Top-Choice-Billy-Ray-Cyrus-‘90s mullet—or something in the grey area between the Cristiano Ronaldo metro mullet and a surviving vestige to the fallen American Indian hairstyles—is commonplace. If these cultural norms strike you as a proper prescription for stress-relief, then let your “achy breaky heart” long no more! I have got just the country for you: Spain.

When I applied for this position as a blogger for CIEE, the starry-eyed, soon-to-be college graduate that I was looked Europe-ward with a similar naivety likened to an elderly person handing over their social security and banking information to the nice, friendly man on the other end of the phone, congratulating them of their inadvertently won prize money ready for collection. Perhaps, I was not ensnared into such a ruse of that extent, but I was prey to ideas of utopia. In CIEE’s application criteria, it made mention of blogging about the good, the bad, and the ugly, so please allow my textual temper tantrum to proceed under the banner of gratitude. As deceiving as this blog entry may seem, I am still privileged to be here.

We stumbled upon a modern art museum in the heart of Retiro Park

Now the time calls for my proverbial swan song. The violins should be reaching their crescendo soon.

For starters, I have grown accustomed to reciting my endless monologue of lo siento’s as I fumble about my comings-and-goings. The extranjero force is strong in this young Padawan.

Who'd have thought a pallet was modern art. I worked at a Lowe's once. I never knew I was being so poetic.

Opening a bank account was like solving a Rubiks cube just to get inside the BBVA in my neighborhood. As a customer, you are basically guilty until proven innocent ¹. The security at the first branch I attempted to enter would make the NSA blush in shame. I stepped into a metal detector encapsulating me within bulletproof glass to my front and back.  To make matters worse, I was still wearing my backpack carrying my laptop. The peeved teller screamed at me to put my mochila in the lock box in the anteroom I just absent-mindedly sauntered through. I eventually cracked the code and fumbled through enough Spanish to learn that they wouldn’t allow me to open an account until I had procured my empadronamiento.

I had another snafu in at the Carrefour, a local hipermercado near my house. Something as small as weighing out my vegetables and receiving a price tag to present to the cashier had slipped by my awareness and my veil of silence protecting me from being exposed as a foreigner in the checkout line was crushed. Further exacerbating the situation was the sobering reality of an endless line of people behind me. In order to understand what I mean, you must know the social construct of waiting in line at this grocery store. It is much different than those in the States. Customers assemble into one line, waiting their turn from one inlet. It is completely digitized. When one cashier is nearing completion of a transaction, the computerized system informs the waiting customer of the next available register. It actually is quite an efficient system for everyone considered—that is, until someone like myself arrives and clogs the chamber of an otherwise well-oiled machine.

An ancient woe in Parque del Retiro, Madrid

Another chapter of my sob story involves the dysfunctional purchase of my friend’s motorcycle in a small town known as Paracuellos de Jarama near Madrid. Fully aware of what misfortune may transpire in the purchasing and ownership of these bikes, we both decided to give Spanish moto life a twist of the throttle. In the end, we were successful in the transaction although it took an extra 14 hours of frustration that we initially had not signed up to endure. Listing the gory details of our struggle for whoever is out there reading this would be pleading for pity and receiving shadenfreude delight instead. Our series of missed connections and self-inflicted anxieties could in essence be summed up as the antithesis of the Midas touch, everything we came into contact with turned to mierda.²

As for the customer service in Spain, having the patience of Job should be a prerequisite before entering certain establishments. I dropped my computer off at the PCBox in Alcalá’s El Centro. They were off like a herd of turtles. I did not hear a peep from them after the diagnosis of the problem or any status reports whatsoever. I had to make myself a fixture in the store in order to get any answers. And forget about calling in, the phone number basically serves as a decoy while your good faith in them is shot out of the sky. I was beginning to think my relationship with my laptop was going to be a permanent breakup.

My final lament would be the continuous public displays of affection. We still see PDA in the States, but this is different. I made mention of it to an Española I met at my school and she tersely responded, “Somos fogosos.” Just the other day I saw an amorous couple exchanging tongues while sitting directly next to an elderly woman on a bench at a bus stop. Maybe it is just the culture. Maybe if the elderly woman’s husband were present I would have been caught in the crossfire of two couples competing for an AVN Award in public.

I will attempt to close on a high note in spite of how much cognitive dissonance it may arouse for my readers out there. In spite of my petty grumblings, I have managed to really enjoy a few of Spain’s finer activities. The town I am placed in hosts Europe’s largest medieval festival known as La Semana Cervantina where the town celebrates the baptism of the famed writer of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes. I have more to come about this event in my next entry, maybe even a video, so stick with me.

There you have it, the good, bad, and the ugly of life in Spain. My dreams of utopia clashing with the reality of a place I once solely knew on a map are nothing exclusive to Spain of course. It could happen anywhere. As nice as it would be to live in ease—blissfully liberated and far removed from responsibility and worry—there is simply always going to be the elusive, painful reminder that I will forevermore live east of Eden, no matter how far to the east I am from home.

Download Random colloquilism spoken with a strong German accent

Strictly for the purposes of entertainment, I have penchant for having people who don't speak English as their first language recite obscure saying from the States. Enjoy...

[1] It should be noted that this is the only bank I have seen with such aggressive security measures. Go figure…
[2] No need for a hyperlink