Malmö - the cool, green city of my dreams

Even with a heat wave and a drought, Sweden´s summer weather is still heaps better than Spain's.

Sweden, land of IKEA and pickled herring. And, more importantly for me, it is the land where my beloved cousins live. Cousins who not only put up with my biannual visits, but provide me with a very comfy guest bedroom and my own coffee pot. (Conveniently, I also really like the whole family.)

This year, they suggested an experiment where I stayed for longer, but my trip would be less of a visit and more as a member of a family. This means we get to spend time together and time apart, plus I got to spend two glorious weeks away from the heat of a Spanish summer.

By all reports, the experiment was a success and we hope to repeat it next summer. The pictures below highlight the family-bonding side of things, but I also took a lot of long, solo bike rides and met locals at meetups.

Midsommer´s Eve is one of the most Swedish of holidays. We danced around the Maypole at an event aimed at kids, so as far as I could tell from the few words I knew and the hand gestures, we sang of barnyard animals and musical instruments.

A requested a belated birthday cake, specifically an almond cake with cherry filling and coconut filling. I did the baking, but L and N did a bang-up job with the decorating. I need to use more gold dust in my baking, that´s one thing I learned from them.

We built and successfully flew a kite, an item on N´s bucket list. 

All those years of studying physics finally paid off!

Reflections on the last year

Since last September, I've been seriously considering whether I want to continue living in Madrid. (Spoiler alert: I haven´t made any decisions.) I´m quite sure I don´t want to live in a city of six million for the rest of my life, but weighing the factors of city size, weather, the prevailing culture, language, along with tax and visa options, is a complicated process. I don´t have any particular deadline, but I feel some impetus to decide within the next year, mainly because I want to start living whatever life I´m choosing sooner rather than later. I do feel like I have been making progress - I have visited possible cities and countries, investigated immigration laws, and started learning a new language. At each point, it´s been pretty clear what are the next two or three steps I need to take, and I´ll just continue until the right decision seems obvious.

In the meantime, I have been reflecting on my three years thus far in Spain. Moving to a new country is hard. I knew that even before I came, and I came prepared to be lonely and bewildered. And I certainly was, although with diminishing frequency as I learned both the language and how Spain works. So although I feel apprehension about possibly starting over in a new country and a new language, I am also appreciative of how easy my life is now. Three years in, it's quite rare that I encounter a new rule / holiday / life admin problem that I don't know how to deal with. With my B2** level in Spanish, I can generally communicate in any situation, even if I still sometimes sound like an idiot. I've made a huge number of friends in my choir, which means I feel like I have a strong support network and ample opportunities for socialization. I don´t know what the future holds, but the present is a pretty good place for me to be.

** That's level 4 of 6 in the Common European Framework for languages, described as, “Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party.”

Bureaucracy

Who wants to look at a picture of paperwork? 

Here´s a nice photo from a German garden instead.

No one likes paperwork and bureaucracy, but it all grows more complicated once you live in a new country. You suddenly need to make sure you are living there legally, something you did not need to worry about in a place where you have citizenship. You have probably always paid taxes, but now you need to think about paying taxes in multiple countries, and how those countries' tax rules interact with each other. As an adult in the US, I could rely on my parents and friends to teach me about the paperwork of being an adult, and use them for advice when I got stock. In Spain, I have generally needed to pay experts to help me, because I have a lot fewer everyday resources to draw on.

In my first two years here, I hired a paralegal (aka “gestor”) to file all my visa paperwork. Gestors are hired even by locals, because navigating the legal complexities of Spain is considered too onerous for regular people. I also spent a lot of time looking for someone who was licensed to file both Spanish and US taxes, because understanding and applying tax treaties between two countries is pretty specialized work.

This year, with my increasing language skills and experience with previous visas, I planned to file my American taxes, my Spanish taxes, and my renewal visa application all on my own. I have managed to do this (hopefully correctly) for all three situations, although the Spanish tax preparation involved a week of paper collection followed by 20 adrenaline-filled minutes of individualized help at the equivalent of the Spanish IRS. I definitely found the limits of my language skills as I struggled to explain capital gains and interest en español. This took weeks of work throughout the spring, but I estimate that I saved several thousand euros. My promise to myself was that if I managed this, I could spend a percentage of the savings on a very fancy raincoat. So now I´m reveling in the fact that I don´t have to think about taxes for another year, and just waiting until the fall, when it will rain again and I can enjoy wearing the stylish raincoat.

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Lo siento, hoy no hay ninguna entrada en español. 

Los padres en Madrid

Before the Pope's visit. I had some even more illustrious and beloved guests, my parents. This is their fourth visit to Madrid, so we more or less have a routine. We don't worry about cramming the itinerary full of tourist activities, and allow lots of time for drinking coffee on my terrace or naps when jet lag hits.

I am always on the lookout for museums or activities related to vehicles for my father. Alas, Madrid is a city of of art, rather than vintage automobiles, so this can be rather difficult. However, two different people had recommended the airplane museum to me. It's far out of the city, next to an air force base. They had half a dozen hangars and a large field of planes. My father spent the four hours they were open carefully examining planes, and my mother and I looked at a few, then enjoyed a very long coffee break at the cafeteria, so a good time was had by all.

I really appreciate the efforts my parents make to visit me. I'm well aware that airplanes only get less comfortable as you age. On top of that, two of their four visits have had delays of more than 24 hours, so it's even more impressive that they keep coming back. 

 It was a short, six-day trip, but we managed to have really good gelato twice.

A chance encounter

Madrid felt like the center of the universe this weekend - both Bad Bunny and the Pope were visiting. Bad Bunny is pretty famous, but it´s hard to compete with the Pope when you´re in a Catholic country. The planning for this visit was tremenous: while there was lots published about who the Pope would meet and where you could see him, I was even more interested in learning about where to avoid. They closed 15 metro stops throughout the weekend, and on Sunday they expected more than a million people to attend the open air mass. (The mass was held in a huge traffic circle, normally circled by six lanes of traffic. I still don´t know how they maanged to fit that many people in one plaza.)

So my main goal this weekend was to avoid the hoopla. The city government gave lots of instructions about how to prepare for the influx of tourists, including the recommendation to buy all your groceries three days before the Pope arrived. I mainly stayed close to home, but I thought I was safe on Monday, when the Pope had only private appearances. However, since teleportation hasn´t been invented yet, the Pope has to travel on the streets, like a regular person (okay, not really that regular). My friend and I were having coffee in our favorite cafe with a view, when we realized that if we hung around, comfortably, in the cafe for an extra hour or two, we could probably catch a glimpse of him and his entourage. We did, and I found it delightful, simply because it´s fun living in a big city where things like this can just happen. 

All things The Pope, exhibit 1: The news was 100% about the visit. Even the weather was branded with his image. 

All things The Pope, part 2: metros and buses were decorated. This one said, "Welcome, Holy Father," and the blue car next to it had his portrait.

And, the main event. 

Final Germany post: Things that might not happen on everyone´s vacation

My bicycling buddies and I are all physicists, with some additional culinary and sartorial interests. I wanted to capture some of the things that make this special. For example, above, I´m enjoying four different pieces of cake. The intense focus on baked goods during my trips is not unique, of course, but I blame it on my year working in a French bakery when I was younger.

S is a solar physicist, who uses data from satellites to study the sun. When we found one of those solar system models with the planets proportionally spread across a few kilometers of park land, she cycled back to the beginning to get a selfie with the sun.

N appreciates the finer things in life. He found this incredible German hatmaker at the top of a mountain, and convinced me to drop a ridiculous amount on this hat. I love it. I do actually wear sunhats every day in Madrid, so it will be used, and you can really see a different between this and my 5€ convenience store hat. 

The guys really, really loved the extensive hotel breakfasts and occasionally sneaked out a "road sandwich", aka one for the road. 

Emergency coding after a long ride. 

Taken at the airport, before the trip began, discussing physics. N actually travelled with several physics textbooks. I didn´t ask, but I really hope they weren´t actually in his pannier the whole time.

Germany: All the best things

There is a lot I miss about Germany, and I tried to soak it all in while I was there. Of course, many of those things are food. Spain has excellent produce and nuts, and is rightfully proud of its Mediterannean diet. But it´s also a little lacking in food for vegetarians, and of course every country has products you just can´t get anywhere else.

May is prime asparagus season in Germany. That really is an official thing - it´s called Spargelzeit. Especially beloved is white asparagus, and many restaurants offer special menus featuring asparagus. I didn´t find anthing as unique as the aspargaus burger (six huge white stalks piled on a hambruger) compared to our last bike trip to Germany, but we ate lots of asparagus soup, asparagus and hollandaise sauce, even asparagus pasta dishes and flatbreads. 

As is tyrpical in the US and the UK, almost every restaurant has a vegetarian option on the menu, something that I can´t rely on in Spain. This was my favorite - "napkin dumplings" that are wrapped in cloth before being boiled. They were topped with a creamy mushroom gravy. It never occurs to me to make dumplings in my own kitchen, but I need to do so more often.

I am a fan of cake, and on all our bike trips I try to convince a group to make a cake stop daily. Usually we share so we can try many different flavors. I remember this particular cake shop had about a dozen options and I insisted my friend N come view them all before choosing. 

Cool, rainy weather! I don´t actually want to live in continuous rain, but I´d definitely take it over baking heat.

We were able to check a bag back to Spain, and had extra luggage space, so I quickly bought German products I miss. The incredible strawberries didn´t make it more than 15 minutes past this photo. The  rest I have been slowly enjoying over the past few weeks: soft pretzels topped with baked cheese (Käsebrezel), cherry yogurt, plum butter, hazlenut yogurt.

Since it was spring, and there was rain, flowers bloomed everywhere, helped by the German love of gardening. I am now back in Spain, where the temperatures are topping 32C / 90F. When this happens, all the grass dies and the city comes and mows it down to the ground and rakes it all away, leaving bare, dry earth (and presumably reducing fire hazards). So I am especially missing spectacles like this. 

Cycling down the Rhine

Last May, I took a smashing cycle trip through eastern France with friends R, N, and S. We had so much fun that we decided to do it again, this time in Germany. As always, the criteria for our trips are: Schengen zone (so I can travel easily), low chance of Putin invading, good bakeries and beer or wine, and not too many mountains. 

This time, I knew I´d be head translator, so I brushed up on my German the month before. I was pretty sucessful, I think, based on the fact that people did not switch back to English when we were talking, and I´ve definitely heard that Germans will do that if they think their English is better than your German. 

Even though we had a relaxed trip, somehow the days were packed and I didn´t manage to post anything during the trip. If you allow 1-2 hours for every meal, plus castle tours and cake stops, the days fill up very quickly. So stay tuned while I get caught up this month. 

We had lots of meals in little courtyards like this. 

Last year in Lyon, the them was "chateaus". This year the theme was "castles", which are almost excessively abundant on the Rhine. Sometimes you can stand on one location and see three at once, so it seems like all those dukes and barons would be rubbing elbows with their neighbors.

A river, car-free bicycle paths, and easy-going friends. What else could I want on a trip? Well, cake and castles, but I got those too. 

Our free day took place in Koblenz, where we saw the huge statue of William I, the first German emperor, at meeting of the Rhine and the Mosel rivers. That day, we managed to take a river cruise, drink a few spiked coffees, ride a cable car, and tour a fortress. We did not rest much on our rest day.

Three-quarters the way through our longest day, 65 km. I may have taken a nap on one of those benches, but I admit nothing. 

Let´s hear it for modern medicine

I´ve been dealing with some tooth problems again. Right after my trip to France, I got a pretty bad toothache, and the dentist found an infecion deep in my jaw. I´ve already had a root canal there in 2021, but the solution seemed to be to more or less do another one. There have been a couple of days with really unpleasant levels of pain, but mainly I´m on a steady trajectory upward. I´m three appointments into the treatments and only have one more left.

I have been pretty regularly reflecting on how great modern medicine is. I´ve received antibiotics, novacaine, and pain killers that will probably allow me to save (part) of the remaining tooth. Two weeks later, I can eat solid food again and almost all of the pain is gone. Two centuries ago, at age fifty, I probably would be toothless because of all my dental problems, and the treatments would have been agony before anesthesia. I feel really lucky to be alive in this era. (And after a few weeks of laying around and doing nothing more than taking legal drugs, I´m really enjoying walking, eating solid food, and bicycling again!)

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Lo siento, hoy no hay ninguna entrada en español.

Toulouse

As I've talked about in the past, I am exploring other possibilities where I might make a home. One option is France, and that's why I visited it last week. As I did last year in Hamburg, I used a housesitting service, which lets me take care of people's pets while staying in their homes for free. I applied for two positions in France during April, and received one, in Toulouse.

I was in Toulouse a year ago, but that was a touristy kind of trip, and this time I really wanted to learn more about day to day life, not what museums I could see. So I did my usual scouting trip process, which includes talking to other immigrants and using the buses to go to the very edges of the city. In addition, of course, I ate lots of French cakes.

I love the size of Toulouse and that it has a couple of big universities. This, for me, is really a sign of the academic and cultural vibe I'm going for. They also have a great public transportation system and the weather, at least in spring, was lovely. Now I just need to learn more about the disadvantages, like the legal processes I´d need to undertake.

The cats at my last petsitting gig did not like me at all (but I don´t think they liked anyone). These cats, named Paulette and Pacha, were very friendly. I miss pets a lot, and it was a delight to spend time with them. //

Los gatos de mi última función como “cuidadora de hogares” no me gustaban nada (creo que a ellos no les gustaba nadie). Pero estos gatos, que se llaman Paulette y Pacha, me gustaron mucho. Echo muchísimo de menos a las mascotas, y fue un placer pasar tiempo con ellos.

Gariguettes, the best strawberries that I have ever eaten. Sweet and soft, they turn into mush 

within a day, so you have to eat them immediately. They are a specialty of the region. //

Las mejores fresas que he probado... dulces y suaves, se ablandan en un día, así que necesité comerlas inmediatamente. Son una especialidad de esta región.

Market day // El mercado

Really fancy apple cake // 

Pastel de manzana y nata realmente elegante

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Como expliqué anteriormente, estoy explorando otros lugares potenciales donde podría vivir. Una posibilidad es Francia, y por esta razón la visité la semana pasada. Tal y como hice el año pasado en Hamburgo, en Francia, mi intención era cuidar una vivienda mientras vivía gratis. Solicité dos puestos en Francia durante el mes de abril, y recibí uno, en Toulouse.

Visité Toulouse hace un año, pero esa fue una visita turística, y esta vez quería pasar más tiempo explorando el día a día, y no los museos o las atracciones turísticas. Es por eso que tuve algunas citas con otros extranjeros y viajé en autobuses por toda la ciudad. Además, claro está, comí muchos pasteles franceses.

Me gusta el tamaño de Toulouse y que haya algunas universidades grandes, porque define muy bien su interés por lo académico y el gusto por lo cultural. También tiene un buen sistema de transporte público y el clima (al menos en primavera) es agradable. Ahora tengo que aprender más sobre las desventajas, como por ejemplo, los procesos legales.

Olives

t is no secret that I really miss gardening. I make do with my little terrace window boxes, but they certainly don´t scratch the itch of growing and storing your own food. However, I have managed a bit of this by collecting olives. My first winter here, I noticed that a nearby park had been built around an older, existing olive grove. I watched carefully, and noticed that in the late winter, the birds were feasting on the olives, so clearly the city did not pick them. I had seen people who did not look like locals (as evidenced by their headscarves) picking them, so the following year I did too.

I picked 5 kg of olives this fall. That is a LOT.

Processing olives to make them edible is time consuming work, as I knew from the one time I ordered a delivery of raw olives in the US. After picking, you sort by size and variety, prick or cut the skin of every fruit, then soak them in water. This water must be changed daily for 2-4 weeks, until the bitter compounds have been leached out sufficiently to make them edible. If you try to eat an olive off the tree, you will spit it out immediately - it is that astringent. After the many soaking, you marinate the olives in salt, vinegar, and flavourings, and in just a few more months, you have tasty olives to share. This is not for the faint of heart, or for those who can´t abide a bucket of olives in the kitchen for a month, but it definitely feels close to gardening.

Oviedo

The countryside is very near to the city of Oviedo. // El campo está muy cerca.

Oviedo is a small city in the north of Spain. When I made a list of the places I might like to live besides Madrid, it was one of the top choices. It´s quite close to the sea, which give it a maritime climate with lots more rain than Madrid. It is extremely picturesque, surrounded by mountains, and is filled with fountains and sculptures. Apropos of nothing, it was awarded the title, "Cleanest City in Spain", a fact that almost every person I talked to here told me about.

I went up there last week to explore. I followed my standard scouting mission methodology, which I use when visiting places I might like to live. I schedule coffee meetings with as many immigrants and expats as I can, to learn about their experiences and I take the bus to the end of the line to see what the countryside and outskirts of the city look like. Since culinary ingredients and bicycling are important to me, I always check out the local Asian grocery store and monitor how many bicycles I see as well.

I´m not sure this will be the location of my forever home - it´s simply too small. But it was a fun trip and it feels good to be exploring options.

Woody Allen is apparently a fan. // Woody Allen es un fanático de la ciudad. 

It´s a beautiful city, with lots of sculptures and fountains. // 

Es una ciudad muy chula, con muchas esculturas y fuentes.

Oviedo es una ciudad pequeña en el norte de España. Cuando hice una lista de lugares donde pudiera vivir además de Madrid, fue una de las primeras. Es cerca del mar, que da lugar a un clima suave con más lluvia que Madrid. Es pintoresco, con montañas, fuentes y escultura pública. Además, ha ganado el título a “La ciudad más limpia de España”, aspecto que casi todo ovetense me dijo.

Estuve allí la semana pasada para explorarla. Tengo un horario y metodología cuando visito lugares que podrían ser un posible hogar. Planeo citas con café con inmigrantes, para aprender sobre sus experiencias. También, voy en autobús al final de la línea del autobús, para ver los campos y los barrios de las afueras de la ciudad. Dado que cocinar es importante para mí, siempre voy a las tiendas de alimentación asiática. Al final, presto atención al uso de bicicletas.

No estoy segura de que Oviedo sea el un hogar para vivir siempre; es demasiado pequeño. Sin embargo, fue un viaje divertido y me alegra explorar mis posibilidades.

El Escorial

My friend L came to visit right after my brother vacated the guest premises (which is actually just a comfy mattress on my living room floor). We had big plans, but unfortunately L got sick and spent most of her Spanish holiday in bed. Before she succumbed, though, we visited El Escorial, a place I´ve been meaning to return to since my first visit in 2018.

El Escorial is a palace / monastery / basilica / hunting complex built by Phillip II in the late 1500s. This was during Spain´s Golden Age, and Phillip II was a very devout man who plowed a lot of those stolen riches from the American into this building. It is the largest Renaissance building in the world. (According to the English Wikipedia page, but not the Spanish one, so who knows what the truth is. In any case, it´s big). A friend who recently visited said they did the full tour and then visited the gardens and he tracked his walk at 5km (3 miles).

There was so much to look at, but after the library and basilica and the crypt (where all the Spanish royalty are buried), I started flagging during the second half, where all the living and entertaining rooms were. I have resolved to go back some time and simply sprint through the first half, so I´m fresh to enjoy the second half. We revived ourselves with coffee and cake, then headed home.

A stunning library, featuring gold books, achieved by gilding all the books pages and turning them wrong side around. // Hay una biblioteca impresionante que cubre de oro las tripas de los libros, razón por la cual están colocados del revés, para que se vean sus páginas bañadas en oro.

Its really, really big. // Es muy, muy grande.

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Mi amiga L me visitó inmediatamente después de que mi hermano fuera de mi habitación de invitados (que en realidad es un colchón en el suelo de mi sala). Tuvimos grandes planes, pero desafortunadamente, L se puso malo y pasó casi todo el viaje en encamado. Aunque, antes de esto, visitamos El Escorial, un lugar que visité por última vez en 2018.

Oficialmente, se llama El Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial; es un palacio, monasterio y casa de caza que fue construido por Felipe II a finales del siglo XVI. Esos años fueron parte del Siglo de Oro de España, y Felipe II fue un hombre piadoso que usaba una parte de los tesoros que robó del Nuevo Mundo para construir este palacio. La página web de Wikipedia en inglés dice que es el edificio renacentista más grande del mundo, pero la página web en español no dice nada, entonces no sé qué es la verdad. De todos modos, es muy extensa. Un amigo que lo visitó recientemente me dijo que su guía de los edificios y jardines juntos se midió a 5km.

Había muchísimo que ver, pero después de la biblioteca, la basílica y la cripta, estaba cansada y no prestaba mucha atención a los detalles de la segunda parte del palacio. Decidí volver e ir más deprisa durante la primera parte para poder disfrutar más de la segunda parte. Después, recargamos las pilas con café y pasteles y volvimos a casa.

Calçots

There are only a handful of Spanish dishes that I can appreciate, because most involve pork (aka jamón), fish, or at the very least meat broths. That´s why I usually content myself with enjoying Spanish ingredients, like olives, fresh-squeezed orange juice, or the massive and sweet red peppers. So when my friend T. suggested a meal of a local onions, I was very excited.

These onions, named calçots, are a Catalan specialty eaten in the spring. (By the way, Catalan in the language spoken in Barcelona, which is different enough to Spanish that I cannot understand it. It also uses the letter "ç" which finally explains why that letter is on my Spanish keyboard, even though Castillian, the Spanish that I speak, does not use it.) It´s quite an event to eat them, starting with the fact that we had to request the number of calçots that we wanted when making our reservation, and our lunch reservation was limited to a strict two hours so the next shift could eat. (Usually, once you book a table, it´s yours for the entire mealtime, which can be 2-4 hours.)

The actual eating is also a bit of a process. The calçots are grilled until they are black and charred. To eat, you peel off the outer burnt layer, revealing a smoky soft onion. After donning you plastic bib, you dip it into the romesco sauce sauce, which is made of roasted red peppers, tomato, almonds, garlic, and oil. Then you lower it into your mouth, because you´re not supposed to eat it with silverware.

They were delicious and definitely the highlight of the meal. We had very simple main dishes - my friends shared a sausage and a few slices of potato, and I had white bread topped with tomato paste and slices of manchego cheese. I hope I can make eating these a regular springtime tradition.

Eating lunch with friends can be an all-day affair here. After the three-course lunch, we went to a café for coffee. My friend T then needed to go, so A and I went to a third location for Aperol Spritzes, which are the taste of warm weather for me.

Adventures with my brother

My brother recently had to travel to Morocco for business and added a few days to his trip to hop over to Spain. It is a real treat when friends and family come to visit - not just because I enjoy spending time with them, but because having them see my life here and forming memories of US friends in Spain helps these two parts of my life feel more connected.

His trip was poorly timed, in that the weather was pretty awful. They were predicting strong winds and "mud rains", which are when storms brings lots of dust from the Sahara and dump it on us. So we cancelled out plans to hike in the nearby mountains and stayed closer to home, where we could time outings to breaks in the bad weather. He never saw the sun while he was here, but he lives in the Pacific Northwest, so that´s normal for him.

We hiked in a huge park west of the city, and bicycled another day. But most of the time we spent on projects, as that is my family´s idea of a good time. He helped set up an infrared reader for my heat pump, so I can automate it to turn on before I wake up. Spaniards do not run the heat during the night or while they are out of the house, and I was always cold while I waited the few hours in the morning for the chill to leave the brick and stone walls of my apartment. This was a piece of cake for my brother, who has automated his house so much that in the morning, the house turns on the lights and makes a cup of tea for him when he awakes.

I also decided to replace my oven. It has been the bane of my existence. On one hand, I know I am lucky to have any oven at all in a small Spanish apartment. On the other, it is tiny and lacks both thermostat and fan. Although I monitor it obsessively when baking, I have burnt many cakes in the last few years. I knew it would be hard to convince my landlady that the oven was faulty, so I just replaced it without her knowledge. I´m not sure she´ll notice, but if she does, who can complain about a slightly larger, better functioning appliance being left in the apartment?

My brother carried it through the city to the metro and then to my house.
No trip to the gym needed for him.

We discover that the oven is actually a toaster oven built into the wall.
As you can see, there is very little space available.

S had to modify the built-in cabinet a bit. The oven definitely burns fewer things now, but I still need to think of slightly more complicated things to bake so I can  really test it.

Lo siento, hoy no hay una entrada en español.