kellycrull.com - expat life in Spain

These little potatoes are probably the most traditional tapas food in Spain. They can be found almost everywhere. I usually order a plate of patatas bravas when I’m out for tapas with friends because they’re cheap, they’re vegetarian (there’s usually at least one herbivore in the group), and in a country where most food is cool on the tongue, these little spuds, packed with hot pepper and vinegar, make your mouth zing.

Read my full recipe online at Other Spain Magazine. Here’s the link:

spain.othercountries.com/otherspain/pages/recipes/bravas.asp

April and I lean on the old stone wall. From here, 166 meters above the city, Alicante unfolds before us like a living tourist map. We trace our steps from yesterday through the city, from the train station down the wide, glittering Avenida de la Estación, past the dignified Mercado Central, right onto La Rambla, eventually worming our way into El Barrio, circling the Catedral de San Nicolas once before arriving at our hostel, our Les Monges Palace.

The port looks like a parking lot for boats, a square patch of water with each boat in its place. Palm trees stitch up the port on all sides. Bulky nightclubs nap close by. They need their rest for tonight, like last night, when we walked between the palm trees and the clubs, the port going off like fireworks, lights flickering in all directions, disco music echoing in our ears.

Now, in the early afternoon, Alicante is tame, like the golden retriever jogging next to its master along the beach. It’s December and 20 degrees. Three wet heads bob in and out of the cool water just beyond the white-laced shoreline.

This morning we walked Postiguet Beach till we found the “tunnel into the mountain” as the girl at the tourist office put it. We searched the beach like pirates, even though there was no “x” marking the spot on our map, until we found the tunnel. Only once we found it, was it obvious were it was. The entrance, framed by a red billboard, told us in capital letters that this black hole drilled into the side of the mountain was not the path to buried treasure, but to El Castillo Santa Bárbara, the proud castle that sits perched above the city, a reference point as trustworthy and faithful as the sea and the mountains.

At the heart of the mountain, we paid our 2,40€ a person, stepped into the elevator and were pumped to the surface in seconds by this mechanical artery. The steel doors opened, and our senses were jolted by everything Mediterranean. Read more »

Guest contributor to kellycrull.com is Kelly Wills, a good friend of mine living in Madrid and this year celebrating her first Christmas in Spain. Besides having a great name, and possibly having watched A Charlie Brown Christmas a few too many times, she brings us this Christmas tale straight from Plaza Mayor in Madrid.

I bought a Christmas tree yesterday–the first big one I’ve ever bought. It’s 180 cm tall, which is 5.85 feet, for those of us to whom centimeters means nothing at all (I had to look it up–I didn’t know either). Not the tallest in the world, but the biggest I could find. It will do. I’m ridiculously excited about it. I can’t wait to take it home and fix it up with all the trimmings.

Oops.

I don’t have any trimmings. Not one light, not one garland. No ribbons or tree skirt. No star. I can’t even find my Bing Crosby Merry Christmas CD. I have one little gold ornament with black bears on it. It says, “Harlan County, KY,” I think. It’s my first ornament. I plan to go to a cien pesetas store or to the Christmas market in Plaza Mayor to get decorations, but the thought of it still makes me a little sad. No matter how much I spend on decorations (which won’t be much), my tree will never compare to the tree in my parents’ house. It’s the most beautiful tree in the world.

Our family has been considering getting a new tree for at least the past decade. The box it was stored in has long ago disintegrated, so now it’s just wrapped up in a sheet (often fastened with panty hose tied around it) for most of the year, hanging from bungee cords in the garage. I’ve always thought it kind of looked like a body hanging up there, but there’s my overactive imagination for you. And too much CSI.

But when we put the tree together, it’s magical. Shaping it is always a painstaking job, pulling out each individual twig from each branch, making sure that each bough curves like a real tree (rather than sticking straight out in fake tree fashion), enough to look realistic but not so much at the bottom that the tree will be too skinny at the top. And of course, it only can be shaped while listening to Bing Crosby.

Next come the lights. Inevitably, at least one string is missing a bulb that has to be sought out, and at least 3 or 4 have been put away improperly. We wonder who on earth went up into the attic and messed up the strings of lights that were in perfectly good shape last MARCH when we put the tree away.

The white lights are wrapped around the middle of the tree, as far inside as they will go, followed by strings of colored lights on the middle and outside. This makes the tree look infinitely deep, as if it were its own Narnia-like forest where you could walk in and never come out the other side. Next come the garlands (silver, gold, sometimes red). At this point it’s getting late, so we leave the ornaments for the next day, turn out the lights, and enjoy our half-done, but still beautiful, work of art.

The next day, with Bing back on (maybe interspersed with Amy Grant’s christmas album and Handel’s Messiah, but Bing is the standard), we start hanging ornaments. Here’s where the real magic starts. It is scientifically impossible for all those ornaments to fit on that tree. First there are the clear glass balls that go deep into the tree to reflect all the colored lights. After that, we have the colored glass balls–boxes upon boxes upon boxes. The tree is full. But we’re just getting started. Now it’s time for the fun stuff.

My parents have been married over 30 years and haven’t thrown away an ornament. There are the ones from their first years of mairrage, a few from their childhood, and my sisters’ and my baby ornaments. They’re both teachers, so each year the collection is added to by students who either have conscientious parents or who are making a last ditch effort at upping their B+ to an A-. There is the white paper dove that Mrs. Martin gave me in the first grade. There is Kim’s popsicle stick sled, painted red. There is the aluminum foil angel that Country Mother (my great-grandmother) made. There is the wooden nativity, the clothespin reindeer and the cuckoo clock. There is the dancing soldier, the red ice cream cone looking thing, and the countless pictures of us as kids. I had really big teeth in the second grade, and wore a purple dress. There is the Star Trek ship where you press a button, and Mr. Spock says, “Starship to Enterprise…Starship to Enterprise. Spock here. Happy Holidays. Live long, and prosper.” There is a tiny bird’s nest that rests on top of a branch, and a cat that has “Fluffy” written in marker on the back of it–my grandmother got that one for our cat. (Only she called him Fluffy. To the rest of us, he was Fat Boy.) Sometimes, to finish it off, we would buy a box of candy canes and hang them from any branches left unadorned. All of these ornaments had their own hierarchy of importance. Kim and I, for years, had staked out which ones were ours to hang, and hanging someone else’s ornament was right up there with blasphemy in our family. There are some things you just don’t do.

I remember finally being old enough to hang things near the top of the tree when I used the cricket (wooden stool) that Uncle Poppy made, and then finally feeling like a full fledged adult when I didn’t even need that help anymore. I was 14. I had arrived.

The house was always quiet the night after the tree was decorated. Usually there would be a Christmas movie on TV or something, and we would turn the lights down in the rest of the house and congregate in the living room around the tree. We never made a plan to do this–I think we all just decided together to take that time and admire our handiwork. There was our family–me, my sisters, my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and now neices and nephews, all represented in one way or another on our tree. The more we looked, the more stories we remembered. Sure, the tree was a bit busier than ones you would see in Good Housekeeping, but it’s the most beautiful tree in the world. Ever since I was little, I remember being so proud when a visitor would come into the house and start the ooh’s and ahh’s, touching ornaments and asking the stories behind them.

This year will be my first Christmas away from home.

So even though I’m excited about my new tree, having my own tree makes me a little sad. It’s like an admittance that I’m an adult, that I have to make my own tree now and start collecting my own ornaments to put on the tree (although, Mama, if you want to send me some of ours, I’ll be more than happy to take them off your hands.) I’m only 24. I don’t have years of stories to tell for different ornaments. At best I can make the tree beautiful, but it still won’t be our tree in Kentucky.

But I do have one ornament with a story. I have my Harlan County black bears ornament that my mom gave me before I came back to Spain. My first real ornament for my first real tree! It’s just a little ornament, but it means alot to me, and will have a prominent place on my tree.

I would like to have seen my parents’ tree in its first year. Were the ornaments sparse? Was my mom sad that there weren’t many stories on it yet? What a difference a couple decades make.

I hope that in 30 years I will have a tree that’s just maybe a little too old, with too many ornaments, so that my tree is full almost to the point of bursting with things from my parents and grandparents, and my own family. I hope that my kids will get excited about paper doves and popsicle stick sleds and clotheshanger reindeer. And then I can point to the Harlan County ornament and say “This was my first ornament.”

“And this one next to it? I got that at the market in Plaza Mayor in Madrid, Spain.”

I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

My brother Chad at the lake.

This past June my family of fourteen swarmed a two-bedroom cabin by a nearby lake like it was an anthill. We were everywhere. My youngest nephews were on the floor wrecking Matchbox cars. My youngest niece was doing her usual happy baby aerobics in her high chair hanging off the side of the kitchen counter. My dad and brother-in-law were just outside the patio door flipping burgers over a Coke and a beer. My sister was looking for diapers. The older nieces and I were munching on Doritos. And the women (minus my sister) were all in the kitchen at once, each working independently from the others, never getting in each other’s way, but somehow in the end finishing our fine buffet-style lunch in unison. It was like watching synchronized swimming, only in a kiddy pool.

“Mom, where’s the water?” Jayden asked as she picked through the fridge like a half-price rack at Old Navy.

“I don’t know, sweetie, I think we’re out,” my sister-in-law Sharla answered.

“Maaaam!” Jayden pushed the fridge door shut and sulked against it. “What am I going to drink?”

No answer. Her mom was busy unpacking a shopping bag of plastic plates and silverware.

Jayden looked at me sitting at the counter eating chips. She rolled her eyes.

“Why don’t you drink the water from the faucet?” I asked.

Jayden grimaced. “No way. I only drink bottled water from Sam’s.”

Apparently I was uninformed.

I suppose living out of the country for three years with only occasional visits is like being that kid at school who wasn’t allowed to watch TV at home, only a show or two at friends’ houses after school once in a while if he was lucky. Those kids never knew anything. They lived in another reality. And I honestly had no idea people thought it was cool to drink water out of bottles like they were drinking Coke. Nobody told me.

Of course as soon as my niece pointed out how cool bottled water was, I saw people drinking it everywhere, like I was in a bottled-water commercial.

I did some research online about bottled water because that’s the kind of geek I am and discovered that drinking bottled water is, in fact, a big deal. Selling water on American soil is now a multi-billion-dollar industry. The market reached $9.2 billion in wholesale dollar sales in 2004 [1]. Bottled water is the fastest-growing beverage category in the country [2] and has surpassed fruit drinks, even milk and beer to become the second largest commercial beverage, second only to carbonated soft drinks [3].

Drinking water is, of course, a good idea. The Mayo Clinic says the average person should drink eight 8-ource glasses of water every day (about 1.9 liters) [4]. I don’t drink that much water. I should drink more. Still, there’s something about this whole bottled-water business that bugs me.

I think it’s just that—it’s the bottled water business. People are spending billions of dollars on something they can get for pennies at home. One statistic I read said it costs somewhere between 240 to over 10,000 times more per gallon to purchase bottled water than it does to purchase a gallon of water from the tap at home [2].

Charles Bridge in Prague, The Czech Republic

Two weeks ago I was in Prague on vacation (this time, sans family), and I had time to think about the important things in life, you know, for example my stance on bottled water. Even with all these bottled water numbers in my head, I found myself settling in the middle of the debate. I actually found myself thinking about one or two good reasons to drink bottled water.

In Prague people don’t drink the tap water—too much lead or something. So while my wife April, my sister-in-law Heidi, and I were visiting (okay, so we did bring one sister-in-law along) we had to drink bottled water. Not that it mattered to the rest of them since they’d shoot up bottled water intravenously if they could, but the point is I had to drink bottled water too. I’ve tried to avoid drinking water from a bottle if possible, or in the worst cases, drinking from a bottle my wife has already used to avoid saying I actually drank bottled water instead of saying I reused an already existing plastic bottle—a noble cause, in my opinion. Anyway, I had to drink bottled water or get sand paper mouth. With the added factor that I was barely recovering from a cold that had put me down for the count for three days, I carried a water bottle with me wherever I went.

We saw the castle in Prague. We walked across Charles Bridge. We went for a promenade in such and such a park. We ate lots of dumplings. For three whole days I drank water from a bottle.

While I still think drinking water from a bottle is about as smart as setting money on fire, I did discover that drinking water from a bottle taught me one lesson. It taught me that water is limited and valuable. See, bottles are containers, and containers do two things. They hold a particular quantity, a particular limit of something, in this case, one liter of water. They also (in general) keep track of something that you want to keep track of—something valuable. I found that drinking water from a bottle reminded me throughout the day that water is a natural resource and is both limited and valuable. I would fill up my bottle in the morning from the eight-liter jug and would think to myself, “Okay now, you have to make this last all day. Drink it wisely.” Since I knew I only had one liter to drink, every sip was valuable to me. I thought about it.

Maybe this is a stretch, but I think families are the same way. Families are like bottled water. We bottle ourselves up every now and then in a condo or a little cabin because it’s our duty to keep track of each other. Most of the time we take each other for granted, but for those two weeks or so that we’re together, that’s when we remember that our time together is limited and we mean something to each other. We’re not strangers, we’re not necessarily friends either, but we are family.

Sources:
1. Beverage Marketing’s 2005 Market Report Findings
   www.bottledwater.org/public/BWFactsHome_main.htm
2. Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?
   www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/chap2.asp
3. Bottled Water Strengthens Position As No. 2 Beverage, Reports Beverage Marketing
   www.beveragemarketing.com/news2vv.htm
4. Water: How Much Should You Drink Every Day?
   www.mayoclinic.com/health/water/NU00283

Additional Sources (if you really don’t like bottled water):

5. Message in a Bottle: Despite the Hype, Bottled Water is Neither CLEANER nor GREENER Than Tap Water
   http://www.emagazine.com/view/?1125
6. Bottled Water: Understanding a Social Phenomenon (pdf document)
   http://assets.panda.org/downloads/bottled_water.pdf

While putting on prawn puppet shows for your friends is possibly the most fun part of cooking with prawns, a close second is sitting around a table enjoying good conversation and eating a plate or two of sizzling prawns with a bowl of bread. This is an art form you’ll learn well if you spend any amount of time in a Spanish tapas bar, and with this recipe, you can do the same at home or wherever you find yourself with an appetite for prawns.

Read my full recipe online at Other Spain Magazine. Here’s the link:

spain.othercountries.com/otherspain/pages/recipes/gambas-ajillo.asp

Yesterday I went to church, and at the end of the service Juan, the guy who makes announcements, mentioned that anyone who wanted to be in the Christmas choir could meet at the front of the room after the service.

A friend of mine had recently told me if I ever had the chance, I should join a Spanish Christmas choir because Catalonian Christmas carols (Catalonia being a region of Spain in the Northeast, near where I’m living) are known internationally. My friend told me every choir she’s been in, and she’s been in choirs in countries all over the world, has sung at least one Catalonian Christmas carol every year. Now that she was living in Spain, she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to sing in a Spanish Christmas choir.

I walked to the front of the room to learn more. Sidling myself up to a new friend of mine, I asked him about the Christmas carols. I said something like, “A friend of mine told me Catalonian Christmas carols are beautiful. Do you know which ones we’ll be singing?”

He looked at me. “This isn’t Catalonia,” he said. “We’re more international. We sing ‘Silent Night.’”

Additional Resources:
If you’d like to learn a few Catalonian Christmas carols yourself this Christmas season, here’s a couple to get you started:

“El Cant Dels Ocells”
lyrics and sheet music

“Fum, Fum, Fum”
lyrics and sheet music

If you’ve been to Retiro Park in Madrid, particularly on a Sunday afternoon, you may have been too busy watching a puppet show, splashing around in a rowboat, or snapping photos of your little ones with Mickey Mouse to notice the park’s most obscure attraction.

However, had you walked along the lake on Salón del Estanque through Plaza de Honduras and down Avenida de Cuba, you would have found yourself face to face with the only statue in the world dedicated solely to the devil. Meet the Angel Caído (The Fallen Angel).

Click image to enlarge.

I’m not sure what you would have expected the devil to look like, but you might not have expected a statue like this one. Unlike the comics, this devil has no hooves for feet or horns on his head or a pointy tail, which, had the sculptor considered it, would have been particularly relevant in a country where snorting beasts with horns chase down people in the streets on a regular basis.

If you’d had some time to consider what a Spanish devil might look like, or if you’d recently spent an afternoon at the Reina Sofia, you might have expected this Spanish devil to look more Picassoesque than anything else—mismatched limbs, mixed-up face, bloated features—enough to make anyone believe in monsters.

In actuality, this devil is a Hercules type—a real pretty boy. He’s clean-cut, nude and ripped with muscles. He’s got wings like an angel. He’s horribly beautiful. You could easily mistake him for a good guy—for one of us.

Don’t let yourself stare too long or you might begin to feel bad for him. Of course, he does look harmless enough. He’s obviously having one of the worst days of his life. For starters, he’s naked, and everyone’s looking at him. Not to mention it looks like he’s lost his balance and chaffed his bum on that sharp rock. Oh, and there’s a very large snake wrapped around his groin. He’s got one arm free, and he’s trying to shade his eyes from the 16 trillion-watt God light shining from heaven right into his eyes. He’s in bad shape.

Won’t anybody help this guy?

I’m not surprised the folks back in 1878 were uncomfortable with Ricardo Bellver’s statue of the devil. To put it simply: he’s too close for comfort. Instead of being ugly and abstract, he’s beautiful and personal. He looks like we do, and we want to help him. And somehow, even though we only came out today because we wanted to get some exercise, maybe rollerblade around the park a few times, we find ourselves standing here in front of this statue, surrounded by living things like chestnut trees and pink flowers, in the middle of our very own garden of good and evil.

My wife April and I have been living in Spain for almost three years, and one month ago we moved to a small town on the Mediterranean called Castellón de la Plana. The phenomenon in Spain of topless sunbathers used to be a once a year experience, but now has become a nearly daily occurrence in our lives. April agreed to interview me about the conversations we’ve had on the subject at various times and places in Spain.

This interview originally appeared in Catapult Magazine.

April: When we go to the beaches here in Spain, some of the women are wearing bikinis, and some of them are not wearing the tops of their bikinis. I think about these women being topless a little bit, but mostly I think about what you’re thinking and how this affects you. I figure these women are the same sex as me, so I probably don’t notice as much or maybe I notice different things. So I thought I would just ask you some questions about your experience.

My first question is what was your reaction when you first saw women without their tops on last year when we were on vacation in San Sebastian?

Kelly: Actually, at first I didn’t even notice. Going topless is normal there. The women aren’t walking around topless trying to get lots of attention. They’re seriously there just to sunbathe. In my experience, guys usually have tan chests, but women don’t, so when these tan women walked by, I just saw another tan body. Of course there were obvious differences, two of them, but I really didn’t notice. It’s funny because we were probably on the beach in San Sebastian for half an hour to forty-five minutes before I even noticed that there were topless women around. But then it dawned on me, and I started looking around. I realized that there were a lot of them. I mean they were everywhere.

I’m trying to think back to how I was feeling then. Obviously, I can’t speak for every guy, but for me it was more of a curiosity than anything. I’ve been married for almost six years, so it wasn’t completely uncharted territory, but at the same time, it was a radical cultural difference. All of the sudden there were all these women around me doing something that I never experienced while I was growing up.

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My wife April and I have been living in Spain for almost three years, and one month ago we moved to a small town on the Mediterranean called Castellón de la Plana. The phenomenon in Spain of topless sunbathers used to be a once a year experience, but now has become a nearly daily occurrence in our lives. April agreed to interview me about the conversations we’ve had on the subject at various times and places in Spain.This interview originally appeared in Catapult Magazine.

April: When we go to the beaches here in Spain, some of the women are wearing bikinis, and some of them are not wearing the tops of their bikinis. I think about these women being topless a little bit, but mostly I think about what you’re thinking and how this affects you. I figure these women are the same sex as me, so I probably don’t notice as much or maybe I notice different things. So I thought I would just ask you some questions about your experience.

My first question is what was your reaction when you first saw women without their tops on last year when we were on vacation in San Sebastian?

Kelly: Actually, at first I didn’t even notice. Going topless is normal there. The women aren’t walking around topless trying to get lots of attention. They’re seriously there just to sunbathe. In my experience, guys usually have tan chests, but women don’t, so when these tan women walked by, I just saw another tan body. Of course there were obvious differences, two of them, but I really didn’t notice. It’s funny because we were probably on the beach in San Sebastian for half an hour to forty-five minutes before I even noticed that there were topless women around. But then it dawned on me, and I started looking around. I realized that there were a lot of them. I mean they were everywhere.

I’m trying to think back to how I was feeling then. Obviously, I can’t speak for every guy, but for me it was more of a curiosity than anything. I’ve been married for almost six years, so it wasn’t completely uncharted territory, but at the same time, it was a radical cultural difference. All of the sudden there were all these women around me doing something that I never experienced while I was growing up.

April: So what were you most curious about?

Kelly: I just wondered how it all worked. Do topless women play volleyball when they’re topless? Do they go swimming? Do they walk into town? Or is being topless just something these women do on their beach towels? I wondered just how far these women would take this?

I wondered about moms with their kids. How were their kids responding to their moms being topless? Or teenagers, boyfriend and girlfriend, how were they responding to this? Or married couples? There were all these different combinations of people, and I was curious how they were experiencing the situation.

April: What have you noticed about the situation?

Kelly: A couple days ago there was a Spanish family on the beach. There was a son who was maybe in his late teens, mom and dad, and two girls, maybe 10 and 13 years old. The mom wasn’t swimming. She was in a dress. The teenage brother was on the beach reading a book. The dad and the two girls were in the water playing. And the two girls were topless. The one girl was obviously going through puberty, and I remembering thinking to myself, “Now that’s a time in my life when me and the other kids my age were all really insecure about what we looked like.” I remember the shower room at school, and that was the worst possible place you could be when you were a teenager. But here are these girls going through puberty, and they’re splashing around in the water with their dad having fun.

I thought, “How can they do that?” Not how dare they do that, but how can they be okay with being out there in the water playing with their dad when their bodies are changing almost before our eyes.

Actually, if I’m honest, those girls made me wish I was more comfortable with myself. I was a bit jealous. I’m not saying I want to be teenage girl topless on the beach, but for example, as a guy I see these guys walking down the beach in Speedos, and they don’t think twice about it. I know of one guy in the county where I grew up who has a Speedo, and he mows his lawn in his Speedo, and everybody knows him. If you would say, “Hey, do you know the guy who mows his lawn in his Speedo?” everyone would know who you’re talking about. No one knows his name. He’s just the guy who mows his lawn in his Speedo. People can get away with that kind of thing here, and it doesn’t seem, or it doesn’t appear that they’re thinking much about it, and that amazes me. I wish I was comfortable with myself like that, even though I’m not necessarily sure I want to express it in the same way as people do here in Spain.

April: In terms of body image, it’s actually been good for me as well to have so many people around wearing so little. I remember an article that Kirstin wrote for Catapult a while back that was about being in public shower situations and seeing women of all different ages and body types and realizing that our culture says there’s only one body type that’s right, but when you’re in that situation, you see that’s not possible—there can’t be just one right body type. There’s too much diversity. Being on the beach with so many people without clothes on has actually sent that message deeper and made me more comfortable with what I look like, which is not a message I would have expected.

Kelly: Yeah, I’ve heard so many stories about people our age and even people our parents’ age who were just left completely in the dark about sexuality and all the changes that you go through in puberty. Basically, we’ve accommodated for that by starting sex education programs in schools, which is not a bad idea, but there’s something to be said about your parents or someone in your family telling you about the birds and the bees. When you’re a teenager, those are the last people you want telling you those things, but it’s important.

When I see the people here on the beach just going about their normal life, I sort of feel like I’m behind or something, like these people have matured beyond me or have learned a life lesson I haven’t learned. They’re okay, and they’re not worried. Whereas I still feel uncomfortable with it.

Actually, it’s funny to me how positively we’re talking about being topless on the beach because I think the conversation could just as easily go the opposite direction. For me, I think there is a line somewhere.

April: What’s different between seeing everybody’s knees or seeing everybody’s shoulders. How is seeing everybody’s breasts any different?

Kelly: That’s a good question. It’s one I’ve been asking myself. I wish I was more of a science guy because I don’t know whether there is physically-speaking a difference between women’s breasts and women’s knees, to say that one is more sexual than another. But on a cultural level, I still live in the Western world, and I’m still an American, and the way I was raised, I know that for myself a woman’s breasts or other parts of women are sexual to me. This is up for debate, obviously, what is and what isn’t, but there is some common ground there. People know what they’re doing. People know what is off limits and what is acceptable. People in advertising know this line very well, and they push it as far as they can to get attention. I guess my challenge would be why push the limits? What is the big need to show the world what you’ve got, to show the world your goods?

April: How would you feel if you were with one of your friends on the beach, and she was topless?

Kelly: That’s the thing. We live on the beach now, and we’re there maybe three or four times a week, and often with friends. Before this summer, I was lucky if I got to the beach once or twice a year. I could get away with objectifying the women then because I didn’t know them. It was easier to forget that there were naked women around. For example, when I was at the beach in San Sebastian last year with my dad, I remember talking to him about the topless women there. We were there for five days, and by the end, we both just sort of forgot about it. You’re playing Frisbee on the beach with your dad, and you’re jumping over these topless women to make a good catch, and it doesn’t faze you. It’s like a lot of things, you put them out of your mind if you want to.

But now, here we are living on the beach, and seeing topless women is an every day kind of thing. I could be on the beach with friends, and they could be topless.

April: You said something about objectifying women. Why did you use those words and how does women being topless require you or ask you to objectify them?

Kelly: To objectify someone is, to use a bad pun, to strip them of what makes that person a person and to see them as an object or a thing. So like beach furniture or something. There’s something about seeing a topless women who is almost completely naked that seems too intimate for me.

Besides you, I have a lot of other friends who are girls who I’m close to and who I know really well. It would be really hard for me to know someone that closely and also be put in that awkward situation where I know something about them that I only know about my wife. In some ways, it’s not good for me either. There’s something special about my relationship with you and our marriage. We only know each other in a certain way that no one else knows. That’s sacred ground. That’s our space. And I like knowing that I’m the only person that experiences that with you. I don’t want to know that about other people. Go find somebody else.

It’s a broader concept than just topless women on the beach. This is how relationships work. We aren’t expected to be intimate with everybody we know.

I read a book last year, actually a web design book about how to build community on the web, and the guy said that the best way to build community on the web is to be exclusive, to have certain requirements that you have to meet in order to be a part of that group, and then the community will grow because people like being a part of something that is exclusive. A marriage is the same way. You’re not entering into the relationship just because that person is there, you’re making a commitment to the person who has special privileges in your life—to tell you off when you need to be told off, to comfort you when you need to be comforted, and the one who shares a level of emotional, spiritual, and physical intimacy that no one else does with you.

April: When we’re at the beach, and there are some women who are topless and some women who aren’t, do you perceive those two groups differently while we’re there?

Kelly: One of the conclusions I’ve come to is that there is a difference between being curious about someone and being attracted to someone. Just because I see a topless woman on the beach, and that makes me curious, doesn’t necessarily mean I’m attracted to her or that I’m thinking sexual things about her. One thing I’ve learned from experience is that just because you’re on the beach with a bunch of topless women, doesn’t mean it’s pretty. In my opinion, naked people are more comical than anything. Clothes are a good thing.

I think there is actually something really attractive about clothes because of the mystery involved. I remember one Christmas when I was a kid when my parents were gone for an evening, and I went under the Christmas tree and found my present. I opened it, secretly, and saw what I was getting for Christmas. Before my parents got home, I put it back together and taped it shut, so when Christmas came, my parents didn’t even know I had looked at my Christmas present.

I don’t even have to tell you the rest of the story. It wasn’t nearly as fun to open the present on Christmas Day because I already knew what I was getting. You know how kids get all worked up the week before Christmas about what their present could be, how much money their parents are going to totally blow on them. I didn’t get to do any of that that because I knew what I was getting.

Mystery is a part of who we are, and there’s something about being together and having sex and all that stuff that comes with marriage, and I think that the mystery of it all is a beautiful thing. It’s fun. It’s exciting. Even when you’re married, you don’t walk around your house naked all the time. Again, having sex is like discovering the mystery in each other again, in this sense, on a physical level.

April: I still don’t know what you mean when you say you’re curious about topless women. For me being curious means there’s something unknown, like you’re curious about somebody’s middle name or what they had for lunch.

There are a few things you don’t know in that situation. For example, you don’t know what that breast feels like. Are you curious about that? Are you curious about her, or are you curious about her body, and if you’re curious about her body, you can’t be curious about what her breasts look like because you see them. You need to be curious about something else.

Kelly: There is some curiosity about who she is just like there is curiosity about anybody you pass on the street or anyone else sitting on the beach, but there is an extra curiosity about somebody who is sitting there of the opposite sex mostly naked. You’re right, curiosity is about something that is unknown. But even for a guy who has been married for five years, there is still a curiosity about the opposite sex. Of course you see things on TV and in your marriage relationship you’re aware of other things, but there is still a general curiosity about women that makes you think, wow, this is not an everyday thing.

Maybe if you went to the beach long enough that would change. Maybe that’s the difference for European guys. The curiosity about what women look like has been demystified.

When I see a woman sitting there on the beach, and she’s topless, it’s nothing sexual for me that makes me think I want to have sex with that woman. It’s not that. It’s more of a curiosity about what women look like in general.

April: So, it’s not so much that as you look at her you become more and more curious, it’s more like, this is a bad example, but you walk past somebody, and you notice they have a tattoo, and it makes you want to turn around to see what that tattoo looks like. So it’s more like that. In this case, you’re walking, and you notice that a woman is topless, and it makes you want to turn around and see what that woman’s breasts look like because you haven’t seen 2000 breasts in your life.

Kelly: Yes, exactly. I was just thinking about when we went down to Morocco for a weekend. Morocco is a Muslim country, so most of the women were walking around in the full jilaba with the headdress. Some of the girls had on pink ones. Some had the jilaba with jeans on underneath. Some women were dressed in a Western style. And still other women were almost completely covered. All we could see were their eyes. I don’t know if you were like this too, but the whole weekend I couldn’t stop looking at those women. It was curiosity. Once I saw them, I knew what they looked like, but I kept looking because it was something I hadn’t experienced much before.

The curiosity part of the being at the beach and wanting see more of what you haven’t seen a lot of in your life, I don’t think that’s unusual or necessarily a bad reaction. I think the part about it that I question is just the relationship that you’re having with that person, and in our relationships there is this concept of what we do and do not share with everybody else.

April: You still don’t know what you think necessarily. You have ideas. You are uncomfortable with women being topless on the beach, but you’re not ready to send Spain to hell in a hand basket. So how are you going to deal with this on an everyday basis? Does it affect whether or not you will go to the beach? Does it affect how you will act at the beach?

Kelly: I don’t think it’s a unique situation in comparison to other cross-cultural experiences I’ve had as a foreigner living in Spain. There are so many people that come to Spain, and they don’t like something, like for example, they don’t like the fact that Spanish people smoke like chimneys, almost everyone of them smokes, or the fact that old guys often don’t wear deodorant, or other things, small things, and some people honestly think they can change the culture as one American, one Dutch person, one English person. They can just come into Spain and say, “This is really dumb. I’m going to change this.” I’ve just figured out that that doesn’t happen. There are just so many different culture things happening in my life all the time. If I would stop and try to fix all of them, or any of them, I’d just go nuts. So, I don’t know if it’s good, but my approach is to live with it, and hope I can learn something from it.

Click map to enlarge.

A guy living in Barcelona emailed me recently and asked for advice on where to rent an apartment (or a piso) in Madrid. I remember three years ago when April and I first moved to Spain and were walking the streets of Madrid looking for an apartment. We were hopeless—we could barely tell what was up and down on the metro map, let alone which neighborhoods would be a good fit for us. Thankfully our friends Jesús and Rachel gave us some good advice.

So, it’s time to return the favor. Above, you’ll see I’ve sketched out a map of the Madrid city center with all the neighborhoods in different colors. Below, I’ve scribbled down a few thoughts about each neighborhood.

Of course, which neighborhoods are more livable than others is always a matter of debate. So for those who live in Madrid, let the friendly bantering begin. Hopefully through some discussion we can come up with a pretty good guide for anyone looking for a place to live in Madrid.

Sol / Opera / Las Cortes
Sol is the city center. Most city dwellers spend a lot of time here shopping, meeting friends, or just passing through from one place to another. Because Sol is central and home to some of the best monuments in the city such as Plaza Mayor, The Royal Palace, and The Cathedral of Almudena, it’s full of tourists (and as a result, pickpockets). Sol may be a great place to visit or spend time, but it’s not great for daily life sorts of things like buying groceries or getting a haircut.

Gran Vía
Take a walk down Gran Vía, and you’ll know you are in a big city. Tall office buildings, giant department stores, movie theaters—this is modern Madrid. Beware of Plaza Luna. It’s rundown and dirty, and like Gran Vía and c/Montera by night, it’s where the prostitutes work.

Huertas
Not a neighborhood known for anything in particular, Huertas is still home of some of my Madrid favorites. Populart is my favorite jazz club. Ricci is my favorite gelado / ice cream shop. And Plaza de Santa Ana is a great place to enjoy a summer drink on a terrace. Huertas is also walking distance from Sol, Madrid’s best museums, and the ever popular Retiro Park.

La Latina
Everything that is traditionally Madrid you’ll find here—the people, the food, the architecture, and the way of life. La Latina is hands down the oldest and most beautiful neighborhood in Madrid. Still, old buildings are nicer to look at than to live in. They’re often rundown, dingy, dark and lacking modern conveniences like heat, good-sized windows, natural gas, etc.

El Rastro
El Rastro may look like other neighborhoods in Madrid during the week, but on Sunday it’s something else altogether. Street venders line the streets and people flood in from everywhere to get a bargain and spend an afternoon with friends eating lunch on a terrace. Pickpockets are rampant. If you live in this neighborhood, think twice about sleeping in on Sundays or doing anything other than watching the swarms of people from your windows.

Lavapiés
Lavapiés is a neighborhood of extremes. Here you’ll find young and old, Madrileño and foreigner, and the barrio with a reputation for being full of life and full of crime. I would consider not living here for safety reasons.

Atocha
Named after the city’s most important train station, Atocha is great for getting anywhere by train. Also, its central location puts most places nearby. Atocha may not be the coolest place to live, but it’s convenient and good for daily life sorts of things.

Malasaña
Malasaña is quiet and residential, but also trendy and alternative. See the Conde Duque cultural center or the shops and people on c/Fuencarral or find out for yourself by spending a night in any one of the small and eclectic clubs in the area. Malasaña is also international. Some of the best international restaurants are on c/San Bernardino. Just down the street is the international food market.

Chueca
Chueca is best known for being the gay district of Madrid. It’s yuppie, cosmopolitan, and prides itself for having a great nightlife. By day, Chueca is the city on a small scale, a blend of little streets, little shops, and the hustle and bustle of normal life.

Alonso Martínez / Bilbao
Most of the people who live in this neighborhood are young professionals, but on the weekends the streets surge with teenagers clubbing and drinking and smoking in the streets. The location is close to Sol, but also to the business district along the Castellana.

Moncloa / Argüelles
Madrid’s Complutense, the largest university in Spain, is located in Moncloa. Mostly students and the elderly live here. The neighborhood is a getaway from the chaos of the city center, but only a short metro ride away. You’ll find everything you need for daily life here. Also, the park around El Templo de Debod and Parque del Oeste provide some quality green space for hanging out with friends.

Castellana
The Castellana is Madrid’s business world. Here you’ll find the headquarters of many banks and companies. There’s not much to look at besides wide highways and tall buildings. It’s a place to live if you want to be close to work.

Salamanca
Salamanca is a classy neighborhood. A lot of people who have money and want to live in the city live here. Sunday afternoons at Retiro Park is a favorite pastime for the locals. Try it for yourself sometime, and you’ll find there’s something to do for everybody.

Nuevos Ministerios / Rios Rosas / Chamartín
These neighborhoods are mostly residential and lots of families live here. They are far enough outside the city that most people probably only go the city center if they work there or on special occasions. Shopping caters to the locals, including some fine tapas restaurants—nothing fancy, just good food at great prices.

General Guidelines:
1. The metro is very efficient in Madrid. You can get almost anywhere in the city very quickly and comfortably (although rush hour can be a different story).

2. In terms of safety, as an assumption, anything South of Sol is less safe. The farther South you go, the dodgier it gets.

3. If being central is important to you, I would stay within the map I’ve drawn, maybe even excluding Nuevos Ministerios / Rios Rosas / Chamartín, which is a bit far away. Personally, I’d also prefer to live outside of the Sol area because it’s mostly for tourists and doesn’t provide very much in terms of grocery stories and that sort of thing to people who actually want to live there. Neighborhoods like La Latina, Malasaña, Chueca, Alonso Martínez, and Salamanca, for example, are both central and very livable.

4. Green space. If you want green space, obviously living somewhere near Retiro would be a plus. However, there is also a long and narrow park west of Argüelles running from the Royal Palace to Moncloa (roughly) called Parque del Oeste as well as a giant area called Casa de Campo straight west of the city where you go for a run, mountain bike, or sit for an afternoon around the lake there. Some people think Casa de Campo is a little barren, though, so I’d check it out for yourself.

5. Trains. If you are working out of the city or need to go to the suburbs regularly (for example, to teach English), it’s actually better to live either East or West of the center of the city (Sol) because there is no train station in the center. The most central train stations are Atocha at the Atocha train station, Recoletos, which is on c/Recoletos between Chueca and Salamanca, Nuevos Ministerios, and Príncipe Pío, which is about a 10 min. walk from the Royal Palace in Argüelles.

Special thanks to softdoc.es for help with the map.