The Robbery

My wife and I were robbed on the way to our Spanish class. We were driving down the autopista (highway) when a car drove beside us. The passenger started yelling something at us and making motions with her hands that we should slow down and pull over. I was a little hesitant, because our car seemed to be driving fine, but the people in the other car looked very upset. We were close to our exit so I was thinking we could take a look after we parked, but my wife started getting upset and telling me to stop. The other people were driving a nice BMW which made me feel better (so much for telling a book by its cover), so I pulled over a little way down the exit ramp for the school. The BMW pulled over just after the exit and the driver jumped out and hurried back to us waving his arms and saying lots of stuff in an urgent voice, none of which I understood. My wife thought he was saying something about the back tires and a fire and it was clear he wanted to show us something so my wife got out of the car to take a look. He wanted my wife to look under the car in the back, but when she hesitated he started to get angry. He came to the front and showed me a burnt piece of paper and then went to the passenger’s side of the car, opened the door and pointed near the top of the car. He then closed the door, said a couple of more words to my wife, headed back to his car and drove off. My wife wanted me to drive a little ways with her watching the back of the car, but I already sensed that the car was just fine. This was confirmed when my wife noticed that her pocketbook was no longer in the car.

After talking with the police of Sant Cugat, we found out we were lucky on a couple of accounts. Actually, after the second time we talked with the police we found out we were lucky on a couple of accounts. The first time we talked with the police, the only thing we found out was that mastering level uno of Spanish is completely inadequate for filing a crime report. We may or may not have continued to pursue matters, but that night my wife received a call from someone saying that they had found her purse. My wife was thrilled and she told the person we lived in Sant Cugat and would like to pick it up. But, once again, level uno Spanish was insufficient to really understand what the person was saying. She left it that we would get a friend to call and make arrangements. I was less thrilled to hear about the call because I worried that these might be the same people who took the purse. They were in possession of my car keys ($220 to replace), and I worried that this was a scam to get our car (more than $220 to replace). We decided that it would be best to turn the matter over to the authorities. Luckily we have a very good friend who offered to come with us and serve as an interpreter.

We arrived at the police station the next morning after getting very little sleep. Every bump, clang, or creak had my wife sending me through the house to check things out. I would canvas the house with my cell phone out, already dialed to 092 (the Spanish 911 equivalent). We were fairly certain that the thieves didn’t have our exact address, but something about having my personal space violated made me feel less secure. This was especially true at night. About 3 in the morning, we finally gave up on sleep and watched Tom Hanks in the Terminal. I find good movies to be totally relaxing. As I worried about poor Tom being stuck in the airport for 9 months, I totally forgot about the army of gang members casing out our premises.

At the police station the first thing we found out was that this was not done by Spaniards. They told us this before they heard any of the details of the robbery. This has also been the reaction of every Spanish person who we have told. It is always the South Americans and probably a Peruvian. One friend even followed up by saying, “It’s like in America. It’s never the Americans committing the crimes.” I don’t know where that came from, but I just thought, “What America are you talking about?” It might be my political correctness indoctrination, but I think it is simply wrong to prejudge huge groups of people. On the other hand, I have to admit that the person didn’t look Spanish and, if I had to guess, they looked South American (Peruvian?) to me.

We also learned some more things at the station. When we told them that we had pulled over on the interstate because another car was indicating we had a problem, they looked at us like we had told them we had stuck our tongues to the frozen flag pole so that we could see what it was like. (It’s the why in the world would anyone do that look). The police went on to tell us that we were targeted because of our French license plate, once again emphasizing that no Spanish person would ever stop. We also learned that looking under the car is even worse. This is when they knock you unconscious and grab your wedding ring, watch, and wallet. Taking the whole car is not that uncommon either. All told it could have been much worse. My wife even had her credit card and driver’s license in her coat at the time.

I’ve included a picture of the police report below. I’m not sure it adds much, but I couldn’t think of any other picture to add for this entry.

Rascon de Reyes

This is me standing in front of the Museo del Jamon (Museum of the Ham) in Madrid. Seeing this picture reminded me of another Spanish custom. There is a dessert, Rascon de Reyes, which is traditionally eaten as part of the “Los Tres Reyes Magos” celebrations. The dessert is a ring of sweet bread that has two prizes baked into it. It is traditional to cut up the ring so a piece can be distributed to each person around the table. Receiving one of the prizes is suppose to impart good luck for the coming year. Receiving the other prize means that you are obligated to buy the Rascon de Reyes for the next year. While strolling through the streets of Madrid we passed a pasteleria (pastry shop), and we decided to partake in the tradition. Being that there were only four of us, we purchased a small Rascon de Reyes. We were warned that the mini size only had the good luck prize and that this one prize would also carry the obligation for next years purchase. Willing to accept the terms, we left with our mini Rascon de Reyes. As it turns out, I was the lucky recipient. As I munched into my slice of Rascon de Reyes, I bit into a little plastic pig. It seems that nothing could represent more good luck to a Spaniard than finding an extra pig when you weren’t expecting one.

Things Remembered

You can sometimes be surprised at what you remember most from a trip. After traveling to London, Edinburgh, and Dublin I’ve had time to reflect on all that we did. We saw lots of interesting places. We saw the new Harry Potter film in a great theater in Piccadilly Circus. We went to the stage production of Mary Poppins. We went to a lot of good restaurants. We saw lots of natural wonders like the cliffs of Moher. We took tours of famous buildings and saw many wondrous works of art. But none of those things are what I remember most.

What I remember most was an incident in Luton. We had flown into Luton because Ryan Air flew there for 1.99 pounds per person. We could also find a reasonable hotel that had good train accesses into London. We went into London to see the show “The Lion King”. We thought we could just pick up tickets for the show that night (perhaps a bit over optimistic since I was later told there was a 4 month wait). We were able to find a discount ticket seller, and eventually settled on seeing the evening show of Mary Poppins which was my daughter’s first choice anyway. The tickets were 80 pounds each and, when my wife asked how much they were with the discount, we were informed that 80 pounds was already discounted. Nobody ever said that London was cheap.

The show was great, but that wasn’t what I remember most. After the show we had to take two subway rides and a train to get back to our hotel. About 5 minutes into the second subway ride, my son announced that he really, really has to go to the bathroom. We still had about 5 minutes to go to get to the “King’s Cross” station, and then another 30 minutes on the train back to Luton. He was sure he couldn’t wait for the hotel, but he was OK with getting to King’s Cross (barely). Of course, when we get to King’s Cross we can’t find a bathroom anywhere. With my son getting gradually more and more upset, we decide to try to find a restaurant on the street. By this time it is about 12 O’clock and a lot people seem to be stumbling out of bars. The first two restaurants we try have just locked up, but finally we are successful at a Middle Eastern kabob place (to the great relief of my son). On the way back toward the station there are even more people out on the street and my son (10) and daughter (9) started to get nervous. “Daddy, those people look like they’re drunk…They scare me.”

This actually surprised me. We had been in the London area for a few days and seen a lot of drinking already. In fact, there was a pretty rowdy bar in our hotel. When we arrived late on a Saturday night, the entrance to the hotel was blocked off with a line of people waiting to get in. I had to push my way to the front of the line to talk to one of the bouncers at the door. He sent two other bouncers back to help with our bags and move people out of the way. As we pushed our way through many loud dancing people with full pints, I thought our hotel choice might have been a big mistake. To be honest, my thoughts were more along the lines of, “Thank god my wife picked this hotel so I’m not going to be blamed for this.” It turned out the rooms were down a long corridor away from the bar and fairly nice, so the hotel worked out well. But the point was that the kids weren’t nervous at all, which is why it surprised me that they got nervous later, outside King’s Cross.

Anyway…, with both kids starting to get upset, we hustled through King’s Cross and were able to get onto the last train back to Luton. With the excitement of the show, the adrenalin from being nervous and the fact that it was after midnight, the kid’s lasted approximately 30 seconds in our comfortable train seats before they were fast asleep. The train had us back to Luton at approximately 12:45 at night. Luckily, my son popped right up when we reached the station, but my daughter was out cold. I just had to pick her up and carry her the three long blocks back to the hotel. About two thirds of the way back, I was startled to feel a kiss on my neck. I looked down and saw my daughter staring up at me. She looked completely content. She had been scared and tired and she didn’t know where she was, but when she woke to find herself in my arms she had no cares and just felt herself overcome with affection. About 3 seconds later she was back to sleep. I’m not sure why such a little thing would make me feel so good, but it did, and I still remember that kiss. In fact, that kiss was the best part of the whole trip, and that kiss is what I will remember the most.

Dalhousie Castle

I’m backing up a bit, but I want to write down some of the details of our trip to Scotland before I forget. We stayed at a Dalhousie castle just outside of Edinburgh. The castle had been featured on the cover of the book, “Ghost Hunter”, and as soon as we arrived Peter (Pe’er) gave us a private tour of the facilities to point out all the places where ghosts had been spotted. There was a ghost from the queen (duchess?) of the castle who hated weddings and often caused mischief with ceremonies. There was also the recent addition of a ghost dog. In 1994 a dog had gone to the top of the highest tower and then thrown itself off. Late on moonless nights the dog could still be heard to bark. Apparently the moon was always out while I was there because I never heard any mysterious howling.

Peter also showed us additional idiosyncrasies of the castle. There was a special room for the Duke of the Castle. It was designed with a floor that was tilted so that one side of the room was about 6 inches higher than the other. The tilt was to help the Duke appear taller to impress his lady friends (when just owning the castle isn’t enough). This might also help to explain why the Duchess wasn’t so keen on weddings.

Dinners in the castle were held in the “dungeon”. The area seemed more like an armory, with a liberal assortment of weapons and armor decorating most of the stone walls. The food was great, with the meal finishing with the pre-desert, followed by the desert, and then the all important post desert. I also enjoyed Scottish Oatmeal, the local brew.

One oddity of the castle was that it was the location of non-stop weddings. We were there on a Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in the middle of the winter and every day had a full day wedding ceremony. I was amazed that people could get so many guests in the middle of the week, but Scottish bagpipe players in traditional kilts are a powerful draw for getting out the crowds. Another option for the wedding couple was to have the ring delivered to the best man by a falcon, which swoops out of the sky with the ring attached to one of its feet. The falconer (?) told us that they had only had one problem. A bride had insisted on having cute little bunnies up at the altar to add to the ambience. When the falcon found the cute little bunnies more interesting than the best man, a certain ambience was created, but not the one that the bride had hoped for.



The birds were actually amazing. There were eagles, hawks, and owls as well as the falcons and we were able to spend a morning with them. You would wear a special glove and hold up a little piece of chicken. A bird would then swoop out of tree, land on your hand, and get its reward. Just seeing a bird swooping down with a 3 or 4 foot wingspan and land on your hand is a sight not to miss.

My First Spanish Business

I have now made 53 cents for my time in Spain. As you might have noticed, I have taken my wanderings, mishaps and musings and turned them in to a “money making” venture. Living In Sant Cugat has sold out to the man and now is a vehicle for pushing everything from rental cars to sex change operations. (The sex change ad displayed when I clicked on the Gender Confusion entry.) By signing up with AdSense, Google now figures out exactly what anyone who would spend time reading this blog would like to buy and helpfully puts up a link to those services. FOLLOW THOSE LINKS. If you don't think you need the service, remember ... Google's stock is up over $450 / share. They know better than you do what you might need.

Seriously, I'm surprised at how much satisfaction I received from making my first 53 cents. The fact that some advertiser is going to pay me 7 cents for getting someone to follow a link to their site makes me feel like I've created something of value. I know that it was just as valuable before, but I enjoy getting the extra external validation of an independent business willing to pay me (indirectly through Google) for my efforts. In fact, it got me so excited that I went onto Google and opened an AdWords account. This allows people searching for certain key words to see a link to this blog. I've now invested $2.02 promoting this blog to the world. Yes, I can do the math. I know I'm losing money, but I can't think of anything else that I could have spent the $1.49 on that would have provided me as much pleasure.

Off to Lisbon

The family recently traveled to Lisbon. When we crossed the border from Spain, I was surprised that there was nothing except a small sign. It is more prominent to cross state lines in the US, where at least you usually have a welcome center. When I asked a Portuguese tourist guide if there was nothing at the border because relations with Spain were so good, he looked pained to tell that the Spanish weren't always the best neighbors. Apparently Spain's been putting up dams to keep water from getting into Portugal and sending their fishing boats into Portuguese areas. But he also said that, being part of the EU family, neighbors could work things out in a welcoming way without fancy borders. When I told him that there was a border checkpoint when I went from Spain into France, he said, “You know, the French, they're French.”

Before heading to Lisbon, we had been staying in an inn in Madrid. From the inn we searched the Internet for places that we could stay in Portugal that would accept dogs. After spending about 20 minutes without having any luck, we decided to just drive out and find a hotel once we got there. As my wife said, who could turn us away once they see how cute our puppy is. Nothing against our dog (which really is very cute), but I had my doubts. When we arrived, I headed for the city center and, too my surprise, Le Meridien let us right in. Le Meridien is located across the street from the park Edward VII, not that far from the Gulbenkian Museum, and by going to the Praca Marques de Pombal you can walk down the Avenida da Liberdade all the way into the center of town (OK, I admit it, the last sentence was partially plagiarized from the hotel's website). Our dog especially enjoyed the park, but her favorite activity was strutting through the fancy lobby to get to the elevators.

Lisbon is a great city and, like in most European cities, you would hear people say things like, “This is a new church, it was only built two hundred and twenty years ago.” We went to an especially nice cathedral about half and hour outside of town that was built to honor a general for fighting off the Spanish. (He's the one on top of the horse). I was told that it took over 200 years to build. You enter by walking over the graves of two of the head architects on the project. This made me wonder how you get to be chosen as an architect. How much experience can anyone have with making buildings that take 200 years to complete? If you are the architect, are you tempted to take shortcuts that look good now, but will cause problems in 40-50 years? I guess if you do, you don't get the honor of having American kids see if they can hop all the way across your grave, without landing on you. (Not that my well behaved children would ever participate in such disrespectful behavior.)

Parking Revisited

Since we've now been in Sant Cugat for a few months, I thought I might revisit some topics. Not only have I started taking pictures, but I also have learned some secret tricks that the locals use to make life easier. One area where I have improved is in my ability to find parking. One sure bet for finding parking near the kids' school is to go into the park. The curb around the park has some tapered ramps allowing for easy access for bikes. These are perfect places to have the car jump the curb and enter the park's walking/biking paths. You can then park between trees alongside the path. Not only can you find a spot this way, but there is the added advantage of making it impossible for a tow truck to be able to drag you away (it just can't fit between the trees). In the photograph you not only see several people using this parking strategy, but you can also see an SUV driving down the walking path looking for an open spot.

There is also another parking strategy that I have yet to try. Apparently, after a tow truck pulls someone away, it takes quite a while before it's back on the prowl. Just the other day I saw a savvy spanish driver taking advantage of this information. There are a few prime spots right in front of the bakery (of course they are all illegal). When I drove by, I saw someone patiently waiting for the tow truck to finish removing a car from one of these spots so that they could parallel park into the newly cleared space.

Some Spanish Traditions

For New Year's Eve we went to Madrid where the festivities seemed to center around La Plaza Mayor. As you might guess from the picture, it is common to wear funny hair. We picked up a couple of wigs from the kiosks in the center of the plaza. In the evening, there is a live broadcast from the La Plaza Mayor as the midnight hour nears. They have a stage set up, and an ensemble of pop singers. About two thirds of the songs are in English with many taken from the group Abba and the show Grease. When it is finally midnight, it is traditional to pop a grape in your mouth for each of the twelve tolls of the bell. The supermarkets sell special cylindrical containers set with 12 grapes ready for the ceremony. If you watch on tv, as soon as the bell starts tolling, they put a picture of a chewing cow in the corner whose cheeks gradually puff out.



The 5th of January is also a special day in Spain. This is when "Los Tres Reyes Magos" (the 3 kings) come to the children of spain. There are many parades where candy is thrown out into the crowd. The parades always end with the 3 kings riding on the last float. The parade in the picture was in Salamanca, a city known for its University. On the night of the 5th you are suppose to put shoes outside of your front door to let the kings know that there are kids in the house. Then the kings leave presents for the kids (or Carbon if the kids are bad). Many Spanish kids don't get any presents from Santa Clause (Papa Noel), but just get their presents from the 3 kings. My kids must have been pretty good because the kings got my son a watch and a dragon sword, and they got my daughter a traditional spanish outfit. My behavior must have been questionable, because the kings didn't leave anything for me.

Castle Mottos

This is a picture from the castle that overlooks Edinburgh. Over the front gates is a saying in Latin that says something like, No disrespect will go unanswered. The tour guide explained that it was the Scottish motto. While this might be the Scottish motto, it was very similar to the sentiments found on castles in Ireland, England, and Spain. I found this interesting because it reminded me of the computer strategy tit-for-tat. There was a famous programming competition where programs would square off against each other. In a given round a program could decide to cooperate or fight. If you fought and the other program cooperated, you got 4 points and he got none. If you both cooperated, you each got 2 points. If you both fought, you each got 1 point. After 100 rounds, the programs would rotate to face another program. At the end, the program with the most points won. People wrote very elaborate programs, but what won the competition was tit-for-tat. This is where you start off cooperating, and then always do what the other program did in the previous round. What strikes me about these castles mottos, is how they seem to represent the idea of tit-for-tat in the real world. It seems that being either too aggressive or too forgiving keeps you from staying in power long enough to build a castle.

Questions that you don't want answered

I use to think that there was no such thing as a bad question. Spain has taught me that I was wrong. Take, for example, the question, “How long can you go without paying any of your utility bills before your utilities stop functioning?” The answer is 4 months and 4 days. To be completely accurate, after 4 months and 4 days an order is sent to a subcontractor to turn off your utilities. The water subcontractor is the most efficient, taking only 2 days to shut off the water. Both the gas subcontractor and the electric subcontractor take longer (thankfully I don't know exactly how long).

I'm sure this leads to another question. Why in the world would anyone who can pay their utility bills, go so long without paying them. As you might have guessed, the answer is that I had no idea that I wasn't paying any of my utilities. When we moved out to Sant Cugat, all the utilities were set up by a relocation firm who tied them to our bank account (also set up by the relocation firm). During my second week in Sant Cugat, I went in to the bank to set up a wire transfer into my account. I asked them why they charged so much to accept money (2%). They told me that this was their standard rate and showed me where it was listed in a brochure. I told them that I still thought this was too much. They then asked me if 1% would be OK. I told them that I still thought that this was too much. They said to do any better would require talking with the branch manager. I asked them to talk to the branch manager. The bank official came back and asked if a flat fee of 15 Euros would be acceptable. I said, that is OK with me. Early in this conversation I realized that my Spanish was not up to the task at hand, so I had called the relocation service and had someone on the phone who could act as a translator, allowing most of this conversation to be accomplished by passing a cell phone back and forth. Now apart from getting a better rate for receiving wire transfers, at some point during this visit (probably during the first 2 seconds), the bank realized that I was not a Spanish citizen. They also realized that my account number was one reserved for Spanish citizens so they made a tinny, little change to the number allowing everyone looking at the account would know that I'm an extranjero (foreigner). Now, believe it or not, I remembered that my utilities were tied to the original bank number, so I asked the relocation agent to make sure that things would still be linked up. He told me, “No pase nada”. (Don't worry about a thing.) And that was the last I worried about it for 4 months and 6 days.

Another oddity about utilities is that the names listed on the contracts are for various previous tenants. For example, the gas is listed for Fernandez, the electric is for Jose, and the water is for Felip, with these three making up only a small fraction of the names of people who receive mail at our address. Not wanting to open other peoples mail, I've been collecting up their letters and giving them to the local post office, happily passing on all the disconnection notices without even realizing what they were. My recent experience has caused me to reevaluate this procedure.

As a final note, the water company finally had office hours this morning. I was able to go in, explain the situation (all in Spanish without my cell phone translator), and pay my back bills. This has lead, in under 2 hours, to my water being turned back on. If anyone was wondering, having water is much better than hopping over the neighbors fence to load up buckets of water to fill up the toilets.