Euro Life

I thought I should shed a little bit of light on the contrasts between California life and Spanish life.

When you eat at a restaurant, or sit in a cafe for a coffee or beer, you have to ask for the check. You sit as long as you'd like and then you grab the attention of the server and ask for the bill. You pay, and if it's a full fledged meal, you leave a tip.

Lunch begins at no earlier than 1pm. The Spanish can barely fathom the fact that I would want to eat lunch at noon. If I ate breakfast at 10:30am everyday I would be a bit perplexed too.

Butter, oh butter. It's hardly used. You don't get butter with bread at restaurants, and even most of the croissants are made without butter. Once again this is only in Spain, when we were in the Netherlands this last summer, it seemed they put butter on everything.

Also free water is not offered at restaurants and in fact most "don't have" tap-water. It's a luxury that most of us take for granted back home.

The trash is collected at 3am in the morning. When you live on the corner of two busy streets with bins nearby expect to hear the hydraulics a few nights a week. I understand that they don't want the trucks to block traffic but 3am?

When sharing an elevator with someone they may or may not say hello but they always say good-bye.

That's it for now...it's 12:10pm I think I'm going to eat a butter-free croissant.