Café

(I should have posted this a few weeks ago, sorry!)

I’m officially a “regular” at my favorite café. It’s called Cáscares and after several weeks of loyal patronage, my (endearingly grumpy) waiter finally paused, smiled, and said: “Hola, ¿qué tal?”

This place is great – it’s got a long bar, always stocked with croissants, donuts and various tapas. Bookshelves packed with colorful books separate the bar area from the restaurant. It’s well-lit with warm, friendly light and feels spacious despite a consistent crowd of regulars who have stopped in for lunch with friends, a drink on the way home from work, a caña and tapas with co-workers around three, or perhaps a quick café on the way from one place to another. I nearly always see a group of 40-something men in suits, often accompanied by one or two fabulously-dressed women, standing at the bar sipping on cervezas and gesticulating animatedly with their cigarettes or the toothpicks they’ve just used to spear a yummy golden wedge of tortilla española, and laughing in that easy irresistible way that can only arise as the organic overflow of satisfaction with life.

Cáscares provides the perfect ratio of laid-back to cheerfully busy, with good food and interesting clientele, and despite its chic décor it is a firmly traditional Spanish cafetería that gracefully merges the modern with the classic without missing a beat. The mercifully high ceilings welcome the upward drift of cigarette smoke and persistent café chatter so that their presence merely flavors one’s sensory experience, rather than overwhelming it.

All of these things converge to form the perfect background atmosphere for my musings and, fuelled by the fantastic café con leche and the occasional delicious slice of chocolate cake, I always find myself pulling out my notebook to make note of the various rich details of Spanish life that I have spent so long observing and trying to absorb.

From what I can tell, “cáscares” comes from “cáscara,” which means shell or peel, although personally I like to think that it means “cocoon,” because that’s what it feels like: a warm safe space that, insulated with good vibes and nourished by good coffee, allows me to do some linguistic and cultural growth before reemerging into the real world again.

Part of this growth, I think, is to just sit for a while and enjoy. That is the most Spanish thing to do, after all. And when I finally pack up my stuff to leave, my waiter says “hasta luego” with a wave, because, needless to say, I will be back.

¡Más Fotos!

Here are pictures of Getafe (southern Madrid, where my university is), and getting there and back from Madrid. Also last weekend we went up north and visited the regions La Rioja (where the wine Rioja comes from) and País Vasco (Basque Country). The pictures are of Burgos (birthplace of the written Spanish language), Haro (where we visited a bodega and drank some good wine), San Sebastian (BEAUTIFUL), and Bilbao (mostly the Guggenheim, but gosh is that city beautiful too).

Grocery Shopping

So I’m in Madrid again, in my lovely little apartment near Plaza de España, feeling decidedly more Spanish than this time last semester. I’ve been spending a lot of time at the grocery store lately (seeing as I finally am able to cook my own food, and all). Ordinarily, I love grocery shopping. Back in the states I have been known to plan my day around going to Trader Joe’s to ensure that I have a large block of free time in which to put in my headphones and stroll around, taking as long as I please.

But here it is not so. The first time I went to my local Corte Inglés supermarket I was there for quite a while, but rather than relishing in the vast gastronomical landscape I felt a rather jarring sense of confusion. I wandered through the maze-like aisles, with my little basket-cart trailing obediently behind me, feeling disorientated by the seeming lack of organization (for instance, why are there two bread sections?).

I was intimidated by the produce section because I couldn’t pick my own fruit or vegetables but rather had to request them from the supermarket employee with the sterile-looking gloves and hair net – like a deli, but for bananas. I appreciate that this is to ensure that my vegetables remain uncontaminated by the germs from shoppers’ sticky fingers, but the prospect of trying to articulate my rather particular produce preferences to this formidable Spanish lady is so stressful that I have yet to buy a vegetable or fruit that does not come in a bag or box.

I nearly sprinted out of the aisle that was dedicated almost entirely to tuna – tuna in every possible form and every conceivable type of packaging (can, tin, jar, box, bag…). I hurried past boxes of tuna burgers (yes I am serious), tins of baby squid, canned lentils and chorizo, tomate frito (is that fried tomatoes? honestly, these Spaniards…), jars of pickled white asparagus, cans of mussel meat… until I emerged in the seafood section. Not being a huge fan of seafood, this was rather unfortunate. I peered through the glass at the whole shrimp with all their crumpled legs and eyes that look like little black peppercorns, and a large bulbous purple octopus – still in possession of all it’s tentacles and suckers – slouched in defeat on a scale, and watched a fishmonger slapping down enormous whole fish, fins and all, onto bed of ice – the sight and smell of which could make you forget that Madrid is neither a seaport nor part of the 19^th century.

Another sizable corner of the supermarket was dedicated to the Tienda de Jamón, where you could buy a whole leg of cured Iberian ham (hoof included) for 50 euro. I like ham, and Jamón Iberico is a particularly tasty variety that comes from black pigs who live in the southwest provinces of Spain and eat nothing but acorns, but I have to say it is a bit off-putting to see all these amputated crusty brown pig legs just hanging there in a grocery store (to be fair, it’s not very appetizing to see them all hanging in the window of a museo de jamón either).

Desperate for a bit of familiarity, I sought out the dairy section (it couldn’t be that different – everyone needs to refrigerate their yogurt), and aside from the fact that milk and eggs reside in separate, unrefrigerated aisles, it was a comforting sight. That is, until I went about trying to pick a sandwich cheese and realized that for whatever inexplicable and infuriating reason Spanish dairy producers can’t seem to be bothered to label their cheese – you know, like with a name. No, they just write “cheese” on it, say whether it is whole, semi-skimmed, or skim, and call it a day. After several frustrated minutes of trying to guess (based on texture, price, and ingredients) which package of sliced cheese was which, I gave up and just picked one at random. It turned out to be American cheese – without the American, of course.

Moving on down the aisles, I found myself in the row of “international” foods, with such exotic things as tortillas, salsa (very mild), and – holiest of holy – peanut butter. It was allotted only one row of one shelf, and came in a single variety (creamy salted), but I have never been so happy to see a jar of Skippy in my entire life.

In a country where eggs are treated as a meat and tuna is for all intents and purposes a vegetable, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that the supermercado is so, well… Spanish. Seeing how Spanish life is translated into its food makes me think about my beloved American grocery stores and what our large grocery carts, well-labeled cheese, germy vegetables and modestly packaged meats might say about us. On second thought, maybe I’d rather not think about that…

Pictures!

FINALLY, pictures from Santiago and Portugal, Toledo, Valencia, Segovia, Sevilla and Córdoba, Madrid, Granada, and Extremadura (Guadalupe, Cáceres, Mérida and Trujillo). I'm sorry it took me so long!

Also, yes, those are square watermelons.