I am a little bit beside myself. I’m pretty certain the Russian is gone. If you haven’t previously read about my Russian, see Suspicious Minds…
What am I going to do now? Who am I going to watch, track, monitor, report on? There was a young couple in his place recently who had a car with French plates, but they’re gone now. In the past, the cars have come and gone and whatever people may have been in the house besides the Russian himself have kept a very low profile. The presumed French people were walking around the neighbourhood, not stealthily.The same bicycles are in the garage, but I suppose they could belong to the actual owner, if not the Russian, or maybe he just left them behind. Or maybe he’s coming back — but it’s been over a month.
It is interesting to me that both the Russian and his German neighbor next door left the area during the two and a half months I was in the States this past summer. I wonder if they realized I was getting too close. I guess I’ll never know uness his photo ends up on the front page of some newspaper. Damn. I feel like I’ve lost some of my raison d’être!! I rather fancied being a modern-day female Sherlock Holmes. Maybe it would be more accurate to aspire to be Jason Bourne or Jack Ryan, famous spy hunters!
One of the few con’s of living here is that I don’t have a clothes dryer. Many, if not most, people do not. It simply uses too much electricity and is expensive, so my landlords have not installed one. I don’t know where they could put it anyway as the washing machine takes up the whole closet where it resides. So I hope for sunny days!! The sun works well for clothes-drying in full summer. They dry pretty quickly and fully then, but the rest of the time it’s a challenge. When the sun is out on my balcony, I put them out on a rack. They start getting dry but if I leave them too long and the humidity rolls in, they get wetter again. Then I have to move the rack indoors and hope they will dry out more inside before I put them back out in the sunshine the next day. Then it happens again. All of my clothes these days are damp. I sometimes resort to putting them piece by piece on the radiator. This is probably dangerous and not the radiator’s best use, but radiator drying is all I can do unless I want to cart everything to the washateria. At least now there is a washateria in Begur! It’s actually very nice with large, efficient machines. Before it came to town, I had to drive 30 minutes to get to a washateria. It’s the small things!
Recently, my Catalan coffee buddy told me about a nearby festival that sounded pretty fascinating, La Carbonera. The people in the town of Forallac, every autumn go to the woods and assemble large mounds of wood and cover them with dirt. They set the logs on fire and allow the mounds to burn for two weeks under the dirt to create coal, in the very old-fashioned way. My friend told me that people go to observe the ritual and have picnics and camp and participate in the project. There are sooo many local festivals and customs. It fascinates me. I wish I had time to know them all!
I jumped out of bed for a couple of really good sunrises last week:
Susie's Senior Year Abroad 
Hope alls well with you? As a newcomer to your fab blogs – I can’t find the reference to The Russian – can you repost it or send it direct Susan ?
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Hey Eileen! Thanks. All is well except one of my dogs was recently diagnosed with cancer, as you may have read.
I’ve written about the Russian in a number of blogs, but I will send you the original/main one. Cheers!
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Here is a link: https://susiessenioryearabroad.blog/?p=3604
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Spookily the pages ‘can’t be found or link is broken’ 🤔
Eileen
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Hmmm. Let me see.
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