I can’t speak to the rest of Spain, or even to the rest of Catalunya, but here in Begur, cats are well looked after. Although not revered as in ancient Egypt, they seem to have a special place. I have never seen a stray dog anywhere around here, but there are feral cats. Calling them “feral” may be a bit harsh because they seem perfectly tame, they’re just homeless. My first clue was a cat stand I saw in Begur where food and water is left for them perched on a pedestal they can get to without having to worry about pesky land-bound animals. I’ve also seen dishes of food and water placed randomly about town on walls and in nooks of walls. Up the hill from where I live, a woman feeds the neighborhood cats. She wrote me an email last week asking me to drive slower by her house because of the cats. I can do that.

My yoga studio is cat heaven. There are four indoor/outdoor cats and 11 outdoor cats. The yoga maven is a very zen-like woman and kind and a cat lover, obviously. I asked what happens to the cats in the winter and she told me that she opens the basement and has boxes with blankets for them. They are beautiful cats and appear to be well fed and tended. I think she has as many or more cats at her home.

My dogs are born cat killers, or at least attempted cat killers. They’ve never captured one, though there have been close calls when we have visited friends with cats. When I go out of town, my American friend watches my dogs. He has six dogs, two cats, and a dove. The dogs are fine with these cats. I can’t understand it, except that his cats are large and seem to have a “go ahead, make my day…” attitude. Thank goodness they get along so I have a happy place to leave them when I go out of town! Here are the six dogs, plus my two, after a walk to the top of the tallest hill in town!!

We spent a lovely Thanksgiving together – a Catalán Thanksgiving – with paella and roast chickens (plus my sweet potatoes with marshmellows that were hard to find, and green bean casserole from scratch) and the dogs were absolutely loving the cats! And the day ended with another double rainbow! Living right, I guess.

Why in the world do they have Black Friday here? They don’t have Thanksgiving! And it’s not a holiday day, everyone is at work as usual. But sure enough, they do and everything is on sale. They call it “Black Friday,” not “Viernes Negro.” They also sort of have Halloween, which I haven’t totally figured out. They have costumes, but I don’t think they trick or treat. It’s weird and as far as I can tell totally commercially motivated, based on not local, but American custom.

There are some things I can’t find in the grocery store, and I have a huge, pretty sophisticated grocery store nearby. They don’t have pickle relish, or baking soda, or sour cream, or corn starch, and now I’ve just discovered they don’t have peppermints. I can find a few other types of hard candies, but not many, and not peppermints. Because of Amazon, I can find some of these things, but it seems silly to have peppermints delivered to my house! Plus, there are none on Spanish Amazon, a $45 bag on French Amazon, and the reasonably priced one on UK Amazon will charge double because of the shipping (damn Brexit!). Oh well. There’s also no cream of mushroom soup. Too bad! I’m going to make a “modern” green bean casserole anyway.

If I knew how to do photoshop, I’d crop out my neck, but I do love this picture of me and my neighbor’s dog, Janis, watching Succession together. My favorite dog after mine, of course. The flowers are on the table, not coming out of my hair, and yes, I’m drinking WHITE!

I just saw a HUGE pod of dolphins swimming south, I suppose migrating or following prey. They weren’t close in enough to video. They were barely breaking the surface, as if they were really booking it!

I finally got the ROKU to work on the TV. I like to have the captions on all the time. I got used to them when watching with my mother and I find it helps me fill in the blanks if I miss what someone says. BUT, the caption choices on my ROKU (I hope I can figure out how to fix this) are: Swedish, Norweigen, Danish, Finnish, or Spanish! Did I buy the Scandanavian ROKU version?? I’m going to use Spanish. Although it’s fine when the words are in Spanish, it’s confusing with the words in English. It’s always something!

I really think I could launch a new career as a menu translator. I think that most restaurants rely on Google Translate and it’s not a good result. When I go to a restaurant here they sometimes ask what language menu I would like. I always say English and Spanish because while I know a lot of Spanish foods, I don’t know all. But if I get only the English menu, I’m really lost.

Recently, I looked up the menu of a restaurant recommended by a friend. Here are a few of the specialties (as listed on the English version of the menu):

• OLD COW RIB
• OLD COW SIRLOIN STEAK
• ENTRECOT OLD COW IN THE TERRACOTA OVEN

I think maybe they would like to say “aged beef.” Old cow is not a terribly appetizing menu item. I’m also not sure what they mean by another item, “LOBSTER TO THE SIRLOIN.”

Many restaurants calls the menu “the letter” in English. I guess people can figure it out, but wouldn’t it just be clearer to put “the menu”? Many of the mis-translations can be figured out, but they’re so funny. I don’t understand why they don’t go the extra mile to have a native speaker give it a once-over. Other examples: tuny fish (I’ve seen this one a lot), mixed fish frying, fried laminated artichokes, mushroom bikini (a bikini is a grilled sandwich, why not say sandwich?), egg poché of farmers. Some are just spelling errors: triple coocked potatoes. There are so many more. I’m going to start a list.

Random stuff from this week:

The mean old woman who works at the bookstore where they oddly take in laundry and alterations, was actually nice to me and fixed the zipper on my heavy coat, saving me time and money. I’d taken it there to have it sent off, but she repaired it for me with some needle-nosed pliers while I waited.

The wind is pretty constant, but not terrible. There have only been a few flying-nun days so far when the furniture moved across the balcony. One day, I was wearing some dangly earrings while I walked the dogs and it honestly felt like the wind was going to blow them out of my ears!

Last week, I got my Foreigner Identification Card without having to drive to a small town in the mountains! I kept checking the official website for appointments, and a town near to me finally popped up. The first time I got my residency card in 2018, it took me three trips to get it right, but this time, voila. I’m legal.

I wondered if any new potato chip varieties had come out since my last taste test and I found a few. I need to have another American here to help me judge. Maybe in the future.

Have a great week!

All of a sudden, the wind swept in and the temperature dropped and we’re knee deep in winter. I’m cold. The dogs are cold. There’s no central heat, just electric radiators and they don’t do a very good job. I’ve ordered an electric blanket and I plan to buy another electric radiator. I’m worried about the cost. The landlords pay all bills, so I may have to supplement if I crank it up to Texas toast temperature!

I was thinking recently about how I now feel at home enough to break traffic rules – small ones like turning left when there’s no left turn (but when no one is looking), or illegal u-turns. Today, I parked in a spot that requires payment. I didn’t realize it (really), but I was just running in and out of a store, so I probably wouldn’t have paid regardless. When I got back to my car moments later, there she was, the meter maid. I told her I didn’t know I was supposed to pay. Is that what the blue lines mean? Of course. She told me that blue lines mean the same thing in Spain as in France. Funny that people assume that I’m French, sometimes even without seeing my car with French plates. France has a program for long-term car rental that is very easy and appealing to me – no fuss, for a fee everything is covered. You hit the wall in a parking garage (twice!) – they just shrug their shoulders. Perfect. Once, at the car wash in 2019, the owner asked me how I felt about the fire at Notre Dame. I told him I thought it was very sad, but “I’m not French! Just the car!”

I explained to the meter lady that I wasn’t French, I was American. She said they must have blue lines in America, but I said that we do not. Thankfully, she let me go with a warning. Two years ago, I received four speeding tickets in the mail. Surprise! They actually went to my daughter’s house in NYC because that was my address of record at the time. Originally 100 euros each (!), they were reduced by half, for some unknown reason, so I only had to pay 200 euros total. I’ve never seen a cop with anyone pulled over here. I think it’s all done by radar and mail. I wasn’t sure how to pay the tickets, but a friend clued me in — at the bank! You can pay for traffic tickets and a lot of administrative things like property taxes at the ATM. Wow!

My car is super cool.

The weather has been somewhat shitty recently – extremely windy and overcast. the coming week looks to be more of the same, but with rain. Yeah. But then again, the end of the day brought this…

Ahhhh.

After arriving in Begur in 2018, I joined a class to learn Catalán. It was a twice-a-week class that was free and pretty casual and unstructured. The other students were from France, Germany, several Latin American countries, Morocco, and Spain. Over the course of the year, I was out of town a lot with visitors from the States, so I attended as I could. I met some other expats in the class and made a few friends. The teacher was kind and funny and we all loved her. But in the class…I only learned basic vocabulary. Well, you have to start somewhere, but after eight months of classes, I still could not construct a sentence. No verbs were involved and verbs are essential!

Last year, classes were not offered during the pandemic, but when I got back to Galveston, I found a Catalán teacher online and I began taking classes two days a week for an hour each day. My teacher is warm and charming and a very good teacher. I can now make sentences in Catalán!! I know verbs!

This week, my teacher arranged a conversation over coffee (well, they had coffee — it was morning in America, but happy hour for me) with another of her Catalán students. This young man is hoping to attend the University of Barcelona next fall. He’s very intelligent and especially gifted in languages. He is also studying Russian and Thai at the same time as he’s studying Catalán!! My teacher only has one other student of Catalán, but that student was not invited to the coffee klatsch because my teacher said that student was not on my “level.” Not on my level??? What a joke. The young man did know some things I did not in Catalán, but at the same time, I knew some things he did not! It was such fun.

Language to me is everything. Connection with others is what it’s all about. And I love having those connections with people from another culture. It’s my favorite thing. The first time I made a joke in Spanish and a Spaniard laughed, I felt like I had won an Academy Award!

I’m still hoping to brush up on my French a little. I may spend a few days there over Christmas, and again next summer. But Catalán is the priority right now. It’s important to me to pay respect to the people who live here to try to speak to them in their native language, the language that represents this place. It happens everywhere, of course…immigrants come to a country for whatever reason, but never assimilate, never learn the language or the customs. I don’t understand that. I’m going to try…

PS Cassie has always been my “bad” dog – eating things she shouldn’t, but last night I found a dead bird on my bed! Cam must have carried it in inside of his mouth undetected. Nothing to see here! Yuck.

PSS Happy Halloween!! Couldn’t help but share my adorable grandchild.

As if jumping through hoops and living in suspense for months wasn’t enough to get my long-term visa issued by the Spanish Consulate (finally!), I also have to obtain a foreigner’s identity card. To do this, I have to register with the City Hall in my town to get a stamped certificate saying I live here, and then take that certificate, plus passport photos, my health insurance, and multiple forms to a police station in my province to apply for the ID card. When I filled out the online form to get an assigned appointment time, it offered me the choice of two offices — one two hours away in a small town in the mountains! and the other three hours away. Really?? I hope I can figure this out and not have to drive so far, because inevitably, I will be missing some piece of information and will have to return on another four or six hour trip! And the first available appointment in the closer office is in December – so a pleasant jaunt in the mountains in the snow! Yippee. Maybe twice.

Speaking of time, when I turned on my dishwasher for the first time, the panel lit up in yellow, saying “3:30.” I thought that meant the time, but it meant the cycle would take three hours and thirty minutes! Longer than the two hour and thirty minute cycle for clothes! Jeez. And the coffee machine! I’ve mangled so many of the capsules. I keep thinking I’ve gotten it figured out and then I screw up another one. I’m just not good with appliances. Or they’re not good with me!!

This country is endlessly fascinating to me. Today I saw an article about an annual event (now largely symbolic) when shepherds lead their flocks of thousands of sheep through the middle of Madrid. Imagine being a tourist heading to the Prado for an afternoon visit, turning a corner and seeing this! Baaa!

There are various ways to reach me. I still have access to my text messages when I am in my apartment or somewhere with wifi. But the best way to contact me is through WhatsApp on my Spanish number. +34 666 379 917. Obviously, also email, sw6252@gmail.com, and my mailing address is: Carrer Sa Nau Perduda, Apartado Correos 34, Begur, Girona, 17255, Spain.

The mornings here are still impressively beautiful and the nights are still sparkly… Stay in touch !

The first time, I spent 10 months in Begur, and it was a delight and full of advanture….

The second time, I spent 8 months in Begur, and it was interesting… you know, the Pandemic, getting stuck with the dogs, etc.

What will the third time in Begur be like?

I never thought it would be a full year between the time I left Spain in October 2020 and I returned here to Begur, but COVID restrictions/vaccinations, a beautiful new grandson, and getting my visa from the Spanish Consulate delayed my departure.

Getting here was not easy! Although I started the process of gathering the paperwork for my long-term visa application in April, and submitted it to the Consulate in early July, I was told that my FBI background check authenticated by the US State Department was too old. Ay caramba! The rules are complicated and rigid! That meant I had to start over and wait…and wait…and wait…. All of my correspondence with the Consulate stated plainly that my plane ticket was for October 1 and the lease for my apartment, the lease for my car, my health insurance all started effective October 1. I pleaded for information, but the Consulate’s website materials all plainly announce that they will give NO information about visa status by phone or email. And there is no entry into the building without an appointment.

On September 29, around 1:00 p.m., I broke down. I cried. Until then, I had held out hope. I’m an optimistic person and I just hoped and hoped. But at that late hour, I decided that I needed to face facts. Plans would need to be changed. I started to talk myself into acceptance, and that maybe some good things could come out of the delay. Maybe I’d lose the five pounds I’d gained in New York waiting for my grandson to be born! Then, at almost 4:00 p.m., less than 48 hours until flight time, the Consulate called me and asked if I could come to their offices the next day at 9:00 a.m. to pick up my visa. What a surprise! That’s an understatement. I had to re-adjust my re-adjusted thinking and do a million things to get ready to leave!! I was more-or-less packed, but there were lots of details to attend to.

But, we made it – two dogs, me, and my charming and competent dog mule, Melissa.

After a brief stopover in Paris and Rogny-les-Sept-Ecluses to see my friends from last summer, I’m finally here in Begur. It’s beautiful, it’s familiar, and it’s my home for the next 9 months.

My Catalan teacher asked me what I was most looking forward to when I arrived. Making contact with my friends here was number one, of course, but second on the list was to eat some good food, and I have!!

I can’t wait to have more to report and I hope it will be more exciting than Pandemic Week 14!!

I’ve really missed writing my blog entries so much!

Cod with aioli, honey and tomato; artichoke with ham; remains of Catalan paella; anchovies in vinegar with olives!!!

Benvinguts! Welcome back!!

Even though I don’t really want to leave Spain, I do love to pack. I love to organize my things and I pack way in advance, and often unpack and repack multiple times. In advance of travel, I packed a baggie full of enough dry dog food for a couple of days that I could keep in my carry-on bag to be sure I had access to it wherever I was staying along the way. Done. Then I found the ripped up baggie that the food had been in. Cassie had found it in the carry-on and of course eaten it all. So, the next day, I filled another baggie with dry dog food and I put it in the zippered compartment of my carry-on. No outsmarting Cassie!! She unzipped the pocket, extracted the baggie and ate it all. Again. Before I started keeping the door shut to the room where I was staging the packing, she also ate a carton of Knorr beurre blanc sauce. I’d bought it in France and I was really excited to take it home to try it on some Texas Gulf Coast fish! She got the carton totally out of the plastic baggie and ate all of the liquid sauce out of the carton without leaving one drop in the carton and without spilling any inside the suitcase. I think she’s smarter than I am. She is the worst!

I bought a bag of the hot dog potato chips. Really not bad. I could definitely taste the mustard and ketchup as shown in the picture. Also, the flavor of hot dog really came through. I wonder how they do that…I hate to think. I noticed there’s a hot dog in the picture with lettuce on it. Novel.

For good measure, I also tried another new flavor. I don’t know how they keep coming up with so many delicious (tongue-in-cheek) flavors. This one is chorizo AND fried egg. They were pretty gross. My taste buds may not be the most refined, but I couldn’t taste the egg, chorizo yes, unfortunately.

And for your amusement…

I feel totally ridiculous in this get-up (and WAY TOO blond!), but prepared for travel…

This morning I was foolishly feeling confident about getting everything done before leaving when the zipper on one of my suitcases broke. It may have had something to do with being overstuffed, but also it is a bad zipper in a cheap suitcase from the China store. I had to go get another one.

So this is my farewell blog post for a while. This experience couldn’t have been more different from last year when I had 30 visitors and was constantly traveling. It’s been eye-opening in ways. I’m sure you’ve all had some epiphanies. Leaving is sadder this time because I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back due to the virus/border closings/unwanted American passports.

What I do know is that I’m very lucky to have found this corner of Spanish paradise and wonderful friends who will be here for me whenever I can return. Love you all! Un peto.

My whole visit here and uncertain return has hinged on bringing my dogs home safely. Finally, after finding a traveling companion, I thought all was in order. But, ha ha! No! Delta re-routed me from Barcelona through Paris to NYC after cancelling my non-stop flight. That would have been bad enough, but the flight from Barcelona to Paris was scheduled to leave at 6:15 a.m. I’m just not going to do it. After a couple of hours, literally, on the phone with Delta, I’m leaving Barcelona a day earlier, spending the night near Charles DeGaulle, and arriving JFK on my scheduled date of October 11. This whole process is stressful for me because the airlines are in complete control and at any moment they could cancel the flight or say, sorry, the dog carriers are one inch too long, or there´s some detail I missed in the paperwork. It’s humbling and unsettling.

On a lighter note, when I first got back to Begur and saw the balcony at my new apartment, I was THRILLED. Because it’s on the second floor, there’s no roof above me, just sky, and because I’m on the north end, there’s nothing blocking my view of the mountains (where snow fell this week). I really thought I’d hit the jackpot!

THEN, the wind came. I think it was only about 35 mph, but that was sustained for hours and I think there were higher gusts. The table, which is fairly heavy, was moving and the chairs were skating. A couple of the shutters are broken, so I had to tie one to the radiator in my bedroom to keep it from banging open and closed. The dogs were scared and so was I! Maybe if I come back here, the apartment with the balcony with the lovely view of the sea, and a roof and wall will be my pick!

Answering my Spanish telephone has always been a bit challenging. It’s usually someone I don’t know and who doesn’t know I’m not a native speaker and they just start rattling in Spanish and I have to try to grab some key words so I can figure out who it is and what they want. Today I got a call and I swear I thought she said “I’m calling from the Department of Alcohol”! I thought WTF? How do they know? Turns out it was Vodafone my mobile phone carrier. I don’t know how I got it that wrong, but I was greatly relieved for once that it was a solicitation call!

I guess it’s come down to this — I have to admit that I’m a ditz; I can be flaky.

First, whe I was leaving France for Spain, I planned to stop and spend the night halfway because I don’t enjoy long car trips. I made a reservation at an inexpensive European chain hotel in Clermont-Ferrand. I’d driven about 2.5 hours, and I was almost there, when I got a call from Susan that I’d left both of my computers, tablet, and some important papers that were all in the same bag. I had to think fast. I knew in theory that Susan could pack it all up and send it to me, but it would take time and effort, and although the risk was low, there was some risk. So…I turned around, drove back to Rogny, and spent another night. I had to drive all 10 hours the next day, damn it.

Then, first day back in Begur, I walked out of my apartment and left the keys inside. The door locks automatically. Shit. Xavi, my neighbor, said he knew a woman who knew a woman who cleaned apartments there who certainly would have a key. Another neighbor said the same thing. He knew a woman who knew a woman who worked for a company that cleans apartments. After more than a few phone calls, including Xavi calling his mother, we hit a dead end. Both women worked for different companies, and neither was the one that cleans my apartment. Then Xavi remembered that another neighbor had a ladder. That guy was having a soccer lesson or something, but when finally reached by phone, he didn’t have a ladder. Finally, Xavi remembered that the neighbor with no ladder had a key to the upstairs apartment two doors down from mine. So, Xavi climbed over a couple of walls and then the balustrade to let me in.

He’s such a nice guy that it was a terrible shame when two days later I did it again. At least then we knew the plan, but the guy with the key was out of town, so he had to call and get the code for the alarm. Ay ay ay. I had two extra keys made. One is in my car, and Xavi has the other, just for good measure.

The next night my doorbell rang at about midnight! It was a guy who lives across the street. I’d seen him walking with his golden retriever sometimes. He’d locked himself out of his apartment and needed to call a locksmith. Unlike me, he hadn’t left windows open. I took him to Xavi, who I knew would know what to do.

That’s all the stupid stuff I’ve done just in one week’s time!

The most exciting thing that’s happened this week is that I have conquered the garbage situation. When I was here last year, my landlady told me there was no garbage pickup at the apartments. So, garbage became my hobby. It took a lot of time. They are very serious about recycling here and there are five categories of garbage: glass, plastic, paper, food/organic, the “rest.” So, I had to keep five separate containers for the garbage and then haul it all to the recycling bins by car. Now, the town has expanded pickup to the environs of Begur including where I live. I was very confused about the pickup days. The instructions on the refrigerator magnet in English, Spanish, French, and Catalan explain that garbage is picked up FIVE days a week!! Can you believe it? I think some places in the states have pickup once a week or less. But the confusing part to me is that the days listed are for the putting out of the trash, not the picking up of the trash. So when it says “Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday,” it really means “Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Monday.” I couldn’t get that to compute at first, but now I’m chugging along…Yeah!

Today at the grocery store I was startled to see there is a new flavor of potato chip, or at least I missed it last time around…

And after a nasty morning storm, this happened. I love the aquamarine…