My three-month sojourn in Spain has turned into five months (feels like a year), and now I’m preparing to close up shop and move to France for six weeks.  Je suis vraiment enthousiaste!

Every time I say I’m going to France, I think of the Coneheads!

As always, my life is a bit complicated.  I’m packing summer clothes, with a couple of sweaters and jackets, just in case, to wear in France; things I will leave here in the apartment’s storage closet – household goods and coats, robes, boots I only wear here; some winter clothes to take back to the US; and the clothes and things I don’t need for France but I definitely want to have when I get back to the states – I’m taking these things with me in case I have an opportunity to fly to the US from Paris.  This is bound to go perfectly, right?

I also have to try to clean and fix all the things I’ve broken or stained while I was here.  That is a challenge!

I’m going to pick up my new car next week.  France’s lease program of their cars (Peugeot, Renault, and Citroen) has a hard maximum of 175 days.  France is the only country that has this type of long-term lease available of brand new cars with total insurance coverage, no deductible.  It’s expensive, but less so than renting a car from a traditional car rental agency.  They deliver the cars to the Barcelona Airport.  So, I’m turning in the Peugeot for a Citroen.  I had a Renault last year and I wasn’t impressed, so we’ll see how the Citroen fares.  So far, Peugeot is my favorite – good acceleration (maybe too good, I got four tickets last year – by MAIL!) and most importantly, the GPS feature was easy to use.  The Audi I rented last year when the hoodlums broke the window of my Renault had a system that was impossible to intuit, and I couldn’t read the instructions, which were in German.  Helpful.

There are some things that I like to do that most people don’t.  One is grocery shopping  and another is moving.  I like looking at my things as I pack them away and then taking them out at the next destination and deciding where they should go.  I also like packing for trips which I’ve been known to do it months in advance!  As my friend Mario said, I’m a “monton de rara” – a mountain of weirdness.

One thing I am worried about now is that if I have to stay past September 20, I’ll be overstaying my 90-day tourist visa.  I’ve been told that it’s not terribly serious, but I really don’t like the idea of getting in trouble with the Spanish government.  It used to be run by Franco, and they still have the Guardia Civil!  If I’m not able to get out by the deadline, one solution would be to go to a non-EU country for 90 days before I return to Spain.  I thought of Andorra, which is not an EU country, but upon further research, that wouldn’t work because as it’s basically embedded between EU countries France and Spain, they don’t even maintain a border, so…nevermind.  And I’m not going to Morocco for 90 days!! I am seriously trying to get home, but I’m not willing to sacrifice the well being of my dogs.  And at this point, I’m in a much safer place.

I’m rambling…more next week.

 

 

 

 

I just watched an adorable seven year-old and her father on Facebook singing a song, “The Shallow,” from the Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga version of A Star is Born.  It was really touching and as I thought about my situation, I too feel like I’m far from the shallow now.

In  two weeks, I’ll be starting a new adventure in a different place… France!  I have to vacate my apartment as of July 17 and August is THE most expensive month for rents on the Costa Brava — I’m told four times the amount of other months.  I’ve decided to visit my friend in Rogny-les-Sept-Ecluses, about an hour and a half southeast of Paris.  It’s quiet and pastoral and so far virus-free.  As someone said to me — I’ll be able to practice my French, eat croissants, and enjoy good wine and good coffee AND have someone to talk to!  Sounds great to me.

I don’t know when the EU will open to Americans.  According to news reports, the list of “approved” countries will be reviewed bi-weekly.  I’ll be able to return to my apartment in Begur on September 1, so with any luck, I can enjoy a bit more time here in paradise, say goodbye to friends, and return to the US in advance of the second wave of disease!!  Ha ha.  That’s with luck.  We’ll see how it plays out.  You know what they say about the best laid plans…

The weirdest thing happened the other night.  I took the dogs out at about 11:00 for a final pee, just out in the yard (where they’re not allowed).  They were both on leashes and we came inside.  I was watching Call my Agent on the couch – great Netflix series in French with subtitles.  I noticed Cassie going out the door onto the balcony.  Then, maybe 15 or so minutes later, I decided to close the door to the balcony to keep mosquitos out.  I looked, didn’t see her, and figured she must be inside.  I looked everywhere and I called her and no answer.  She always comes right away – just in case I have a treat or food!  I went back out onto the balcony, but nothing.  I went to the door and looked outside and didn’t see her, so I did another recon of the apartment and balcony.  When I went back to the front door and looked out, there she was, and she came running in.  I KNOW I didn’t leave her out there, so she must have either jumped or fallen from the balcony!!  Part of the ground below the balcony is dirt, but part of it is stone.  See photo of offender on said balcony, post-escape attempt.

She’s lucky to be alive.  She was found on the streets of Midland as a stray eight years ago (she must have escaped from a previous owner because she was very domesticated and house-trained) and she was flown to Houston by the Dachshund Rescue group by helicopter!  She was picked up in Baytown and delivered to me in the Methodist Hospital parking garage.  Of course she immediately did her trick of standing on her hind legs and “waving” her paws for attention.  She succeeded in escaping several times from my mother’s backyard and running down busy streets before capture.  And of course, there was the chocolate bar incident.  She must have a guardian angel dog.

When the news came out this week that the EU would ban Americans coming to Europe this summer, I wrote to my landlady to update her.  She had seen the news.  She has been reassuring me all along that my staying longer than my original lease was OK, but now, she’s telling me something different.

I do not blame her.  After being cooped up in an apartment in Barcelona for months, they want to come to their beautiful summer home.  I get it.  However, this throws a kink into my plans.

Now I’m looking for another place to stay for August.  Nothing can compare to where I’ve been these past months, but for the next portion of my somewhat ill-fated adventure, I need a place to park myself until my son can come for me and the dogs.

I have a Skype meeting with an immigration lawyer in Barcelona on Tuesday to see if it is possible to extend my tourist visa and/or convert it into a resident’s visa.  Otherwise, I could be in hot water with the Spanish authorities at some point.

Everything is up in the air.  I had a meltdown the other night after I got the email from my landlady.  My neighbors came and brought me a bottle of wine and talked with me until I calmed down.

Thank God for those guys!

I’m reaching out to friends here and rental agencies to find a place.  Updates to come…

Wow – what a difference a week makes!  Oh my God, are they back!  There are strangers’ cars in my parking lot and dozens of motor boats, sailboats, and jet skis going by all day long.  Jet skis in Spanish are called water motorcycles.  Just like motorcycles, they make so much noise!  And taking a walk now, although still relaxing, means greeting a dozen or so fellow walkers instead of one or two.

They say we have to move forward, but do we?  Certainly, I don’t want people to die, but it was so much nicer here when everyone was confined in their places — the good old days of the Pandemic.  It’s not funny, but true.

You’ve probably seen the headlines:  EU May Ban Americans as Borders Reopen

I have purposefully remained apolitical in my posts, because I know some of my friends and readers have views different from mine.  I respect them and I do not wish to jeopardize those friendships.  And politics is not the point of my blog about my adventures here.  But I’m having a hard time right now not attributing my “stuck” situation directly to missteps by the US government.  I believe that if the virus had been taken more seriously sooner, if there had been a strict policy like the one in Spain which was national in scope, but which maintained some leniency based on regional differences in population, and if there had been a clear message of concrete steps to take, reasonable ones, to keep the population safe, it could have made a difference, and I would be coming home this summer.  I don’t know for certain that another administration would have handled the crisis more competently, but I strongly suspect it.  It’s not just the President, there’s more blame to spread around.  But I’m pissed.

I had to get that off my chest.

After reading the article on Wednesday about the EU, I did what I always do when stressed…I shopped online (at Anthropologie UK).  Ha ha.  And then, when I went out and bought a roasted chicken, I did something I never do, I added French fries!  That did the trick, for now…

Morning walk:

Back by popular demand…the story of how my family was separated boarding a train from Monaco to Rome.

On my family’s first trip to Europe, my mother had arranged for us to take a bus tour from Nice, France to Monaco, and rather than return to Nice with the tour group, we would exit the tour in Monaco and catch a train to Rome.  My mother had arranged everything and we had the train tickets in hand when we got off the bus at the train station.

My dad had one rule:  everyone must be able to carry his/her own suitcase (before rolling bags).  Our tickets were for a certain car of the train (say car 8, for instance).  When the train pulled into the station, we were lugging our suitcases down the platform towards our appointed car.  As this was our first train trip in Europe, my parents did not know that the train would only remain in the station for three (3!!) minutes.

As I was struggling with my suitcase, I looked up at a window of the train and there was a group of boys about my age (14 at the time) waving at me.  I was so excited and flattered!!  Imagine!!  But then, I realized that they were waving at me because the train was leaving the station!  It was so embarrassing.

My mother, my father, and my brother all started running and jumped onto the train.  I was running as best as I could with my suitcase, and all of a sudden one of my lime green papagallo flats came off, and I was down.  My father was standing at the door of the train, so he jumped off to help me.  My brother saw that my father jumped off, so he jumped off too.  My mother was about to jump, but some of the people on the train held her back because by then the train was going faster and she was wearing high heels (it was the mid-60’s!).  Helpful passengers on the train threw off all four pieces of our luggage.

My father was the loveliest, kindest man, but slightly incompetent in some of the ways of the world.  My mother had made all of the arrangements.  My mother knew words and phrases in several languages.  My mother was accustomed to wrangling children.

Fortunately, a Cook’s tours operator saw what had transpired and took pity on my father instructing him to get us into a cab and catch the train at the next stop.  I’d never seen my father so flummoxed.  His face was red and all the veins were standing out on his neck.  My brother, who was 10 at the time, was crying.  I found it all pretty amusing.

The Italian cabby took us on a wild ride on the narrow, curving, mountainous road that is probably a 6-lane highway now.  At a certain point, the cabby looked around at my father and said “pasaportes,” to which my father said “no pasaportes,” because my mother was carrying all four passports in her purse on the train.

The cabby threw his hands in the air and began yelling then muttering in Italian.  He took his foot off the gas.  What was the point in rushing?  The next stop of the train was in Italy, and the cabby said we wouldn’t be able to cross the border without passports.  Of course not!  But my father was in adrenaline-induced emergency mode and waved the cabby to continue and to hurry.

We arrived at the border crossing and my father got out of the cab to talk to the border patrol officer.  He told him in English, of course, what had occurred, and miraculously, they let us pass through the border into Italy!!  This would NEVER happen today and was pretty unbelievable even then.

So we caught the train, boarded the train, and ha ha! my mother had gotten off of the train in Menton, a stop in between Monaco and this stop at Ventimiglia.  Oh the Gods were laughing!  and I was laughing, but my brother was still crying!

Fortunately, my mother had prepared a type-written itinerary for the trip which included all of the details, including the name and address of our hotel in Rome where we arrived to have a day of pre-arranged sightseeing (now without my mother), and wait for her to catch up with us the next day.

In Rome, my dad had all four pieces of luggage, no passports, and no money.  We got by somehow.  My mother, who had gone back to the hotel we had just left in Nice, had all the passports, all the money, and no suitcase.  She did however have a lovely day on the beach in Nice all alone without children or husband.  I think a Frenchman even flirted with her!

My Mom flew to meet us in Rome the next day.

After our adventure, my dad made a new rule:  everyone must wear tie-up shoes.

 

 

 

 

I guess technically, I’m not in self-isolation any more.  We’re going into the final phase of of the de-escalation and the State of Alarm ends as of this coming Sunday.

It’s already starting – more cars, more people, movement.  Everyone who’s been in Begur these past three months is feeling wary and a little frightened.  I don’t think we’re frightened about the virus, which has declined steadily and consistently in Catalunya, but about sharing our precious, private paradise.  At times the isolation has made me feel sad or lonely, but it was also a beautiful blessing.  On to the next phase!

Regarding my return, no news is…no news.

News from the United States, however, seems grim.  From the very beginning of our confinement, this was my fear — things would improve in Spain and when I was ready to return to the US, it would be bad there.  Hmm.  Self-fulfilling prophesy?  Not really, but seems to be happening.

Still no word from the Spanish government on when US citizens may enter the country.

Addendum to Gift Horse/Trojan Horse in week 11.  I was moving the coffee maker on the counter to plug in a different appliance when I saw (without glasses) something orange and sparkly in the corner.  On closer look it was the top of the exploded sparkling wine bottle…, cork still in place.  Wow.

 

A lot of you know this story, and if so, you can tune out…

It all started when my father was a medical resident in Houston and he contracted tuberculosis, probably from a patient.  Back in the day, contracting tuberculosis meant a lot of bed rest.  My father was instructed by an occupational therapist to choose something he could study or do from his bed.  He had an interest in art – he painted a little – and somehow, someway, he became interested in the art of Francisco Goya, Spanish painter (1746 – 1828).

When I was 14, a wealthy aunt gave my parents a gift of some money to go to Europe so my father could see the paintings of Goya he’d always wanted to see in person.  My aunt was horrified that my parents planned to take me and my brother with them, but it was a fortuitous thing that changed my life.

I loved Europe immediately, everything about it, especially the boys who seemed more openly interested in me than any back home.  Maybe I’ll do another post on our dramatic family separation when we were boarding a train in Monaco bound for Rome.

My next year in school, 9th grade, was the year when we made our “four-year plans” and chose a major.  Sounds kind of ridiculous now that a 14-year old would have any idea what to choose for a major.   At that time, I looked back over my report cards, and although I always had A’s and B’s, the class in which I consistently made A’s, no B’s, was Spanish.  Voila, the deed was done.

At some point during high school I learned that colleges offer programs abroad for junior-year students.  I knew that was for me.  I could go back to Spain!  I went through the huge index book of US colleges and looked at only those with JYA programs.  Tulane seemed to fit the bill all the way around – in a city, not too far from Houston, but definitely far enough from home, and the drinking age was 18.  What’s not to like?

The year I spent in Madrid in college was, as we often sarcastically called it, “the most God damned wonderful experience” of my life.  We called it that because, although we had a ton of fun, there were challenges all along the way in being a young American in a foreign country where you didn’t know how to do anything.  Heck, we barely knew how to do anything in the US.  But, I knew when the school year was over that all I wanted to do was go back.

I finished college and took a job as a media buyer at McCann Erickson and saved money for a year and a half.  I had some savings too.  I talked my bestie, Ellen, into going with me.  Because I was very very afraid of flying at that time (I’m not much better now) and I’d heard about freighters carrying passengers to Europe, Ellen and I set sail for Italy, a 17-day sea voyage.  My $3,000 dollars bought me a round trip freighter ticket and provided enough living money for 10 months in Spain.  We lived in Fuengirola and became fast friends with the owners, cooks, and waiters at the O Mamma Mia Pizzeria, whom we met on our first night in town.  I’m still friends with a couple of them!  We all would go dancing at the disco when the Pizzeria closed around 1:00 a.m., dance till dawn, eat breakfast, sleep, sunbathe, then do it all again.

I returned to Spain when I was getting my Master’s in Spanish from the University of Houston.  It was only a six-week course in Madrid, but it gave me a “fix.”

Then, life happened – husband, job, home, children.  I never forgot about Spain – I talked about it pretty constantly to the annoyance of some – and listened to Spanish pop music in the car all the time, also to the annoyance of some.  And I made a few “vacation” trips back over the years.

During the trip to Spain in 2013, it hit me.  Contrary to what I’d always believed, I DID want to retire.  I wanted to retire and live in Spain.

I guess I’m still a little mixed up because I can’t quite bring myself to leave the US and all my special friends behind long-term.  So far, it’s working out that I have the best of both worlds.

And all because my dad got tuberculosis.  Ain’t life crazy?

I read an article published in the Daily Mail that Spain would be opening to Americans as of August 1, 2020.  It would be good news, except  I have not found any confirmation of that date by the US or Spanish Embassy websites and the airlines haven’t a clue.

The Spanish state of alarm will officially end on June 21, 2020.  On July 1, 2020, citizens of other EU countries will be allowed to enter Spain.  No mention of Americans.  Sanchez, the Prime Minister, did say Spain will only be open to tourists from “safe destinations… who don’t bring the Covid-19 virus with them to Spain and create a risk for the local population.”  He said Spain would be “working on safe origins and destinations…” I fear, with reason, that the US may be an un-safe origin, especially because there seems to be a massive disregard there for the use of masks and distancing, which has been well publicized abroad, and the number of cases is rising, ditto.  Because of this I don’t know if and when Americans will be allowed to come here, specifically someone to come here to accompany me and my precious pups home.

So, I’m just in the waiting mode and feeling a little down about it – the unknown end date.  If they just said August 1, September 1, or even October 1, I would know.  I guess we’re all in this state of not knowing, not understanding, unsure or what/who to believe.

I’m hopeful that when the state of alarm ends, or at least by July 1, the Spanish government will make some sort of announcement about the “other” tourists, the ones from the un-safe places.

Until then, carrying on with a smile enjoying my slice of paradise…

 

I’ve always loved good food and loved to eat, so it’s no surprise that I look forward to each meal more than ever – it’s satisfying, entertaining, challenging, delicious, and something to do!

At home in the US, I spent many if not most nights eating out with friends.  It was all about finding  great meals at exciting restaurants.  I’ve enjoyed cooking for myself these past months (to a point!) and I’ve made some really good meals, at least for me.  I’m sure some of you have made fancier gourmet meals.  Share them!!

Instead of just taking photos of my food at a restaurant, which I have been known to do when it’s exceptional, I’ve been taking photos of my home-cooked meals.   Self-indulging again, here’s a taste:

And then there are the wonderful things I ate here (pre-pandemic)!

 

YUM!  Let’s eat!