5/4/2021: Please see the unhappy update at post end. I’ll update again if I learn more. 5/27/2021: I have an appointment! Please see: https://transitophile.com/chango/covid-19-vaccine-for-expats-in-madrid/ I write to share the little I know. Or think I know. Will your embassy help? Mine won’t. Neither will the UK, Australia or New Zealand embassies, if it’s any consolation.…
14 Spanish Expressions That I Wish I’d Known …
… before climbing aboard my L.A.-to-Madrid one way flight in 2016. Fourteen out of many, many more. I launched my personal vocabulary list in my Tracy hotel room on the day I learned that I’d qualified for a Spain visa. The list is now seventy-two pages long, regularly updated, includes about 3,500 entries. Of those…
Europe’s Many Lingoes
“My God, these people are speaking Gallego!” These were the thoughts that ran through this not-entirely-acculturated Yankee’s noggin while waiting my turn at the Día Basquiños supermarket in Santiago de Compostela. I hadn’t eaten since morning, had wandered far from the tourist quarter in search of a vendor that would sell staples to lug back…
Madrid Mid-Pandemic
Ironically, the Madrid Metro I ride during the pandemic is the best I have used since my move here in 2016. Some travelers fear the subway now, have sought alternatives. Public transit ridership in Spain fell forty percent this summer; sales of polluting old cars rose. I reap a dividend: the commuter now gridlocked on…
South Coast: Spain Covid Road Trip #3
Three days, 9/29 – 10/1, from Madrid to Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz, Marbella, Almería, Cartagena, Alicante, Valencia, then back to Madrid. All behind the wheel of a rental car. “But why didn’t you take the AVE train for part of the trip?” Spaniards may wonder. “It goes to Sevilla and Valencia. 300 km/h!” Good…
International Online Language Exchange
Thanks to Covid-19, the in-person language exchange I last hosted at Madrid’s VIPs Velásquez has become a not-in-person international event online, with regular log-ins from three continents. Every weekend I greet familiar faces signing in from Madrid, Barcelona, London, Toronto, New York, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Houston, Chicago, Mexico City, Los Angeles. One faithful user joins…
Picos & North Coast: Spain Covid Road Trip #2
Covid-19 has now killed more than thirty-one thousand in Spain and nearly a million worldwide. Borders have closed; I can still travel freely to some countries, but would have to navigate various hurdles to get into others, and see no guarantee that the number and nature of these hurdles couldn’t change before trip day. It’s…
Extremadura: Spain Covid Road Trip #1
Remote, poor, sparsely-populated Extremadura is the unrespected Rodney Dangerfield of Spain tourist destinations. It didn’t make Planetware’s top fifteen list for the country, or, for that matter, U.S. News’ top twenty. Rick Steves’ Spain ‘at a glance’ map represents the autonomous community’s 41,000+ square kilometers as a big blank area between Portugal and Toledo. Transit…
Spanish Loanwords: My Nominations
What follows is an incomplete list of Spanish words and sayings that might rate utterance by English speakers. The German weltschmerz, zeitgeist and schadenfreude get occasional play in the U.S. media because no English words so ably cover the same turf. Why not pagafantas and hombretón? I have discussed all candidates below with Spain born-and-raiseds,…
Madrid Quarantine
Once a week I shop. This is the only time I leave the building during the coronavirus quarantine in Madrid, practically the only time I leave my apartment. If I have to tote trash and recycling to the bins by the stairs I hold my breath until I’m back in the apartment with the door…