Tuesday 28 October 2008

Weird Things About Spain

Th word "weird" has many synonyms: "strange", "different", "rare", "odd"... although something is weird, it does not mean it is bad or wrong, just different. I have been living in Spain for a few months now, and am starting to get a fuller picture of things...

1) Supermarkets. I might be spoilt, but somehow it feels strange that the main supermarkets have only one kind of white rice (and you can keep dreaming about wild race, for instance), all the fruits are packed in three layers of plastic and they are quite miraculous, too... you can keep your veggies in the fridge for three weeks and they won't get bad. The girls working for the said companies, look like they have been playing with mummy's make-up box.

2) The news. Yesterday we were watching the news for about half an hour. We heard about all sorts of murders, killings, rapes, gang fights and alike that have occurred in Spain. Every clip also featured a hysterical and crying neighbour (or even better, a relative) who just couldn't understand what had happened. The journalists were using very strong adjectives when describing people, crimes, events... something that would never happen in Finland where one tends to stick to the facts and avoid adjectives such as "crazy", "blood-thirsty", "horrible"...
The best bit was the part of the news which dealed with international events; a street fight in Peru and the world's biggest man getting married. That's it. Compared to Spain, the world is a very uneventful place.

3) if you ask someone to speak slower, they start screaming instead. And talking faster.

4) they swear on television.


... to be continued.

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