The local weather people were finally right -- today started off dark and wet, rain coming down like it meant business. In this morning's classes, we talked about street language -- meaning foul language -– and Andres, our instructor, used the rain to illustrate a common Spanish expression. "Una persona podría decir, '¡Que día precioso!'", he said. "Y otra persona podria decir, '¡Anda! ¡Es una mierda!'" (One person might say, 'What a beautiful day!' and another might say, "Get out, it sucks!") The fact is that the weather here is generally so moderate and user-friendly that cold, rainy conditions produce a whole lot of complaining. Last winter was far wetter than normal, with stretches of time between October and February when the city felt and looked like London –- chilly, damp, gray. On the other hand, the abundant rainfall filled up the reservoirs.
This year the water supply is down sharply. It may not be a problem -– much of Spain is dry and accustomed to being so. But for someone like me -- coming from the northeast U.S., where normal rainfall is reliably abundant -- it's a striking contrast.
Went to the gym in the afternoon, during my two hours inside the clouds began breaking up. By the time I emerged from the Metro at Alonso Martinez on my way home, the sun shone strongly, the sky looked like the kind I've often seen in England after rainstorms –- low-slung clouds moving rapidly across, alternating strong, diffuse sunlight with ragged patches of gray. Dramatic. Nice.
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Noticed recently:
1) A street-level tienda next to the building that houses my current language school, a kind of combo eating joint/carnecería (butcher's shop) called El Paraiso del Jamón –- The Ham Paradise.
The Ham Paradise.
The front window: a comprehensive display of ham and pork products, surrounding a small display of bocadillos -– sandwiches on baguettes. Inside, the decor mostly consists of rows of pigs' haunches hung neatly from the ceiling. When I say a pig's haunch, I mean an entire leg, intact, from the little pig's foot right up to the hip bone, heavily waxed to guarantee long, long preservation. For all I know, they may have the shelf-life of twinkies, which is to say decades and decades -– centuries, maybe.
Hmmm. I'll have to quiz a Spaniard or two about that.
This is what I see just before I enter go inside to classes just before 9 a.m.: the Ham Paradise. So far I haven't been able to get up the nerve to go in there for food/drink. Might be perfectly respectable fare, but so far I haven't been able to actually make that leap of faith.
2) At the gym: a guy who -– well, how to describe him? He's not bulky -- he's actually quite slender for his height (a few inches taller than myself). But he works out in dramatic fashion, making excessive loud, masculine noise, acting very intense. He has a dark Spanish look and it would all be a moderately impressive display if it weren't for the fact that the guy smells like a roomful of unwashed bears after a long, hard winter. The word pungent hardly comes close, and it seems to extend out from him for a good four or five meters in every direction, like a cloud of toxic gas.
Don't know if he's aromatic outside of the gym. I saw him leave today in a business suit, looking entirely presentable, but wasn't close enough to get a whiff of his post-workout bouquet.