WTF Moments

by Mandy Weger on October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween everyone! Since Mike has today and tomorrow off of work (tomorrow is All Saints Day here in Spain), we’ve decided to take a short road trip to Santiago today, which is a Holy city about an hour away. I’m hoping that somewhere along the way, I’ll be able to find my favorite Halloween candy-Reese’s Cups!

To celebrate this holiday, I’ve compiled a list of strange, WTF moments we’ve had here so far. I’m sure this list will keep growing and growing!

  • People here do not use clothes driers. It is the wettest area in Spain, it’s rained about half of the time we’ve been here, and people still just hang their clothes outside. It is very, very rare for someone to own a drier. We bought one within our first week here because seriously?? I don’t want to wait three days for my jeans to dry inside.
  • People don’t start to eat dinner here until about 10pm. We arrived at a restaurant a little after 8 oclock, only to find the lights were still out and the heat wasn’t turned on. We were the only ones at the restaurant until about 10 o’clock. We were about ready for bed at that point.
  • When people realize we don’t speak Spanish, instead of speaking slowly and using large gestures like we Americans do with foreigners, they tend to speed up their speech and speak even more to us.
  • Our neighbors have seven dogs, at least 4 cats, three chickens and a rooster. Spaying and neutering is a foreign concept here. Everything stays outside 24/7 and they’re all very loud animals!
  • Speaking of loud animals, dogs here are all outside creatures and are allowed to bark all day and all night long without any “hushing” from their owners. Inconceivably annoying.
  • A woman at the market was annoyed with us for not being able to speak Spanish. So she ripped us off on the eggs we bought from her–she charged us 5 Euros for a dozen and when we took the eggs home, I saw that half of them were obviously laid by a very young chicken since they are wrinkly, misshapen, and the eggs don’t separate easily from the shells. Argh, I hate being ripped off! Egg lady lost a customer.
  • Chocolate chips don’t exist here. Holy. Crap.
  • Fresh milk is in the minority-most stores carry UHT milk, which isn’t refrigerated and can be left on the shelves for months. We haven’t tried it yet- we just keep buying out every store’s meager supply of fresh 1% milk (skim doesn’t exist here either).
  • M&M’s taste different, as do Oreo’s and Honey Nut Cheerios and everything else because they’re manufactured by different companies over here.
  • Waitresses do not survey any of their tables to see if someone needs something else. They’ve even skipped over seeing us as we’re waving our hands and speaking to them from three feet away.
  • Nutella is even more amazing than I remember it being. I hope I’m never able to read the nutritional label.

While I’m willing to accept many of these things, I simply cannot understand how a human being can live without chocolate chips. What does one snack on casually when craving some chocolate? That jar of Nutella better watch out.

Hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Halloween!

What’s the craziest WTF Moment you’ve had when traveling?

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  • http://twitter.com/loverenovations Amanda

    Um, don’t think I could survive without chocolate chips. Seriously. That would be a large crisis in our family! :)

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  • http://opinionationblog.blogspot.com Grace

    I have never been able  to find Reese’s anything outside  of the US (I think most foreigners feel about peanut butter the way I do about vegemite), so if you succeed, I will be impressed! 

    I  feel you on the clothes driers:  we didn’t have one in Shanghai (which is incredibly humid) and so  basically I gave up wearing jeans because they would just start smelling kind of moldy by the time they dried. I guess Americans are considerably richer than the Spanish so we have more appliances.

    So interesting to  hear about your impressions so far!

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    Mandy Reply:
    October 31st, 2011 at 8:18 pm

    Haha, yeah, I can’t find Reese’s anywhere! I’ll have to make my own :)

    When we were looking at driers though, they really weren’t too expensive-ours was about 300 Euro, which I don’t think is a bad investment for something that’s a weekly necessity!

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    Jen Reply:
    November 29th, 2011 at 4:41 pm

    I think it’s more about energy usage and space than cost. At least in Germany that’s the impression I get. I know one friend who has one but she lives in a house not an apartment.

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  • http://www.tryanythingonceblog.com/ Terri

    I actually can understand the pets stay outside. My family in the Caribbean has always had dogs, but they never come in the house, sit on the furniture, get kissed or anything like that. I think Americans just deal with pets in a very different way. Granted my family never has to worry about the dogs getting cold :) Also kinda ditto on the clothes driers for most of the places I’ve been abroad. People either don’t have them and line dry or they are VERY small electric driers. It sounds like you’re settling in. :)

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    Mandy Reply:
    October 31st, 2011 at 8:25 pm

    I very much agree that it’s a completely different mentality when it comes to pet-ownership in the States than many other places. For us, our dogs are our family. Here, that’s kind of a foreign concept and people don’t quite understand why we’re so attached to them!

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  • http://www.geekinheels.com Geek in Heels

    I remember that my biggest annoyance about traveling in Europe was that most restaurants (at least in the places I’ve visited) only open at certain hours, and many of them have dinner very late like you describe above. As such, I remember buying a bunch of snacks and munching on them instead.

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    Mandy Reply:
    October 31st, 2011 at 8:28 pm

    That’s been one of the toughest things we’ve encountered while traveling and living here. Since our area is on the western-most part of our time zone, the sun rises late and sets later here; therefore, people operate on an even later schedule here than we’re used to in other parts of Europe! 

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  • http://twitter.com/MintedLife Kelsey L

    Thank goodness you have Nutella.  But maybe people from the US just need to start sending you some chocolate chips. 

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  • Kim

    People definitely don’t eat until later in Spain, but they also take siestas during the day (presumably so that they can stay up late?) I’m not sure if your husband gets to take one at his job, but I know that I’d take full advantage if I did :)

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    Mandy Reply:
    October 31st, 2011 at 8:19 pm

    Instead of a siesta, Mike just goes into work early and gets out at about 3:00 each day. It’s so nice to have him home for most of the evening!

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  • http://hemborgwife.wordpress.com/ hemborgwife

    If you find Reeses I would stock up as they are very very rare!!  

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  • Anonymous

    Most of my British family don’t have dryers either, and the washing machine tends to be in the kitchen, which I find so odd.

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  • http://www.usmeetsuk.com Christiana

    I’m with rycrafty, while my non-american relatives have driers – they don’t use them often. Since we don’t have a clothesline in DC we use the drier for things like sheets or towels, but I never dry our jeans – they take less than a day to dry on a hanger in the bathroom. When I lived in England I wished I had spent more time appreciating the differences instead of being frustrated by them. Have you tried coffee break spanish? They’re free short podcasts and I bet would help your spanish! I know how hard it can be to adjust to a new culture at first, which is why I’m recommending the mind shift – you’ll really enjoy your time more!

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  • http://twitter.com/BeeingMissStar Kate

    This was a great post. And…um…I’d be importing chocolate chips. I put them in everything! Haha.

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  • Antje

    well, in Germany for example a lot of people don’t have/use driers because the price for energy is 8 times as expensive as in the US. so it’s quite expensive to use them on a regular basis

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  • http://www.oneimperfectlyperfectlife.blogspot.com Bonnie Joy

    Haha, some of these things sound like normality to me. It is funny how little things can be so different in other countries, aye? Here in NZ almost no one has a drier either (unless you are rich)- we all hang our clothes outside which is annoying during wet winters. In regards to UHT milk- I grew up on it in Indonesia. It will take you a few days to get used to it but after that  I think you will like it. Then again, in Indonesia, we never drank it straight but always either had it with cereal or in cooking/baking.

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  • http://www.fearlesslyfree.com Jessica

    I felt so at home in Spain.  Taking naps in the middle of the day, staying up late, HUGE lunch and a light dinner???? Clearly, it’s my homeland. LOL!  The only thing I found strange was that nobody uses conditioner, apparently?  I didn’t pack any shampoo or conditioner for our 3 week stay in Spain, and after 10 days, my hair was like wire because none of the hotels provided conditioner.  I had to go buy some at the pharmacia, which I’m kind of glad about because I got to experience what a Spanish super market is like.  Their idea of service is completely different than ours.  As soon as we walked in, a woman assisted us to the aisle and recommended a great conditioner that had red tint in it to preserve my colored (at the time, red) hair.  When my feet hurt, my mom and I went to El Corte Ingles and bought shoe inserts for me, and the extra small was still too big for my feet, so the sales woman actually measured my feet out and cut the insert to fit my foot and shoe.  She even put it in for me.  I loooooove Spain.  My mom says you have to make your own chocolate chips.  She says you can buy high quality chocolate in big bricks and then you chip pieces of it off.  But it’s expensive, because cheap chocolate doesn’t come in bricks like that (this may have changed since my mom lived there 30+ yrs ago).  Just watch out for baking chocolate, which is more common there, and meant for hot chocolate.

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  • Cortney

    I stumbled upon your blog from That Wife, so forgive me if you’ve already addressed this- are you taking any Spanish lessons? I read back in your archives that you planned this trip for 11 months, did you take any before you left? When I lived in Japan for a year (teaching English) the best thing I did was to take full immersion Japanese classes once a week for the first 3 months I was there, force myself to use it, and then label everything in my home with Japanese words. Even just learning the basics for shopping/haggling/making pleasantries in the street makes you feel a lot more connected to the culture, and you start learning a lot more of the language.

    Also, we didn’t have driers either. And I lived in the part of Japan called “Snow Country” where 7 months out of the year it was cold, wet, and snowy- and of course, on an island, humidity is also high. You get used to it and eventually it’s second nature. I found that having a specific laundry day, when I knew that I would need to dedicate my bathroom to hanging racks for two days after, made things run a lot more smoothly. For example, if you and your husband tend to go out on the weekends, exploring or whatever, it might be good to do laundry on a Friday night, so it can hang all Friday night, all day Saturday/night, and should be good to go on Sunday night. It requires more forethought and planning, but your clothes last longer and it’s better on the environment because driers are the biggest energy suck out of all the household appliances.

    Good  luck in Spain!

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  • http://twitter.com/jennacole Jenna Cole

    This post was so fun to read! So many similarities to my time in Europe. TH’s parents are quite well off financially, but don’t have a dryer. It’s just not the way things are done! They do have this cool centrifuge machine that spins the clothes *nearly* dry,  which helps a lot.

    It’s funny, they don’t have a dryer, but they have a sauna in their basement! Something we would consider extremely extravagant in the US, whereas a dryer is a necessity. 

    And whenever we visit, we take Reeses candy. Every. Single. Time. Once I brought them fancy peanut butter chocolates, but that’s not what they wanted. They wanted Reeses. Sick. :)

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  • Elizabeth C (above)

    Can you remove this comment? It’s showing up when people search for my name – somehow, I managed to get my whole name in there instead of logging in. THANKS!

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    Mandy Reply:
    November 27th, 2011 at 8:36 pm

    deleted!

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  • Jen

    Welcome to Europe. I can ditto most all of those comments (except outdoor dogs) living in Germany. However, I just roll with it. Drying clothes inside is not so bad and it keeps them nicer. Stock up on anything peanutbutter when you are in the US and learn where you can find large grocery stores with an American section in cas you need to solve an instant craving. Kinder chocolate is great for a craving, small bars sold in a multi pack and with a milk component so you feel healthy. Learn how to make crepes and your Nutella will not last long.

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