Thoughts not from Galicia, Spain: 1.5.18

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable. 

- Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain. 

If you've arrived here because of an interest in Galicia or Pontevedra, see my web page here.

CAMINO NOTES

• Yesterday's interesting question:- Belgium is in Holland, no?
• And the contender for most Spanish statement of the week:- We're wonderfully kind people in this town. But not those outside it.
• Contender for the most amusing comment of the week: Shame you're not here next week. We have a world famous motorbike fiesta.
• Talking about things Spanish, here's a little scenario:-

We've decided that we'll take a 20 minute bus ride to the next town as one of the group is suffering from bad blisters and can't walk further. We're told the bus leaves at 4.30. So we decide to walk (or limp) 15 minutes to the bus-stop and then get a drink at a bar near it.

We arrive at 3.40, to find an old woman standing at it. She tells us that the bus comes at 4, which is not only not what we've been told but also not what it says on the bus company's site.

So, we abandon plans to go across the road for a drink.

At 3.55, a guy arrives and tells us the bus is due at 4.15. So, still no time for that drink.

At 4.10, a woman arrives and says the bus will arrive at 4.30. For the first time since we arrived 35 minutes previously, the (frail-looking) old woman sits down. Possibly in shock.

I predict that these 3 people will now spend the 15 minutes available talking entirely about buses and the performance of the bus company. Which is exactly what they do. We decide they've formed an informal Association of Unhappy Bus Users.

But they talk/moan not for 15 but for 25 minutes, as the bus arrives 10 minutes late, exactly an hour after we'd arrived. Which, in retrospect, would have been enough for not 1 but 2 glasses of wine.

The 3 other actors in this scenario climb into the bus and each of them chats to the driver, probably indicating why the bus is running late.

We get on, pay our fares and move along the bus towards the available seats. Our 3 friends are seated apart but are still talking/arguing about buses as we pass them.

• Another camino day on which the 3 texts I have in Spanish prove to be erroneous in some way or other. As before, confusion is engendered by different numbering of the roads we use or cross. Which is hardly surprising when they can have up to 4 numbers. On this subject, I note – in the bus we're on – that the road we're on goes in not 2 but 3 different directions. I ask myself how this is possible. But get no reply.
• I read yesterday a report about a bullfighter who'd been injured in a Madrid corrida last week, after being severely gored there last year. I couldn't help wondering whether he's in the right business.
• In El Diario de Jerez, I noted that – when sending a letter to the editor – you have to restrict yourself to 20 lines (fair enough) and give your address (again, fair enough). But you also have to provide your ID number. FFS, why?? Is there the same obsession with this number in, say France and Germany, as there is here in Spain?
• Finally . . . Yet again . . . Another day, another room, another failure to get wifi. This time either on my phone or on my laptop. The router needs to be switched off and back on but, in this (better than a hotel) hostel, there's no one around to do this. And today's a national holiday.

ODDS AND SODS

• Funny, isn't it. At the same time as Fart is claiming that the Iranians can't be trusted he's telling us he can do a great deal with the president of North Korea. The man really does believe in himself.

FOTO GALLERY

Lebrija's smaller version of Sevilla's Giralda tower . . .