I'm living here in Spain for already two years now and I cannot complain about the life here ;) People are very kind and energetic at the same time, but for understanding them and their habits you have to be able to speak Spanish otherwise you'll miss a big part of their way of living.
It is incredible how many expressions they are using while talking together, even if you know a bit of Spanish you are not gonna understand what they mean unless they explain it to you. Literal translation in most of the cases is not working... After two years living here and meeting people daily, sometimes I'm still not able to understand what they wanted to say with their expressions and daily I get surprised with their imagination and humour :)
Spanish life is not that different from the rest of Europe, except that they are doing everything later then usually ;) With this I don't want to say that Spanish people are always late (it just happens from time to time :P) but that their life timing is different from what I was used at least.
What a surprise was for me to discover that all the shops open only at 9am! If you want to buy some bread before there are just a few shops open... and you have to know where to find them. At least for me it was very strange since I was used to have most of the shops opened from 7am ;) They don't have a fixed time for lunch, it can be from 2pm till 4pm, but what surprised me most is the fact that many people have dinner very late (at least for me). It's normal to meet people at 10pm to go for dinner... or to have dinner at your home even later. If you are going to a restaurant at 7pm asking for dinner they'll look at you a bit strange... but you'll get some food, don't worry!
Last, but not for this less surprising... at least for me arriving from a quite small country, is that Spain is really big! It is impressive when you travel for example in the region of Castilla and for a couple of hours you see only fields from the window of your car :)
I could talk more about Spain, but I reserve it for future post ;)
Little correction :)
ReplyDeleteShops normally open at 10:00 until 14:00 and then from 17:00 till 20:00. From monday to friday, and on saturday they only work in the morning.
Malls are open from 10:00 until 22:00. From monday to saturday and some sundays in which they are allowed to work (8 per year if my memory serves me correctly)
And lately, some supermarkets in the cities have started to open from 9:00 till 21:00 from monday to saturday.
There are places in big cities that are open till 3.00 AM, but there are not that many and the prices are normally higher.
Ma super! Puno te volim!
ReplyDeleteHello agan:) Ajme, nisam prije skuzila sto Franchu kaze...lijepo vi dodite u Zagreb, tu rade neke pekarnice cijeli dan i noc:)
ReplyDeletePusu veliku saljem i voli te i dalje netko:))Nadam se da ce mi ovaj puta staviti ime kak spada, nest sam zeznula prije.
Bok Eda :)
ReplyDeletePa zna Franchu jako dobro da u Zagrebu pekarnice rade non stop, pogotovo jedna kod Vjesnika ;)
U svakom slucaju dobro me on ispavio!
I tebe netko puno voli, pogotovo sada kad znamo tvoje ime :P