Month: August 2016

Getting Acquainted

Spanish Bank Account, YEAH!

Our new amiga Maite at the bank hooked us up real nice on Friday. OK, so maybe we’re not amigos per se, but she did make the necessary (but dreaded) experience of opening up a bank account here relatively painless. Frankly, I’m surprised it was so easy, given that we don’t have our student cards yet. I figured it couldn’t hurt to go into a friendly-looking branch and ask, but was expecting we’d be turned away for lack of some sort of documentation. And yet, 45 minutes and an initial deposit of €100 later, we walked out with all the paperwork

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Food / Restaurants

Pure Tripe

Took me four different tries, but before we left Madrid, I finally found a restaurant that served a typical Madrileño dish: callos, or stewed tripes. And yes, they were delicious. Unctuous and perfectly savory, just melt-in-your-mouth goodness. When cooking entrails, it requires some skill to get to this point. In the photo below, you can see a nice piece of crispy blood sausage in the center, too, which was the perfect counterpart to all of this goodness. I think I may be drawn to tripes in particular in a quest for the ultimate Kosher sin: there is some evidence that this word shares an origin from

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Favorites / Food / Getting Acquainted / Madrid / Restaurants

Madrid in Our Rearview Mirror

We drove to our home region of Castellón, a province in Valencian Community, on Wednesday. But I tend to process my experiences chronologically, so before I write about our adventures here, I want to wrap up our Madrid chapter. While Madrid is a fast-paced world capital, our best moments in the big city were those in which we were able to slow down. My favorite experience in Madrid was our Sunday night dinner with Doer’s exchange family, with whom he stayed 16 years ago. They invited us to their home in a Madrid suburb and prepared traditional Spanish food, including various

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Bureaucracy / Getting Acquainted

Hay que tener THita

I rented a car on Wednesday to take us and all of our bags from Madrid to our home provincia of Castellón. As expected, the rental experience – from leaving the hotel to arriving back with car in hand – felt like it took several hours. Dreamer informs me she was not waiting back at the hotel with bags for quite that long. I swear it was at least two hours, maybe three. After forgetting that the subway line to Atocha train station was closed for repairs, I had to take a taxi from a stop more distant than our hotel. Finding the rental car

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Food / Spotted Abroad

Un Poquito de Homesick

After a jet-lagged week of navigating a new culture, we were bound to feel little bites of homesickness nipping at our heels. I think it’s safe to say after a week of eating out (with one exquisite exception – more on that later), Doer is ready for his own kitchen again. I’m thinking about my family after learning my grandmother passed away. This wasn’t unexpected news, but it’s still very sad, and it lends a bittersweet feel to the days. Even though Spain is very different from where we’re from, we keep stumbling across strange little signs of home. On

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