Category: Burriana

Burriana / Castellón / Valencia

Spain, where a medieval walled village is just a short bike ride away

Last Saturday Doer and I explored the walled medieval town of Mascarell in our province of Castellón. This tiny hamlet is one kilometer from Nules, the municipality neighboring our own city, Burriana, and we reached it after riding about 25 minutes along a bike path, a route which took us past ceramic factories and orange orchards – the latter are about as common in the autonomous Valencian Community as corn fields are in Nebraska (maybe even more so). We encountered scores of other bicyclists along the way, leading me to safely assume that cycling through the countryside is a common weekend pastime here. The history

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Burriana / Castellón / Getting Acquainted

Diary of a Bus Ride

Though there are many cultural differences between Spain and the U.S., for me the one of the biggest changes may be living without a car. Plenty of Spaniards have cars, of course, but for us it doesn’t seem worthwhile to buy a car for one year. The paperwork alone – ay. Thus, Doer and I have been walking a lot more, I bought a bicycle, and we’ve been using public transportation. The trains between our town and other cities are fantastic, but up until recently we had not mastered the other big source of public transportation here – the autobús.

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Adapting / Burriana / Getting Acquainted / Holidays / Strolling

Open

Even the most reserved travelers have to be somewhat open to new experiences. When you leave your comfort zone, you will have encounters that may make you uncomfortable. Obviously, Doer and I have been trying to approach our time living abroad with as much openness as possible. However, a couple of unexpectedly related recent events have caused me to consider my own openness. The first incident happened our second day in the city of Castellón de la Plana. After spending a week in Madrid, Doer and I were eager to find a home in the province of Castellón, where we

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Burriana / Holidays

Everybody loves a good parade

The Burrianenses really seem to know how to throw a good festival. We returned our rental car to the Valencia airport on Wednesday and took a train back here, so we are without our own transportation now. So, of course, we did not make it to the market here on Wednesday, and then woke up Thursday to find everywhere closed because it was a holiday… and the same on Friday, too. Oops. I am pleased to report we survived despite our lack of preparedness with nowhere being open, and the festivities seem to have more than made up for the inconvenience. Here is

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Adapting / Burriana / Getting Settled

Adapting

Doer and I have been expats for just over three weeks now, and we’ve spent a week and a half settling into our new piso in Burriana (or Borriana, if you prefer to speak Valenciano instead of Spanish), and as he already has shared, it is a relief finally to have a home. Although we love traveling, at heart we are homebodies, and hotel life is not for us. And while we like one another quite a bit, one cannot underestimate the importance of two introverts coexisting at home together, but in different rooms.  Before we arrived in Burriana, we

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Burriana / Getting Settled

I was saying, “boo-ooz”

“Are you going to go to a bull fight?” This is the first question I would inevitably be asked anytime I told someone I was moving to Spain. My response to this was always along the lines of, “No, we aren’t going to be anywhere near Pamplona, and that’s where they do that stuff. But maybe if we travel up north, I’ll have to check one out by myself, since I know Dreamer won’t abide that cruelty.” I guess I should have become suspicious when, one day in Castellón, Dreamer was asked to sign a petition to stop the “bous”

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