Confusing stations. Silly developments - in my opinion!

During the years before the whole Covid mess started, when we could still travel freely, before the Brexit mess restricted how much time we can spend in Europe, we came to and fro between Manchester and Vigo on a regular basis. And also in the few years immediately before the crisis, we watched with interest what was going on with the railway stations here in Vigo. 

For a while the station at Urzáiz was closed and a new one opened at the end of Arenal, the Guixar station. Then eventually the new Urzáiz station opened but the Guixar station remained operational. So if you wanted to travel between Vigo and Pontevedra, or indeed all stations along the way to La Coruña, you had to check which station the train was leaving from.

A young friend of mine, a former student, whose boyfriend is a Gallego, Vigo born and bred, whose parents have a house near the beach at Samil, came with his boyfriend on the train from Madrid to Vigo to visit his parents and go to the beach. This was during the period when Urzáiz station was closed, knocked down, under reconstruction. Their train therefore arrived at Guixar. The boyfriend was totally freaked out by this. He had absolutely no idea where they were! I suspect he was not the only one!

During that time, I saw someone arrive at what was left of the old station, expecting to catch a train from there, only to discover that there was no station. His train was due to leave in 15 minutes from a station a good fifteen minutes or more walk away. After Urzáiz reopened, on more than one occasion I saw quite a few very confused people at the wrong station for their train. 

But people adapt. Trains to and from Urzáiz were faster than those from Guixar, and still are. There is a slight difference in price, as my friend Colin has written about. You pay more for a faster journey. 

Last time we were here, before the pandemic caused international chaos, we also watched with interest the developments around the new Urzáiz station. It looked like a huge construction site and you had to walk what seemed like miles to get to the trains themselves. As you walked along Via del Norte, the road overlooking the building site, you would see groups of people, mostly old blokes, leaning on the wall, looking down at what was going on. It was impossible to work out quite what was going on but everyone had an opinion and it seemed there were plans afoot for a new shopping centre there. 

While we have been here this week we have had no occasion to visit this new development - Vialia is its name - but from our balcony we can see the huge blue letters spelling out PRIMARK. So Primark has arrived in Vigo, cheap clothing made in sweatshops in the Indian subcontinent for the most part by workers who are paid a pittance. 

Anyway, yesterday we had lunch with our friend Colin from Pontevdra. We all had the chipirones encebollados that I had promised myself. Very good they were too. 

After lunch he was catching the train back to Ponters. So we accompanied him to Urzáiz to take a look at the new development. It is large and bright and confusing, as is the Arndale Centre in Manchester. I’ve grown used to the fact that Piccadilly station in Manchester has a lot of shops, including a small Boots the Chemist and a small Sainsbury’s, as well as a selection of fast food outlets and coffee places. But it’s hardly a shopping mall. Similarly, Euston Station in London is something of a shopping mall, rather like an airport duty free section. Bigger than Manchester Piccadilly but then Euston is a rather more important station. 

But this Vialia place is enormous. It seems as if the trains are a kind of afterthought. Heaven help you if you are in a hurry to catch your train! 

I can’t say I was impressed. I accept that shopping is a leisure activity for a lot of people but I would prefer to keep my shopping and travelling separate. A little bit of airport shopping may be all right, as a way of killing time while waiting for your plane. But having to plough through a huge complex with cinemas and food halls to get to train platforms seems a little over the top to me. 

Here are a couple of pictures, one of which shows what turns out to be a Christmas tree made of huge sparkly letters. I had to look hard to work out that letters spell out XMAS and LOVE, good Spanish words!!

 

Maybe I’m just getting old and grumpy! Hey ho!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

In praise of bread. Less so of desserts.

The Spanish have an expression: Bueno como el pan. Literally it means “as good as bread”. It’s their equivalent of the English “as good as gold”. Does it say something about the national character? The English must be very materialistic on that score, valuing goodness monetarily. Whereas the Spanish make the comparison with one of the basic essentials of life.

After all, it’s there in the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

In various accounts of the French Revolution, I have read about the riots that ensued when the people were not able to get their bread. Good old Marie-Antoinette (there she is again!) is supposed to have said, “Let them eat cake?”, probably because that’s what she would have done if no bread was available. She probably thought everyone had diamond necklaces as well. A sort of childlike naivety there!

And it has to be said that good bread is a delight. Our daughter has fond memories of “those Vigo breakfasts”, when she and the children would go with me to buy fresh bread every morning. This morning I managed to get our breakfast bread from the usual bakers, after two days of inferior breakfasts. I have a German friend who brings suitcases full of German black bread back to the UK after her visits to Germany. She freezes it in her mother’s freezer, packs it in her suitcase and then pops it in the freezer when she gets back to England. Needless to say, it has to go in her hold luggage. I can’t say I appreciate the German bread myself but I suppose she grew up eating it. And we almost all like what is familiar and nostalgic. 

It used to be the case that bread came as a standard accompaniment to meals here with no extra charge in restaurants. Now some charge for it. And certainly in Portugal it was a regular thing for bread to appear as na item on your bill. I suppose every little helps!

That’s enough about bread, for the time being anyway!

We had a bit of a discussion about desserts with our cruise ship friends yesterday. The men turned down the idea of dessert altogether but we ladies agreed that you have a separate stomach for puddings. I’m afraid that the choice of desserts was not great though - a small failing in an otherwise excellent restaurant. They had no “flan” - crème caramel - who h was a great surprise as it is usually on everyone. Our friend was disappointed but was persuaded by the waiter to have “natillas” as the closest thing. I had my doubts, “natillas” being custard. And that’s what she got, a bowl of cold custard, sprinkled with cinnamon! Acceptable if you like custard. “Arroz con leche” was also on offer but personally I have never found any rice pudding style dessert to match the standards set long ago by my mother. As for me, I opted for cheesecake, another mistake as I make a much better cheesecake myself! So it goes. 

We’ve been back to the Rosalía Castro restaurant again today, this time with our Pontevedra friend, Colin. I deliberately didn’t have my favourite “chipirones encebollados”, baby squid cooked with caramelised onions, yesterday as I was saving that treat for today. It will be the last time I’ll eat it for a while, I guess. 

And now we’re back to finalising the packing.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone. 

Boats or ships? Out and nostalgically about.

I looked out from our balcony this morning and saw a huge boat in the harbour. This was the boat a couple of our friends were arriving on. 

I went out running as usual, only to find that my usual bread-shop was closed … again!! Does she open later on a Sunday? I avoided the expensive and snooty bread shop and went elsewhere. The bread was moderately satisfactory.

Later in the morning we walked down to meet our friends off the boat. They told us that we’re not supposed to call it a boat. It’s a ship! Apparently! Okay! 

They have been on lots of cruises but now they’re a little disillusioned with the various rules and regulations, all Covid-related. They’ve decided not to get off at Gibraltar when they get there as they will have to have a rapid-flow test. This would cost them almost £60. Is it worth it for the chance to go and buy some cheap booze?

We walked up to the Castro, somewhere they have not visited before on previous cruise stop-offs to Vigo. This suited us fine as we wanted a nostalgia trip. On our very first visit to Vigo, back in 2007. We walked up to the Castro in the broiling sun, stopping for water in a cafe half way up. On the way down we took refuge in the De La Salle bookshop, not realising it was a purely Christian organisation.it did have air conditioning though!

Today we had a quick drink at the cafe up at the Castro and the  walked back down to the harbour for lunch at the Rosalía Castro restaurant. A good time was had by all.

We’ve been doing nostalgia walks over the last few days, in between sorting out our suitcases to comply with Ryanair weight limits. The other day we walked up to A Guía, again in the sunshine. It might well be the last time we go there as we are unlikely to be at that end of town again. But you never know! So here are a few photos.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Closing down. Reminiscence. Bread problems. Bread recipes.

Yesterday we took another step towards closing this bit of our adventure. Our landlady’s daughter came round to sort out our final arrangements for ending our tenancy on this flat in Vigo. She got quite emotional. It seems a long time since we tramped the streets of Vigo investigating places we might like to spend a part if our lives. Probably the strangest was a little flat at the top of a building on García Barbón street. The main bedroom was in a sort of dome. Had we not had the possibility of grandchildren visiting we might have considered it. But there were too many possible hazards. The prospect of a grandchild plunging over a balcony was too much. Besides it was in a noisy bit of town. We admired it and rejected it. 

And then, we also fancied something with a pool. This one fitted the bill. A quietish end of the city, almost in Teis, with a bit of a balcony - not really for sitting out on but okay for hanging the washing out and looking across the bay at Cangas or out onto the Atlantic to the Islas Cies. And there’s a decent pool in the garden area. So there we were, August 2020, signing a contract for a year, to be renewed semi-automatically unless we decided otherwise. 

All our dealings have been with the landlady’s daughter. They seem to be Galicians who emigrated to Venezuela and then came back with enough money to buy goodness knows how many flats around the city. I’m not sure we ever met the owner, but we have seen her daughter through her pregnancy and have seen and admired photos of her son Antön, now about 4 years old. It seems a long time since we stood in the garden, looking at the pool and deciding to take the flat. 

So she came yesterday morning to do a sort of “inspection” prior to our leaving. She gave me some money back as it seems I had miscalculated and had paid an extra month’s rent - that’s nice. She told me how she had only just realised how big a deposit we had paid - we had no bank account here and so were unable to get a bank guarantee. I think it was a bit of a shock to her to realise that she needed to repay the deposit - about 6 month’s rent! We’ve helped to organise transferring the money to our account as the prospect of carrying large amounts of Euros around is a little daunting. Fingers crossed that that all works. 

She also told me tales of woe: bajos (the ground floor sections of blocks of flats usually reserved for shops,and cafes and the like) that they can’t rent, tenants of bajos who refuse to pay the rent, a flat whose tenant they agreed could sublet one room to a friend and who then went on to sublet to maybe four “friends” and eventually changed the locks and refused to pay the owner any more rent, “occupas” (squatters) causing problems - goodness!  who would be a landlady?

Anyway, we got our bit sorted. We’ve been perfect tenants. No problems at all! And all the stuff we can’t carry away with us - a fan, kitchen equipment, towels, bedding - we can leave bagged up for her cleaning lady to deliver to her church to distribute to the needy! I had feared we would need to clear everything out!

Because she was coming I got up a little earlier than usual and went out to buy bread for breakfast. My usual bakery cum cafe was not yet open so reluctantly I went to one across the road. I’ve been disappointed there before. It’s a bit trendy and would-be upmarket. The first time I went the assistant condescendingly told me a “barra” was a “baguette”. What happened to the customer being always right? Altogether snooty!

On top of everything else their bread bags come with a “recipe”:-

5 cups of love

2 table spoons of happiness and good temper

1 ounce of patience

3 teaspoons of agreement

A pinch of tenderness

Mix with respect. 

Avoid the formation of lumps of arguments and bad temper

Knead the dough with trust and dedication

Bake it and fill it with hugs and kisses. 

All very well, but their bread is hard and dry instead of crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside. And besides, a barra artesana costs €1,20 as opposed to just €1 at my normal bakery. 

Today is back to normal.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

A bit of a reconnaissance. Changes - not all for the better.

 Coincidentally with our being in Vigo some friends of ours are on a cruise which calls in at the Ciudad Olívica on Sunday. So the plan is to meet them for lunch. Under normal circumstances we would have no doubts about good places to take them. However, these are not normal circumstances. We’ve all had a good year and a half (+ a bit more) of pandemic altering all our circumstances. 

Time for a bit of a reconnaissance, we thought. Which also gave us an excuse to go out for lunch yesterday

A large section at this end of Rosalía de Castro street seems to being dug up. In various other parts of the town on the way to the port demolition and reconstruction is underway. At least one building had the stones of its facade numbered, indicating a plan to keep the old facade as it was before, which is always a good thing. We didn’t get as far as Príncipe, as we were angling down more to the alameda and the port, so goodness only knows what’s going on there. 

The alameda, Avenida de Santiago de Compostela, is one of my favourite spots in Vigo. It’s a lovely broad avenue, semi-pedestrianised, with old established trees, many of them mature chestnuts. There are even notices now telling you these are live trees and that Vigo is looking after them carefully. With its fountains fountains its usually a nice place to stroll. Not at the moment though. It looked as though the circus had come to town. Well, at any rate, the funfair. At one end is what looks a bit like a ski slope but which I suspect is one of those structures where you climb up the steps, sit on a mat and slide down, risking life and limb. Only for the young and foolish, in my opinion. 

 

At the other end they’re putting up a ferris wheel, a huge affair. 

There’s at least one roundabout and others seem to be in the process of being installed. 

 

Next to the ferris wheel some wooden structures are being put together. I suspect a German style Christmas market. There are decorations all over town. Abel Cabellero has clearly gone to town to encourage Christmas visitors this year. In fact, our Portuguese driver, the one who drove us from Figueira to Porto on Monday, told me during the journey that he and his wife, and a couple of friends, are visiting Vigo this weekend, planning to see the illuminations (will they all be lit up already? Goodness me!) and to do a bit of shopping. 

We strolled past one of our favourite restaurants, the Rosalía Castro, near the port, where the waiter recognised us - that says something about how many many times we have been there to eat chipirones encebollados - baby squid fried with onions - delicious! We checked that the place will be open on Sunday. He asked if we wanted to book a table. Unfortunately we don’t yet know what time our friends will arrive. So Armando ( we now know the waiter’s name) gave me a card with his phone number so that I can call to book a table. That’s service for you!

And off we went to another of our long-standing favourite places, La Porchaba, bar and restaurant, only to find that it’s changed hands - victim of the pandemic? - and is under new management. First, the service was brusque, not unfriendly but brusque. We asked for a list of tapas - much reduced - and while we perused it, ordered a glass of Albariño. Short measure compared to what we were used to, and for that matter compared to what we were getting in Figueira da Foz. And there were no free tapas - we had grown used to a nice selection of tapitas at the old Porchaba. 

This led to the resurrection of Don Gruñón. Phil has not been Mr Grumpy for a long while but he had a little complain about the lack of free tapitas. Free tapas did arrive eventually. Things were not helped by there being no “setas con jamón”, an old favourite tapa of garlic mushrooms with jamón serrano. The waitness did suggest a portion of “huevos rotos con puré de patatas y jamón serrano” - ham and eggs with a bit of mash, and your fried eggs are a bit stirred up - but it was almost €20 for one serving. 

We explained that we’ve been going there for hears and had enjoyed our “setas con jamón” and were a little disappointed. That’s when the waitress said they were under new management. We settled for a small tortilla. You can’t usually go wrong with a Spanish potato omelette for Phil. Except that it came without a knife to cut it up and share it between us. Don Gruñón emerged again! The omelette wasn’t bad though!

After that we went for coffee at the Rosalía de Castro cafe (lots of places are names after Galicia’s female writer heroine) where, fortunately things haven’t changed. The wifi password is still on the wall. They still give slices of cake with the coffee. All’s well with the world.

And the sun is still shining out of a blue sky.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone. 

Weather. Who decides who is the sexiest man. MP’s salaries and child care costs. Brexit problems.

When first we came to Galicia, some fifteen years ago at least, we were impressed by the sunny weather we experienced, especially as Galicia is famous for being wet. Okay, Santiago de Compostela was a bit damp, but you expect that of the umbrella capital of Spain. I had learnt a song way back in school, probably at the age of 12 of 13:

A Santiago voy, caminando,

Y con mi paragüitas

Por si la lluvia está cayendo.

(I’m off to Santiago on foot,

And I’ve go my little umbrella

Just in case it rains.)

Our Spanish teacher was a great believer in the power of song as an aid to learning languages. It works. One reason why so many foreigners speak decent English is because they listen to so much English language pop music.  

And now, as we pack up our stuff, Galicia is having a bit of an Indian summer, a “verano de San Martín”. More blue sky and sunshine today, for which we are very grateful!

That’s not the case in Manchester, I hear. We’ll go back to some grey days, I expect, but we’ll have had our dose of sunshine. 

Back in Manchester, The mayor Andy Burnham is about to open a new bicycle rental scheme in the city centre this month. This is Manchester’s second go at bike rental and the mayor has appealed to residents please not to throw them in the canal, as happened apparently to quite a few of the previous version. “I would just say to people: these are your bikes, we own them. So, please look after them,” he said. “Damaging your own stuff doesn’t make sense.” These are supposed to be better bikes and a better system. He’s also asking people not to call them “Burnham Bikes”, possibly a bit too reminiscent of London’s “Boris Bikes”! They are to be called “Bee Bikes”, the bee being Manchester’s symbol, seen everywhere much more frequently since the bombing at the Ariana Grande concert. 

Scanning newspapers online in As Cobas cafe yesterday evening I discovered that someone I have never heard of has been voted the sexiest man alive:

“The actor, screenwriter and producer Paul Rudd has just been named as the sexiest man alive.”

Previous incarnations have been Michael B. Jordan, last year, John Legend, 2019, Chris Hemsworth, Bradley Cooper, Jude Law, Nick Nolte or John F Kennedy Jr, who were named as the sexiest men alive in 2014, 2011, 2004, 1992 and 1988 respectively. Some of those I’ve not heard either but then, nobody asked me to vote on it. After all, it’s surely a matter of taste! Johnny Depp was apparently named twice and I’ve never fancied him in the least. It’s all done by People Magazine, who’ve been doing it since 1985. There you go. 

I really appreciated the description of Nigel Farage in the news item, which informed me that : 

“Rudd has always managed to be handsome in a manner that borders on the miraculous. Not only is there his seemingly supernatural inability to age – he is only five years younger than Nigel Farage, for instance, who has spent the last decade looking like the botched results of a scientific quest to fuse Crazy Frog with the concept of gout – but he also radiates dangerous levels of easygoing charm. There is no mysterious darkness to Paul Rudd. There is no hint that he would ever attempt to steal your wife even though everyone knows your wife would leave you for him in a second.”

The question of politicians having a second job is still around in the news:

“A backbench politician has lamented the paltry salary for MPs – saying there’s no way they could afford childcare without “outside interests.”

MPs are paid a salary of £81,932 a year, but second jobs have been in the spotlight since the resignation of former North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson in a lobbying scandal.”

Of course, the headline to that news item says ‘we can’t afford a nanny” which exaggerates it all somewhat. But really, you don’t hear of MPs who find it’s better not to work because the child care fees take up so much of their salary! Which is the case for some women. 

And here, from a social media forum, is an example of the kind of nonense Brexit has caused:

“Hi everyone! I wonder if someone can help my family. I am an EU citizen with settled status. My husband is a Cameroonian citizen with settled status. Before Brexit he had a Resident Card that we used with his passport to travel. His resident card has expired in February and we were told that they don't exist anymore (it still says the same thing on the Government website). We travelled to Italy for a one week holiday to visit my family and he was refused boarding from British Airways on the account that he can't re-enter UK only with his passport. We have been in contact with Immigration, the Embassy but noone can give us an answer on what does he need to re-enter. I was also told that if I leave him here, he would be illegally in Italy and he could potentially be arrested. Our two young children are also with us. Does anyone have any information that could help us please? We are desperate!!”

Life used to he so much easier but ….

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

There have been some changes around here. Some thoughts about certain rich people.

Yesterday evening we went hunting for wifi as we have no connection here in the flat. When last we were here we knew a selection of places with free wifi, and free tapas with your beer if your were lucky. One of our favourites, Mid Century, run by the charming and music-obsessed María - a fine selection of 50s and 60s music, hence the name - had its blinds closed but showed no sign of being under new management or being up for rent. We’re hoping María is able to keep going. Down the road from Mid Century is the more traditionally Galician As Cobas, often a good place to go to watch Celta de Vigo play against some other football team. The decor was all changed, the staff were all unfamiliar, there was almost no-one in and certainly no football. But Celta’s flag still adorns the bar and the new-to-us staff were friendly. We got the new password for the wifi, together with a decent serving of free tapas. All good! 

Closer to our flat, the general rubbish collection bin has moved a hundred yards further down the road, which is a little annoying. The little cafe run by a Filipina lady, always handy if we needed a wifi connection midmorning, appears to have closed down altogether and is all boarded up. A small fast food outlet of sorts has opened nearby, selling empanadas and bocadillos and canned drinks. What used to be a bread shop has turned into a launderette! And the funny little shop that used to sell hand crafted leather goods such as little purses and bracelets and interesting-looking rucksacks is up for rent. 

So many changes since the pandemic turned everyone’s life upside down. And in just over a week, we’ll be gone too. Everything changes!

It’s hard work all this sorting out your belongings to move out of a place you’ve been renting for almost a decade. How did we accumulate so much stuff? Some stuff has to be thrown out altogether. Other stuff can go to a charity clothes collection. We’re being ruthless! Yet more needs to go along with us. There are also a number of chess trophies whose fate is to be decided. I feel quite exhausted! And that’s before I start to carry suitcases!

Now, Marie Antoinette was clearly a much more decisive woman. Realising that her goose was cooked and that she and Louis XVI of France had not got much of a future, she sent away two diamond bracelets for safekeeping. Did she imagine that she might manage to escape from France and be reunited with her sparklies? Or did she just not want them falling into the hands of Messieurs Robespierre and Danton and other such ne’er-do-well revolutionaries? Anyway, the diamond bracelets, each composed apparently of three strings of diamonds and a large barrette clasp, totalling 112 diamonds, including “old cut” stones and silver and gold, have been sold at auction in Geneva for £7.04 million!! Wow!

Marie Antoinette is said to have carefully wrapped her jewels in cotton herself. She certainly knew how to look after stuff! Or maybe she didn’t trust the servants. And she sent them in a wooden box to a former Austrian ambassador who was in Brussels, with a letter instructing him to keep them in a safe place. The head of Christie’s jewellery department said before the sale: “Despite Marie Antoinette’s capture in the French Revolution and her unfortunate death in 1793, the bracelets survived and were passed on to her daughter, Madame Royale, and then the Duchess of Parma.”

I like his choice of words: “after her unfortunate death”! As of her death were some kind of accident. Maybe he saw her as a Lady Diana figure. One way of looking at it! I suppose he’s got used to siding with the rich, selling off their stuff for them. Apparently they were kept “within royal lineage” for a couple of hundred years. That gets us to the 1990s, relatively recent times. It’s funny how the French still like their nobility and the titles and so on, even after chopping off their heads. (I once read that the reason for French restaurants becoming so renowned was because the former chefs from “noble” houses had to do something with their skills. So they opened restaurants where everyone could eat like a nobleman.)  And it seems there is a lot of interest in Marie-Antoinette memorabilia. 

I could almost feel sorry for Marie-Antoinette. She was only 14 when they married her off to Louis. Just another victim of international politics. She was only 16 when she had the bracelets made. She lived a life of privilege and couldn’t really be expected to understand why the people turned against her. Maybe!

Another woman puzzled by ficklepublic opinion has been Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Her famous letter to her estranged father has been in the news again. Time to stop washing all that dirty linen in public, I think. It sometimes seems to me that famous people moan a lot about the consequences of being famous. Also they live their lives like a soap opera. And if Harry and Meghan have opted out of the royal family, why do they still have titles? Load of nonsense!

Pictures have been doing the rounds of Boris Johnson touring a hospital. Touring is surely the wrong word. He’s not a hospital tourist; he’s the PM on an official visit. And all the photos show him without a mask!! Accompanied by medical staff wearing masks, he clearly doesn’t feel the need to set anyone else an example. 

Here in Spain wearing masks indoors seems to be the norm. Travelling in lifts is a little strange. In the past people drew back to make room for others to squeeze in with them. Now they stand firmly in the middle and sort of indicate that you should wait for the next one. Logical enough in the circumstances.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!