1) Sometimes a guy just likes to take a leisurely stroll down a quiet cobblestone street while being pursued by a herd of homicidal bulls. That guy isn’t me because I was born with certain birth defects which preclude my participation in these events: a dominant cowardly gene and an excess of common sense. There is no known cure.
2) 82.3% less news about Michael Jackson (and there was plenty about him in Spain).
3) This may seem astonishing to many of you but as a male of the species I really don’t find nude women on the beach to be repugnant. I think that I could live without the naked, fat, 60 year old foreign tourists but you have to learn to take the good with the bad, the ugly, and the “Oh my God I wish I had never seen that.”
4) As far as consumer mentality goes, Spain has helped me to realize that life isn’t better just because you have a choice of 95 breakfast cereals at the supermarket. I don’t even like cereal.
5) Like almost all Spaniards, I have learned to have a healthy respect for food. People here won’t even eat a bag of potato chips without first decanting them into a nice serving bowl. I have learned that Menú del Día translates into English as “Two hour lunch with a nap afterwards.”
6) Vacations in Spain are an art form. We don’t even have a word in America for puente which in Spain means to milk as much out of a day off as humanly possible. A café in my neighborhood run by a Chinese family put a sign in their window that said they were taking off two hours early on a Saturday night to celebrate Chinese New Year. Most Spaniards needed three days to do that holiday justice.
7) 86.3% fewer serial killers than in the USA.
8) Two ice-cold quintos (small, 1/5 liter bottles of beer) for 1€ at a bar in my neighborhood (I have never claimed to be a complicated man).
9) I can buy a pig’s head at my butcher. I have never bought a pig’s head but I like having the option.
10) Honestly, I can’t be bothered to find out about anything in Spain I don’t like. You'll have to give me more time here for that.
