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Published: February 21st 2012
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When getting to somewhere new I always have a tendency to compare my arrival with my arrivals in the places before it, almost as a way of getting a handle on things immediately and trying to get a feeling of comfortability and familiarity straightaway. Getting to Vigo airport was no different. The jet-lag, the nerves and the crying baby on the plane were all reminiscent of the flights to Costa Rica, China and Budapest, which provided me with some comfort. What was different, however, was that here, I was accompanied on the flight by the entire Celta Vigo squad (the local football team) who then proceeded to chat to kids who were staring in awe before loading all of their gear up themselves and leaving – difficult to imagine this happening in England somehow.
It was a nice thing to see because when I accepted the job here, Celta were one of only two things I knew about Vigo, the other being the lad from Ghostbusters Two and he probably has no real connection aside from his name. Celta were a pretty decent team about seven or eight years ago, playing in Europe and almost winning the domestic league, but
now they’re in the Spanish 2
nd division, so perhaps the whole airport thing shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise as we’re hardly talking about Christiano Ronaldo looking for the case with the red string around the handle, are we.
Vigo itself, is in a region called Galicia, which predictably in Spanish terms, some people view as an area that is entirely independent from the rest of the country, just as with the Basque region or Catalonia. I do kind of enjoy this desire for isolation or segregation or whatever you’d call it. I don’t really know the history of it past the Spanish Civil War but the fact that some of the regions, Galicia included, have their own language and customs, which far outstrip the ambitions for independence held by the likes of Liverpool and Cornwall, makes it something I do quite like witnessing.
As a city, Vigo does not have the feel of what I always thought of as Spain, infact outside the city some of the views feel like you could be looking at the Yorkshire Dales or Snowdonia. The atmosphere of the place is not how I remember smaller cities in Spain feeling and the weather, at the moment, definitely has more of a British feel to it than what you’d think of as a Spanish one. I’ve been here for maybe five weeks now and there has been little sight of the sun that everyone (me included) expected me to be basking in. Instead it’s been cold and wet, albeit with none of the snow that the rest of Europe seems to have been dealing with. They did have snow here for about a minute and a half, a few years ago and people still talk about it. The Great Freeze of 2009 it’s (probably) called in the text books, meaning that all the news footage of 30 foot snow drifts in Serbia and Romania look like they’re from an entirely different planet.
That said, much like China, and for obvious reasons, most places don’t tend to have heating here, so in winter, when it’s cold, people just wear coats indoors. As someone who really dislikes any form of heating this is something I thoroughly approve of, although I do admit to having different thoughts to this a year ago in Xiangfan when my hands swelled up like the Elephant Man’s face because I’d not brought anything more substantial than a hoodie to guard against the Chinese Springtime.
Probably the thing that most people would expect to be the best thing about living in Spain, which has so far, been proven to be correct, is the food. It really is like having a choice of the best and most varied dishes in the world, every single day, whenever I want them. And that includes days when I’ve just stayed in and cooked, as just being here has apparently turned me from a beans-on-toast cooking philistine into someone who now looks at a shelf of ingredients and thinks “I wonder if that will go with that? Let’s see.” In the interests of fairness, it should probably be mentioned that one of those “that”'s is almost always Chorizo and the other is usually anything runnier than Chorizo, but it’s still a huge leap forward from a Fray Bentos pie, with mushy peas and potatoes from a can, on Tinned Food Tuesday – although I do miss those days.
This isn’t to say that food shopping here is without it’s shocks, as it will take me a very long time to get used to turning a corner in a supermarket and being greeted by a pigs head, staring at me with a look of surprise on his face; but even that is easier to stomach once you’ve dealt with the shock and disgust of being in a Chinese supermarket and seeing 200 goose feet where you expected the cheese to be, they would’ve even taken the edge off bumping into Christiano Ronaldo at the airport, carrying his own suitcase. Maybe.
Pura Vida
Dave
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kimby
non-member comment
it's a baby (with no lower half at all) that decided it was a good idea to run hurdles. clearly.