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One of the joys of living in a relatively popular, foreign city is the snobby, ridiculous smugness you feel when you see tourists, who are obviously tourists, wandering round, lost, sunburnt and a bit flustered. Perhaps smugness is the wrong word as it comes from the “I recognise that feeling – thank God it’s not me again” school of emotions, so maybe relief laced with sympathy is a better way to describe it. Either way, there is something kind of fun about it all. Going past the harbour (a particularly deep harbour for this part of the world, so I’m told, impressed huh?) and seeing a cruise ship there means that there’s always a couple of mood-lightening treats around the corner.
By way of an aside, the whole cruise thing is something I have never really understood. I imagine being out in the middle of the ocean with blue water and blue skies as far as the eye can see, in luxury and all that would be fun but the whole being herded on and off the boat, like lemmings once a day, being given strict leaving times like a school trip without the educational worksheets and, worst of all,
being trapped for ages on a sort of floating metal bucket populated exclusively by the types of people who go on cruises, is just not for me.
Maybe it’s an age thing and over time it’ll have to go into the same box as facebook, coffee and Jamie Oliver as something I disliked for years before eventually bowing to popular opinion and accepting that perhaps it’s not the antithesis of all things good, but as it stands, theyre just not things I understand. That said, the ships themselves are damn impressive. They are absolutely huge, just impossibly big things, which makes sense when you think of the amount of people who are on them, the fact that they have swimming pools, restaurants, dancing halls, cinemas and sometimes Tom O’Connor on them, but still, they are massive. (And this is said without me having seen the really big ones yet. The ones here so far have been Tony Hibbert to The Queen Mary 2’s Lionel Messi, if you will).
So, coming down onto Calle Alfonso XII and spotting one of these palace like structures, means that round the next corner, you’re going to be faced with a decent amount of confused faces shoved into maps, Chelsea tops and the obligatory socks and sandals combo. In Vigo, the area that surrounds the two or three streets nearest the docking place of these ships is far more ‘souvenir shop’ orientated than the rest of the city. Obviously this makes sense from a business point of view but at the same time, it just reinforces my idea that going on a cruise, to an extent, is just box ticking for different cities where you can go around a couple of streets, visit a café, buy a tshirt with that city’s name on it in an offensive font and say you’ve been there – like a form of Travel Bingo I guess.
Of course, a part of me loves all this, because it makes me realise that I actually live here, and, as abhorrant as it might be, it is this part of me that always wants to get my front door keys out of my pocket when I’m in that area, just to show that despite my awful Spanish and tendency to stand around looking as confused as any new visitor, I do live here.
As though anybody gives a crap.
Despite having been living here for 4 months now, and hopefully for a good while longer yet, there are still some aspects of Spanish/Galician life that I struggle with - siestas and the obsession with either Barcelona or Real Madrid being just two. The major one at the moment is the double kissing thing. For many years, I had a big problem with almost all aspects of physical contact, which I’m now in the latter stages of recovery from, thank you very much. But to me, the double kissing as a kind of greeting to a stranger (for friends it’s fine) is a step too far.
I do it, of course I do, because the only thing worse than having to touch a strangers face with your own would be having a hesitant or awkward moment when you are as uncomfortably close as that (please don’t take this to mean I’m advocating ‘air kisses’ by the way. I may be a little socially uncoordinated or clumsy at times, but I’m not a complete prick). I do wonder, sometimes, if it’s a version of animals sniffing each other to learn a bit about the other one’s personality, and maybe if you grow up doing it, it becomes like a sixth sense to help you work someone out. For me, though, as a beginner, it’s just something that makes me feel as reserved and English as it’s possible to be, whether I’m holding the keys to my flat in my hand or not.
Pura Vida.
Dave
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