There are plenty of reasons to visit the Mediterranean during the other months of the year but absolutely no excuses for missing summer. The mix of great weather, spectacular views, diverse cultures, amazing food, endless beaches (The beaches are topless? Really? I never noticed.), laid-back lifestyle, and the beautiful sea itself make it a paradise for tourists and residents. Summer is usually a full five months of the year, from May to the end of September, at least. My summers in Greece spoiled this season for me ever since. I have had lots of great summers everywhere that I have lived but the Mediterranean has always been the standard to judge all of the others.
Holgazanear (intransitive verb) to idle, to laze about/around, to loaf
The infinitive form of Spanish verbs end in er, ar, or ir. I recently learned that you can use an infinitive in Spanish to answer a question. So if someone were to ask me what I've been doing this month of July I could reply with:
-Holgazanear.
What else am I supposed to do? It's July in Spain and not just Spain but the endless beaches part of Spain, the part of Spain where other people in Spain go to goof off. Along this entire coast you can't spit without hitting a topless beauty…or a fat, naked, 60 year old foreign tourist. Of course I'm screwing off, there is nothing else to do. I'm no history expert but I'll bet every battle the Spanish have ever lost took place in July when at least half of their army was taking a trip to the beach with their families and the other half was working in the family café trying to keep enough beer cold and sardines on the grill to serve the summer hordes.
One of the coolest things about Valencia is that you can take the subway to the beautiful city beach called La Malvarrosa. There aren't many cities in the world that you can say that about. I live on the line that serves the beach so I see a lot of people either going or coming. My favorite sight is the stuff that parents pack to entertain their little kids when they spend the day on the water. Pails, shovels, watering cans, sailboats, and, of course, balls are part of what the beach caravans have in tow on the Valencia metro. This is one aspect of Spanish life that is exactly the same as it is in America: kids all use the same paraphernalia when they play at the beach. The kids in America and Spain are even in agreement about the soccer balls as more American children now play this sport than play football or baseball.
Many Valencianos drive to the beaches south of town and for this ten minute expedition families bring more baggage than a Spice Route camel caravan. Chairs, tables, umbrellas, blankets, volleyball nets, rackets, and all of the kid junk listed earlier. It's hard to imagine that all of this stuff fits into the little cars people drive—maybe they make two or three trips. Goofing off requires a lot of equipment if you are doing it right.
If you can find a restaurant that is actually open in July it will be filled to capacity, at least during the hours when Spanish people eat, which seem to get later and later as the summer moves along its trajectory. Lunch is still going strong at an hour when many American early bird specialists are already packing up their leftovers in doggie bags. The crowds wash in and out of the beach cafés like the tides. If you were to take a water sample of those tides, the results would come back as coffee, Coca Cola, red wine, and beer. It probably takes at least one nuclear reactor just to power all of the espresso machines working furiously along the coast. I would rather suffer the consequences of a dozen reactor core meltdowns than risk having a few million Spanish people go without coffee for a single afternoon.
I'm pretty sure that they still print newspapers in July, and there is probably news on television, but maybe if we just ignore it the real world will go away—it can at least wait until September. I'm too caught up in the trashy Spanish novel I'm reading to bother with the newspapers, except to read the Calvin and Hobbes comic in the local paper, Levante. Even soccer takes a break in July so there's no reason to read the sports.
Thank God that in the middle of all of this hustle and bustle I have time to take a nap. These aren't my usual little power naps of ten to fifteen minutes, these are howling one hour affairs so intense that I don't know what day it is when I wake up (not that I really knew what day it was when I first laid down, but still). I wake up semi-paralyzed and semi-conscious and I check to make sure I didn't lose anything to some international group of organ thieves—not that anyone who knew any better would want anything coming out of this burnt-out old carcass. I use the slobber on my chin to fix my bed-head hair and then head down to the café for a coffee.
The café is full again and I am beginning to wonder if all of these customers have been evicted. It's hard to imagine they have homes when they spend 10 hours a day at this joint. I'm sure they think the same about me and I don't even bother changing clothes from day to day. I stick with flip-flops, surf trunks, and the soccer jersey du jour—I speak Spanish like Tarzan so I may as well look the part. I haven't worn shoes in months and can someone please explain to me again the purpose of socks? I don't know how much longer I can keep going at this frantic pace. Something has got to give and I hope it isn't the seam in the butt of my surf trunks from all of the fried squid I've been putting away.
I have to be honest; I'm exhausted. Sometimes at 8:30 a.m. I'm ready to go back to bed for an hour, maybe two, three at the very most. I don't know if I should be worried but my blood pressure is so low that the readings begin with decimal points. I'd call a doctor but they are all out of the office in July. For medical emergencies you are supposed to rent one of those sound trucks and try to page a doctor at the beach. I tried that but all the little kids mobbed me because they thought I was the ice cream man. It was pretty funny but things got ugly once the little animals found out I didn't have any ice cream. I was able to take out a few of them but in the end I got stomped something fierce. Ice cream sounds good right now, even if it is 8:31 a.m. In July, 8:31 a.m. is like four in the afternoon.
Summer Menu Changes
By the time it is officially summer it is officially very hot, especially if you are standing directly in the sun. My place has air conditioning but like most Spaniards, I don't bother turning it on—not yet, anyway. The air heats up and life slows down; instead of being a cold shock to the system, a dive in the Mediterranean is a welcome relief from the heat; tomatoes are riper and fatter than ever; cold beer tastes better; bike rides are shorter and sweatier; and the summer menu is now in full swing.
Forget about using the oven. Even cooking on top of the stove is to be avoided at all costs, at least during the day. I don't even turn it on to make coffee in the afternoon, switching instead to a favorite beverage that is the national summertime drink in Greece but unknown here in Spain: the frappé. Spaniards will mix ice with their coffee during the summer months but that is a very imperfect substitute for an ice-cold frappé.
Frappé
In a cocktail shaker add ½ cup of milk to a cup of water. Add ice, Nescafe instant coffee and sugar. Shake vigorously and pour into a tall glass. Drink it with a straw.
A frappé is foamy and sweet and perfect on a summer afternoon. Unfortunately, they don't drink them in Spain so I had to import them myself by making them at home. When I lived in Greece I would have to say that drinking a frappé at some little café on an island was about as close as I have ever come to perfection in this life. Now that the afternoon temperatures are soaring I try to get to that same place whenever I am at home by making a frappé for myself. In Greece I always had to ask, “Just a bit of sugar,” because the normal version must have about half a cup of it. After introducing this Greek import, my Spanish friends are now completely addicted to frappés as well.
Gazpacho
I made gazpacho for the first time in my life my first summer here. Now that I have lived in Spain, and I made it once, I guess you could say that I’m kind of an expert on the subject of this cold, tomato soup. I have heard it described as a liquid salad which sounds more accurate than calling it soup. What I can say with authority is that it’s really good and it’s almost impossible to screw up. What more do you want out of a menu item?
Since I have adopted a Castilian accent to my Spanish I now pronounce this simple yet wonderful dish gath pacho. gath pacho.
Gazpacho
4 tomatoes (peeled and chopped)
1 onion (chopped)
1 cucumber (peeled and chopped)
1 garlic clove (diced)
1 red pepper (seeded and chopped)
Bread (I used three slices of the 5 seed whole grain stuff. Soak it in water briefly and then squeeze out the water)
I had a zucchini lying around so I peeled it and cooked it in boiling water for a few minutes.
Salt, pepper, a dash of cumin, a tablespoon or two of olive oil, and a few dashes of red wine vinegar (No, not balsamic).
I like to chill all of the ingredients beforehand so that as soon as you process everything in a food mixer it will be ready to eat. Most recipes call for you to strain the soup in a food mill after mixing after processing but my blender is powerful enough to liquefy everything. Garnish with a bit of avocado.
I prefer to drink gazpacho out of a glass instead of treating it like a soup and trying to use a spoon. So you kids out there fighting over whether gazpacho is a beverage or a soup just break it up. It’s both.
I rarely drink any sort of alcohol before evening, and in these months it's much too hot to drink wine in the afternoon, but it's hard to turn down a glass of sangría. Sangria is something rather unique to Spain. I have never come across anything similar in Greece, Italy, or France, and lord knows that it wasn't for lack of trying on my part, but I may be wrong. There are as many different recipes for sangria as there are people making it. The important thing is that it be served cold and that some sort of red wine makes it into your glass accompanied by fruit. The rest is up to personal interpretation.
Sangría
Preferably in a ceramic pitcher, add red wine, a bit of Spanish brandy, lemon and orange juice along with slices of both fruits, any other sliced fruit that sounds good to you, sugar, cinnamon stick, and top off with something like lemon-lime or club soda. Serve very chilled.
The Little Malarial Mosquito That Could (Almost)
Most inspiring tales have humble beginnings, and what could be more humble than a mud puddle in equatorial Africa? Even in the lowly world of larva, your mud puddle was nasty and nothing to write home about. Almost the moment you got airborne out of that pestilential backwater, a fierce wind carried you north across the great Sahara desert where another wind, the sirocco, swept you farther north and out over the Mediterranean Sea. During the flight, other mosquitoes in your swarm told stories of older siblings who had the fortune of landing on cruise ships in the Mediterranean, ships full of fat, thin-skinned tourists who provided an eating orgy for the half-starved mosquitoes on this same pilgrimage. All your party can muster up en route is a garbage scow registered in Liberia with a crew so scraggly and diseased that you decide to hold out for better prospects.
It has been over a week since you said goodbye to your little mud puddle, a week of adventure and little blood. Just when you think that you can't hold out any longer and are about to do a belly flop in the sea, you see lights on the horizon. Someone in the swarm who has made this trip says that it is Rome up ahead. Ah Rome, the Eternal City. You have always wanted to see Rome. Maybe you will stick it to the Pope, so to speak. The Coliseum would be a good spot to hunt…oops. A strong easterly sweeps you back out to sea. Goodbye Rome, hello Valencia, Spain.
You would have liked to check out the beach as there is less in the way of clothes to get to bare skin. Instead you finally come down in the heart of the city. It is something like 3 a.m. and there is no one in the street. Almost crazed with hunger you fly up, and up. Somewhere in one of these endless apartment buildings there awaits your first meal in over seven days. You fly into an apartment on the sixth floor. No pesky screens in this country. The kitchen and living rooms are empty. As you attempt to enter the bedroom you are repulsed by a chemical being emitted from a socket on the wall. The anti-mosquito device is just too powerful.
Is this to be the end, not only for you but also for the malaria protozoan parasite that rode as a stowaway all the way from the steamy jungles of Africa? What a cruel evolutionary demise for the both of you. “Adiós, protozoan parasite. Adiós, little mosquito.” You land on this strange plastic thing that hums quietly. Death is near.
But then someone enters the room, and get this, HE ISN'T WEARING A SHIRT! You are almost delirious from hunger and it is difficult to see in the darkness. The great shirtless one sits down and touches the strange plastic thing that hums quietly. Miraculously the strange plastic thing lights up. It is like seeing a lighthouse in a storm. You point your needle and fly as fast as you can, sticking it into the hilt in his chest. You take out so much blood that you almost faint. What happened to protozoan parasite? I guess this is where he gets off. He didn't even thank you for the ride. You don't want to, but you pull out your needle and flap your wings. You are so full that it is going to take extra effort to get off the ground again. You flap your wings furiously and start to move just as you see something coming your way. It is a long limb with five digits at the end. What could it be?
SPLAT!
Note to self: buy a can of aerosol bug spray for when I can't sleep at night and want to do some writing at my desk which is outside the range of the bug zapper I have in the bedroom.
Closed for Vacation
In Spain if you wake up in the morning in August and you know what day of the week it is as well as the exact date it means you’re working too hard.
August is the month when everyone who is anyone closes up shop and heads out of town. There are signs posted on businesses all over town explaining that they are taking the month off and will be back in September. The signs are an interesting mix of apology, exasperation, and things that look like counterfeit absentee excuses written by delinquent children. Some of the notes read like messages found in bottles which vaguely explain the whereabouts of the owners and contain an even more unclear explanation as to when they plan to reappear. Many of the signs I have read say that the closure is so that the employees can rest—as if they are all off to some tuberculosis sanitarium to take the healing waters.
The café that shares the courtyard with my building is run by the three brothers. They are rarely open at any time of year. If there is a big football match they will be open. If someone has booked the place for a first communion they may condescend to come in to work. They have been closed for all of August and they didn't even bother to post a sign. A written notice of their vacation plans would have constituted too much work for them. If they did have a sign it would read something like this:
Are you kidding? We are closed about 50% of the year and you come by here in this month and you think we'll be open? We'd all laugh at you except it is too pathetic to think that someone actually thought they could get a cup of coffee or a beer at our place IN AUGUST! Go away! We'll be back when we're back unless the day we're supposed to be back falls on a holiday in which case it will be the following day. Don't hold your breath.
August is the month when people make major renovations to their apartments because they are gone all month. It's the time when businesses overhaul themselves. Two apartments in my building have been gutted and are being transformed. The bakery in my building is getting a major face lift. There is a new bar going in around the corner. If you left town this month you won't recognize the place when you return.
I was down in the Plaza de la Virgin last night—one of the more popular sights in Valencia—and it was completely filled with tourists. Even the people speaking Spanish were out-of-towners. The waiters and waitresses all seem to be on loan from other countries. It's like the locals just handed over the keys to the city and left everything to the Visigoth hordes who have invaded.
I never thought that I would say this after living through the Fallas festival but it is really quiet here in Valencia. It is 8 o'clock in the morning and it is eerily silent. I haven't heard a car horn yet today and even the dog across the street who howls like a coyote every morning at this time is conspicuous by his absence—or at least his bark is. I am straining my ears but I can't hear a single jackhammer or any sort of power tool. The people doing all of the renovations in town don't seem to have bosses looking over their shoulders so they start work at a reasonable hour, usually after noon. There is no doubt about it; things are rather quiet around here. Why would I want to leave now?
Lots of Valencianos have second homes, mostly along the shore somewhere. The quiet little Mediterranean beach towns that I rode my bike past all winter are now filled to the brim with people, cars, dogs, and everything else that people from the city take with them when the exodus begins. I think that if I were now in one of those little beach towns I would be listening to the morning cacophony of car horns, jackhammers, howling dogs, and squawking parrots. It's a good thing that a lot of these places have bike paths because the traffic there in August is atrocious. The major beaches all look like U.N. refugee camps. Anything providing a bit of shade in these places is swarmed by older Spaniards with card tables and chairs where domino games and impromptu picnics are held. If the shade happens to fall on the bike path then you'll just have to ride around them; it's called “summer rules.”
With the sun and the heat my bike rides aren't as ambitious these days as they were back in the winter and spring. When it is almost 40° a little goes a long way as far as bike rides are concerned. I head to the beach at 4 or 5 in the afternoon and return as late as 9. Even then the sun is strong enough to dry me out before I have completely left the beach behind me as I ride the bike path back into town to the north.
It's not like I really need a vacation since I really don't have a job to need a vacation from—if I can even write a sentence like that one without getting beaten up by an old high school English teacher. Besides not needing a vacation, I like it here in Valencia more than ever. I seem to have the whole neighborhood to myself as well as this three bedroom apartment. If you're planning to visit me, now is the time.
I almost forgot to add one thing: none of the summer rules seem to apply to the immigrant community. The Chinese mini Wal-Marts are all open for business, the döner kebab places run by the Turks and Indian subcontinent guests are on their usual schedule, and the Africans still roam the plazas hawking electronic gadgets and other trinkets. Once again, no one sent them the memo about the vacation hours.
Too Hot to Think
We are in the real dog days of summer. You can feel exactly when the wind stops at any time of day—even when you are sleeping—by the rise in temperature. I leave my house to go to the beach at four in the afternoon and sometimes I will stop to have a beer or a coffee at one of the cafés overlooking the sea just to put off facing the blazing sun. There is a strong offshore headwind on the bike ride to the beach. At least it is cool. On the way home the breeze shifts, coming from the west like the air in a convection oven.
It may sound like it but I'm not complaining; I am just moving a little slower these days. The Mediterranean is warm to the point of barely being a refuge from the heat. Everyone in the world is at the beaches so they are a little crowded. I don't have the energy to ride the extra half hour to my private beach—at least not every day. I usually just stop at the newly refurbished beach at Pinedo just south of Valencia. On a bike I can find an empty spot that is too far from the parking lots to attract crowds.
I stand my bike up in the sand as close to the surf as I can. I dig a hole for both wheels and stand it up straight so I can hang my shirt and pack on it. Even in these hours of the late afternoon I try to limit myself to less than two hours in the oblique sun. Showering at the beach after a long swim is one of life's great pleasures. Yesterday there was a kid with a guitar playing flamenco music on the beach path within earshot of where I was showering—just in case I had forgotten that I was in Spain.
The earlier part of these days is best spent as idly as possible: reading at a shady café, preparing food in a cool kitchen, shopping in the grocery store that actually has air conditioning, or anything else that keeps you out of the sun. The days seem to begin more slowly and don't really get up to speed until the sun has set at around 9:30 or so. Lunches in restaurants start later and later every day, reflecting the intense heat and the idleness of the population boom of vacationers. No one sits down in a restaurant for dinner until it is completely dark outside and for a lot of diners the meal doesn't begin until after midnight, as if postponing the evening meal to the next day will offer some relief from the heat.
There are a lot of advantages to these scorching days of midsummer. I love it that I can take a shower without turning on the water heater. When I was freezing my tail off last winter I couldn't imagine taking a shower with anything but the hottest water possible. It still is a bit of a shock when you first hit yourself pointblank with the stream of cold water. Other than this initial jolt I couldn't imagine raising the water temperature a single degree. Cold beer becomes euphoric. White wines have more appeal during summer and you can thumb your nose at convention by chilling red wine. There are probably cold, nonalcoholic out there but I'm not going to sing their praise.
It is also the season to discover some of the lovely Spanish rosé wines. Most of these are from Rioja and almost all of them are modestly priced. I ran across the street from my building to the Mercadona to take a peek at their rosés. The big grocery retailer also has air conditioning. I asked them if I could live there for the next couple of weeks, preferably near the ice cream or in the wine aisle. A quick glance of their rosés:
Rioja Region:
San Asenio 2.55€
Romeral 2.65€
Comportillo 1.69€
Marqués de Cáceres 4.50€
Valencia:
Baron de Turis 1.09€
Castillo de Lliria 1,30€
I would have sprung for the Cáceres but in these trying economic times I didn't want to come off as a bourgeois pig at the cash register. I opted instead for the Romeral. These rosés are all fairly dry and shouldn't be confused with those horrible white zinfandels which no adult should be caught drinking. They go great with a salad, which is about all you'll feel like eating. The good news is that the tomatoes are looking great.
Just One
How many old, fat, and naked foreign tourists does it take to completely ruin about 500 meters of pristine Spanish beach? If I had written that last sentence in Spanish the declensions for gender would indicate that I am talking about the male of this particularly grotesque species. How do I know that he is foreign? I don't know for sure but past experience on Mediterranean beaches tells me that I probably guessed correctly. Northern European would be my first pick if I had to guess where he's from; that's just the way those dudes roll.
This inquiry is not some sort of riddle or the opening line of a bad joke; it's a simple rhetorical question to which we all know the answer. How many dead mice on your plate are enough to make you lose your appetite? For those of you who think that last sentence was in bad taste let me remind you that nothing is more tasteless than an old, fat, and naked foreign tourist.
So I'm riding down the beach bike path on a glorious day when I look up and on the sand dune in front of me stands the old, fat, and naked foreign tourist in all of his glory. All that I can do is shout out, “¿Porqué, porqué, porqué?” as I pedal by. Why, why, why old, fat, and naked foreign tourist? How could you possibly think that there is even one person on this earth who would want to look at your frightful human form? There is really no upside to being exposed to an old, fat, and naked foreign tourist but at least his gut was big enough to cover most of the truly horrifying parts of his misshapen and hairy carcass.
There you stand on the crest of a sand dune, like a hirsute scarecrow. If I ever wanted to have 500 meters of pristine Spanish beach all to myself I would hire an old, fat, and naked foreign tourist (OFNFT) to stand atop a dune. I guarantee that no one else will want to share this space with you.
I quickly ride past OFNFT but I will have to look at a lot of topless Spanish beauties to scour that image from my mind. You are like a visual Exxon Valdes, OFNFT. Who is going to rescue the sea birds that have been traumatized by this toxic spill of hair and bald spot and grease and flab and suntan oil? Green Peace says that their people won't move in until someone makes OFNFT at least put on some shorts and preferably a burka.
I consider myself to be a pretty tough guy but how do you defend yourself against an OFNFT if you are attacked? I have read that you should try to stuff something in his blow hole but I have the feeling that is exactly what OFNFT is looking for as he ambushes unsuspecting bicyclists on this stretch of pristine Spanish beach. Harpoons are awfully heavy to take on my bike rides but I don't know of any other way I can go by this stretch of beach and feel safe. I didn't want it to be this way but OFNFT has turned me into a two-wheeled Ahab.
Perfect Zeros: Doing Nothing with Style
You would have never thought that being a lazy slob was such hard work until you spend a summer in Valencia. Idleness is an absolutely relentless task around here. It starts the minute you get out of bed in the morning, or at least when you decide to open the persianas, the blinds on the windows here that block out every last ray of skin-scorching, house-plant-wrecking, and furnace-like sunshine that beats down on the little corner of the Mediterranean that I call home, or at least it's where I have been keeping my suitcases and doing my laundry. The word “lazy” in Spanish seems to be more of a challenge than an insult, so don't worry about offending me.
Yes, summer can be a real chore, a full-time job, and there is still a long way to go before it's over so you just have to dig in and battle it out like everyone else around here—or leave on vacation for the month. My whole life here is pretty much a vacation so I'm staying put for August. Besides that, it's too hot to move.
Wake up late, have a coffee and listen to people in the café bitch about the heat, maybe do a little shopping and stand behind women at the supermarket cooling themselves with hand fans, and then it's back home for a nap. Wake up an hour later in a stupor from which you are only partially revived by an ice coffee, lather up with 50 factor sunscreen, drink a few liters of water, and go out for something remotely resembling a bike ride. Bike rides in the summer are shorter and sweatier than during the other seasons. The dress code changes radically. Instead of cycling clothing, it's flip-flops, surf trunks, and a shirt that goes into my pack as soon as I clear the city limits. I wouldn't actually call my summer bike rides “exercise,” I just sort of go through the pantomime of a bike workout. It's too hot to think about where to go on my rides so I just go to the beach every day on the bike path. 30 minutes after pushing off in front of my building and I am carrying my bike across the sand at the beach at El Saler. I go for a swim, if you can call it that. Some days I just dive in and then head directly to the beach shower.
Showering outdoors is one of the biggest treats of summer. In my old bungalow in Florida I had a great outdoor shower that I used when I got home from the beach. I have often thought that outdoor showers could be a lucrative sort of business if everyone knew just how great it feels. I just wish that you could make the water colder at the beach showers.
One of the hardest jobs this time of year is choosing an outdoor café for coffee or a beer. The good thing is that you have lots of occasions to stop for a beer or a coffee. The even better news is that there are countless places to do it. Just about every bar and restaurant has what is called a terraza de verano, or summer terrace. Tables and chairs are placed on the sidewalks and often in the street. If anyone is bothered by this no one seems to have the energy to complain. In summer it seems that no one can make it the two blocks to the supermarket without stopping on the way there for something to drink, and maybe on the way home as well. What the hell else do you have to do?
A lot of people complain about the slow service in cafés during the summer. Have you ever tried to wait on tables while you are in a very deep sleep? And look at how peaceful he looks sacked out in a chair behind the bar. He looks like a little angel, even with his hand stuffed in his pants and a wisp of slobber on his chin. I don't have the heart to wake him up to order a coffee so I just sit at a table on the terrace and try not to disturb him as I read. The bar owner will wake up eventually and it's not like I'm in any sort of hurry. If there is something that can be defined as the exact opposite of being in a hurry then it comes pretty close to describing this place in summer.
Doing nothing becomes something along the lines of an Olympic event during summer in the Mediterranean. Judges give points for style and give lower scores for difficulty. It's not impossible but judges rarely award anyone a score of perfect zeros.
Plazas and Terraces
Because of Valencia's fine weather, people like to sit outside at cafés throughout the year. There are very few days when you won't see at least a few brave souls sitting at tables on the sidewalk or on park benches. The big plazas in the center of town are filled to the brim with cafés and are a natural place for people to gather and just hang out. I think it is an innate human instinct to group together with family, friends, and total strangers in a public place. In the summer months here in Valencia there are so many people lying around in cafés that you almost feel like you should have called ahead for reservations.
Every neighborhood has its own little park or plaza where people come and go throughout the day and each one of these spots seems to have its own personality. If the park happens to have a fútsal court (a small concrete soccer pitch), sport will dominate the theme of the place. Perhaps the ethnic make-up of the area will influence what goes on in the cafés. If there are a lot of Latin American immigrants, you will hear salsa music coming from portable CD players or car stereos. If you grow up under the influence of the rhythms of the Caribbean, music is one of those non-negotiable items in your carry-on baggage when you emigrate. Age groups often vary from one plaza to the next. Where one place seems to be reserved for older folks, another is full of young parents with strollers, and another may look like a nightclub for teenagers. The bars and cafés surrounding a park or square also tend to dictate the clientele. Any place in the center of town will be the realm of tourists, especially during summer.
Right outside of my building you will find a plaza as pleasant as any in the entire city. The Plaza Doctor Lambrete lies on the north end of the Ruzafa market. The 15th century church of San Valero is at one end of the small plaza. The square is more of a pedestrian shortcut for the neighborhood than a plaza. People flow through here all day on their way to the market or towards downtown a few blocks away in the opposite direction. There are two cafés in the square, which along with the half a dozen park benches all seem to invite pedestrians to stop and sit for a few minutes on their way to where ever they are going. Consolat de Mar, the only street adjacent to the plaza, is choked down to a single lane thanks to double parking. Cars can barely be heard—a big advantage for any hangout location. Get rid of automobiles and people will flow in. There is a modest fountain that is just big enough for kids to float their toy boats.
A few elms, a few orange trees, and three big date palms keep the plaza in the shade even at midday in August. The breeze that is funneled between the church and the adjacent apartment block is almost always welcome. At just about any time of day, when you walk past the square, excuses for stopping for something to drink disappear. Since this beautiful little plaza lies directly below my apartment, it has become my de facto living room. If someone is planning to come to visit me I can sit at one of the cafés downstairs and head them off as they approach the front door of my building. I find it easier and more pleasant to read in a café than at home, and this time of year it is cooler in the square than in my place so I spend a lot of time at one of the tables.
In the Blink of an Eye
It’s all over so quickly. I often think that it’s a shame that summer doesn't last forever. At least I think about this whenever I live in a place where summer doesn't last forever. I lament seeing the first signs that summer is waning—a harvested field, the retreat of sunlight in the late evenings—but there is still plenty of summer left at this point. Here in Valencia I would say that we are just at the half-way point. Even with so much summer still in front of me I like to take time to appreciate everything this means. I like to take stock of all of the things that I love about this season so as not to forget about anything important that I may be missing—not that anything that I enjoy about summer is in any way important.
As far as food is concerned, the summer months are a bit paradoxical. It is almost too hot to cook and even eating becomes a tiresome task at times. Even thinking about what to cook gets to be a little tedious. Thinking, in general, seems almost hazardous when you are baking in the sun. Still, you have to eat. The good news is that you have friends who have barbecue grills on their rooftop terraces. If I had a wood-fired grill I doubt that I would cook food any other way—at least until I got tired of it. I suppose that keeping the grill clean is a natural impediment to over-using it. Here in Spain you can buy real wood coals instead of those charcoal briquette things that seem to have been hatched in a chemist's lab. They take a while to get going but waiting for the fire to get up to speed is why they invented cold beer—or at least one of the reason (note to self: write essay on all of the uses for beer).
Beer tastes a lot better in the summer than in other months. I love riding my bike to the beach in the early evening and the finishing up by stopping by for a cold beer at a bar near my apartment. There is nothing like that first, ice-cold swallow of beer after you have been out in the hot sun. The next five beers don't quite have that same zing to them but what are you going to do, quit after one mouthful of beer?
The next best thing to a cold beer after a good bike ride is a cold shower. As I said before, I don't even bother turning the hot water on in the summer except to wash dishes. In fact, the water never gets cold enough for me. Showering at the beach is one of the true joys of summer.
*I love how the streets are totally deserted on Sunday mornings in the old quarter of town. I ride my bike down all the very narrow roads and I can actually feel the vibrations of the church bells because there is no other noise.
I could go on all day about what I like about Valencia in the summer, but it's already too hot to be in the house and it's only 09:00. Too hot to write, too sunny to be exposed this leaves sitting under a canopy at a café or finding some shade at the park to read.
Sol y Sombra: The Beginning of the End
August ended just a few hours ago. There are still a few weeks of official summer as far as the calendar is concerned, and here in Valencia we probably have a few months of shirt sleeve weather. It is every bit as bright and sunny this morning as yesterday morning but I can't help but feel that summer has somehow slipped past. Yesterday was the last Sunday of August and probably the last really busy day at the beach this season. I remember growing up in America's Midwest when right about now you were just waiting for that first cold day when the temperature dropped to around freezing—a real sign that summer had ended. The climate here isn't nearly as drastic and summer slowly slides into fall like a hot bath gradually cooling after you turn off the spigot.
If the spigot here wasn't turned off about two weeks ago, someone definitely turned it down to a slow dribble. Just when you thought the heat was unbearable, summer hit its apex and, almost overnight, it is just warm outside instead of sweltering. Instead of leaving for a bike ride to the beach at 5:30 in the afternoon, lathered in 50 spf sunscreen, I find it safe to leave at 3:30 with 30 spf. Instead of diving into the sea that is practically at body temperature, I find that first dive to be a bit refreshing. Hot coffee in the morning has edged out the ice frappés that I preferred during the hottest couple of weeks of August. I don't have to run throughout the day to find shade, fearing the sun like some celestial bully.
Today most people in Valencia will go back to their businesses, take down the signs they had put up bragging about their month-long absence, and get back to work; appetites start returning for food that hasn't come directly out of the refrigerator; turning on an oven doesn't seem like suicide; and you begin to think that, sooner or later, you may have to return to wearing socks. Fall is a great time of year in Valencia; it's like summer in Seattle. As pleasant as autumn may be, I can't help but cling to summer like a shipwreck victim holding on to a bit of driftwood.
I still have to close all of the curtains and blinds in my apartment to keep out the heat, but this pitched battle with the sun has lost the desperation of only a few weeks ago when I had threatened to turn on the air conditioning almost daily. As it turns out, I only bothered with the AC on about three occasions this summer, following instead the example of the Spanish who use resources like electricity a lot more judiciously than we Americans. This was about how many times I was forced to turn on the heat last winter. Last night I actually groped for a top sheet to pull over me.
I can't recall the first day I opted to wear shorts this year. You see many people switching to shorts as early as mid March. I'll try to keep a record of when I return to long pants. I don't know how my feet will take to being shod again after at least three months of going in flip-flops. I can't believe that soon I'll have to start wearing a shirt around the house. I love summer here in Valencia and I want to wring it out for all it's worth. I am going to celebrate summer today by christening my new 46 centimeter paella pan that covers almost the entire top of my stove. My 40 centimeter pan just left me feeling like half a man. It also really wasn't big enough for a paella that contained half of a rabbit and half of a chicken, so it wasn't all male overcompensation issues that made me buy the new pan.
It isn't nearly as hot as it was only a week ago and I can actually hear the summer starting to wane just a bit every evening. There is a Mercadona grocery store across the street from my apartment and I can hear them close the shutters on the windows every evening promptly at 9:15. As we move into the middle of August it is almost completely dark at this hour when last month there was still almost an hour of daylight after they closed. These are the cues that the modern day urban naturalist picks up on to gauge the seasons of the year.
You can tell that it is summer by the faint amount of laundry that cycles through my washing machine. I think that I may have done one load in the last three weeks or so. The summer dress code in Valencia—at least for me—is decidedly casual: flip-flops, surf trunks, and soccer jerseys which usually follow me into a cold shower when I get back from a bike ride to the beach. There's a bit of a water shortage so I'm just doing my part by killing two birds with one stone.
The few neighborhood cafés that have remained open in August get pretty full in the evenings as not everyone has left town. It seems that everyone that has stayed now has more idle time than usual so café card games flourish, dominoes take on an added seriousness, and the extra chairs that are usually stacked against the wall are all in use.
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