Looking for an epiphany

We've been to see a few Easter parades these last few days. When I was a schoolboy Mr Kemp and Mr Edwards, my Junior and Secondary school headteachers, were keen that I was given a good Christian Education. Whether I asked for it or not they made sure that I got it. Although I haven't really looked at a Bible or happily gone inside a church for well over forty years I still remember the basics of, for instance, the Christmas and Easter stories. At times it's not enough. So when I saw a float in a parade with the title of Aparicion de los Discípulos de Emaus or The Appearance to the Disciples at Emmaus it meant nothing to me. Fortunately other teachers tried hard to persuade me that finding things out and knowing how to find things out was easily as important as actually knowing things. It's much easier now than it used to be. Google knew. Emmaus or Emaus is one of those early Resurrection sightings.

In the same way that I have a well grounded but essentially partial grasp of Christian lore I have a reasonably good handle on Spain. I know a bit of history, a bit of culture, some politics and more. I keep trying to add to my knowledge. My sieve like brain is a perfidious ally in this attempt to learn and those funny foreign names don't help either but sheer persistence has worked for me in the past and I see no reason why it isn't a workable plan for, at least, the near future.

The last Easter float had passed us by. As we walked away the chair hire companies were loading their plastic seats into the back of myriad vans and the road sweeping machines were pirouetting around the streets which moments before had buzzed with spectators. As we neared our parked car we saw that there was something going on in the park, el Malecón, by the river. We've seen fairs and markets there before so we went for a nosey.

There were a bunch of temporary restaurants. They were busy. Most were called Peña this and that. Now peña is probably a word that I don't understand. Or maybe it's a word I understand perfectly. It seems to be a multi-use word - all peña usually means is that it's a group of like minded souls - Peña Madrileña for Real Madrid fans. It seems too that peñas can either be very open groups or quite closed groups. I've heard peña used to describe the garage hired by a bunch of mates during a town carnival to drink beer and hang around in. Often, within fiestas, there are peñas which are set up by associations of one kind or another. Your neighbourhood may be going to do some things in a town fête so the neighbourhood sets up a temporary HQ in an unrented shop. They call it a peña and it becomes a sort of social centre for anybody who has affiliations to that neighbourhood. Some peñas seem to be more permanent than others.

Anyway, so we've diverted to have a look in the park and we find all these restaurants and they are all called Peña this and that. We have no idea whether they are something to do with the Spring Festival, which always follows on from Easter in Murcia, or whether they are tied in to the Holy Week celebrations. We have no idea but hundreds and hundreds of people do, they are having their lunch there. Some of the peñas have price lists, most are completely full. We don't know if it's a walk in proposition, whether we need a reservation or if it's a members only deal. It doesn't matter. It's not as though we want to eat. We've already eaten in a bar in town. The reason we are interested is simply because we don't know what's going on. We are quietly and individually distressed. It's discomforting simply because we don't understand. It's another Emmaus moment.

Not enough meat for a post

I was trying to decide whether there was enough material for a post or not.

I went on a tram. I parked outside of town and rode in on the tram to save car parking fees. That's it. That's the nub of it, the kernel. I don't think it's enough. It doesn't have the lurid appeal of "I Married an Alien" nor the biting, if misplaced, immediacy of "Gotcha"

Maybe I could pad it out? Details about the Murcia City tram system: length of line, stuff like that but just reading the information was boring enough - test line in 2007, opened 2011, only one of the four lines built, 21kms in length etc.

What about a trip down memory lane? Illuminated trams in Blackpool dresseed as rockets, Lisbon trams scraping past walls or Huddersfield trolley buses passing through Elland on the way to the terminus in West Vale. Hardly appropriate for Life in Culebrón.

Something on the organisation of public transport perhaps? The Alicante to Jumilla bus that stops in Culebrón? How, within towns at least, there is a fixed fare scheme nearly everywhere in Spain. About the per kilometre price for main line trains with slower trains cheaper than faster trains? Even more yawn inducing. Anyway I seem to remember a remarkably tedious post about a narrow gauge railway somewhere.

No. Not enough for a post. And the photos were blurry anyway because it was so dark and dismal in Murcia.

In the city

Pinoso doesn't have traffic lights and parking is free. In Culebrón we don't have much tarmac let alone street names.

Yesterday I went for a job interview in Murcia. I hadn't been looking for a new job it's just that a job website I'm signed up to sends me offers matched against keywords. From time to time I apply for something that looks interesting. Like being a tourist guide. But jobs are in short supply in Spain at the moment and I never get any sort of response. There's no effort to applying though, just push a button and my CV wings its way to wherever. I never bother with a covering letter. I'm not expecting to get an interview so I don't put any effort into the process. There was effort in writing the original CV of course and every now and then I update it but it's low maintenance.

So the surprise was that the firm came straight back to me after one of these occasional button pushes. It was for English teaching of course. The only job where my faltering Spanish is not a handicap. The advantage to me in changing jobs is mainly financial. I am, technically, self employed and taking advantage of a reduced rate, for startup businesses, of Seguridad Social which is a lot like the UK's National Insurance. Even then, by UK standards, this reduced rate is startlingly high. It's a fixed minimum and I'm paying 153€ per month at the moment which will go up to around 210€ in November and six months later it will reach its final level of 263€. Quite a whack out of my part time earnings; 30% of my gross and if I add in my tax the total in stoppages is something like 38%. The new job offered a simple, straightforward contract. I would become an employee again.

The interview was fine. They offered me a job. After a lot of indecision and a lot of sums about diesel costs, hours worked and stoppages paid I said yes. The job wasn't actually in Murcia as I expected but in a much smaller town called Cieza. I think I will be working principally as a language assistant to youngsters doing vocational courses which sounds both interesting and organised.

So, back to the point.  I had to go to Murcia. I don't mind driving anywhere but one of the joys of rural Spain, and lots of it is rural, is the roads. They are not busy. But Murcia City isn't rural - it's a real city. The centre is encircled by a giggle gaggle of intersecting motorways and out of town shopping centres. Once onto the ordinary streets it's roundabouts, traffic lights, five lanes of traffic, cars jockeying for position, bus lanes etc. Normal town stuff but always a bit of a change after Pinoso.

The interview was in the centre of town and I parked in an underground car park. When I drove out to come home it was lunchtime. I had the SatNav thingy on which tells me how many metres it is to the next rounadout or junction. It took me 20 minutes to cover the 700 metres that got me onto a relatively free flowing road heading out of town. I have a similar story about Victoria Station to the Wellington Arch but that story involves a Routemaster bus and over an hour.

Anyway, I drove over to Cieza just to have a look. I parked in the main street without any problem and without any payment. The town seemed nicer than I remebered, a bit prettier. The drive home along the N344, bits of the almost deserted A33 motorway and the RM427/CV83 was a pleasure. Not a traffic light or a bus lane in sight.

It was nice in town, the hustle and bustle, all those shops and people. I went to see a temporary Goya exhibition. We don't get a lot of Goya in Pinoso but, on balance, I quite like small town life. And I'm not far from plenty of 200,000 plus cities should the need for a bit of traffic overcome me.

It's a franchise

Murcia City has changed a lot over the years. It feels citylike now - it hustles and bustles. The first time I went there I thought it was a dusty hole. If I tell you I arrived in a friend's Lada Niva you'll realise just how long ago that was.

We were there yesterday and we wanted something to eat. The place is alive with tapas bars and trendy looking eateries. I quite fancied a place called Tiquismiquis (which means something like fusspot) or maybe Moshi Moshi (I don't speak Japanese so I don't know what that means) but by the time I'd found a bank machine we'd passed those places by and we were footsore so we went to a Lizarran instead.

Lizarran is a franchise. They have little tapas, generally bread mounted snacks, stored inside cooled display cases. each tapa has a toothpick driven through it. You bung a few tapa on your plate and when you're settled a server asks you about drinks. When the place is realtively busy they usually come around with additional hot tapas. Other things are available for order too but basically the fare is tapas on sticks. When you're done they count up the number and style of toothpicks on your plate and charge you accordingly. It's hardly cordon bleu but it's usually pretty acceptable and it's easy.

We considered 100 Montaditos as well. Cien Montaditos is also a franchise. In there you choose a table and in the centre of the table is a pen and a list of the montaditos which are basically mini rolls or sandwiches. You mark how many of which you want on the list and hand it in at the bar. They fill the drinks order straight away and give you a shout when your montaditos are done. Cien Montaditos is also usually pretty acceptable and it's easy.

Searching, as ever, for a blog entry it struck me that both were franchises. I did a bit of Googling and I was amazed how many everyday Spanish businesses are, in fact, franchises. It's not just the opticians, dentists, fast food chains, parcel carriers and quick jobs on the car businesses. One of the big supermarkets, Día, is a franchise and there is apparently a bread shop with over sixty varieties of bread - never seen one of those but it sounds good. There's another one that sounds like an equivalent of Wetherspoons with dirt cheap beer; never seen that either or I would still be there. But my favourite on the currently booming franchise list has to be a language school. If I were to work there maybe I could have a uniform and a zero hours contract like those people who work in the burger bars.

Gainfully employed

According to three people I've spoken to this week Murcia is now the seventh largest city in Spain. That's not what it says on Wikipedia or almost any other Internet source I can find (9th or 10th) but it's nice to know that Murcianos are proud enough of their city to want to bump it up the league a couple of spots.

Culebrón is 58.6kms from Murcia yet I don't really know the city that well. I've seen the Cathedral scores of times, visited a few museums etc. but I still let the Tom Tom guide me in and I pay to park. So, when I decided to book up a weeks worth of residential Spanish course Murcia seemed like a good choice. Near enough to be cheap travelling and yet still largely undiscovered, by me at least.

The plan was a school with five lessons a day of Spanish tuition and also to stay with a Spanish host family for a week. I had this vague notion of me sitting, Homer like, on the couch, bottle of beer in hand as the host family and I guffawed along with something on the telly after a hard day of internalising compound conditionals. It didn't work quite like that but it was surprisingly close.

For a start María Ángles doesn't watch much TV. She seems to get her news form the radio and the normal sound as I crossed the threshold was Classical music. The rest of it hasn't been that Homerish either - Mediterranean cuisine and hardly any alcohol at all. The best bit was that I did get to speak and trying to explain about Lingula, the brachiopod, or my views on some Spanish authors, in Spanish, has been exactly the sort of thing I wanted to try to do.

The school, Instituto Hispánico de Murcia, has been good too. It would be easy to start a list of things I would have preferred to be slightly different but the truth is I got the package as described, the teachers were pleasant and skillful and I've probably spoken about half of the Spanish I've spoken all year in their classrooms or with Mª Ángeles over the past week. The cultural programme hasn't been that good so I haven't picked up as much about Murcia as I might have hoped but I don't want to nit pick and I did drive out of town without Tom's help so I must have learned something.

Starting and finishing

Many years ago, as tourists in Havana, we were shown the Cuban "kilometre zero" - the point from which all distances to and from Havana are measured. I remember being treated as an idiot when I asked how you would know where the other end of the line would be. Maggie added her scorn to that of the guide.

True enough you can measure to a point form any other point but where do you measure from? The roadsigns say, for instance, 70 miles to London but to where in London? - Westminster Abbey maybe - and if so the door or the altar - or it could be Buckingham Palace or, perhaps, The House of Commons. Apparently, in London, it's to the statue of King Charles I on the South side of Trafalgar Square.

In Madrid it's very obvious. Tourists queue to have their pictures taken standing on or near the Km0 point in the Puerta del Sol. And, yesterday, in Murcia I was shown the point to which all distances to and from Murcia are measured.

So, Cuban tourist guide, I can work out how far it is from London, Murcia or Madrid to Havana but can you tell me how far it is to Culebrón from Havana if you're so smart?

Coals to Newcastle

The school is in a prime
 city centre location handy
for the sweet shop,
bars and  restaurants

You're going where? In high summer? You must be bonkers - it'll be like an oven! That's been the general drift of the conversation when I've explain to any Spanish chums that I'm intending to spend a week in Murcia city doing a 25 hour Spanish course and living with a host family for a week.

They also find it difficult to understand. You do live in Spain, don't you? Nearly all Spaniards firmly believe that a few months in an English speaking country will turn them into polished and fluent English speakers. If that's the case why hasn't it worked for me the other way around?

The reason is twofold, the first and most important is that I am so terrified to speak that I avoid doing so if at all possible. The other reason is that I hardly ever get the opportunity to speak Spanish. They pay me at work to speak English, Maggie and I speak in English and you don't get a lot of language practice buying a beer or getting the supermarket shopping done.

So, in a few days the Instituto Hispánico de Murcia and Maria Angeles (my host) will get the pleasure of my company. We were in Murcia today signing paper so we went to see where it was.

Who knows, maybe I'll have to speak a bit of Spanish?

In praise of maps

I must have been to Murcia City at least twenty times. It's only about fifty minutes from Culebrón and a bit less from Cartagena. According to a list on Wikipedia it's the 9th largest city in Spain. Anyway, nearly every time we go there we go to the square outside the Cathedral, wander around a bit, maybe get onto Gran Via and then decide there's not much going on and leave.

Sneakily they seem to have opened a tourist office in the Cathedral Square without us noticing. So today, for the first time, we had a map as we wandered. What an amazing difference. It wasn't just that we got to see an exhibition about Alfonso the Wise, went to the Archaeological Museum, wandered the Christmas Market and nearly went in the Fine Arts Museum, it was that we knew where we were and, maybe because we went a sensible way from one place to the next, we went past scores of new and interesting places.

The town felt really nice too. It was a warm day, I dumped my jacket and pullover and still felt over warm in a T shirt, and the Christmas lights, Christmas happenings and Christmas crowds made it an exciting place to be. Our luck must have been in too because the Cathedral was open. It was the first time we've ever got inside.