6 degrees of anticipation

Thirty years. It’s been 30 years since I last lacked a car. Over that long a time, a vehicle becomes like another appendage. Always there, always responding and always reliable (at least, once you get past the early years of cars that are hand-me-downs five times over).

I must admit to being really antsy when we first arrived in Barcelona and I lacked a silver  key in my pocket and a familiar leather seat awaiting my behind. I was new to hoofing my way to anything that needed doing after years wrapped of being wrapped in a car culture that I warmly embraced. Walking certainly wasn’t a bad solution – just ask my bathroom scale – but it was a little less comfortable than just a few weeks prior when I’d simply hop behind the wheel, hit play on my iPhone and be in my own little cocoon.

I’ll admit to investigating car options in the first couple of weeks. What could be had for a cheap lease? How much do extended rentals cost? Nothing really looked that appealing, and the more days that passed, the less the need seemed to be there. And once Liam started school, well, that was the best reason I could find yet to cement in the decision to not have four wheels. Morning drop-off is like feeding time at the zoo. A herd of Euro micro cars mixed with an unhealthy dose of oversized Range Rovers and other assorted SUVs all descend on the tiny streets around the school in a frenzy that I would pay to avoid. Sunday evening sitting dead stopped on I-95 traffic isn’t any more frustrating than this show.

So, do I miss it, you ask? Some days, I definitely do. Like yesterday as I schlepped onto the metro with about 40 pounds of groceries and odds and ends from our run to one of the big supermarkets. That’s a moment when even a Pinto would look like heaven on wheels. But beyond that, most days, it doesn’t seem like much of a loss. The metro and buses in Barcelona are remarkably efficient with waits rarely more than 7-8 minutes, and more often only 2-3. Transit is a priority here as it is in most European cities, so it’s quick and even pretty cheap. Multi-trip cards get a ride down under a Euro.

But the biggest argument in favor of skipping a car is the act of driving in these conditions. Traffic is no worse than any big city, and easily better than a place like Washington, DC. The killer is the parking. There is little of it the further into the core you go, of course. More importantly, what there is wouldn’t qualify as a bike space in most of the U.S. They love underground garages here, with emphasis on the underground. The entry ramps are akin to driving off a cliff with slopes that must be 30 degrees, immediately followed by a left-hand turn that came straight off a Hot Wheels game. I could swear, the center of the Earth, or maybe a small town in China, is only one more level down into the garage. Topping it off, the ramp will be wide enough to fit a tiny European car plus, oh, say two sheets of paper on each side. In case, you know, you need to pass two sheets of paper between the car and the wall. And did I mention, the ramps are two-way and the corner blind. Good luck with that.

Whether it’s born or bred into the locals I don’t know, but clearly the driving skills here are way above the norm across the Atlantic. I like to believe I can handle a car pretty well. I’ve parallel parked into some spots that won me a bet, but I’m left shaking my head at what these drivers can accomplish with nary a shrug. The automotive contortion needed to go from a narrow lane to squeezing between a car and a cement post is baffling. I’ll admit to failing the first time I tried here with a rental car. The drive of shame to a lower level of the garage with multiple open spaces was my fate that day.

It doesn’t feel like I’m missing much by avoiding the parking lottery by going carless. It seems like every car here has scraps on two out of four  corners from the multiple tight turns. I don’t need to experience that. Nor do I need to dodge the scooters and motorbikes threading the needle between cars in a fashion straight from Deathwish. Nope, skip that, too. I guess I’ll keep hoofing it, and starting another streak. I don’t know if it will last 30 years, but it’s working for now, at least.

RANDOM THOUGHTS: Of all the pricey things here, it’s a relief to see great prices for seafood. Fresh fish or shrimp is often only a few Euros in the market, making for a great meal at home… Many Spanish words either sound virtually the same or have very close spellings, For example, the words for ID and meat – now that could make for an awkward moment at customs. Also, garlic and son. I know boys can be smelly, but… For those that do splurge on a car here, it’s remarkable the range of the prices. A little Euro box can be less than $10,500 , but a undersized Mercedes-Benz (which is as small and doesn’t look much different than the Euro boxes) will run you close to $50,000. Then there’s the $300,000 Porsche I spied in a showroom a few blocks from us. As if the tiny parking spaces here are not nerve-racking enough, imagine tackling them with $300k worth of overpriced iron wrapped around you…

Looking back years from now, I hope I can count Sept. 15 as a fateful day in my personal history. No, not because it’s National Double Cheeseburger Day in the United States (although, come to think to it, that’s a pretty appetizing reason). Not even because some prefer to think of it as National Make-A-Hat Day (propeller beanie, anyone?). It’s because Sept. 15 marked my first day of Spanish lessons. Welcome to my Ground Zero.

Languages are definitely not a skill listed on my resume. My only real formal training amounts to a couple of years before high school, where I share the experience of most kids that virtually nothing stuck, and an intro French program in my early 20s. I actually did intend to go on to the next series of French classes, but the school closed. It appears I have that kind of effect on the language teaching trade. If nothing else, the brief training gave my friends countless hours of amusement when they repeatedly greeted me with “Bonjour J.D.” Money well spent was clearly their opinion of my adventure.

I entered Spanish class knowing this was going to be an uphill battle. I’m no spring chicken and re-wiring my brain to think in words totally foreign to my comfort zone was feeling akin to visiting Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory.  Now, 10 days into the class, I can safely judge that an underestimate of the amount of surgery necessary.

As adults, most things we learn are very tangible. Whether it be a new piece of software, or an innovation in our field of expertise, or simply getting a new electronic gadget to the level of functional, all these things are reasonable chunks of information that can be mastered with some willpower and discipline (or the help of a 14-year-old). But a language is a more unwieldy beast, and it creates a roller-coaster of up and down moments worthy of a badly written romantic comedy.

There’s the high of listening to someone speak a sentence of more than three words and saying to yourself, “Holy crap, I actually understood that whole thing.” Or the rush when you fully conjugate a new verb and feel a little king of the world-ish. But then the lightbulb goes off that there are 8,397 other verbs yet to learn. And, oh yeah, that was just the present tense of the verb. Oy! I’ve got a lot to learn.

Fortunately, early on in the learning, there’s been a good number of lightbulb moments that help push the motivation envelope. And, of course, there is always humor. Struggling through so many unique pronunciations and different sounds inspires comical errors. I’m learning to roll my r’s with right emphasis to be understood, but not so much to sound like a cat hacking up a fur ball (not as easy as you might think). And I’m trying my best to untangle my tongue in a fashion to get the right word. Feedback from the teacher is welcome, but a tad embarrassing when it includes, “I think you’re trying to say ‘He is 34 years old’ not ‘He has 34 bums’.” Med school also appears not to be my forte.

So my Spanish is definitely still muy mal, or very bad, at the moment, but I’m concentrating on the baby steps that will take me forward. If every week, I can advance from knowing two things on the menu to three, then four and five, imagine how much my world, and palate, will open up in time. And how many polls will be saved once I figure out what they call a cow.

RANDOM THOUGHTS: Here’s one bad translation that’s easy to get behind. I’ve joined the Let’s Beer website. Gotta wonder what info they’ll send out… The language school offered a bonus class in Spanish street language. My key takeaway: the Spanish seem to gold medalists at innovating and using swear words. And they also seem to skate a razor thin line between use of the same word as complimentary or slap-in-the-face negative. My other takeaway: I think I need to stay waaaaay wide of that line to avoid an international incident… A language class that’s a melting pot of Italian, Dutch, Ukrainian and Icelandic participants is a pretty remarkable thing. The world really is getting a little smaller all the time.

With homage to the great Bill Murray movie of a similar title, my lost in transition moment has arrived  (translation is a whoooole other ballgame that I’ll get to later). I’m proud to say I sailed through my Grade 11 Electric shop class with good grades, but I didn’t expect that to be preparation for jumping knee deep in circuitry and voltage. On the plus side, I have managed to avoid shocking myself as much as one eye-opening moment in high school.

How our electronic “stuff” would transition was a concern from early on in the process of moving internationally. My laptop was only a few months old and, I hate to say, I’m a little lost if my trusty Mac and iPhone are not nearby and in working order. Then there’s the myriad other things that we had normally plugged in without a second thought. What to do?

The electric current in Spain runs at 220 volts, compared to 110 volts in the U.S., so it’s pretty darn easy to fry an item without some care.  Then again, even with care, it’s touch and go, as evidenced by the speaker phone and alarm clock that have been sacrificed to the utility gods in the weeks since we arrived. The other wildcard is wiring in an old building, which appears to range from 220 volts to “holy crap” if I’m translating the frog-in-a-blender-like sound that came out of the alarm clock.

A simple plug adaptor makes it possible to plug virtually any item in, and many items such as computers are built to handle different voltage levels. That’s the easy part. But for the items not configured for different levels, a converter is needed. Sounds simple, huh? The now familiar smell of melting plastic suggests otherwise.

The biggest conundrum, not surprisingly, is the television. I’m not glued to the tube by nature, but I do want access when the next Dexter or Six Feet Under comes along. I might even admit to a small addiction to real estate programs. So, a solution to accessing U.S. TV was on the to-do list. I knew this wasn’t going to be an easy box to check off, but it has become an ongoing adventure. I’m happy to report the TV and DVD player are hooked up and not a victim of electric overload (knock on wood, knock on wood, knock on… ). And except for the patchwork quilt of extension cords stretching around the living room, since electric outlets are as rare as Cheez Whiz in Spanish rooms, the plugging in part proved to be pretty easy. The challenge has been trying to tap into U.S. programs.

If you haven’t discovered it, there’s a service called Hulu which is quite remarkable, allowing cheap access to a huge amount of programming. There are a number of other similar services, but Hulu seems the most flexible. I set up an account before we left the U.S. with the goal of tapping into it via a VPN once we were set up on this side of the Atlantic. Countless others have done the same thing, according to what I’m reading online, so how hard could it be? Good intentions, as they say.

The adventure started with trying to program a secondary router to run the VPN, including more than 90 minutes online with the company’s tech staff to try and get the settings correct. I have no doubt that the tech lady who was assisting me thinks I’m the dumbest thing on two legs. At times, I had to agree (yes, it does work better if you utilize the ON button). But in the end there was success and the VPN was up and running. For about three minutes. Then it disappeared, never to return. On the positive side, the three minutes was long enough for me to figure out that Hulu didn’t like this VPN anyway and had no intention of letting me get any further. That’s one Wednesday of my life that I’ll never get back.

So it was on to solution number two. Luckily, this one did not involve the separate router, which I happily stuck back in the box to hopefully never see again. In mere minutes, I had Hulu up and running on my laptop and was back to giggling nonsensically at a recent episode of the Colbert Report, just like old times. But, alas, even with my magic spaghetti combination of wires, there was no movement on the television. It was still firmly grounded in Spain and on the not available in your country list. So, the adventure continues. I’m up to 17 emails back and forth to support, which are not easy to produce when you have your fingers crossed. If anyone has the name of the genie I need to consult to make my television again sing out something worthwhile like Breaking Bad, please contact me ASAP. I don’t want to be Lost in Transition forever.

RANDOM THOUGHTS: I lost six pounds in my first six weeks here, which is really quite remarkable considering I was traversing the city with a five-year-old who has never met a bakery he didn’t adore. That’s what not having a car will do for you… I’m also happy to report that the fried alarm clock has been replaced with a local model. Despite the fact that the manual lists 10 languages – none of them English – it is now displaying the time. Check one more box.