“I would sooner be a foreigner in Spain than most countries. How easy it is to make friends in Spain!” George Orwell – ‘Homage to Catalonia’
Eventually we left the A2 Autovia and took a minor road for the final twenty-five kilometres to Sigüenza and as we did we began to climb because we were entering the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama, part of the Sistema Central which is one of those east-west mountain ranges that extend through Spain that before high speed rail and modern motorways that have bored straight through them kept the Spanish people historically separated.
Have Bag, Will Travel 
Was Iniesta’s wine as good as his passing?
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No better than the Rioja so overrated and over priced – his wine not his football!
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Using a ‘phone to book in?!!!!! It’s not that difficult! Tengo un habitacion por however many dias. And don’t say I’ve lived here for more than ten years. I was doing that years ago. Or quiero un habitacion etc.
Is this inexpensive one the one that cost 65€?
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I am quite happy to blunder about in other people’s languages but the poor man was really very uncomfortable and he seemed to like showing off his fancy phone with the translation facility.
When I walked into town later there was a man on the pavement just watching the world go by and minding his own business so I asked him a straightforward one word question, “¿Supermercardo?” (I’m no linguist) his face went curiously blank and I think that sudden shock came over him that happens to us when someone speaks to us in a foreign language when we are not expecting it and he was completely thrown off balance.
Actually, I doubt that Siguenza sees many English visitors so it probably wasn’t so unusual!
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Very clever question marks, I can never be bothered to do the first one.
A gets that ‘uh you can’t possibly be speaking Spanish because you look like a foreigner’ a lot. Probably because a) he is tall b) he has greyish hair c) he has blue eyes d) he has high cheek bones and e) he basically looks celtic (hence being taken for a basque terrorist more than once).
Me, I could be anything. So, I’m often taken for Gib/Spanish. Long brown hair helps 😀
Must go to the job centre. Unemployment in Gib. Must be Thatcher’s legacy. 😉
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I think that first question mark is really clever! In the written word you know that it it is a question even before you begin the sentence – Brilliant, I don’t understand why the English language hasn’t stolen it like everything else it has nicked!
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Talking of football: do you know that two of the Premier League stars this season had their boyhoods in Oviedo? Juan Mata of Chelsea; Michu of Swansea. But the biggest sporting star from Oviedo is of course, Fernando Alonso.
And as for that quote from Orwell: gosh, I truly LOVED his writing, but you have to laugh eh? What did he know of “most” countries? He had lived in Burma and Paris … and by the time he had written Homage To Catalonia, I don’t think he had visited French Morocco.
Two countries is more than many Brits had visited/lived in, back then. But that hardly gives him the right to make such sweeping statements.
That said, I am a Orwell man till I die. And talking of death: I have lost count of the number of times I have taken people to his grave in Sutton Courtenay. A hero!
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Had me worried there for a moment Dai – I thought I must have got my un and dis mixed up again.
Nice point about the Orwell quote but it is still a good one. It has been sometime since I read him, not since school, but I have almost finished ‘Homage to Catalonia’ and I had forgotten just how simple but powerful is writing is.
Quite a coincidence that you mention Oviedo because that is my nest Spain destination and talking of football – well down Cardiff City! Now they play in Red are they still called the Bluebirds or will they have to become the Robins?
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As usual, I live in my own little time zone! Apols. You had told me that you were Oviedo bound, and I thought this was the trip!
As for Cardiff City: they will surely soon become the Cardiff DRAGONS, … particularly seeing that the Welsh flag features a red dragon.
And the Malaysian owners will happily change the name, given that the “dragon” features prominently in culture and folklore in the Far East. And these days, that is where the REAL Premiership money is to be made. Imagine the number of fans the team could recruit in CHINA … not that the number in Malaysia would be anything to sneer about !!
Now, if only your team – Leicester would drop their nickname of The Foxes, and adopt their rugby counterpart’s name of The Tigers! All of India would sign up as fans, especially if you changed the kit from blue!
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