Hail on the hilltop

On Saturday, Beza and I walked from Logrono to Alcanadre. The guides gave varying distances, from 32 km to 40 km, which was a pain in the arse because we had to time our walk to arrive in Alcanadre by 4.08 pm, which was when the first train back to Logrono was (the second and last train was at 7.25 pm).

We ended up arriving at about 4.20 pm, just missing the train and had to catch the train to Calahorra and a bus from Calahorra to Logrono.

But it turned out that it wasn't so bad after all, considering what other horror might have befallen us.

On the way to Alcanadre, we had to climb up a small mountain and when we reached the top, we saw this huge black cloud hovering over the horizon. It was about another two hours to the village and we hadn't seen signposts for the last six or seven kilometers, so thought we were lost.

Just when we were about to give up, we saw a beautiful yellow arrow on an abandoned barn marking the camino. (The Camino de Santiago is pretty well signposted and it's hard to get lost but we were doing this stage in reverse, which is a lot more complicated that it sounds.)

On Monday, when I read the papers, it turned out the massive black cloud we saw was the biggest hailstorm to hit La Rioja in decades. There were hailstones half a metre high in Alcanadre and surrounding villages and most of the wine crops were 100% damaged, which means no wine next year. Windshields, windows and glass doors were broken, the blinds and corrugated roofs had holes punched into them and everything was devastated.

I'm not sure if anyone was caught in the storm but I suppose it would've been quite uncomfortable to have hailstones the size of cricket balls pelting at your head.

A meringue is a beautiful thing

I made this meringue (and about 20 others but without the decoration) on Sunday morning. It was surprisingly simple, although because I didn't have an electric beater, I had to beat it by hand and now have a sore right arm. I don't know how the people used to survive without electricity. They probably didn't make meringues.

Afterwards, Millán was playing in an ice hockey match so we went to watch him. The weather has been weird- it changed from sunny to rainy every five seconds yesterday. So I left the house thinking it would be hot and sunny, in shorts and thongs and nearly froze in the ice rink.

More Camino de Santiago

On Saturday, we did another bit of the Camino de Santiago, from Calahorra to Alcanadre. Again we were going to do two days and again we just did one because the weather report said it would rain. (Photo: in the playground in Alcanadre)

This time we started a little later because it was only 22 km. It was supposed to take about four and a half hours, so when we arrived at 3 pm, after three and a half hours (and including a half hour break for lunch), I actually thought we were in a different village.

We entered a bar to ask directions to the train station, which probably wasn't really necessary because it's a village with a population of 350 people and maybe seven or eight streets. There were five old men sitting round a table chatting or reading the newspaper, and when I entered the bar, there was a dead silence and all the people turned around and looked at me, like they'd never seen an Asian person in their life.

When we started there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the sun was scorching. Both of us ended up getting pretty sunburnt, even with sunscreen but now people can't make fun of me for being so pasty. And for once the weather report was correct. It started pouring down rain at about 6 pm with huge chunks of hail.

Macmillan, soccer and tortilla

On Wednesday, Macmillan, the publisher of the primary school textbooks that we use, held a series of talks to publicise their new textbooks and market their readers a little.

It was absolutely awesome. In the talks, the speaker talked about activities you could do with kids and every time he needed a volunteer, I was the first to put my hand up, because I love this sort of thing. Some of the teachers attending probably thought I was a bit crazy, or hyperactive and over-eager but I got free stamps for volunteering, so ha!

Afterwards, I met up with Beza to watch the all-important Barca vs Chelsea soccer match in a bar. It was a great match. Chelsea were winning 1-0 and Barca was down a player because of a penalty but in the last two minutes they scored a goal and the bar went crazy. So now they're in the finals which will be played at the end of May and I bet there'll be people waiting in the bars by 4 pm to nab some decent seats.

We went back to my flat to make dinner because the bar was just down the street from me and Beza kindly offered to make tortilla. So I started making homemade soy icecream while he fried up the potatoes and onion. While I was boiling the icecream on the stove, he asked me 'Is that it?'

I thought he was asking me if it was icecream so I said yes, and the next thing I knew, he'd grabbed the saucepan and poured it all into the potatoes and onions. My shriek of anguish almost cracked the glass in my flat. We ended up eating the eggs he hadn't used for dinner but I was incredibly upset that I had no tortilla and no icecream.

On Friday, I decided to recreate our unsuccessful tortilla. IIt was tasty-ish but lacked an egg, so it sort of fell apart. I've been told that if I learn nothing else in Spain I have to learn how to make a decent tortilla.

Cooking and bureaucracy

I've been in cooking mode lately. So far (aside from the risotto, sushi and empanada) I've also made pizza with homemade pizza base, homemade spaghetti with sauce, chocolate macaroons, carrot cake, banana bread, burritos, choc chip biscuits, anzac biscuits, cuajada...

Last weekend I made teriyaki skewers with homemade teriyaki sauce and raisin bread.

I'm not very good at Spanish food because it's so cheap and easy (and tasty) to eat out here but I have two awesome Spanish cookbooks that I'm going to conquer.

Yesterday I went to the Oficina de Extranjeros (the Government office for aliens and yes I think they actually use the word aliens in their official text) and was given a ticket and told I had to wait more than two hours.

This debacle started at the end of October when I applied for my residency card. They told me they'd send me a letter within a month and I'd have to go in with an ID photo and get my fingerprint taken. At the beginning of January after returning from holidays I still hadn't received the letter so I went in to the office, waited almost an hour in queue and got told they were delayed with lots of paperwork but I should get a letter within three weeks. Three months later (and five months after I was supposed to get the letter) I still haven't received anything.

You'd think after a five month wait, spending two hours in queue isn't too much. But frankly I don't give a damn any more. If they've already sent me the letter and it got lost in the mail, they can damn well send me another one if they want me to have my card so badly (which I sincerely doubt) and if they haven't sent it yet, I'm not going to wait two hours to be told to wait another three weeks.

Meanwhile, Friday is another public holiday and with one thing and another, I'll only have worked two days this week. With a working week like this, I can put up with shitty bureaucracy.

The Camino has begun!

Last weekend, Beza and I walked from Alfaro to Calahorra, which was about 25 km, as part of the Camino de Santiago that I want to complete some time this year. From Alfaro to Logroño isn't part of the popular French route of the Camino de Santiago, but I wanted to walk through La Rioja since it's been my home for nearly two years.

Also (and more importantly), there was a festival of vegetables in Calahorra, which is apparently famous for its greens. So I thought I could kill two birds with one stone- start the walk and eat some pinchos in Calahorra. We were going to walk two days but the weather forecast said it would rain on the weekend so we just did Saturday, caught the bus early in the morning to Alfaro and returned to Logroño in the afternoon.

As usual, the weather forecast was wrong because it didn't rain, but it was less wrong that normal. Usually if it says it's going to be sunny, I put on a scarf and extra jumper just in case. And the last few times it's said it's going to snow it hasn't. But on Saturday it was very cloudy and extremely windy.

We stopped halfway to have almuerzo in Rincón de Soto, a village famous for its pears (don't know why- I didn't see any). Almuerzo is a Spanish concept that I don't quite understand but like a lot. It's like brunch, at about midday except people also have breakfast and then afterwards, at about 2.30 or 3 pm they have lunch. Which means they eat three meals before they hit dinnertime.

The wind was blowing against us the whole way and about half an hour after we left Rincón de Soto, we could already see Calahorra in the distance, which was very encouraging at first but then took another two and a half hours to arrive at.

Still, we had some awesome pinchos. My favourite was the one in the picture- ostrich meat with brussells sprouts and carrot on a potato puree base.

Beer and waffles in Belgium

For some reason I couldn't sleep so ended up sleeping maybe 3 hours and was very nasty to be around on Wednesday. Plus our plane was delayed and I was hungry but refused to buy overpriced prepackaged semi-plastic food at the airport. I started biting Beza and I think he was quite happy when our plane finally arrived. (Photos: Mannekin Pis; Jannekin Pis)

Things improved in Brussels. I thought we'd booked an upmarket hostel but it turned out to be a fantastic guest house and the owner was really friendly and helpful. Visited Mannekin Pis, his less aesthetically pleasing sister Janneke and had our first waffle and first litre of cherry beer.

Went to Ghent the following afternoon. We were going to stay but couldn't find cheap accommodation so caught a train to Brugges and stayed the night there instead. Brugges was so idyllic it was almost scary. Like a picture perfect village in some horror film, where all the people are friendly and there are horse-drawn carts (which there were in Brugges) and picturesque houses and suddenly all the children turn evil and decapitate the neighbours. (Photo: in Ghent)

The weather was basically shit the whole time in Belgium except on Saturday which we spent in Antwerp. In the morning we went to an open market and had snail soup (well, I had snail soup and Beza watched with disgust) and in the afternoon we went to a legal graffiti park and had a picnic of horse jamon (like pork but leaner, very interesting) on bread.

The most disappointing thing was we only managed to fit in two waffles each in five days because we were too busy eating/doing other things.

And on the way home, the plane was delayed again so we missed our train and had to catch one three hours later. Which then broke down in some God-forsaken village for an hour and a half. And had to backtrack for some unfathomable reason. BUT we went back to the station on Monday and got a full refund on our tickets, ha!