BACK FROM SPAIN

BACK FROM SPAIN

18 November, 2003 - Houston 

(An email to family and friends in the days before FaceBook.

Hi, everybody

Just to let y'all know we arrived day-before-yesterday safe & sound from

Madrid.

We're still a little jetlagged - and mostly suffering from lack of sleep after that NOISY hotel room in Madrid. HOLY TOLEDO!  And people say that I am talkative! 

Those Spaniards yackedy-yacked till dawn's early light, and really LOUDLY!! 

They must vaccinate folks there with phonograph needles! 

In Spain, the HORN is the most-used piece of equipment on the car - and I am sure nobody dares to venture out into the street without their horn in tip-top-tooting condition.

The police there have sirens on their cars. These they use at night after nine PM, so that everybody in town will notice them. Everybody notices them, all right, but nobody gets out of their way. Hence: MORE HORN TOOTING and siren-wailing.

Police in Madrid do not use their sirens in the day. They are ultra-quiet in daylight hours so as not to disturb the local folks who now are SLEEPING after being out all night cavorting, talking loud, and honking their horns.

The last night there, we saw an altercation that would have gone nicely on the Jerry Springer show: 

A lady evidently was stopped by a security guard at the exit of a clothing store, after the alarm sounded. Now, I am sure everybody has had at least one incident where somehow the salesclerk forgot to remove or demagnetize the anti-theft device. Usually the matter is cleared up within a second, when the receipt for the offending item is produced. In this case, the female security guard began to curse out the customer, who in turn began to curse back, and they raised quite a ruckus! 

I felt like hollering out of my window:"JER-RY! JER-RY! JER-RY!", but I am sure that that action would have not had the desired effect, either on the folks involved in the hollering - or for that matter on Koky, who, by this time, had not slept well for several days, on account of all the horn-honking!

Surprizingly the matter was cleared up, quietly, and the noise level dropped to a din.

In Spain, the folks who work in stores everywhere must eat lemons before going to work. For every friendly or helpful salesclerk there are about 100 rude, dry, or just unfriendly ones just itching to show everybody just how mean & nasty they can get! They come to work dressed up in suits, and they let those suits go to their head.

But I have figured it all out — those poor slobs have to go to work after not getting any sleep because of all the horn-honking, siren-wailing, drunken catterwalling, and hollering and screaming - to say nothing of overtalking. They probably talked so darn much that they's plum tuckered out of talking. 

So no wonder they's so onery.

Leaving the country, we had to pay an airport tax. WHY? Don't know - jest 'cause, that's all. 

Seems to me they'd PAY folks to come into the country to show their sales clearks how to be nice and friendly. Maybe they're just sore that we're leaving, and not taking a few of those sour-pusses with us.

Anyway, despite all that foolishness, we had a great time, spent way more money than we should have, and came back safe and sound. Can't ask for more than that!

Later,

Kenny