And the question is… how many times can someone go shopping before being declared his brain dead? For how long can someone subjugated to the lights, the crowds, the thousands of colours, the Christmas music and the loudspeakers announcing the offers in the commercial centre, before starting acting totally out of control?

I don’t know the answer to this questions, but I have the feeling that is very short time

After a short fighting, we: “the anti consumists” fell without hope in this net of consumism. We have surrendered to the Christmas tradition of trying to demonstrate our love by the means of giving presents. We have taken refuge of the cold, the snow and the boredom in places more dangerous, uncomfortable, annoying and, finally, still more expensive than the second option (the bars): in the stores and commercial centres of this small city.

I complain, I complain and I complain… but I already know that it’s out of my control, and even when I suffer with each bank note I remove from my pocket, I’m already conscious that I have entered the game a year more…
It’s necessary to change it, as much at particular level than at global one, but it’s very difficult… how to change this consumist and wasteful system in which we have entered, not absolutely voluntarily?…. I stop a little while to think, it’s very difficult!

I’m going shopping!!

Saturday, December 24th , 8:30 p.m. Christmas Eve

>>>IN SPAIN<<< (this night is called "Nochebuena"):

We have just come back from the street, were what is happening in this moment is the following:

There are thousands of people in the street, most of the oldest ones are men. Some are just after doing their final shopping; others are going, in groups, to the bars; others are in big groups in front of the bars’ door, talking with joy. Many of them are wearing red caps, like Santa Claus. You may wonder why they are on the streets when is -2ºC. The reason of that is that the bars are too crowded. Young and old people there are talking and drinking a toast with Champaign. The atmosphere is rare and dense with too much smoke and the noise is so high because of the music and the people’s conversations that it’s almost impossible to speak loudly enough to make the others hear you. People are kissing and greeting good whishes to the others, even when they don’t know.

What is happening in the houses? In most of them are, unfortunately, still the women and only them who are preparing the best dishes for the diner: staffed turkey of duck, sucking pig or lamb (depending on the house); appetizers in which there always are king prawns and asparagus; and, for dessert, turron (Spanish traditional Christmas sweet made mainly of almonds and honey, it used to be very hard and difficult to byte, but cab also be made of milled almonds with honey) , marzipan and polvorones (Spanish traditional Christmas sweet made mainly of roasted flour mixed with sugar and lard, it’s very dry, that’s why it is called polvorón “dust”).

Around 9:30 or 10:00 men and young will arrive home and the dinner will start, all the family together. They will drink wine or Champaign, they will make a big noise, talking loudly, interrupting one another, discussing about everything and nothing at the same time. Many times the family will sing Christmas carols after dinner and they will play some games, still drinking and talking till very late in the night.

Some of them will go to the church at 12:00 in the night, and other will still go out at 1:00 for keeping on celebrating till the sunrise.

Tomorrow there will be a very big hangover in this country.

>>>IN POLAND<<< (this night is called “Wigilia”):

At this time the dinner probably would have finish in most of the houses.

Families would have started cooking in the morning and they would have started the dinner when they saw the first star in the sky.

Before the dinner they would have shared the bread and greeted each other good wishes. They would have dinked a toast together at home.

In the dinner they would have eaten 12 different dishes, as the tradition says, All of the dishes consisted in fish and vegetables, not meat. Many different kinds of herrings, salted and marinated, with thousand different sauces: apple with cream, garlic and oil, mustard with honey, vegetables… Carp in the Wigilia’s dinner is a must: fried, with gelatin, in sauce… Also fried mushrooms and, moreover, the soup, made of mushrooms and full of flavors, with the small “ears” (the typical polish “ravioli”, stuffed with mushrooms and fried onion), swimming on it. They would have drunk “compot”, which is the sweet water after boiling dry fruits. And for dessert, they would have eaten that one made with poppy seeds milled with honey, nuts, dried grapes and sweet orange skin. It has aroma of amaretto, and it is eaten with small very crispy cookies made with butter.

At this time they all probably had opened the presents, brought by Saint Nicholas, they would have spoken a lot, and they will still speak through hours.

And finally we arrived.

Flying, feeling important for receiving that small food of the plain that give you when you fly in a not-cheap company, for having a second helping of orange juice and coffee, two times more of sugar and cream. Feeling even more important when we found the welcome committee in the airport, consisting in my father in his superreflective jacket whistling us from far away. Feeling dazzled for the intense light coming from this light blue sky, for the sun brilliantly till 5 pm. for the beauty of the fields of Castilla in winter.

And already at home, and with the presents already given, with all the news already told, with the afternoon snack already eaten in family… we find out that, without any duty, without a car and without the possibility of walking too much, we don’t know exactly what to do.

So we camped in the big red sofa, all day “atalangados” (word that only exists in the vocabulary of my grandma referred to “the position in which you are when you are laying when you should be doing any other thing”)

We try to be busy with something and we go shopping. We bought turrón for our friends in Poland, and we got angry because or the high price, but we bought it anyway. Few minutes after we found out that in other shop it costs the half, we got angry again and we tried to bring it back to the first supermarket with the excuse of: “my mother bought it also and now we have too much”. We could obtain the money back, and we returned home feeling very brave for defending the right of our friends.

We returned home, we lie down again in the sofa, we read…

Últimamente por mucho trabajo que tenemos (como escribe ahora Raquel) hemos dejado el blog. Por eso me sorprendió un montón hace dos días cuando miró el correo y teníamos 10 nuevos comentarios! Pienso “que guay!” Nuestros lectores no nos han olvidado. Pero resultó que no. Que todos los comentarios eran spam. De usuarios tipo “poker online” o “texas holdem”. El nuevo mecanismo anti-spam ya funciona pero puede ser que va a rechazar algunos comentarios. Así que por favor: si no veis vuestro comentario inmediatamente esperen un tiempo y aparecerá.
Muchísimas gracias por todos los comentarios!

En una ciudad tan grande como Varsovia el transporte publico es esencial. Las carreteras son muy malas (para no escribir palabrotas) y con el metro sólo se puede viajar norte-sur. Quedan tranvías. Geniales. Rápidas, cómodas, no pillan los atascos y no se rompen tanto. Sólo que de vez en cuando le pasan cosas raras. Sobre todo porque sus usuarios no saben las reglas básicas. Hoy por la mañana uno de ellos no podía partir de mi parada porque tanta gente quería entrar que las puertas no se cerraban. Pues, pasa a veces. Pero no tanto para que cinco otros tranvías atrás le esperaran! Es que a veces no entiendo a la gente: no dejara a unos llegar un minuto antes al trabajo. Si van a llegar tarde - van a llegar tarde todos!
Uno de los tranvías se enfadó tanto que unos pocos minutos después se le rompió el parabrisas. Después de un frenazo que dejó casi a todos en el suelo, salimos para investigar lo que había pasado. La conductora con la voz templado dijo: “no entiendo nada. de repente el cristal se ha roto. el sólo…”

In my mind is written that every good trip must start and finish with a good shower. I must say that this is only something hidden in my mind, you don’t necessarily need to take a shower before your trips, but I can’t take the car, or the plain with dirty hair and not recently washed shocks.

Well, I have just taken a shower, dried my hair with care, depilated my eyebrows, polished my nails, depil… (oh! no! this not)… but… yes!: tomorrow we are making a trip:

CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS IN SPAIN!! (Mammy: there we are going!… will it be croquetas for diner tomorrow? )

We know that we wrote very few in the last months. What has happened in all this time?: we have been deserving the holidays, working exhaustively and trying not to see this half-dark in which we have been living during November and December. You all know but… everything is so dark that I’m waiting for the sunrise since 40 days ago: my hormons need more light and for my brain is hard to differentiate the difference between the day and the night.

In this Christmas we promise (with our’s fingers crossed) to inform you frequently of what will happen.