Some things I don't understand

1. The Spanish eat all the time. I mean they eat all the time. And it's not health food or anything. It's fatty and salty and they don't seem to eat vegetables (unless they are fatty and salty). Here's what I mean:

8:00 pastry and coffee, maybe a juice (definitely several cigarettes but that's actually a different entry)

10:30-11:00 time for a snack: eat a bocadillo – french bread roll with jamón serrano, manchego, another cup of coffee. these despite the diminutive are not small. These are sandwiches. Like we'd eat for lunch. Large french rolls, like going to subway for a six-inch.

2:30-3:00 or so is almuerzo time. You sit down to a big meal. And by this I mean a big meal. Like if we go out for almuerzo this is what we get for 9 euro: a shrimp and mushroom omelette, followed by two skewers of beef shish kebab with veggies and fries, bread, and dessert. Were we drinking folks, our wine or beer would have been included as well (as it is, our 1/2 liter of water is). Now rarely in all this are vegetables consumed without them being loaded with oil (olive of course) or, inexplicably, tuna. If you order a salad, it will about 50% of the time, come with tuna on it. I do not know why this is. To me, tuna is not an obvious must have with my iceberg lettuce and tomatoes (which is what a salad is most of the time), but in spain it makes perfect sense since tuna is a) salty and b) drenched in oil.

5:00is coffee and a little something

7:00-8:00 is tapas time

11:00-12:00 is time for cena (dinner) during which time you eat an even bigger meal than what you had for almuerzo

And then you get up and do it all again!

Which brings me to number 2...

2. Spaniards do not seem to sleep. Things open here at reasonable hours. 9:00am and the shops are open. Some are open earlier. This means that people have to get up and get going (after all there is eating to be done!). They don't bathe much, so that trims off time (although unlike the French they do not smell) but still, to get there and get the shops open, to get to work and get things going, you need to be up by at least 7:30 in the morning. This means that if you ate at 12:00am (and I mean you sat down to eat) which is not at all late for the Spanish by any means, by the time you've eaten your meal, smoked several cigarettes, had your coffee, cleaned the dishes etc, you are not going to bed before 2:00am. And you are doing it on a pretty full stomach. At most, you are looking at getting about 5 hours of sleep, maybe 6 tops, a night. And the people of Madrid, as incomprehensible as their accent and their vocabulary is, are lovely people. They are kind, helpful, and sociable. They are not crabby or grouchy (unless they are waiters) or under rested. How is this possible? A lot of stuff is closed around the time of almuerzo, but they can't be getting more than an hour's worth of nap then.

When the hell do these people sleep?

And how are they not the size of sumo wrestlers since that is the schedule (and the diet) they are keeping?

3. Smoking.

The Spanish are like walking fucking chimneys. When they are not eating or, actually even sometimes when they are, they are smoking. All of them it seems, smoke. This country will single handedly keep Philip Morris in business forever. Ricardo was watching the news the other night and there was a story trying to convince people that smoking while you drive is a dangerous activity. You know how in the US we're trying to get people to stop talking on their cells or to not text and drive? Well here it's smoking because it can distract you while you drive.

Note that we don't want people to stop because smoking can kill you but because you could have a wreck. And we wouldn't want that now, would we?