If you’ve read this blog and recognise the little sketch up there from a past post, you can say you knew me before I went viral!
Hello Rachael:
This is Lucía from Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, I’m in charge of OSG’S Social Media , we just receive your mail and draw and since today is the European Music Day we will like to publish the draw.
Please let me know if it’s ok with you.
Do you have an instagram account so I can tag you.
Thank you so much for your kind words and your draw.
All the best
Lucia
Obviously I said it was fine.
And the General Manager of the orchestra has invited me to attend a concert in A Coruña if I’m ever there.
In other big news….
Walk into bar
Me: Hola, buenos días
Señora behind counter: Hola
Señor behind counter: Buenos
Other customers: various greetings
{gotta love that about Spain – everybody greets everyone}
Señor behind counter: Dime
[this is two-syllable word dee-meh, literally meaning “tell me”, which is a handy shorthand for “how can I help you?”]
Me: ¿Puede ayudarme? Busco una caja de poliestireno. Quiero tomar quesos de Galicia a Nueva Zelanda. [what I hope I was saying is: Can you help me? I’m looking for a polystyrene box. I want to take cheeses from Galicia to New Zealand]
Señor: Klaro. ¿Quiere una grande o pequeña?
Me: (with appropriate hand gestures) Pequeña, no más grande.
Señor leaves the bar, opens an outdoor cupboard, reaches inside and holds up a box: ¿Como esta?
Me: Exactamente – perfecto – genial. ¿Cuánto cuesta?
Man: ¡Tómala! Es para ti.
[which made me so happy – not that he told me to take it, or even that it was free, but that he didn’t use the formal form, which always makes me feel old!]
Me: Muchas gracias. Estoy tan feliz.
Señor: De nada, a ti.
Señor went back to work chatting with a customer sitting at an outside table and I snapped a photo for the blog – and thanked the half dozen people just to the right, who didn’t step into the picture!
This was not the first place I had asked for a polystyrene box (and in the interests of full disclosure, I had to look up the word for polystyrene). There is a swanky hotel nearby where I’m staying and I thought their kitchen might have some floating around, so I had gone in wearing my slides and toe socks and looking very Out Of Place next to the ladies with handbags on gold chains and sparkly jewellery.
No luck there, but the helpful suggestion to try the street where I had success.
Now I just have to fill it with cheese.
In the late afternoon I had had enough sitting – I had got my finances up to date…
….got my journal so close to caught up that there’s just a little picture to finish while I’m waiting at the airport….and yesterday I had completed the cathedral section of my cross stitch, so I was feeling very relaxed and needed a spot of fresh air. As I walked along the street I heard bagpipes, a snare drum and two tambourines – a group of half a dozen or so was sitting outside a bar, chatting, laughing, drinking and making music. Que guay!! (How cool)
I didn’t feel like going in to the old city and if I’d gone in the other direction I’d have been out of the city, so I wandered to an enormous nearby mall.
I’d forgotten just how huge this one shop is – by the time I’d wandered round half of it and got lost (I had seen some shredded roast chicken, which I decided would go nicely with my salad for dinner, but even though I retraced my steps three times I could not find it – but I did see umbrellas and beds and pool chemicals and lightbulbs and cutlery and prams and clothes and chilly bins and books and electronics as well as every kind of food imagineable….)…I had had enough of “shopping”. It was time to return to the albergue and put the slicker pads in the freezer and use the razor blades I had just bought!! No photos.
SoloWalk2024 