EL TERMET where they fed usAs I've said before, our schedule in Spain was a nocturnal one. We'd tumble into our sleeping pods around 6-8 a.m. and emerge around noon or one. Tired as we were, few of us could sleep through the leaf blower man's daily "performance"; he'd show up around 8 a.m. and obsessively rearrange the pine needles in the courtyard with manic zeal. One morning he purposely blasted into the room where we slept! Perhaps he wished our group could be tidied up like other debris.
So each day after peeling my appiccicoso self from the sheets and crawling out of the sleeping pod, I'd wonder what time it was and whether or not the door to the showers was unlocked. One afternoon as I wandered over to the shower building, I rounded the corner and found myself standing in front of a fifty-piece children's orchestra that was getting ready to practice. As I stood there in my nightgown, rubbing my eyes and wondering if this experience somehow made up for the fact that I've never had the ubiquitous "going to school naked dream", the children erupted into giggles. The conductor merely smirked and waved me past.
Once showered, I'd gather up other hungry folks and head to the restaurant, El Termet. There were rules at El Termet. For one thing, you didn't walk up and order coffee at lunchtime without raising a few eyebrows. No matter how tired you were, you must have your first course, your second course and your dessert: primero, segundo y postre! Only then were you supposed to order coffee. The waitstaff's attitude towards us ranged from indulgence to pure contempt. For instance, Atty ordered an ice cream once and was refused because those were strictly for kids. Even so, Atty had this way of obtaining fancy stuff from the kitchen while the rest of us were given the same three choices over and over: ensalata (salad), entre mes (meat and cheese plate) and lomo ("This is the back of the pig," they'd say each time, rubbing their backs to demonstrate).
This first meal of our day often lasted two to three hours. We'd linger over coffee, water and perhaps a 'Snacky Taco' ice cream, socializing in shifts as other freshly-showered people made their way up the hill. Not everyone approved of the leisurely length of our meals. Zdeno grumbled that, "Some people eat to live and others live to eat." When I offered him a vitamin C tablet one morning, he said, "Would it not be better to simply squeeze a lemon into a glass and drink that?" Of course, a few hours later I saw him drinking wine and smoking a cigarette! I teased him that he needed to have his own cooking show because for some reason, we'd always end up asking him questions about food preparation, to which he'd respond, "I do not have the vocabulary for this!"
El Termet is the Valencian term for 'little countryside' which is what they call the area where the hermitage is. Speaking of Valencian, Spanish street signs were often spray-painted over with Valencian spellings; the word "playas" for example, might be changed to "platjes" (or was it "platges"?) Like Catalan, Valencian struck me as an amalgam of French and Spanish. According to Atty, however, Catalan is most closely related to 'Oc' linguistically. I'd never heard of the 'Oc people' as Atty called them, but I have noticed the phrase, "Pays d'Oc" on wine bottles before. Atty said that the Ocs were indigenous to the south of France and that "Pays d'Oc" essentially refers to wine that is from "Oc Country." This is either an interesting bit of linguistic trivia or else Atty is pulling my leg... (By the way, Atty, I have yet to sing "Greensleeves" to a seal, but I still intend to!)
I've also concluded that after the fall of Franco came the rise of Coca Cola. It's everywhere! A visit to Spain is like living in a Coca Cola commercial. Coke's red and white umbrellas blossom from cafe to cafe and it's found on every menu. I finally ordered a bottle of Coca Cola because it seemed like such a part of the Spanish culture. And they serve it in cute glass bottles (like you only ever see in old movies in America) with a slice of lemon.
Fede, who is from south america, told me he's noticed that Coca Cola adapts its packaging to match each country's prevailing aesthetic sense and bodily shape of their people. Mexico's bottles, for instance, are short and squat whilst Argentina's are tall and thin. Meanwhile, in the United States Coca Cola appears most often in these huge plastic jugs. Hmmm... just what does that say about my country? | ||||||
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