#3 Las Tapas

Ok, so once you're familiar with the whole culture of food in Spain, there's another thing that you just can't miss here. It's las tapas!

Tapas are pretty much small snacks you get when you go out for a drink. Tapas you can also get as an aperitivo before your meal. Let's be honest, tapas you can get where you want, when you want and how you want!!
Tapas is a big thing. Spanish people are not able to comprehend getting a beer without a snack. Imagine how lost they must feel when they're exposed to a single bottle of vodka without even a juice? Ok, that's a little too much Polish/Eastern thinking for today...
Anyways, when you go to a bar, apart from a drink, you will get a card of all the tapas you can choose from. They could be very small and very cheap (1 euro) but also bigger, meant to be shared among the people (aaand that's exactly why we don't have tapas in Poland!). One of my goals, BEFORE coming to Spain, was to try all kinds of tapas. Little did I know and little did I understand when my Spanish friends laughed at me when I said it... There's so many different versions, types, styles of tapas, its impossible to try them all. But I'm doing my best!

One of the most popular Spanish tapas is tortilla.
Tortilla de patatas is the most common one and super easy to make! It's not the Mexican tortilla you might be thinking about, it's more like a Spanish omelette. And here comes the recipe!! What you need is eggs and potatoes, nothing else! I personally like the version with the onion but the plain simple one is only eggs and potatoes. You need to fry the potatoes (well, cut them first), take them out of the pan, mix them with the eggs and fry them from both sides! What's tricky is turning the tortilla. For that you need practice but even if it breaks it will still taste good! Just don't forget about salt and pepper!

Spain is a country where you can find all kinds of seafood and you can also get it as tapas.

Of course fried, like most of the food here, with a mayo to dip them with, here, fried squid.

Tapas also differ depending on which region are you actually in. In the South, in Andalusia, you can often get tapas free with your drink. Here, In Catalonia, that would never happen, although you can always get a bowl of FRIED nuts (frutos secos). No matter where you are though, you will always find patatas bravas which are, again, FRIED potatos with a sauce based on ketchup and mayo (depends, every place makes bravas in a different way so the sauce might differ, too).

One of the strangest things that I have tried so far in Spain and one of the tapas you might find is morro. If you don't know Spanish I recommend you write this down somewhere because you might not even want to try it. Unless you like bacon. I like bacon. Bacon...
Morro means 'a nose' in Spanish. And that's what it is. A pig's nose. Cut in pieces, don't worry. You can have it as a dish but also as a tapa. It's really fatty, I mean, it's fried, of course, like everything here, but it tastes a little like bacon so I like it. :)

Las tapas are addicting! Once you get a hang of the idea of tapas it will be hard for you not to have them every now and then when you go out. Not that good for the body but sooo important as a social convention! Besos,
xoxo

#2 La Comida Española

La cominda en España es muy importante...

I come from a country that food is really important. If you are ever a guest in a Polish house, you will understand what does the sentence 'Postaw się a zastaw się' or 'Gość w dom, Bóg w dom' mean. You will always be offered amounts of food that a normal person is not able to eat! Am I right, Carol&Dave?? ;)

Spain is like that, too. Although you eat a lot not only when you're a guest. You eat a lot EVERYDAY! And they even have special hours and special names for the times they eat. And since I'm living in Catalonia right now, it gets even more complicated here.
To understand it better, it's useful to know about the daily schedule of the Spanish which I wrote about in the previous post.
What you need to understand is that here, in the summer, it gets really hot. That's the reason why many things you just need to do in the evening, if not at night. To begin with, and one of the most difficult things I had to get used to, was breakfast.
Breakfast, el desayuno practically doesn't exist. No place, no house, no Spanish person will ever, EVER, offer you a plate of pancakes with maple syrup, scrambled or fried eggs with becon and toast, everything bagel with orange juice, white cheese filled crepes with strawberries or a LBC sandwich. They would just drink some coffee (about coffee I will need to write another post, it's ridiculous what they call 'a coffee') and maybe eat a toast or croissant...
But don't worry, the Spanish lifestyle hangs around the food and meeting with people so not long after el desayuno ( esmorzar in Catalan) you would eat a second breakfast (almost like the Hobbits! What proves that too, is that they all have a Hobbit door, with a know right in the middle!) which would be a simple sandwich. But listen, it's not a sandwich you'd see in Subway, especially in Catalonia, bocadillos or bocatas are made with a special bread (some kind of baguette I would say with... meat, or seafood, or jamon serrano or something. I have never seen a lettuce, tomato, vegetables in general, not to mention BUTTER, in a sandwich in Spain...
After that comes a very important time of the day, which is a break from work or school for lunch, el almuerzo!!! Here, you can find typical dishes like paella, seafood, or meat, most of the time accompanied by a baguette and olive oil.
*This part confuses me still, I never know if el almuerzo is in fact a second breakfast, and then lunch would just be la comida? Somebody please clarify this for me :)
You know how important it is to eat regularly, 5 times a day, right? The Spanish sure know it! Around 6PM comes the time for an afternoon snack (which, if it was half lighter would be my dinner), la merienda ( la berena in Catalan), which again would be some kind of sandwich, or what they told us was typical from Catalonia, would be pan con tomate - bread with squished tomatoes and olive oil (will get back to it when I'll tell you about las tapas).

La merienda could be sweet, too ;)

The most important meal in Spain is dinner. Not like any other NORMAL country when you eat dinner at 6/7/8PM after everyone's off of work and school and can finally dine together after the day. No. In Spain you eat at 9PM. Or 10PM. Or 11PM and you continue till 1AM before you go out. How crazy these people can be?! Well, la cena begins so late for a couple of reasons. First of all imagine the hotness during the day, you would not want to eat when it's still 30 degrees outside... Other than this, if you work till 8/9/10PM when are you supposed to eat? Some of my Spanish friends could not imagine dining when it's still bright out haha ;) And as I mentioned at the beginning, you eat a lot, I mean those people have no bottom in their stomachs, and for some magical reason, they can all stay skinny! Life is so unfair...

I'm really glad that I got addicted to working out but I really need to start a better diet soon. And for the end I just have a one small message:

Besos,
xoxo

#1 Los Horarios

You have probably heard about famous siesta, haven't you?

If you are ever in Spain you should really pay attention to the time you want to go out. Nothing will ever be open before 9AM, it's a fact. And that doesn't even mean they would open at 9AM. In Spain there's no such thing as a rush, people don't worry about the time very much, they're very flexible. That also refers to the times they open the shops, cafes, train stations (that are closed for the night so I would not recommend you to plan your hitchhiking trip with a sleepover at the station)....

Around 1PM-130PM begins the break, sometimes called a mediodia. At that time the shops close. Everything closes. Everything. My first experience walking the town was horrifying, it seemed like an abandoned plane because everything was closed!! Of course big supermarkets and some of the cafes will remain open, in big cities like Barcelona you will even find 24h small little shops but usually everything is closed. This is the time the Spanish people have their break for lunch aka el almuerzo. That means you stop working for 2-3 hours, go home or go out to eat and then come back to work around 5PM. This works in schools too. Children have clases starting from 9AM THE EARLIEST and at 1230PM go home for lunch only to come back to school at 3PM again. Sick.

IMPORTANT! This break is not a siesta!!! Siesta refers to the nap you take after lunch. This confused me the most at the beginning. I used to call this 'break' a siesta which often finished with people laughing at me because in Spain siesta refers only to the little sleep you can take during the day. Makes sense in the amazing summer weather when it gets really cold but during, what they call a 'winter', it was extremely hard to get used to.

Shops remain open till about 9PM. In Lleida there are no night stores so majority of the people does the groceries around 1-2PM when they get off of work, just before they prepare the almuerzo for themselves or their families. Cafes also close before 10PM, bars and clubs are a different story though, for another time! Besos,
xoxo

What you should know about Erasmus in Spai... Catalunya (Lleida)

Hi! I finally found some time to start up my blog and I really hope I will post at least short notes systematically. Well, my second time as an Erasmus is ON and I decided not to use this blog as an online diary but to give you some useful, interesting, funny, intriguing, scary information about Lleida (the place I'm staying in), Catalunya (a part of Spain that has some strong independence movements) and Spain in general. Most of it will either speak about food, show you the food or tell you how to make it but I like to follow my interests and I hope you will enjoy the taste of Spanish cuisine with me! ;) First post coming soon! Besos,
xoxo