Flavours of Spain

When you come to live in another country, you really do not want to limit yourself to the food you already know from your country of origin. Elise and I come from Belgium (well, I'm Welsh originally, but lived in Belgium for 35 years, so…). Belgium is a small country with a fine culinary tradition, offering plenty of variety, from sweet chocolate pralines to delightfully common stoofvlees met frieten, to more select plates that tempt even the most demanding of gourmets.

Now that we live in Spain, however, we like to try the local dishes, but this is not as easy at it sounds. Spain is a huge country and it isn't feasible for us to pop up to Asturias or Galicia, or across to Extremadura for an evening meal that includes the local specialities. We were therefore delighted to find a service offered by a company called GoodlitBox, which is advertised as offering gastronomic tourism.

The idea is that each month you receive a box of several specialities from a particular region of Spain, together with a booklet that explains what each product is and how it might be prepared. Each month a different region is selected, so that over the course of several months you can start to get an idea of the range of products available in the different parts of Spain. Great idea. Each box costs about 50 euro, but this can be reduced by ordering more than one box at a time. To start with, we have ordered three boxes, one each per month, which saves us about 10 euro. The price includes delivery.

Our first box arrived today, containing products from the region in which we live, Alicante. As you can see from the picture above, the box itself is pretty smart, being of hard cardboard, covered with a dark blue paper, which is embossed with a logo that incorporates a map of Spain.

Lifting the lid revealed that the products were well packed in straw. On top of the straw lay a GoodlitBox business card, the booklet about the products, a packet of mojama de atún (best described as a tuna ham), and a packet of date-and-walnut cake:

Removing the layer of straw revealed the following items: a bottle of Vino Cap d'Or Moscatel Mistela D.O.P. (Muscatel wine with l'appellation d'origine contrôlée); a jar of pericana (a sauce made of dried tomatoes, pine nuts, and cod); a jar of spreadso de alcachofa natural y aceituna negra (a mixture of artichokes and black olives, used in all sorts of preparations); a jar of pomegranate jam (very difficult to find); a jar of turrodella (a turrón spread, also difficult to find); a bottle of 100% ecological virgin extra olive oil. Here you can see these products, still in the box:

A pretty good first box, I think you'll agree. Here's you can see all the important contents:

We shall start on this lot (the pomegranate jam and the turron spread shouldn't last very long!) and look forward to receiving our box of delights from Asturias next month.

If you'd like more information about GoodlitBox, visit their site here (you'll find a section in English, too). Note that they also provide a blog, where recipes can also be found (this part only in Castellano).

Elvis 60

All together now,



Well, that's all right, mama

That's all right for you…

Would you believe that Elvis Presley recorded "That's All Right" sixty (yes 60, 6-0, zestig, soixante, sesenta, trigain!) years ago yesterday?



The story of how the number came to be recorded has been told many times and can easily be found online, should you be interested. But it was then that popular music took its first steps to becoming desegregated: no longer was there the artificial divide of music for blacks and music for whites; from now on it would at least endeavour to be music for the people.



The recording had enormous social impact.



But the event and its repercussions also had huge impact at the individual level.



I was a mere whippersnapper of five going on six in the Rhondda Valley of south Wales at the time that Elvis was struggling to prove to Sam Phillips that he was a good ballad singer (and then, quite unexpectedly broke into "That's All Right"), but within a few years I was an Elvis fan. In 1966 I went to Belgium to take part in an Elvis fans convention and whilst in that country, though separate from the convention, I met a girl and decided there and then that she was the one.



Five years later I moved to Belgium and Elise and I got married. We're still married and now live in the south-east of Spain. It wouldn't have happened if Elvis had not recorded "That's All Right" 60 years ago.

Ring, ring!

The thing is, we have had the wedding-rings we bought when we were married over 42 years ago, well, over 42 years.

They fitted nicely then, but years of rain, sweat and tears have somehow seemed to shrink the golden bands, so that mine was relegated to a little finger and Elise's was stored away in a dark drawer.

So a couple of months ago, Elise decided it would be nice to celebrate our 42 years and six months of married harmony by purchasing a new set of rings. I, of course, had to agree. Wonderful idea…

Off, then, to the jewellery department of Elise's favourite shop, El Corte Inglés, in Elche, where it didn't take us long to choose a matching pair of rings, in very similar style to the original ones. Apparently our tastes have not changed very much in 42 years.

Fingers were measured, inside legs taken, waists, chests, shoulder-to-wrist, all noted to perfection. The rings had to be made to measure, you see. Order placed and off we went to Belgium. A couple of weeks later, still in Belgium, we received an email from the salesgirl in El Corte Inglés, informing us that the rings were ready and could be collected. A few days after our arrival back from Belgium, off we were again to Elche. The rings were fitted, approved, and paid for.

Here's to the next 42 years and six months.

Problems with Pensions

The European Union has some great ideals. One of them is free movement of its citizens between the member states. This, of course, necessitates the implementation of systems to cover health care (already a touchy subject, if one takes as an example the situation of the state health care in Spain when applied to non-Spanish residents) and, of course, pensions.

The time has come to apply for Elise's pension. I therefore checked the website of the European Union to find out what a European citizen from one member state now residing in another had to do in order to claim their pension.

The site contains all sorts of apparently useful information and should form a reliable source for European citizens wishing to check on their rights on various issues. The information is available in many of the languages used in the EU (sadly, Welsh is not represented).

The page that deals with retiring abroad (here in English and here in Dutch) states,

When the time comes for you to claim your pension, you'll have to apply in the country where you're living - unless you have never worked there. In this case, you should apply where you last worked.

 Als voor u de tijd is gekomen om op pensioen te gaan, moet u dat aanvragen in het land waar u woont, tenzij u daar nooit hebt gewerkt. In dat geval moet u de aanvraag indienen in het land waar u het laatst hebt gewerkt.

Note, "…unless you have never worked there. In this case, you should apply where you last worked."

That seems clear enough and, given that Elise last worked in Belgium (she stopped working in 1982), we took it to mean that she should apply for her pension to the Belgian pension authorities, the Rijksdienst voor Pensioenen, in the Zuidertoren in Brussels.

The necessary information was sent together with a request for payment of pension, but soon the request was returnd with a covering letter in which was stated,

U moet in principe uw aanvraag indienen bij de bevoegde pensioeninstelling van uw land, omdat u in een land woont van de Europese Economische Ruimte (EER)…

U gaat met dit bericht en de bijgevoegde aanvraag als bijlage naar de bevoegde pensioeninstelling met het verzoek ons de gebruikelijke verbindingsformulieren en een kopie van uw originele aanvraag naar mijn diensten toe te sturen

In principle, as you live in a country of the European Economic Area (EEA), you have to make your request to the authorised pensions service of your country…

Take this notice together with the enclosed request to the authorised pensions service and aske that they send the usual forms and a copy of your original request to my services…

This appears to be different to what the EU had to say on the matter in their own website, so Elise phoned the Rijksdienst voor Pensioenen in Brussels and pointed out the discrepancies, noting that she had never worked in Spain and that her last employment was in Belgium in 1982.

Her explanation was simply brushed aside. Nope, that's the way things have to be done and the EU website must refer to functionaries (civil servants).

Well, no, the website does not refer to functionaries: it refers to State Pensions for Citizens.

I suspect that the wording of the EU's website is unclear and that the pension authorities in the various countries really are acting correctly. Whatever the reason, the result is confusion for the EU citizen. This might result in mistrust and suspicion of any other information that can be found on the EU site regarding the rights and obligations of such sitizens and that is simply not a desirable situation.

Somebody from the Plain English Campaign (and the Plain Dutch Campaign, too, if there is one) needs to tidy up the information provided by the EU.

In Belgium

So here we are in Belgium.

We left Guardamar last Thursday morning and drove to Jaca, in the Pyrenees, where we spent the night in the very pleasant Eurostars Reina Felicia hotel. It would have been even more pleasant if a couple of brats had not been allowed to use one of the corridors as a practise area for the 100 metre sprint and their parents had not then punished one of them by locking him out of their room, prompting him to scream his head off for a good ten minutes.

Still, the room was excellent, very clean, very well equipped, and the hotel was in a quiet location, just outside the town of Jaca. Of course, it would have been much quieter without the aforementioned couple of brats, who also made their presence known in the breakfast-room. A very good breakfast buffet, incidentally.

After Jaca we drove through the Somport tunnel into France. An impressive tunnel of some nine kilometres in length. Then onto Pau, the worst part of the journey, not because of the scenery, which is often spectacular, but because of the drive around the intervening town of Oloron-Sainte-Marie, which is very slow. By the evening of the second day we had arrived in Tours. Nothing at all special about the relatively cheap French hotel there, except that it was more expensive than the hotel in Jaca and offered considerably less quality and comfort.

We had intended to visit Brittany on our journey from Spain to Belgium, but the French weather reports were so bad for that part of the country that we simply drove straight through to Belgium. Well, that's not entirely true, as we did make a slight detour in order to visit the village of Bergues in French Flanders. Bergues was the main location for the hilarious French film, Bienvenue Cez Les Ch'tis, an we wanted to see the real thing. We thought it would be a good idea to get a packet of chips and a frikadel from the baraque à frites on the Grote Markt, but sadly we learned that the mobile chip-shop was put there only for the film. Still, we had a cup of coffee in the café that was the scene of the bicycle crash (Café de la Porte in the film, but Café de la Poste in reality) and also visited the belfry, which played such an important part in the film, so all was not lost!

The Grote Markt (Grand Place) without the baraque à frites, but with the impressive belfry.

In the tourist information office (in the belfry) one of the post-bikes from the film.

The location of the bicycle crash, the Café de la Porte/Poste

From Bergues it was just a relatively short drive to Heusden, near. Gent, where we arrived at about seven-thirty on Saturday evening.

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Magnifique!

Italy 11 England 52

Wales 51 Scotland 3

France 20 Ireland 22



Well, that was a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon.



Rugby.



Three games.



And they got better as the afternoon progressed.



It's easy to make a half-good side look very good: give it a game against a pretty terrible side. And that's exactly what happened in the first two matches.



England had the fright of their lives in the first quarter against Italy, with the Italian pack proving the better of the two, but as the game progressed, Italy's indiscipline and lack of staying-power worked against them (as well as an unfortunate forward pass following an excellent interception) and England were able to secure a very easy victory, though not without conceding a try and two penalties. Better luck next year, Italy. Get your discipline together and tighten up your second-half performance. As for England, they would have to await the outcome of the final match of the tournament, France against Ireland to know if they'd win. Oh, and England, please don't throw the ball away when you score a try: three points away if I were the ref, or at least a yellow card. Prima Donnas belong in soccer, not in rugby. (And here's a nice aside: the commentator on France 2 introduced the English national anthem as Flower of Scotland; unfortunately, God Save The Queen was played.)



Heaven only knows what Scotland is up to. They made Wales look almost good. The game was like so many we played at school in the 1960s (yes, that long ago): get the ball, score a try, start again. The only difference is that we'd reach scores of 70, 80, or 90 (and this when a try was just three points), whereas Wales could only manage 51 (and this against just 14 Scotsmen, Hogg having been sent off very early on), thanks to some desperate Scottish defence work. (Another aside: usually the commentator on France 2 introduces the Welsh national anthem using the colonist title of Land of My Fathers, but this time he announced it as Pays de mes Ancêtres, which is an improvement, if still not quite Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau.)



And then came the real stuff. France against Ireland. To be honest, it seemed that France didn't have much of a chance against what was clearly the best team by far of the tournament, yet they were still in with a chance. The only drawback (and it was a big one) was that if France managed to win, England would take the championship, so although I really wanted France to win, I didn't…



Well, what a game! Sheer rugby pleasure with both teams fighting desperately for every ball and every inch of the field. The lead went backwards and forwards throughout the game and with just a couple of minutes to go, Ireland was ahead, 22 to 20.  Then the French headed for the Irish line: a try in the corner was sufficient, it need not be converted, so position was unimportant. And, indeed, over they went! Unfortunately, however, the last long pass had been fractionally forward (well, chwarae teg, a bit more than fractionally), and after some considerable deliberation, the try was disallowed. With some ninety seconds remaining, that sealed the victory and the championship for Ireland.



Well done Ireland.



Well played France. By far your best performance of the tournament. Magnifique!



England finished second; Wales third; France fourth; Scotland fift; Italy sixth.



When does next year start?

Chwarae teg

England 29 Leigh Halfpenny 18


Well, that should be Wales 18, of course, but, chwarae teg, it was Leigh Halfpenny who scored the eighteen points and the rest of performance was pretty poor.

But, chwarae teg, it was a lot better than the performance by the Welsh team in their first match of this year’s Championship, against Ireland.

Perhaps it’s just that Ireland are so much better than England, though, chwarae teg, that seems unlikely. England played well today, even though they seemed not to have needed to put in a 100% performance. Still, chwarae teg, they were playing against a pretty uninspired Welsh side that, when it attacked, did so down the blind side in an ever so predictable fashion, so the strong English defence had no problem with that, and if they didn’t attack, they kicked, nicely giving the ball to an English side that soon proved it could kick with the best of them, not that that stopped the Welsh from kicking.

On three occasions, Wales actually managed to create overlaps when heading straight for the line at a brisk pace, only to kick the ball unnecessarily or to go into a tackle, just as unnecessarily, and then lose possession.

Chwarae teg, England looked far more dangerous in attack and it was only some remarkable defence by Wales that prevented an even higher score on the England side of the board.

This win gives England the Triple Crown. Well done. Next week, if they beat Italy by about five million points, they’ll also win the Championship. Of course, France might beat Ireland and that would mean a quite undeserved Championship for France… chwarae teg.

(And now, if nothing else, you should know what the Welsh expression, chwarae teg, means.)