Family Spanish Lesson: Using a European toilet

I was fortunate enough to have my family visit over the holidays. This was my Mom´s first time in Europe and only my sister´s second time, so it was funny to hear all the lessons they were learning about life in Spain. It also reminded me of a few problems I encountered when I first arrived...

One of the biggest problems my family had was with the bathrooms. Every time someone came back from one there would be another story. So here are a few lessons to help you survive without getting caught with your pants down:

Lesson 1: Know where the light switches are when you go in.

Often you will enter a restroom with the lights on, but they seldom remain that way. Europe is great at conserving electricity so many lights turn off by themselves every 30 seconds or so, or when you stop moving. If you don´t know where the switch is when you go in, it can lead to some uncomfortable situations, like wandering about the bathroom blindly with your pants around your ankles.

Lesson 2: Be familiar with the different flushing manners of toilets.

Honestly, flushing a toilet can seem  like a special-ops mission (especially if the lights have gone out). It took me five minutes to figure out how to flush the toilet in my apartment.

The most common toilets are the ones with buttons on the top of the tank, in the middle. You simply just push this button. However, this can be made confusing if the button is divided into two parts. I still don´t know what each button does, so I push both of them.

You might also find a similar set up, but instead of pushing the button you have to pull it up. Then of course there is the more familiar style, with the handle on the side of the the toilet tank. Also, there is still the rare possibility that you will find one like the one in my apartment where the tank (or cistern) with the fresh water is located above the toilet bowl, near the ceiling. With these you must find an attached string and pull it to flush. A nice rule to follow, if you can´t find the flusher, look up.

And that´s the most necessary information you need to know when tackling your first European bathroom. Don´t forget to wash your hands... if you can figure out how to turn on the faucet.

Observation 5: Feliz Cumpleanos! Where´s my drink?!

I recently celebrated a friend´s birthday and was reminded of the Spanish birthday customs. In Spain you get your ear yanked for every year you´ve endured and usually an extra one for good luck the coming year. It´s also tradition to bring a cake or goodies in to work for your birthday and/or to buy drinks for everyone when you go out. This is much different than in The States of course, where you aren´t expected to pay for anything when you go for a drink. Good thing my birthday passed without my co-workers finding out... being as I am already broke with big ears.

Observation 4: If kids know about deodorant, they sure don't smell like it

I have noticed a lack of hygiene at the school I teach at in the mornings. These kids are between 13 and 18 years old (I even have one that's 21) and probably going through some stage of puberty, but could someone please tell them about Old Spice? I'm not saying that every child is a stinky child, but it only takes a handful to leave the entire school like Chernobyl.

The worst part is that I have three of my classes directly after their recess. So these boys come in after running and playing football (soccer) for the past 30 minutes and then all sit in a small cramped room together. The smell just seems to brew around filling the air until its nearly impossible to breathe. The other teachers warned me about this early on. They called it "Huele a Tigre," which loosely means tiger smell. The smell lives up to its name. It's like being stuck in a jungle somewhere, trapped and alone, with a heavy humidity wrapped around you, suffocating you, while feeling the presence of some gigantic beast lurking around waiting to pounce. It reminds me of the cologne, Sex Panther from Anchorman.

I'm kind of tempted to try and start a water balloon fight so that these kids might finally take a shower, but no one else seems to be truly affected by the smell. Maybe they are all use to it. Still, hopefully one of them will learn of Axe Body Spray. I prefer a cloud of that over Huele a Tigre.

Lesson 13: Spain is not the United States, but it's closer to it than Turkey

When I moved to Spain I knew my way of life would be a bit different. And it has been. But it's nothing compared to the drastic cultural change my friends Paul and Doug were experiencing when I visited them in Istanbul, Turkey last month.

My initial thoughts of Istanbul were that it was this grand city covered in gold, with monolithic buildings, and history that you could feel while walking through the streets. What else would you expect from a city that was once the capitol of the world. Needless to say, I was shocked on my arrival.

My first reaction: chaos. Istanbul is the 5th most populous city in the world, with somewhere around 12 million people, and I feel like I saw every one of them. The streets were always filled, with either people or cars. The rich history I was looking for was hard to find under the facade of retail businesses and advertisements.

However, my first account of Istanbul  should be taken with a grain of salt, as I had only slept for 3 of the past 40 hours, just got off a four-hour flight, and had to take a one hour bus to get from the airport to the city center. To make matters worst I sat behind possibly the most annoying couple I have ever come in contact with.

The bus had 60+ seats. six people got on the bus. I happened to sit behind an old American couple. I would have preferred they spoke any other language, but because they were speaking English I had to hear everything that came out of their mouth, most of which flew right past the brain filter. The man continually repeated everything he saw, and i mean EVERYTHING.

"There's a red car. I think it's manual. Yep it's manual."

-"There's a blue car," the lady decides to join the game.

"Look, a bike store. There's another bike store. And another bike store."

To his credit the man did point out that there was the same shop on every corner, although he didn't articulate it very well. Bike shops here, lamp shops over there. As Paul later described, they don't seem to have a grasp on market competition. That, or they just don't care.

I tried to give the old couple some slack. Although they were entirely annoying, I have to admit I was a bit envious. I hope when I'm that age I still have someone to chat with about arbitrary things. Plus, they were probably there to scratch things off the bucket list.

When I arrived to the city center, I met up with Paul and Doug who took me to dinner in the madness of Taksim. Taksim is located in the center of town but it it is so crowded because it has the ability to mutate into anything you need it to be. It has restaurants, stores, clubs, street vendors, and anything else you might or might not expect. Just turn down and alley and you can escape the madness of the street and find a tranquil restaurant like the one we ate at.

We walked up this old wooden building to the third or fourth floor and found a waiter who directed us to our table. But our table was off in to what use to be a small bedroom. Now it is a dining area covered with pillows and blankets and three short, round, wooden tables. My first meal in Turkey ended up being my first meal where I ate shoeless, and sitting on pillows. The food itself was quite good. Lots of spices, vegetables, and some low-quality meat, that was more than edible. We also shared a Turkish pizza. Overall, I would say the food in Turkey is quite good, but takes a couple days for your stomach to get accustomed to.

A lot of great food can be found on the street. There are kabob and waffle vendors everywhere. Both make for a delicious treat. This waffle is topped with chocolate and caramel, with bananas, strawberries, kiwis, chocolate chips and whipped cream.

I spent less of my time in Istanbul sight-seeing, and more time sight-experiencing. Walking around with my friends I got to experience living in Istanbul. Unfortunately for Paul and Doug, that included living in a mold-infested apartment on the wrong side of the mountain (I'm certain I lost a year of my life just from spending four days there.). There were many run down parts of town, with cracked streets, rotted buildings, broken cars, and stray cats and dogs. Much of what you would expect to find in at least a few parts of a city that big.

However, there were also a lot of treasures. Our first stop was to the Spice Bazaar, a giant market with just about anything you can find. Besides spices, there were stalls for ceramics, sweets, scarves, rugs, jewelery and tea. And everyone came across as friendly, even if it was self-serving. Though my favorite part of the bazaar was the nationality guessing game. Most of the vendors knew at least a few words of a lot of languages and would say "'Hello" in every language they knew until you turned your head. Sometimes I was mistaken for French, once for German, but usually they nailed me for an American. To throw them off I would try and toss a little Spanish out there.

They also seemed to know one piece of information from evereywhere just to impress you. One man asked me where I was from and I said Texas. Instead of getting the normal response of cowboys, guns, and horses, the man replies, "Schlotzsky's." I was amazed and dumb-founded. I knew he had absolutely no more information than that. He might not have even known what that meant. I suspect that he goes home every night and pulls out a binder full of useless information from every place in the world, just to try and create a connection with a customer. These guys would kill in Jeopardy!

Again, most of the people were very nice. They usually let us sample the food, had no problem bartering with us, and even on a few occasions invited us down into the basement (yes I know that sounds scary but it's customary), where they would show us a wider selection and serve us tea.

Apart from hospitality, there were a few other things you couldn't avoid in Turkey: mosques, tea, and hookah. There was a mosque on just about every corner with their big domes and many columns. The horizon was filled with thin spires jetting towards the clouds like giant toothpicks. Two of the most famous Mosques in the world, Hagia Sophia and "The Blue Mosque," actually sit right across from each other in one of the main plazas in Istanbul. When not hanging around a mosque the Turks can be found inside, usually sipping on tea and smoking hookah. Almost every place I went to served both.

Although Istanbul was not what I expected, it was an amazing place to visit. It also help put things into perspective for me. I realized just how similar Spain really was to America and how difficult it would be to leave my life for a completely different culture like my friends did. I guess it's possible that one day I might trade in my Westernized life, but for now I'm happy with my American-created lifestyle, even if I'm not living in America.

If you want to see some more cool sites around Istanbul, check out this video from YouTube. It shows a lot of the things I saw/expereienced.