Re: Visit to Uk
 

I don't look 'back' to the UK, with rose- or any other colour glasses. We spent five years full-time in Spain; the last two years we have done half and halr. We kept our house in the UK.

I do buy the 'local equivalent'. Doesn't stop me liking the British one.

Moving to Spain did not make me hate the country of my birth.

I think Spain's laws are a lot more 'hemmed in' than the UK. For a start you have to prove yourself innocent and if you cannot you are presumed to be guilty.

I don't know about the 'seaside rubbish'. I have not lived at the 'seaside' in either UK or Spain.

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We were told for six years that we could not have ADSL. Now that we can have it we have been waiting six weeks (still waiting) to have it connected and it is going to cost us 35 euros a month for up to 6 meg.

In the UK my son has 20 meg wireless broadband for about £10 a month.

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It's true some places in Spain are a few years behind, depends where you purchased it is a huge country;)

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I don't think anyone on here has ever said that they hate the UK, except perhaps some when talking about others comments that they may have misinterpreted, as you are now. There is a difference in preferring one place to another for whatever reasons.

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As I said, we enjoy the spring, early summer in Spain, but look around at the end of the summer and it's all pretty brown and parched. I like the Vejer area, and my brother went on my recommendation, but he went late summer, and didn't like it all, because everything was so dry and brown.

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The feeling about being hemmed in, as you put it, is one that I am pretty familiar with.

I was used to the easy going way in the UK, the not having to show a load of paperwork just to join the library for example...

No it does not seem so bad now, but in the beginning it really got on my nerves.

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Think yourself very lucky!
Our ADSL was connected within a week, but anyone here who does not already have a landline can't get one!

Our ADSL is only 1mg and it costs 40€ a month, that includes free local and national calls, we also pay an extra 3€ a month to get our international calls at a lower rate.
There is not a hope in hell of the speed being increased anytime soon, and no option other than Telefonica if we want it landline based.

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WELL SAID !
Could not agree any more than you.
DSB.

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Ouch! I pay £13.99 for 8mb, unlimited downloads, includes 500 free phone minutes, which is more than we ever use.

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I dont want to know..........

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No nanny state in Spain surely, reading this forum I thought it was only UK that had red tape. ;)
http://abroadinspain.com/2009/11/18/...pain/#more-838

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Didn't realise Spain still had residency CARDS.

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That's not that long ago, I expect el maldito papeleo is a thing of the past now.

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I think Spanish authorities are far more controlling than the UK ,if you do everything by the book (many dont) small business is often impossible ,you even need to get planning permission to paint your house!!! ,even selling a car is a major paper shuffeling exercise, working part time is nearly immpossible and rarley viable (legally) , you have to carry ID at all times and when driving you need all your docs etc etc

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Yes and it's worse now than when we moved over in 1995. The first few years people react like in the blog, shrug and chuckle but when they keep moving the goal posts it really tries your patience. I got so fed up when my residencia ran out in 2006 I never bothered to renew it.

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If the authorities are so controlling then how come I have seen the same UK matriculated cars on the road (from the British neighbours) during the past year and a half? Surely the authorities would have scrapped the cars by now and fined the owners? :blink:

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Spain gets a bit brown come the height of summer. No great surprise. The trees and bushes are still green.

The scrub browning is the price you pay for a hotter, drier climate. The UK is green all over all year, and the price you pay for that is that the climate tends towards the wet, grey end of the scale. You are what a friend of mine would describe as a winter person. You shun heat, and persistant grey skies doesn't seem to bother you.

Me, I'm a summer person. I love the blue skies, the sunshine and the heat, and I found living in the UK with the almost continuous grey skies, depressing beyond belief.

Nowhere is perfect, but for some the grass on the other side really is so much greener. I'm glad you have found somewhere to be that makes you happy. Me, I'm happy here, and happiest of all when the sun is shining.

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Absolutely, same here

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If you want some green all year round scenery than you can go to the Spanish Atlantic coast. In Asturias the colours are a bright radioactive green, compared to the muddy-green in the UK.

Cádiz province is actually pretty green thanks to the Atlantic rains. I enjoy the change in scenary when we cross the Sierra de Ronda into Cadiz province. You can even notice it in the middle of summer

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Yeah, but we specifically moved as far south as we could because the last thing I wanted was lots of rain.

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I must admit, I love the green and am prepared to put up with the rain to get it.

However, we live right on the border of Granada and Almeria provinces and Almeria is the dryest place in Europe, so it is a really depressing brown and frazzed in the summer.

The mountains however are beautiful in the Spring, covered in flowers and smelling of thyme and menthol.

My husband needed a few summers of 40 degree heat, so we livd here full-time for five years. I can't stand the heat so we now spend several months in the UK during the summer, where I can get greenery and rain. Then we escape the grey winter (my husband gets SAD by December if he stays) and have the sunshine and blueness that graces southern Spain's skies even for most of the winter. :)

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Make sure you don't get into the same situation this guy did ! - http://www.tumbit.com/blogs/860-nega...ng-the-uk.html

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Poor chap!
I was talking to my Mother on the phone a few weeks ago and she was ranting on about the number of Polish that were in Hull and how they were taking over all the shops and setting up their own little country in "our" country. I remended her how she'd visited us in Benidorm (:o) a couple of years ago and how many Brits do exactly the same in other countries........(insert short silence)...."oh, well I suppose you're right" was the reply.

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Yeah, I was listening to an expat here raging on about bloody immigrants in the UK who don't integrate and live in urban ghettos of their own kind.

A couple of questions extracted the details that he lives on an urb and speaks **** all Spanish. He also seemed puzzled that I had problems keeping a straight face.

Ah well.

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I avoid British bars because I can no longer be bothered to listen to some idiot who has been unemployed for the last 20 years complaining about Poles stealing his job in the UK.

But the Spanish don’t come out of it too well either, if you go into a real Spanish bar in a real Spanish town, and they think that because of your blue eyes and fair hair you don’t understand Spanish, you will hear them discussing Moroccans and even Brits stealing their jobs too.

I blame it on the Mail and the Sun, and the Spanish equivalent.

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I think the Polish have been an asset to the UK. They are hardworking and do the jobs that all the layabouts won't do. Unlike the Romanians who just sponge and thieve.

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That's a bit like saying all the expats here in Spain live in a British ghetto on the Costa del Sol and eat fish and chip or hamburgers..... and we all know that is far from the truth!

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Well yes, but if you only had 5 seconds to describe the situation... :rofl:

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Yes, bit like all the Poles are an asset! ;) There'll always be the exceptions.
Bit from my local paper,

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I'm glad I live in a nice place where the many Romanians seem to be quite hard working folk and don't just sponge and thieve and not in a British ghetto on the Costa del Sol and eat fish and chips or hamburgers.

Some of you should try moving.;)

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Yes of course I am generalising:lol: Still stand by what I said except to add "in my experience". Did have a Romanian gardener who was hard working unfortunately he knew nowt about gardening!

Whats fish 'n chips on the costa got to do with it:blink: I often read in the spanish press that many Romanians have set up camp like ghettos on the outskirts of cities in Spain, they have had to demolish some, Inland that is.

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Yes indeed they have. There is a Romanian camp near Madrid which is one huge rubbish tip filled with rats. The Romanians go around stealing copper wiring from building sites, telephone wires and train lines and take it to their camp where they take off the plastic coating and sell the copper.

The camp is surrounded by hundreds of tons of plastic casing.

I also saw a news report that 90% of all pick pocketing on the Madrid Metro is by Romanians.

Not all Romanians are bad of course, my OH works with a very nice Romanian woman, but they are a huge problem in Spain because they commit so much crime.

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Read the post. ;)

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Whats wrong with eating fish n chips or hamburgers anyway???? Wherever you go in the civilised world you'll find "foreign" restaurants and areas where certain cultures are more prominent than others

Jo xxx

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I love living in a multi-cultured society for most of the time. Today we had a Hungarian meal, a menu del dia at five Euros – fish soup, goulash and an unpronounceable Hungarian sweet. It was somewhat spoiled by a Moroccan lookie-lookie man who was so persistent that I nearly lost it.

It’s starting to worry me. I mentioned to my wife that maybe we should start dressing down, and she gave me a right dressing down.

“Why should I dress down for these arseholes? I work hard and these arseholes walk about with their silly ****ing carpets and don’t know what work is.”

I still worry. There’s a lot of them about.

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I really dont understand the obsession with intergrating for everyone who comes to Spain.

Granted it does make life easier, and you can be more "self reliant" if you are fluent, but I dont see what is wrong with still wanting to eat the same food as when you lived in the UK ans watch the same programmes and buy the same newspapers.

For those not looking for a job, or with children to educate, why not live as "brit?" If that is what you want.

When we moved to the UK we did intergrate fully, wether it was totally by choice, I am not too sure.

It was probably more down to circumstances than anything, as at the time most of the immigrants to the UK were young, single people without families, unlike my parents.

But looking back, with my adult eyes now, I am sure that if my family had a chance to mix with more people like ourselves, Spanish speakers, and could find more shops and restaurants that had Spanish food, we would not have hesitated to frequent those places.

I dont see why we should have turned out back on all that we knew, just to prove a point, ie that we were totally intergrated.

Because qute frankly I dont think anyone really gave a toss what we ate and what language we spoke at home.

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Do you ever really READ what is written?

There is nothing wrong with eating fish and chips or hamburgers....I even eat them myself on occasion.
I was answering your GENERALISATION, and offering another generalised view that some people hold of how things are here, also stating that it's not how all expats are or how we all live.

My own personal view on the matter is....why with all the delicious food on offer here do some Brits in some locations not feel in the least bit inclined to give their taste buds a break from the fat laden over processed food they generally stuff their faces with? :confused:

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I don't for a moment think anyone should turn their back on their home country, after all it is the place that made them what they are!
Unless you move to a new country at a very early age it's extremely difficult to fully integrate, though I do feel an effort should be made....
None are worse than the Brits for bemoaning the fact that many immigrants to the UK never learn the language or try to fit in.

We personally do what we can, we love Spanish food but also still enjoy the kind of food we grew up with in England.
We do make the effort to converse in Spanish even if we are rubbish at it, though of course when the doors are closed it's English we speak and British TV that we watch and books that we read.
I would say that we try to pick the best from both cultures and join them together to make a pleasing mix....we just do our best with what we have! :)

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You make it sound as though there is only delicious food here in Spain.
And you imply that only Brits eat fatty processed food.

The shops are full of frozen croquets, san jacobos, burgers fish fingers, frozen empanadillas for frying and such just like in the UK and most of these are catering to the Spanish market as they are available all over the country, as is the staple breakfast for many, the bollycao, and all that commercial bolleria.

Have you not noticed that the Spanish are getting fatter, and it is not throught eating too much of the med. diet it is through eating the fatty stuff, just like their counterparts from other countries.

So anyone who thinks that the brits who dont try the fresh produce in Spain should be singled out, remember a lot of Spanish dont either, and it is getting more and more common.

The people of both countries are not as different as some seem to think, there may not be as much processed, fatty food being eaten by the Spanish, but just give it a couple of years.

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The difference being that....yes the Spanish do indeed eat a lot of fried fatty food, but here at least unless they live down on the Costa's it's mostly fresh and not processed food they eat.
Out here in El Campo we don't have the large supermarkets stuffed to bursting with ready meals, the nearest small supermarket is 7 kls away!
Here it's much more likely to be a meal of fresh veg or salad with fish or meat, bought either from the village shop or more likely from the vans that come round on a daily basis.....just as they have always done.

Yes the diets are changing, thirty years ago one would see children eating sunflower seeds or sometimes nuts, now we are more likely to see them eating toffees instead.
We go down to the coast once a month a usually call into Iceland while we are there, (I'm afraid I still miss my English milk and just can't resist the temptation to buy it), I've notice over the last couple of years that there are more Spanish shopping there and buying what I consider to be junk food.
I'm not being superior when I say that, it's just that I never bought processed food even in the UK.
From my own experiences I still think despite the changes the diet here over all is more healthy, and the fruit and veg are fresher.
And no I'm not knocking the Brits when I say that, and I do know that Spain and the Spanish are not perfect,... but I do hope here in (southern) Spain that they hang onto there traditional way of eating as long as possible! :)