Posts Tagged ‘oviedo’

Summer’s ending

En castellano

The outdoor pool at parque del oeste

Bracingly good pool

The summer is winding down, but we’ve had a few days of decent weather, so yesterday I took advantage of temperatures in the low 20s to head to the outdoor pool before they close it on the 15th. Liz usually takes a few minutes to get into the water in the outdoor pool whereas I usually dive straight in… it’s unheated so at 11am it can be bracing.

people at a bar during san mateo

From here they'll go to another bar and stand around there too...

The other marker of the end of the summer is the San Mateo festival. It also began yesterday, and runs through to the end of Tuesday the 21st. As in previous years it seems to be largely about sandwiches and beer and strolling around the city. There’s a big stage in the cathedral square but I don’t recognize many of the artists, there’s a battle of the bands stage by the faculty of psychology and a jazz stage in the umbrella square. Apart from that there are a number of stages in different areas of the city with fiesta bands… these are the bands that spend the summer playing at fiestas all over, some specializing in the 80s others playing a bit more varied stuff, you see them advertised on rural bus shelters, usually with thin white ties on black shirts or some other cheesy band uniform motif. On some of the message boards there were a lot of moaners complaining that the bands were rubbish this year and how they were going to go to Gijón instead. There’s also a funfair, games and activities for kids in the park, the rally of Asturias and a few dozen sporting events going on.

Two workers setting up a ride at the fair

Fairly setup

I went out strolling with my camera to the funfair on the slab above the train station, then around the different stages, wandering solo is entertaining enough, but a large part of the fun seems to be standing around talking, or shouting depending on how near or far a stage is. Still, there’s plenty of time to practice my standing around talking, another 11 days to be precise, although not tonight, because the walking season starts tomorrow, and we leave at 6:45am.

El verano casi se acaba, hacía buen tiempo durante la semana pasada, así que ayer aproveché de las temperaturas que llegaban a los 20 para ir con rumbo a la piscina descubierta antes de la cierran el día 15. Liz normalmente lleva unos minutos para entrar en el agua mientras que me tiro al agua inmediatamente, no hay calefacción entonces a las 11h puede estar fresca.

El otro señal del fin del verano es la fiesta de San Mateo, empezó ayer y durará hasta el final del 21, como los años anteriores parece en gran parte sobre bocatas y cerveza y dar una vuelta por la ciudad. Hay un escenario en la plaza de la catedral pero no conozco muchos de los artistas, hay un concurso de rock en un tablero al lado de la facultad de psicología y un tablero de jazz en la plaza de paraguas. Ademas hay unos tableros en varios barrios en la ciudad en que tocarán orquestas típicas de las fiestas, son las orquestas que tocan en romerías y verbenas todo el verano, algunas tocan en música de los años 80, otras tienen un repertorio un poco mas extensivo, se las ve en publicidad en las paradas rurales de los autobuses, muchas veces llevan corbatas estrechas blancas y camisas negras o algún uniforme cursi. En algunos foros habían muchos que se quejaban que los artistas son malos este año y como iban a ir a Gijón en lugar de ir a San Mateo. Hay también una feria, juegos y actividades infantiles en el parque, el rally de Asturias y unos docenas de eventos deportivos.

Dí un paseo con la camera a la feria que esta en la losa encima de la estación del tren, y después iba por los tableros y escenarios. Pasear solo es bastante entretenido, pero parece que mucho de la entretenimiento es estar de pie charlando, o gritando depende en la proximidad de un escenario. Bueno, me queda mucho tiempo para practicar mi “estar de pie y charlando”, once días más para ser exacto, aun que esta noche no, porque la temporada de caminar empezará mañana y tenemos que salir a las 0645h

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Radiator

It started small enough. Just an occasional dripping sound every now and then. At first I thought it was coming from the bathroom sink, which does drip, but it didn’t sound the same. Subconsciously I must have recognised that because I didn’t feel like I’d resolved the problem. A few days later I´m sitting at the computer and I hear it again, this time I don´t rest after seeing that the bathroom tap is not dripping and I go looking for the source of the sound. It turns out to be the radiator in the hall, a small, old-fashioned cast-iron thing. It’s dripping slowly so I put a bowl underneath it, tie a cloth round it to direct the small amount of water and resolve to call the landlord the following morning.

woman fixing a radiator

How fixing a radiator should go... if you're from the past

I realise something’s wrong in the morning when I sleepily stand in the hall and notice that my feet are wet. The leak had got bigger overnight and when I removed the cloth I saw that it was coming from a tiny hole in the middle of one of the sections. I went to find the portera and see if we could turn off the heating in our flat but she said that it would mean draining the entire system and that would cost €70 but here, she said, passing me an allen key, you can isolate it with this. As it turned out I couldn’t, it’s too old. There’s no isolator. So I fashioned a plug from some cork and duct tape and called the landlord. He said he’d get someone to phone me and arrange a time. Three days later (he travels a lot) I got back in touch with him and said that no one had called. At this point the tray I had under the radiator was filling up every eight hours (which gave me enough time to sleep at least). We finally managed to track down Ariel the plumber and arrange a visit. Ariel turned out to be an Argentine so we chatted as he removed my duct tape repairs and then stopped chatting to let him whistle through his teeth and say that the radiator was jodido (knackered / screwed in polite parlance). The portera had told me that the system was due to be drained anyway at the end of May so Ariel said he’d try and fix it temporarily and then plan to replace it then. He made the most rubbish attempt at fixing it, the paste he was using didn’t stick, then it didn’t harden, and then when it did harden it didn’t stop the water coming out. We ended up removing his repair and putting mine back. Fast forward to today, he arrives ready to remove the radiator, and then spends two hours on undoing a bolt, finally succumbing to the inevitable and wandering off, only to return with two mates to give him a hand, coincidentally, at this point I get a phone call from another plumber (probably the one we tried to get weeks ago) trying to arrange when he could come… this confused me somewhat. After removing the old radiator Ariel and chums head off to buy a new one, and come back this evening to fit it. Whereupon they realize they need another part. So at the last count it’s taken three people six hours to change a radiator. And they still have to come back in the morning to finish the job. Still, he’s a nice enough chap, I’m just glad he’s not charging me by the hour (or at all).

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I have been working, it’s just I’ve been in the dark…

young couple in the park
Parque San Francisco, Oviedo, 2009

I’ve just updated my photo website with a series of pictures taken in the park in the middle of Oviedo. I have a set of prints from this work that I’m pretty happy with, and I’ve got to go out and do some more now the weather is good for park-sitting. Ricardo scanned the negatives and did the hard labour of making them presentable (as they are to appear on the student’s part of his website). I stood to one side and nodded.

I did do the incredibly difficult task of shrinking them and putting them on the server.

I’ve been playing for the last few days getting my new toy (an old iMac) full of my data and learning all about the command button and how we have to do things in Jobsworld… it’s shiny (the mac, or Jobsworld, take your pick).

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There’s an exam for that…

Abstract building

Pretty near the hospital

“How’s are you?” I asked, sitting down and getting my books out of my bag as the doctors put their white coats on and stuffed their pockets with scraps of paper, reference books and stethoscopes.

“It’s not a good day.” They said, “How do you say despedida in English?”

“Depends what you mean, can you explain a little more?”

“Yesterday some doctors were despedida’d and sent home.”

“Fired or made redundant?”

So it turns out that yesterday, with no warning fifty-some doctors were made redundant. This was a bit of a shock. Many had more than ten years service in the hospital. So now they face having to move to another part of Spain to find work, because all over Asturias the lack of tax revenue due to the economic downturn, la crisis means that public sector workers are facing a difficult future.

One of the problems is that to get a job in the public sector you have to do exams called oposiciones or opos. That’s for pretty much any public sector job. You want to be a rheumatologist, there’s an exam; a teacher, exam;  a council worker, exam; police, prison guard, you name it, there’s an exam.

Except when there isn’t.

In the hospital, in that department, there haven’t been any opos for fifteen years because there are no available places. If you get the top marks in an opo, you get the job you want and it’s for life. Which is why so many Spanish folk are preparing for them (I know half a dozen people who are in the process of doing opo preparation, there’s a whole industry of academies and tutors out there). If there are no opos you may still have a job but it’s an interina, a temporary job and you can be tossed out like these doctors were (with no more than one month’s pay).

Oposiciones were instituted, I’ve been told, in response to the old way of doing things, which was to know the right people, and to have the right politics (and it was right being the Franco era) in order to get a job. The exams were supposed to bring about a certain egalitarianism in candidate selection. Which it did. But then it went a bit far according to some Spanish friends, and the whole job-for-life at the end of it seems to encourage a certain lethargy  in those who have achieved that holy grail.

So to be a doctor, first you need to get the degree, then do an exam called the MIR in order to get onto a speciality (if you do well you can pick your speciality, if you don’t then you’re headed for wherever they tell you, you didn’t want to be  a GP? Tough.). then you have to complete the residency requirements and then to progress from temporary contracts to permanent, the oposición. Up until that point you have no more job security than anyone else, and, in these times of crisis, it seems, less.

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Although it hadn’t felt particularly christmassy (maybe we’re just used to the three month build up you can get in the UK when the shops fill with decorations in October and certain parts of the brainstem are directly targetted by Slade or, worse, Shakey) Liz had expressed a desire to have a few folk round for some nibbles and a glass of wine.

MJ (aka Maria Jesús) had previously suggested going out dancing so we decided to combine the two and show off the new flat too.

Liz also bought me a Spanish scrabble set (which includes tiles for “ch” “rr” “ll” and “ñ”) so we thought we might play that too.

We did a fairly standard table full of cold meats, cheese and dips… we even managed to find some humous. What we didn’t know is that dipping is not spanish, and there were a couple of comments along the lines of “what’s this raw carrot for?” In fact, on the humous pack it said “para dipear” which is a hispanicization of ‘to dip’ leading to a discussion about what dip is in Spanish (meter, we decided).

So we dipped, we snacked, we drank wine and toasted a merry christmas. Then at midnight we all trooped out into the chill (-6C, nothing compared to a frosty Yorkshire I know) and off to Rock Circus.

Rock Circus is basically the hard rock cafe, without the eating. As we went in they were playing AC/DC or some such. Saul excitedly recognised Led Zep, I didn’t… and as such, suffered a dent in my muso reputation. Liz demonstrated a fine solo mosh to the new UK crimble number one (which I didn’t recognise either) and drew a few admiring comments from the chaps next to us.

And therein lies the problem with Rock Circus (or lay, because I don’t know if it’s always like that). The average age of the clientele went down when we went in…

After a drink in there we toddled off to Morgana Le Fey, where they played much less recognisable music (made no difference to me), more europoppy, a younger crowd, more noise…

We made our excuses at around 3 and headed home becuase the following day we were up at 7:30 to go walking…

Never got round to the scrabble.

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Camino Primitivo, part 1: Oviedo to Grado

I am not, by any reasonable definition, a pilgrim (the only exception being those times when the nine-year old me would be adressed by John Wayne in my imagination… so whaddya say, pilgrim?) but nevertheless we started the long trek to Santiago de Compostela on Sunday. It was, as may have been guessed, Julio’s idea.

We’re doing the camino primitivo (the primitive path), also known as the camino interior. It was, apparently, one of the earlier pilgrim routes after one of the early Asturian kings did it (and of course, he set off from his house in Oviedo, much as we did). Liz had met up with Julio a few days earlier to get the official papers and to register as pilgrims (I don’t really mind about that but apparently it’s easier to use the hostels if you have this bit of paper). The hostel in Oviedo stamped the papers and we were official.

It’s somewhere between 300 and 340km to Santiago, depending who you listen to, it’s not hard walking, at least this first stage… mostly flat or on rolling hills. We were lucky with the weather because rain was forecast for most of the day but it took a while to arrive.

Julio had baited his hook by saying that we would be passing a place that did some of the best beans in Asturias, no small claim that. As the first drops of rain began to fall and the temperature plummeted we reached La Florinda, the small restaurant he’d tempted us with. It was full and people who arrived after us were told it’d be an hour’s wait. They all waited which suggests the quality of the food. We just had fabada and pudding… no need for more, and the beans were as good as Julio had promised, soft and buttery.

We enjoyed the change of pace that this walkin gives, strolling along through villages and orchards, saying hello to folk all dressed in sunday best for their ‘all saints day’ traditional cemetary visit, asking farmers if we could scrounge a few apples and going away with a dozen or so. The official papers come in handy because you can get them stamped in bars en route (for which you have to enter the bar, and once you’re there… well it would be rude not to). We’ll be doing the next stage in a few weeks… one down and 13 to go…

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Prickly food

Although it’s the end of October, the weather’s still pretty warm (24C today, which is midsummer temperatures…) and we took advantage of it to head up to the Naranco, the hill that overlooks the city. We were going to pick some chestnuts…

The paths were covered in dry crunchy leaves (but no frost) and the spiky chestnut coats (sweet chestnuts are a whole lot spikier than the horsey variety). In short order we had four or five kilos, and Julio was telling us we should be boiling them and then eating them with milk and sugar. Which we will, although some will definitely be roasted.

This has been a bumper year, we scrumped a few apples and figs as we walked enjoying the last of the indian summer. Tomorrow the rain arrives from Galicia, and on Monday, they say it’ll be ten degrees colder, then on Tuesday, snow down to 13oom. Maybe on Wednesday it’ll be spring.

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Pop! Flash! ‘This way David… over here Norman… smile ‘City of Berlin’

According to Juan Ramón Lucas, Spanish radio’s version of John Humphrey’s (minus the probing questions and harrumphing), the Prince of Asturias Awards are second only to the Nobel prizes. I’m not sure who keeps the list… or by what criteria these prizes are ranked. But never mind that. All week there’s been a buzz around the Campoamor Theatre and the Reconquista hotel because the prizes are being awarded tonight.


If you’ve already followed that link you’ll know that David Attenborough and Norman Foster are amongst the prizewinners… they might need to watch what they say, when Woody Allen said nice things about Oviedo, they made a statue of him…

The prize ceremony is on live on TPA (Asturian telly) and on TVE1, it really is quite a big deal. All week I’ve had students expressing republican sentiments about the royal family, the police presence, the pat down searches… one went so far as to complain about the excessive washing of the pavements, so much so she needed to have two pairs of shoes to walk into town.

While I’m with them on the republican side of things… I do like the whole prize giving, and I’ll be watching the speeches on the big screen in the main square (as I walk past on my way home from work).

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A short guide to San Mateo

The end of the Summer here coincides with San Mateo, the fiesta in Oviedo. It also seems to bring  schadenfreude-inducing thunderstorms to the rest of Spain and a brief window where the temperatures in Asturias are not too dissimilar to the south.

San Mateo began on Friday 11th and runs through to the end of Monday 21st (which is a bank holiday in Oviedo). It begins with the pregón, the address to the town hall square by a notable person (notable to the Ovetense, not to me) and the big puppets parading through the streets…

Then it falls into a routine, which goes like this:

First, check the programmme, if there’s a group you want to see, go see them (Ojos de Brujo, Chambao for example).

If not, wander the streets from chiringuito to chiringuito (thats what the temporary stalls selling beer and butties are called) having beer and butties (bocatas, big sarnies).

Have a mojito at the cuban chiringuito and marvel at how the Spanish pack into a very small space very very tightly.

Have a second mojito (if it’s not a school night) and marvel at how the Spanish seem to actually enjoy Europop.

Think about a third mojito, or a beer, another sandwich…

Repeat until tired or the stalls close at five.

Last night there was an extra surprise. Youssou N’Dour was in Asturias doing some stuff for a cultural centre in Avilés and was persuaded to do a gig in the Cathedral square. I think all of the Senegalese in Asturias turned up, it certainly changed the normal ethnic mix in the city.

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Contrasting weekend days

I was sitting on the bench, minding my own business, reading New Scientist (on my ebook reader, I’m so 21st century) and waiting for the Renault F1 roadshow to start, or, as it should be called, the we-love-Fernando show. The streets had been fenced off, and the crowd along the circuit was five or six deep so I had decided to head to the park and the big screen.

A big chap with a comb-over was on the next bench and after a few minutes silence, where his breathing became louder and louder as the big screen showed Fernando accepting the adulation of the city in 2007, he suddenly burst into a massive (and hard to follow) rant about how much it was costing and what a waste of money it was. I was the only person nearby and I mildly mentioned that I had read that Renault was doing it for free and that the only thing the city was paying for was the police. He ignored me completely and continued to call the mayor all kinds of very bad things.

Then he left and we were able to listen to the F1 car utterly destroying the speed limit.

Then on Sunday, a different sort of day. Julio and Liz (not Liz Evans, a different Liz (hmmm, need some sort of Liz notation, Liz2 perhaps…) and I went up a hill. It’s called Pico La Hoya, it’s fairly close to the city and, as usual, we were the only people on it.

I was the guide, that is, I had the guide book and the blame if we went wrong. It’s pretty easy to go wrong too, because the guide book had helpful guidance like:- take the goat track. Paths in the hills here are prone to disappear under vigorous fern growth and sometimes trusting that the faint crushed grass is a path is the only way forward.

The ascent was steep up to a saddle and then along a ridge. The guidebook warned about not taking the paths leading down, so I kept high, although I was following little more than a path that could have been made by a particularly heavy rabbit. Julio decided that the lower path was better and, thanks to an understandable unwillingness to cross a scree slope, Liz2 followed him. I arrived at the summit with no problems, and 20 minutes later, so did they, after a bit of extreme grass scrambling (or as Liz2 said, I’ve just done my first bit of rock climbing but there was no rock). But the views from the top were more than sufficient reward. The hill is isolated, giving great views in every direction, and it’s nice to have walked over many of them, and to get a good feeling for which valley links to which and which mountains are where.

Then the descent. Turn left at the rock shaped like a chicken’s head, said the guide, and there it was. So we did. Down a steep channel, then a left turn to avoid the cliff, then down down down. We made it just in time to have a cider shandy before catching the bus back. We were sitting outside the bar, and an old dear on the next table was asking where we’d been. Julio said the descent was jodida (hard, knackered, but literally fucked). Liz2 and I smirked… you can’t talk to a granny that way!

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