The charger lasted about ninety seconds. Long enough to feel like progress, short enough to feel personally insulting. Plug in, wait, watch the little blue light blink with what I can only describe as false confidence, vacuum for two minutes, die. Repeat a few times until we admitted the machine was never going to get […]
A Small Bureaucratic Opera: Returning a Vacuum Cleaner at Hipercor Read More »
The washing machine did not come. We had spent the better part of a morning waiting on it. Our old one had died in the kitchen a few days earlier, flooding the floor mid-cycle, and our handyman had already pronounced it unfixable. Our landlord had moved fast to get a replacement ordered, even while managing
Spain’s Natural Rhythm: The Rests Built Into a Meal, a Day, a Week, and a Year Read More »
The Aparcamiento Pico del Obispo looked exactly like I remembered it. Six months earlier, on a scouting trip in January, we had left the rental car in that same open-air lot before wandering into the casco histórico, the old town, to imagine a life we hadn’t built yet. Now that life was starting, and I
My First Week in Alcalá: Paperwork With Better Views Read More »
A Knight Without a Cause We all need purpose. The hard part is figuring out what that purpose actually is. Mine came, of all places, from a fictional character. Don Quixote, Cervantes’ aging knight who looks around at the world he lives in, decides it no longer fits him, and simply rides away to create
Why I Left the US After 30 Years and Moved to Alcalá de Henares, Spain Read More »
