The same but different

It's still early days I suppose, but I'm starting to get a handle on the "missing" elements of life (as we knew it) in Spain.

I've always liked the geographical connection; living in the north-east of Spain vs England means radically different things in terms of exactly how far the wind can penetrate your clothing, but there are lots of familiar aspects to life here, largely to do with attitudes, expectations and the local people in general.

I've noticed a similar thing in other countries, where the climate up north is that little bit harsher, life in general more of a challenge and government is perceived as being remote and disinterested. Curious that Western capital cities tend to be further south, or west, or anywhere but north-east of the country, while in Japan, China and India that's exactly the place to be if you're a soft southerner type and need to be close to the action. Whatever, it seems to me there's a natural kinship between these remoter communities that gets reflected in everyday life. People here are like those toffees with the chocolate in the middle, sweet enough but pretty tough on the outside, warm and reassuring once you get into them. The same was true of a lot of Catalan folk I met, although the language issue made much harder work of the toffee.

Catalan people (again, in general) actually reminded me very much of the Scots, which might be a more appropriate comparison. Many north-easterners identify more with southern Scots than southern English anyway, although they don't necessarily share the notorious tight-fistedness common to both them and the Catalans. The old joke is that copper wire was invented by two Scots fighting over a penny, but since living (more pointedly, working) among the Barcelones I'm fairly sure the invention should actually be credited to a guy called Jaume, who beat it so hard it stretched from Manresa to the Outer Hebrides.

We're actually finding the cost of living here to be very comparable with Spain, or at least the region we lived in, which has always been the most expensive. Maybe it's just the intense competition between the major supermarkets here, or perhaps the fact that Barcelona and Newcastle are at opposite ends of their respective national cost-of-living tables. Some familiar things have had to go for cost reasons, like the daily bottle of fabbo Penedès, which has given way to the occasional glass of Aussie shiraz. Other things are just baffling, like for some reason our being unable to buy a decent loaf of bread anywhere. It was the worst thing about Spain for years, but I'm missing the village bakery's wood-fire baked pages like crazy and nowhere seems to be able to match its wonderful doughy crustiness here at all.

Enough time has passed to be missing friends, too. We just had a bunch of emails and the overwhelming feeling I'm left with is one of being utterly anonymous here, as if I forgot to pack my identity in the dash for the airport, or had it confiscated by security as an unsuitable hand luggage item. And I'm still missing the bottle of Asturian cider that they did confiscate. It's all part of settling in somewhere new of course, but the more I do, the more I can barely wait to get back for a visit. Even if I do end up missing the takeaways, and the beer, and...