I've been globetrotting for a while and journeyed back to the homeland last week, so I've been missing in action around here. I'll try to catch up as best I can.
I didn't intend for every food I featured on here to be gross, bizarre, better-in-the-garbage-than-on-your-plate type stuff. But it's managed to work out that way so far, and today's entry is no exception.
Translation: The name above is in Mallorquin, the local language of Majorca. It'd be "lengua con alcaparras" in Spanish and in English "tongue with capers," which are the unripened buds of a plant found in the Mediterranean.
So what is it exactly? It's veal tongue - boiled, peeled and cooked with onions, capers and tomatoes.
Where I ate it: Cura, Majorca, Spain (a small town in Majorca, one of the Balearic Islands)
Before trying it, I was thinking...: "It's amazing how many times I find myself in a situation where I'm eating oft-discarded animal parts. And if my dad were here he'd tell me I'd never eat this if he put it on my plate back home."
Texture: As tender as it gets. Knife not needed. You don't even need teeth, really. You could gum the stuff and enjoy it just the same. Now, in my last post about oxtail, I also talked about incredible tenderness but in a negative way. I said oxtail was so tender that it lacked substance. The good news is that veal tongue didn't dissolve in the same way oxtail did. You don't have to chew the tongue, but it doesn't immediately disintegrate either. It was a slow melt-in-the-mouth, one you could appreciate and enjoy. Luckily, the meat (which is really mostly muscle and fat) didn't linger long enough for me to really think about the fact that the stuff falling apart on my tongue was, well, tongue.
Taste: This may or may not be surprising, but the tongue tastes like...beef! Even better than that ambiguously generic "beef" description: It actually tasted like roast. Yes, roast. OK, wipe that disgusted look off your face and think about this: As this guy explains it, round steak, for example, is none more glamorous than butt. If you can eat butt, you can eat tongue.
As for the capers, although familiar to people raised in the Mediterranean (or in Mediterranean-like climates), they're nothing like anything this Midwesterner had tasted before. They're tiny but packed with flavor. They've got a tart, slightly bitter punch. They don't taste like Greek olives but have a similar sort of mild kick. Just try them.
Verdict: Absolutely delicious. I owe my Mallorquin friends big time for exposing me to two gross-but-actually-not-gross dishes: tongue and frito mallorquin, which is liver and blood. I enjoyed the tongue so much that I'm dying to try a tongue taco at a traditional Mexican taqueria.
I think there's one saying that's perfect here: One man's trash is another man's treasure. So here's to eating trash - and liking it.
**I've added a couple of gems since I posted originally.
1.) When you venture into the bowels of Spanish bureaucracy, you lose.
Getting my foreign identity card was the disasterous, mindblowingly inefficient process I was warned it could be. The workers were incompetent, and the "rules" were nonexistent at worst and fluid at best.
We Americans were each given different "official" forms to fill out. The workers told us it was OK we all had different ones because it didn't really matter anyway. Some of us were told we needed to get a verification from the town hall that proved we did, in fact, live where we said we did. Some of us weren't told that. I was told twice that I needed three passport-sized photos. Ultimately, I needed two.
But the kicker was when my American friend told me that her American friend had gone to the station, and a worker told her that "she and her friends" needed to bring in a copy of every page of our passports. Is that really a bit of information that should be given to someone I don't know and then spread through the grapevine?
If you don't believe me, watch this hilarious-but-sad-because-it's-so-true video about Spanish red tape.
2.) The travel gods like me.
I arrived at the airport in Mallorca at 6 a.m. for a 6:25 departure. And they let me on the plane with only a minor "you should really be earlier next time" scolding. I have twice had mishaps with trains in Merida, a city more than 30 miles from Don Benito. And twice, the train company paid for me to take a taxi from the Merida area to Don Benito. No official form asking for my name or an explanation of the situation. No money out of my pocket.
3.) Don't speak too soon.
I wrote this post and saved it as a draft. Then I went back to Mallorca and got my iPhone 4S and my wallet (with that hard-won foreign identity card inside) stolen.
4.) If you're going to get robbed, don't let it happen in Spain.
Because replacing a stolen phone, canceling bank cards, dealing with police and applying for new identification is best done in your native language.
5.) Always carry coins.
Spaniards really, really prefer not to have to make change.
6.) In Spain, you arrive late, leave late, plan late,stay out late, eat late, wake up late, be late.
Puncuality just isn't a big deal. I think you can tell that from #2.
In Spain, lunch at noon is blasphemous. Going to the club before 2 a.m. is social suicide. Waking up at 10 a.m. on a Sunday is absurd. And being early is sooo foreign.
7.) The siesta is still alive and well in southern Spain.
It's a ghost town around here between 2 and 5 p.m. Don't plan for midday productivity.
8.) "Customer service" is more like, "Wouldn't it be better for both of us if you just did this yourself?"
One day at the bus ticket window, the worker was on a personal call. I waited a few minutes, growing evermore impatient. Then I enlisted the classic American/British foot-tapping tactic. All in vain. Then she pulled out a tin of orange tobacco and started ROLLING CIGARETTES while I waited there.
A different day, I was having beers with my roommate, and I asked for the bill. Ten or 15 minutes later, I still hadn't gotten it. Then the waitress came out, sat down at the table across the way and had a beer with some friends.
I laugh only because it makes me cringe at the same time. Source
9.) Official timetables are really just general approximations.
Shout out to #4 up there.
My 10:15 a.m. bus to work showed up at 11 o'clock once, without explanation. It generally rolls into the station around 10:30. Not once have I been in a plane, train or automobile in Spain that left on time, which has led me to change my arrival approach. I generally add about five minutes to established departure times and show up then. Turning up seven minutes late would be moderately risky, but three minutes would leave me with too much spare waiting time.
10.) Spain is a time warp.
Where did the past 5 1/2 months go?
11.) You can send used underwear to Spain, but don't try to send new ones.
Or detergent to launder them. If you send anything new from the U.S. to Spain (you can send used items without issue), you risk having it detained in customs in Madrid. They can slap you with hefty import and sales taxes on the goods and then charge freight costs to send the goods to their final destination (even though you already paid for them to be sent to their final destination).
I didn't actually learn this lesson from a shipment of underwear, but it makes for a more sensory example, eh?
12.) There are five requisite words/phrases to rock at Spain Spanish.
Dime - literally means "tell me." This is an acceptable greeting on the phone and at customer service counters.
Vale - means "OK."
Venga - generally means "c'mon" but can also be used as a sort of "ok" or "yeah, right."
Vamos - generally means "let's go" but can also mean "enough already."
No pasa nada - means "it's OK," "everything's all right," "don't worry about it" or "no problem."
13.) It is possible to have an entire phone conversation using the terms listed above.
I've heard it done.
14.) When out and about, it's not ideal to go more than a few hours without a coffee or small beer.
That's just the Spanish way. It's as much about rest and refreshment as it is about socializing and seizing the day.
15.) Sharing is caring.
Be careful with what I like to call the "American food and drink faux pas." If you're buying something at the coffee vending machine in the teachers' lounge, you should offer to buy coffee for everyone in the room. (I learned that one in the teachers' lounge after seeming like a real American you-know-what for months.)
And if you go out for dinner with Spaniards, and you order the cheapest platter while your friend gets the most expensive one, the bill often gets split evenly in the end. (That's assuming they actually let everyone order individually instead of ordering a few plates and sharing it all, which is what I often see.)
16.)So just order the big beer and some filet mignon and see what happens.
I may complain about inaccurate timetables and the siesta. And sure, I inject a lot of sarcasm into my posts because I really do see some things that are just outright ridiculous, in my opinion. But I've chosen to live here. I've chosen to subject myself to inefficient public transportation and mindblowing bureaucracy so that I can bask in the general gloriousness that is my life in Spain.
And you know what? I´m having the time of my life. I love Spain, Spanish and the Spanish people. And I don't regret a thing.
Mom and
Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, if you’re reading this, you should probably stop now.
Really, you’re
not going to like what my roommate and I did last weekend.
I know you’re
still reading this post because my warning has piqued your curiosity, but
really, I can’t imagine this will make you any more comfortable with the way I
travel.
We found a
stranger on the internet.
We asked if
he had an open couch or two.
We let him
pick us up from the airport on the Spanish island of Mallorca (Majorca in English)
at 11 o’clock at night.
We stayed
at his house for two days and let him feed us fajitas and serve us wine.
Does what
we did sound incredibly, you’re-just-asking-to-get-murdered-with-an-ice-pick
crazy? Absolutely. But sometimes when traveling, you have to take risks to reap
rewards.
CouchSurfing
is a social network that links travelers with hosts willing to let them stay
for free, assuming the freeloaders will offer some sort of cultural insight in
return. It’s a way for footloose nomads to meet other like-minded souls.
As far as I
know, there are no background checks, no official verifications that the person
you’re staying with or the person who’s staying at your house didn’t just get
off a train after chopping someone up with an axe. But perhaps that’s the
allure of it all: meeting someone completely new, with nothing to go off of
except for an internet profile that can either be sincere or entirely
fabricated.
As it turns
out, Samuel, our host, had a sincere profile, and to our knowledge, he hasn’t
murdered anyone with an axe or an ice pick.
That's Samuel on the left, of course.
He was
ridiculously gracious. Ridiculously gracious. As I mentioned, he picked us
up from the airport late at night even though he had to work in the morning (he’s
a lawyer).
He opened
his home to the fullest degree possible, allowing us to hang around by
ourselves while he was at work.
He left
coffee mugs, coffee and a giant breakfast muffin on the counter on our first morning
there.
He drove us
around the beautiful Balearic Island of Mallorca and waited patiently as we
took way too many nonsensical photos of trees, signs, sunsets and ourselves
from more flattering angles.
I believe this is the town of Valldemosa.
Valldemosa
We stopped at a lookout point to catch this sunset.
Portals Vells cove
Portals Vells cove
He answered
a mountain of “how do you say that in Spanish?” questions from us (he spoke
impeccable English).
He took us
to his workplace on a Saturday so that we could print off our bus tickets
because he didn’t have a printer at home.
He took us
to the most amazing, traditional Mallorquin (the adjective describing people
and things of Mallorca) restaurant that looked
exactly like what I would expect from a Spanish grandmother’s home. They
(Restaurant Hostal Ca’N Marió) served the best food I’ve had in Europe, no doubt.
Frito mallorquin, a typical dish made of meat, liver, blood, potatoes, onion, red pepper and tomato. It was fantastic. We also had wonderful stuffed eggplant, but we don't have a photo.
Arroz brut, a rice dish similar to paella but with broth, and green peppers with lemon, which is apparently typical of Mallorca.
Entrance to the restaurant.
Then, he
tried to not let us pay for dinner.
That, my
friends, is the epitome of CouchSurfing.
We, two
young American women, came to stay at his house, and he treated us like
platonic, longtime friends. No funny business. No shameless attempts to snag a
foreign girlfriend.
I’ve
travelled around a decent amount for someone my age. I’ve stayed in lots of
great hostels and a fair share of rotten ones.
I’ve been
to London, Paris,
Rome, Lisbon, Madrid, Sevilla, Florence,
Munich and a
ton of other amazing, straight-off-a-travel show places.
But one of
my best travel experiences thus far in my life was in Mallorca, a charming plot
of land off the eastern shore of Spain.
And it was
great because we hung out with Spaniards. Speaking Spanish. Doing things that
real people who live on the island do. And that’s what I’ve wanted this whole
whirlwind year in Spain
to be all about.
So, maybe,
somewhere else in the bowels of the interwebz, you’ll find a cautionary tale
about a CouchSurfing host wielding an axe. I can’t imagine there’s nothing bad
out there about the experience.
But keep in
mind that if you don’t go out on a limb, you’ll never reach the fruit.
And “adventure
is what happens when you just did something stupid” (Professor Bernie).
And lastly:
“Yes, risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise it would be called
sure-thing-taking.” – Tim McMahon
Profound,
eh?
Here’s to
that proverbial limb.
Un saludo,
Teresa
Also, as a
sidenote, anyone who tells you to avoid Mallorca
in winter is a fool.
