Our first week in Galicia -- northern Spain -- was outstanding. We made plenty of friends, stumbled across a protest, and managed to find the place with quality craft beer. Surprised? No, probably not.
[mi español es muy mal]
EVO: ¡Viva España! Of all the countries in the first leg of our world tour, this is the one I, personally, was most excited about. The food, the culture...
SHE: ... the warm weather...
EVO: Right, that helps, too. And it doesn't hurt that I speak a little Spanish.
SHE: Oh, whatever! I've seen you consult Google Translate like every time you've tried to talk with someone that doesn't speak english. Spending 20 minutes a day on Duolingo a few times a week does not a fluent Spanish speaker make.
EVO: Hey, don't spoil the illusion. These people look up to me!
SHE: Whatever. But speaking of giving good advice, this trip does let us test out some of our earlier assumptions. We're hopping back into the Schengen area. You'll recall from an earlier show that here's a limited amount of time we're allowed to stay in this area of Europe. We should be nowhere near the limit on our number of days, but there's also a very good chance we've misinterpreted the rules.
EVO: The danger was that a border agent might interpret those rules differently. Turns out, we had little to worry about on this, our third border crossing.
[border]
EVO: Getting to Madrid was one thing. Getting to Galicia, one more plane hop away, was another matter. Because after getting through the easy border crossing, we realized we had forgotten something rather important.
[no tickets]
SHE: Spain, so far, is everything we wanted it to be. And that mostly means warm and dry. We made some friends as soon as the taxi dropped us off at our flat. Somehow we got invited to a birthday party by a bunch of locals that night. We have about two hours of audio that some of you would love to hear, but we're not releasing. After six weeks of low alcohol British beer, those Spanish spirits hit us really hard.
EVO: Yeah, us and everyone else at the party. Then again, if we get enough support at Patreon, that's just the kind of stuff that we'll have to use in our blooper reels. And let me tell you, it's one giant blooper. Did I really sing along to a Spice Girls song? Oy...
SHE: After our time frolicking with the locals, we made our way to Santiago de Compostela. It's claim to fame is the Camino, a pilgrimage of hundreds of miles from dozens of points across Europe that all end up here. We're not religious, so I'm not going to try and explain it. That's what Wikipedia is for.
EVO: To continue our confirmation bias from last episode, we once again found ourselves in the middle of controversy. Right after we got off the bus, I mean literally our first turn to the right -- we found ourselves walking down a street with armed cops on one side, and bunch of angry people on the other.
SHE: What's that? Turn around, you say? Ha. Have you met us?
[protest]
EVO: From what we can make out, the group was -- and still is -- protesting taxation on pensioners who've worked abroad and have returned to Spain, and are now facing double-taxation. Surprise! Tax laws are messy everywhere, not just in America. And getting a few dozen sovereign nations to play nice under the EU banner can't be easy.
SHE: And as a couple starting to think about retirement (OK, early retirement) abroad, we sympathize with their cause.
EVO: So, it if the protesters and government could get it it all figured out before we're ready to retire? Yeah, That'd be great...
SHE: One thing that is getting figured out everywhere is the spread of craft beer. Evo's on record of saying "we're not going to find good craft beer in" wherever we happened to be. And now, he's on record of being wrong one more time.
[fillos de malte]
EVO: And it's damned good craft beer we're finding in Galica. We're here for another week or so, and Jesus from Fillos de Malte (he is who you just heard) has given us plenty of great places to check out. You know, once we' run through all of his inventory. When you get to Santiago, make sure to go to his shop, and his restaurant, Beer Lab. We're headed there right after this podcast goes live. Because before long, we'll be in Thailand, and there's no good craft beer there.
SHE: Dude! There you go again!
EVO: Sorry. Cheers -- or should I say adues from Galicia! (Not to be confused with aidios, which is Spanish. See? My language skills are increasing big time!)
SHE: We travel the world as The Opportunistic Travelers largely because of our generous listeners.
EVO: People all over the world pledge as little as five bucks a month, and in return, they get a hand-written postcard from us sent from wherever opportunity has taken us, every single month. Sign up today at TheOpportunisticTravelers.com/postcards.
SHE: We also stay for free most of our journey. No, we’re not super-stars or anything. We eliminate hotel costs and stay in some great cities by housesitting all over the world. Get our complete list of the actual housesitting sites we use every day at TheOpportunisticTravelers.com/stayforfree, and stop spending money on hotels when you travel, too. Thanks for listening to this episode. I’m Sheila Dee.
EVO: And I am Evo Terra. Our theme music is "On the Ground" by Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com. All other sounds, voices, and odd bits you hear were created by us. And this podcast is just the start of the audio, video, images, and written content we’re producing as we travel the world. Got an idea on how we could work together or a place you like for us to visit? Visit TheOpportunisticTravelers.com to get in touch. Now would be good.
New episodes of the The Opportunistic Travelers Podcast are available every Tuesday. Of course, Tuesday can be a very different thing depending on where we are in the world. Cheers!
