Spanish customs that we lose when we live abroad

Surely more than one of you will have realised that, due to the cultural differences between most countries, you will have stopped doing things that, in Spain, would seem like the most normal and most natural things in the world.

And it's true that us Spaniards have certain customs and habits that would seem absolutely unthinkable or even illogical to people from other countries. That's not the only problem, though: in order for us to adapt and to be "accepted" in the country that you are going to live in, you will find yourselves being almost forced to change those habits if you don't always want to be known as one of those "strange Spaniards".

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Giving two kisses when greeting people

For me, this is just something that happens out of habit; sometimes I don't even think about what I am doing, it's like we were just born with this custom ingrained in our minds. Was there ever an occasion when a mother didn't say to their small child, "go on, go and give them [two] kisses"?

We usually give people these infamous two kisses when arriving somewhere, when saying goodbye, when meeting someone for the first time... pretty much at every available opportunity. We love to shower people with kisses, be that friends or strangers. The ritual goes like this - two kisses on the cheek with the timeless "mwah mwah" - and it typically ends in one of four ways:

• Contact between cheeks or cheekbone against cheekbone.
• Unintentionally giving the other person a light peck for having mistimed the cheek to cheek contact.
• The other person's lips making contact with your cheek and vice versa, which sometimes causes little trails of saliva to be left on the cheek that we then try to dry as surreptitiously as humanly possible.
• Temporary deafness lasting for a few seconds if the person you have greeted makes too loud of a noisy in your ear.

And it's not only that, but we also end up giving someone that we have just greeted not ten minutes ago another two kisses. Let me set the scene: you have given them two kisses upon first seeing each other, you have a typical "hello, how are you? " conversation, and then give each other more kisses as you say your goodbyes.

If, in the distance, we see more than twenty people that we know approaching us, we will go over and give each and every one of them two kisses. Maybe this is part of the reason why we are hot blooded people and we exude love in everything that we say or do.

But if you go to any another country, especially ones in the northern part of Europe, be careful! Don't even think about launching yourselves like bloodhounds to plant two kisses on the person you are greeting, as it is very likely that they will consider it to be an invasion of their personal space, and they may ultimately take a disliking to you thanks to this.

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However, there are other countries where people also give kisses to greet others, and they don't just give two like us, but sometimes three or even four. And they say that we are the weird ones?!

The rest of the planet are more of the handshake type when greeting people, and some are not even that forward, just giving you a "hey, what's up?! " and a slight gesture with their head is more than enough.

I remember that I didn't take this little, but very important, detail into account on my first day at work, and when I went over to greet my bosses, I was literally about to give them the standard (for me) two kiss greeting. I went over to kiss them before suddenly sticking my hand out to shake theirs, and I was like "ahh yes, yes, that was what I was going to do, I was simply shortening the distance because I don't like to stretch my arm very much". What an absolute fail.

And that is not all, as I almost did the exact same thing with my flatmates and I really struggled to control myself. Although it's true that when some people find out that you're Spanish, they say "Wahoo, Spanish! Kiss kiss", and they were the ones who gave me these kisses, leaving me with a look on my face that said something along the lines of "what on earth just happened? ".

Another little anecdote that I have is that when some friends of mine came to visit me in my first flat, they went over to greet my flatmate with two kisses. It was like they literally pounced on her. The poor girl was like, "I'm sorry, what just happened? ", and I then had to explain to her that I had forgotten to tell my friends not to kiss others when greeting them.

But once people gain confidence, it's them who end up giving you kisses, especially if it has been a long time since you last saw one another. I remember thinking "what on earth just happened? " when my flatmate greeted me with a kiss after not having seen each other for several months.

And that is not the worst thing.

When I returned home to Spain, I remember my friends introducing me to someone and I just limited myself to smiling and throwing them a "hey, what's up? " without the two kisses, and many of them were looking at me like I was the craziest person to have ever existed. Obviously, being Spanish and being in Spain, the logical thing is to give someone two kisses, right? Despite having lost habits that were once second nature, when they saw that I wasn't making my way over to greet them the "Spanish" way, she pounced on me to give me kisses saying "come on man, two kisses at the very least, no? ".

So, yeah, the important thing to take away from this is that, when you go to another country, don't be imprudent and try not to give two kisses to people when greeting one another. The best thing to do is wait and see what the other person does so that you can avoid awkward misunderstandings.

Afternoon siestas

This is very important in our country and, truthfully, very few of us could live without it. Taking a siesta is our zen moment after eating, and if we miss it, we will have to sleep for twice as long the following day to make up for the hours of sleep lost.

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But, watch it! If we decide to have a siesta, it's not because we are being lazy, but instead because it's scientifically proven that taking an afternoon nap improves our overall health and decreases (and even prevents) stress levels.

Seriously speaking, who actually has an afternoon nap every single day (except young children)? There are less and less Spaniards who enjoy the traditional daily siesta, however, everybody at some point will have one of the classic 4 to 5 hour "Andalusian siestas".

Because if you are going to have an afternoon nap, you either do it right or you don't do it at all.

If you live outside of Spain, it doesn't matter if it lasts for 4 hours, 2 hours or even 20 minutes, it's better to just forget about siestas altogether.

Despite the fact that the concept of the Spanish siesta is becoming quite popular in the rest of the world, the time frame that us Spaniards reserve for a siesta doesn't exist in other countries, and this is due to the timings for each and every little thing being so very different from one country to another.

So, wake up and deal with it! At least we will always have the weekends to laze around and take day-long naps if we truly feel like it.

Eating lunch at 2pm and dinner at 10pm

This reminds me of an anecdote that I told you all about in one of my earlier blog posts about my first day at work. It seems that, in any other country that's not Spain, they always eat at 12 noon or at 1pm, at the very latest.

During the six months that I was living in Germany, I was always the last one to eat and, obviously, I always ended up eating alone because everyone had already eaten much earlier (except on Fridays because they ordered pizza to the office, and if I didn't go down to the kitchen before 12:30pm, I would end up having absolutely nothing to eat).

For us, we would call eating at that time "lunch": it's a time when we have a couple of little light bites to increase our appetite for when we eat later. But, eating at midday? You wouldn't even believe it.

Us Spaniards like to eat, and if we are going to eat, we are going to go full out.

Another important things that you have to know if you are going to work outside of Spain is that, in the rest of the world, lunch breaks last for 15 minutes at best. Forget about that long-lost luxury of two hour lunch breaks between 2pm and 4pm because the rest of the world carries on working, from the moment that they arrive at the office until they go home.

It was really difficult for me to get used to these schedules. And the worst thing of all for me is when it comes to eating dinner.

In Spain, we can eat dinner as late as 10pm (or even later on occasions), but even thinking about eating earlier than this would be considered as snacking.

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I would say that it's worth getting used to eating dinner before 7pm, especially if you are going to eat out, because the majority of restaurants close at 11pm and you will be left with nothing to eat.

This happened to me once when my work colleagues told me that they were going to meet and go for dinner together because one of the girls was leaving and they had thought about doing a little farewell dinner for her. They were going to go out after work, so that would be at around 6pm (in reality, we finish work at 5pm but it seems like people love to work here), but I had to go home first because I wanted to shower and turn off my computer before going to the restaurant. The problem was that I misunderstood the time that they had said and I thought that they told me that we were meeting at 8pm.

At first, after having gone home and got ready for dinner, I found myself thinking if they had actually told me 6pm and not 8pm, but I then I thought about it some more and I told myself that it was impossible that they were going to eat dinner at 6pm, so I settled on the idea of it being at 8pm. Mistake.

And that was not even the worst part. In my eyes, 8pm still seemed to be too early to eat dinner, so I thought about getting there for 9pm to give myself a chance to build up an appetite. Well, upon calling one of my colleagues to ask for the address (I rang at 8:45pm), she asked me where I had been hiding because they were just finishing their meals and were about to head out for a couple of drinks. Excuse me? You have already eaten dinner? At 6pm? And you are going for drinks at 9pm? And then what, you will be in bed and asleep by 11pm? Unthinkable.

I gave my apologies and promised that I would wait for them at work and go with them there directly another day, but it wasn't looking promising because that would mean eating earlier to feel hungry much earlier.

Well, things got even worse.

Given that I didn't have anything at home that I could eat, I decided to go to the restaurant that they had told me about, with it now being 10pm and, in my eyes, the perfect time for dinner. You won't believe your ears... when I arrived there, they told me that they were not accepting any more walk-ins because they were about to close the kitchen! Could you imagine the gobsmacked look that I had on my face when they told me that? I couldn't believe it!

So, take this advice and run with it like it was a gold bar: outside of Spain, people eat lunch at 12 noon and dinner at 7pm.

Sobremesa

Sobremesa, which literally translates as "over the table", is the period of time just after eating when you order a coffee or dessert while you smoke a cigarette or use a toothpick to cleanse the palate after your meal; all of which is done whilst having a conversation with your dinner companions.

This extremely Spanish tradition drives foreigners insane, especially the waiting staff, who are desperate to get you out of the restaurant so that they can eat as quickly as possible after their shift.

We can easily spend 30 to 40 minutes eating our meals, but the sobremesa needs a minimum of one hour because you have to digest your food properly before getting up and walking around.

As a nation, us Spaniards are very talkative and we really like to chat about every Tom, Dick and Harry that we know, as well as arguing about whose grandmother makes the best croquetas in the world.

And that's not all. If you are with a group of friends and one person has to leave before the sobremesa, the rest of you are left feeling confused and thinking, "and what are they doing exactly? ".

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But, in short, this doesn't happen outside of Spain, so it's quite possible that it will just be you Spaniards sat alone at a big table while you eat your dessert, as everyone else will have gone home.

Going for tapas and bar-hopping

As I said earlier, we really like to eat and we like to eat a lot, and we are never to miss out on a little slice of tortilla.

The majority of foreigners are surprised to see some tapas being served with the beer that they ordered, and often have a look on their faces that says, "but are they going to charge me for this even though I didn't even order it? ". And we have to explain to them that no, it's free, because that's just how generous we are as a nation.

The little tapas being served as some of the healthiest things that you could eat because the Mediterranean diet is one of the best in the world. There is nothing that can compare to gazpacho, tortilla, paella, stew, croquettes or pinchos.

One way of knowing if a bar is good or not is by looking at the amount of cocktail sticks, those serviettes that never soak anything up, crumbs and oil that there is on the floor. The dirtier it is, the better.

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One thing that really surprises foreigners is the whole concept of standing up next to the bar eating some tapas with a beer whilst happily chatting away with your friends. For them, it is somewhat strange to eat whilst being stood up, never mind the whole going from bar to bar thing - that is an entirely Spanish thing.

We like to go to different bars during one given night, so that we can try different tapas or just for a change of scenery and atmosphere. There's none of that propping yourself up against the same bar for hours on end with us.

But anyway, you will never see that outside of Spain. You better get used to always going to the same bar or café after work and staying there for the duration.

I am telling you this from experience because my work colleagues would always go for a drink or for dinner at the same restaurant every single time. There came a point when I got completely fed up it and I stopped going with them.

At least I was with a group of friends who liked this idea of going somewhere else to eat, but I have to tell you that they weren't German, so it doesn't really count as a huge achievement, I suppose.

Using olive oil in every single recipe

It's one of our most valuable goods, especially so when you cross the border out of Spain. Olive oil is liquid gold in the foreign market, not only for its colour, but also for the money that a couple of litres of it costs and for how difficult it is to find it (even more so for a high quality one).

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One time I went to a friend's house in Paris and I decided to make tortilla for dinner. When the moment came of wanting to put the potatoes in the pan, I went to look for the bottle of olive oil but was met with little success. I searched high and low before my friend told me that he didn't actually have any and that he was cooking with butter instead. I was absolutely horrified.

But, it's true! Outside of our little Spanish bubble, the majority of countries cook with either butter, lard or other oils (not olive), like palm or sunflower oil. And it's not just everyone else, but you personally will also be forced to cook with anything but extra virgin olive oil because it is ridiculously expensive outside of Spain.

This is ultimately because Spain is the number one producer of this liquid gold, so it's for this reason that we always have it in our kitchens and that we put it on literally everything that we eat; a salad without a splash of olive oil isn't a salad.

It's one of those situations where we don't realise what we truly have and how truly valuable things are until they're gone...

Having blinds in our homes

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Ok, this is something that I just do not understand and I think that it's absolutely unacceptable.

Like the good Spanish girl that I am, I like to eat, but the thing that I like the most is sleeping. If the sun wakes me up while I am sleeping (as much as I like the sun), it puts me in a very, very bad mood.

And I honestly don't understand how there are rooms without blinds? But why? Which twisted individual came up with the fantastic idea of not putting blinds in bedrooms? Curtains aren't sufficiently thick enough to block the bright sunlight pass from entering the room.

I want someone to bring me the guy who said that it's not necessary to put blinds in bedrooms so that I can sort him out.

Both in my bedroom in Germany, as well as the one in France, I didn't have blinds over the windows. At best, they had a fabric curtain or one of those folding plastic curtains that gave me no end of trouble!

Our Spanish blinds (real, authentic ones) prevent the sunlight from entering your bedroom and help you to sleep for 24 hours straight if you wanted to. This absolutely ingenious invention makes foreigners go crazy, and when they go into a bedroom and they close the blinds, they think that it's some kind of sorcery.

In spite of how in love we are with the sun and how much we like to lie out on a terrace whilst relaxing with a beer, we need complete darkness to be able to sleep. This is where the urgent need for blinds comes from.

Drinking red wine and coke, tinto de verano and sangria

If it wasn't already complicated finding somewhere that serves tapas, don't even think about saying anything about tinto de verano or calimocho (red wine and coke).

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And don't even think for a second about making it yourself, as you are sure to be burned alive for heresy...

Wine is drunk alone: there is none of this mixing it with coke, lemonade or any other fizzy drink business. Outside of Spain, this is considered to be a sin or blasphemy.

However, sangria is already somewhat more accepted outside of Spain and you will sometimes even see plastic pre-made bottles of it in the supermarkets.

The sun

If you go to a more northerly country, say your goodbyes to the sun because you are not going to see it again for months.

I'm not trying to scare you, but at one point during my Erasmus in France, there were five consecutive cloudy days and it was impossible to see the sun. During those days, I felt like I had zero energy because deep down (as much as we like to sleep in complete darkness), we are unable to function with those divine rays of sunshine.

The first thing that you will miss when you leave Spain will be the sun, and then your family, and then your mother's cooking.

But it's not only the fact that, for the majority of the day, the sun will disappear... the strangest thing that you will see when the sun comes out (although it's only the tiniest ray of sunshine), is people putting on their summer clothes and walking around in their swimming costumes, even in the middle of winter!

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Going out out at 12am and going home at 6am

All good Spaniards know that you don't go out on a night out before midnight, and if you do, it's simply because you have to take the metro, then the train and catch three different buses after that to get to your chosen party destination for the night.

But this, once again, only happens in Spain. On the rest of planet Earth, people go out at 9pm at the very latest!

I remember that, when we threw parties in the student residence in Amiens, we would meet at around 8pm ish and then head out to some bars at 10pm.

And, in Wiesbaden, parties started at 9pm. If you came much later, you would almost certainly arrive to find everyone already steaming drunk and ready to go home.

For example, there was one occasion where one of these aforementioned parties was organised to start at around 8pm, but I only arrived just before 10pm (which is what I am very much used to doing). Upon my arrival, I found that everyone was already feeling "party hard" and rolling around on the floor because they couldn't even control themselves anymore thanks to how drunk they truly were..

When it came to going home at around 5am, there were only 4 other people still left at the party and they were the people who lived in the house and one other person who had stayed to help clean up. I remember that, at this particular party, everyone started to leave at around 3am and it was all very sudden. One minute, the party was full of people, and the next, there was hardly anyone left.

Therefore, in Spain, it is typical to go out at around midnight. This, however, is not just limited to Fridays and Saturdays, but includes Thursdays too.

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But, we don't go home until the rooster crows, in other words, until the sun has risen; even then, we don't go home. The first thing we do is go to a churro place to get some food inside us before going home and sleeping until around 2 in the afternoon. The whole going to eat churros with a pot of hot chocolate is an unwritten rule, and is the perfect way to end the night.

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For us, it's never late and it's always early. What would you do without that friend, when you think you might go home at 2am, who tells you "but it's not late yet" or "it's still early" and raises their hand to get another shot brought over to you?!

Arriving home before 3am is going out for dinner, not going out on a night out.

But, like the rest of things, this only happens in Spain. If you are going to live abroad, bear in mind that people meet up at 8pm and you will be heading home to bed by 3am. This is just how life works in other countries.

Anyway, as much as you want to stay out partying until the sun comes out, almost all of the nightclubs in Europe close at 3am.

Making a lot of noise when talking

Many people say that Spanish is one of the sexiest languages in the world. However, it is also said that it seems like we are shouting and arguing all the time when we are talking; even if we are throwing a thousand and one compliments at someone, it still sounds like we are insulting one another.

It's something that I personally don't understand, particularly because, when I talk, I do so with moderation and without raising my tone of voice very much. However, I have realised that I only do this when I speak in other languages and not in Spanish; when I speak in my mother tongue, I seem to be a totally different person.

My international friends know when I am speaking Spanish, not because they don't understand what I say, but because they say that I become more aggressive-sounding. I don't know if it's actually true, but given the number of people who have told me that, I guess that they have a point.

Deep down, we like to have the attention on us when we are talking, especially if we are telling a joke or a story. We like to swear a lot and emphasise our words with hand gestures so that everyone else listens to us for the duration. We really like the attention when we are insulting people: us Spaniards have this incredible capacity to throw at least one insult in every sentence we say.

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And, of course, our conversations are never without the typical nudge or shoulder pat to maintain eye contact with the other person, as the most important thing is that they pay attention to you while you talk.

However, in foreigners' eyes, they see our conversational habits as not being very polite and they think that we are trying to make a big song and dance out of nothing. So, when you travel outside of Spain, try to behave like some kind of stuck up person to avoid them looking at you like you are crazy.

Being "Spanish"

We all know deep down that, if we want to be accepted in other societies, what we must do is stop being Spanish.

But, frankly speaking, I would prefer to be true to myself and be Spanish than integrate myself into another society where everything that I do seems like something crazy to everyone else. Look, there's a difference between someone holding onto their customs and someone being disrespectful and annoying other people.

Apart from the whole giving two kisses when greeting and saying goodbye to people, the rest of our "habits" are something that solely affect us and we are not harming anyone else with them. So, I will carry on with my life like I have always done, although it seems like I will be dining alone during both lunch and dinner and will be the last one in the clubs when we go out.

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