Spain

As we prepare to leave Spain and head to Morocco tomorrow for the next leg of our Worldschooling adventure, it's time for the fam to weigh in on the cultural observations we've made during the past month in Basque Country (as we do with each place we stay in for at least a month).

FAMILY & COMMUNITY (DAN)

Family and community are central to Basque culture, with multigenerational households being very common - more so than in the US. Also with few exceptions, every town in Spain (including the large ones) are centered around a town square where people gather and it's the center for all events, music, dancing, etc.  I really love his town square community culture.

THREE COURSE MEALS /MENU DEL DIA - (FRANCESCA)

Another food cultural difference - you see a trend here?  The Menu del Dia (Menu of the Day) is a set menu usually served for lunch - but also for dinner in some resturants - and offers a choice of starters, a main dish and a desert (usually a choice of 1 out of 4 items). 

One thing Francesca and I both found so peculiar - but we LOVED it - is that some restaurants also offered wine with the Menu del Dia and they would open a bottle of whatever wine you ordered and leave it on your table and you could have as many glasses as you wanted for no additional charge!  At first we were wondering why they left the bottle on the table and assumed we would see the extra glasses on our bill at the end of the meal, but that never happened and then one server informed us that this is common in Spain, or, again, at least in Basque Country. A lovely cultural tidbit for us wine-Os!

SIESTA / WORK-LIFE BALANCE (RYAN)

This is something we ALL couldn't help but notice, but I am attributing it to Ryan as he was particularly interested in this one.  We had heard about "siesta" before, but honestly we had no idea how prevalent it is - at least in the smaller villages.  Literally the entire village would shut down from 2pm to 4pm with the exception of one or two bars.  At 1:30pm the town square would be bustling with people, kids playing, old folks chatting, etc and at 2pm, the place would be deserted!

This was a particularly challenging one for us as we always found ourselves caught out in no man's land between 2pm and 4pm.  Many /most stores are closed on Sunday as well which definitely took some getting used to - we take for granted that pretty much all stores in the US are open 7 days per week - or at least not closed on the same day (Sunday) every week.  Spain, or at least Basque Country, definitely has a better work-life balance than most of the US!

MUSIC /DANCING (AUSTEN)

It seems like the town square where we lived was always filled with music and /or dancing.  There were several festivals where multiple groups (in uniform) would march around the square singing songs or playing music (or both) often at the same time which created a cacaphony that no one seemed to mind.  We didn't see a ton of dancing in our town square, but we learned that it is very much a part of the basque culture.  While Austen doesn't sing or dance a ton, she really seemed to be enamored of this part of Spanish culture.

PINTXOS CULTURE (FINLEY)

Our resident eater really liked this distinct part of Basque culture.  Pintxos (pronounced like "pinchos") are like tapas and are prevalent all over Spain's basque country. Many restaurants won't have a menu or serve food a la carte, but rather only have an assortment of pintxos up at the bar that people purchase and eat along with whatever alcoholic beverage they are druinking. 

Personally, as the extrovert of the family and therefore the one called upon to order the pintxos, I found it a bit stressful as you would need to wade/push through the patrons at the bar and then shout out your order - in Spanish at least for the smaller villages where English isn't widely understood/spoken.  This forced me to bust out my 2 months of DuoLingo Spanish whch was pretty embarrassing.