We are back home?

A BIG MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, we at Custom-4u Spanish Properties hope you all had a great festive time, and are looking forward to the New Year.

We have just returned from spending 9 days at Orihuela (Cabo Roig), 8km south of Torrevieja, it made a change to get away and spend time in an area (6km of coast line) which is basically little England.

Not a word of Spanish is spoken in this area, all the shops and restaurants speak English and all the bars are run by the Brits, I did manage to have my favourite tipple, Magners cider, and watch (on Sat TV) my favourite English football team (Spurs) 3 times in that period.

When talking to the locals many seemed to be ashamed of the fact they didn't speak any Spanish at all, and to top it all we saw people in supermarkets holding out cash in their hands for the assistant to take the correct money, for goodness sake aren't all numbers the same? why don't they look at the till to see how much their bill is?

Don't get me wrong, I understand this environment is ideal for a pensioner not wishing to learn a new language, but what of the 30-60 year olds living there? They are missing out on the Spanish way of life, the food, the fiestas, the culture, all they have is the sunshine. My 80 year old Mother in Law knows enough Spanish to go into any cafe or bar in Spain and order her choice of food and drink, she puts these people to shame.

So why have I used the title; We are back home? it's because we heard people say things like, "my brother is normally here for Christmas, but this year he's gone home," or "I've lived here for 8 years but I try to get home a couple of times a year,"

We live in Spain, Spain is our home, therefore We are back home, in our village house in Spain. If you want to make it Spain you have to be fully committed, you can't do this half heartedly, there are many people who fail to adapt to life in Spain and return to their country of origin within 2 years, think seriously before taking the plunge.

On a footnote, the cost of living in our Inland area is far cheaper than the coast, a pint of lager in our village is 1.50€, the price in Cabo Roig is 3.20€ over double, and I paid 4.50€ for a Magners cider, we stayed at my niece's apartment, she paid the same price, (at the same time) as we did for our village house, our house is nearly 4 times larger than her apartment.

When I next get some free time (we have 9 days to catch up on) I'll post some photo's, and sometime in the future I will post some basic Spanish.

Have a great New Year.