Culture Shock!: Morocco

Watch out, y'all -- Morocco is a crazy place!

I’m afraid I couldn’t contain this Culture Shock! to just one aspect of my Morocco trip — if you’ve ever been anywhere within a 50-mile radius of North Africa, you’ll understand there are FAR too many contenders for that singular award.

Let’s try a top five, shall we? And y’all can let me know if I’m forgetting anything.

1. Everybody is so damn … nice.

No offense to Spaniards, who still molan mucho, but I’ve never felt so welcomed anywhere as I did in Morocco. For the first two nights I stayed with a Moroccan woman named Aoufiya, who insisted we eat mountains of couscous, take afternoon naps (… in her bed) and gave us her address at the end of the stay — with strict instructions that we were to call her and stay with her if we ever came back to Rabat. Outside of the homestay, old ladies and little kids stopped us on the street to say hello, welcome or whatever other English words they knew.

2. It would take years to learn these table manners.

… unless, of course, you already possess the singular gift of eating couscous with your bare hands. Moroccans traditionally eat out of a communal bowl and without utensils, even when the food is really tricky — say couscous or shredded rghaif. If this wasn’t difficult enough, it’s also considered unclean to use your left hand. Righties of the world may shrug that off, but I was in a state of near-panic when I saw the “no left hand” commandment in our guidebook.

Culture Shock!: The Spanish just do not dig plaques

What is this thing? Why is it so oversaturated? Without plaques, you may never know!

Visiting Madrid’s old Royal Palace was simultaneously one of the most interesting and most aggravating things I’ve done in Spain.

On one hand, the extravagance of the 18th-century palace was totally engrossing, and the opportunity to trudge through the rooms where kings once ate breakfast and played pool was sick, to say the least. But every time I was curious about something – an elaborate painting, a weird piece of furniture, the function of a misshaped room – I was absolutely out of luck.

The Spanish hate plaques. There are none to be found anywhere.

This is difficult for Americans, who are used to seeing historical placards, commemoratives and other explanatory notices posted everywhere. If the United States had a royal palace, you can guarantee that its curators would put plaques on every item that didn’t move:

“This is the bench where so-and-so did such-and-such.” “This wallpaper is a prime example of this obscure style, which we are now going to discuss at length.” “This air conditioner was not a part of the original building, but was added in 1972.”

In Spain, on the other hand, you will be lucky to track down a small, rather awkwardly written blurb, which only specifies that Goya did in fact paint the portrait in the far left corner.

Maybe they’re trying to make money off guidebooks (nice try, Spain — y’all got nothing from me). But I think it’s more likely that, in many cases, people just aren’t as hung up on history.

After all, you can’t walk 10 feet in Spain without running into a Roman ruin or a medieval castle or some sort of elaborate, storied cathedral. History here is like a matter of course.

Whereas at home, even one-time brothels and obscure drinks merit attention. Lame, perhaps — but informative!

Culture Shock!: Boxed milk and other weirdness

What the heck is this stuff? More importantly, why isn't it in a refrigerator?

I spent my first few weeks in Spain terrified of contracting some serious infection or gastrointestinal illness. Contrary to everything I’d learned about food safety, my host mother does not refrigerate milk – and while it magically never appears to go bad, I wasn’t convinced that it wouldn’t kill me.

Five weeks in, however, and I’m still here – in fact, even as I write this post, I’m drinking coffee with counter-stored milk in it. And thinking of the number of times I’ve gotten in trouble for leaving milk on the counter, or – even worse! – the number of times I’ve grimaced and drank the only slightly-spoiled milk from my dorm room fridge, I’m beginning to see the wisdom of the European system.

Spanish milk is totally different from American milk. For starters, it comes in a box and thus kind of tastes like cardboard. It also uses a different type of pasteurization – called UHT – that kills more bacteria and makes it safe for longer periods of time without refrigeration. While I wouldn’t be terribly keen to try this one, sources say that unopened boxed milk will stay fresh for up to nine months.

I had to wonder why this thing hasn’t caught on in the States. After all, Americans have pretty much cornered the over-sanitized food market (genetically modified, pre-cut, hermetically sealed vegetables, anyone?), and un-spoil-able milk is hard to beat.

Apparently some European milk manufacturers thought the same when they tried to market boxed milk in the U.S. about 15 years ago. At the time, CNN predicted that they’d face a tough crowd — Americans just don’t want to give up the milk flavor they’re used to, even if it this cardboard variety never spoils.

Judging by the fact that I’d never seen boxed milk before this trip, I’m gonna go ahead and guess that they were right.

Culture Shock!: Madrid’s (shameless) fur obsession

In Madrid, fur-lovers outnumber PETA activists by roughly 1,000 to one.

Remember those new types of posts I promised? You’re reading one right now: Every Tuesday, I’m going to write about something that’s totally different in Spain. You can find all of these posts in the sidebar under “Foreign Affairs.”

The fur coats were literally the first thing I noticed when our bus pulled into Madrid’s Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. I had just arrived in a totally new city – a city where I was going to live for the next four months of my life – and all I could say to my roommate was, “is it just me, or is fur like a REALLY big deal here?”

In any barrio, at any time of day, you are 100% guaranteed to see middle-aged women cloaked head-to-toe in fur. I can’t speak for the rest of Spain, but in Madrid, at least, you’re basically less than human if you’re over 55 years old and don’t own at least half a closet’s worth of rabbit, fox or chinchilla.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why wearing fur is such a faux pas in the U.S., but such a significant staple here. I decided to take the question to my Spanish society and pop culture teacher, who has lived in Madrid for more than 10 years.

At first, he supplied only the unhelpful explanation that fur coats are a status symbol, and everyone likes to flaunt their status.

Okay, okay – that’s totally true. But why are status-flaunters in the U.S. threatened by PETA activists bearing fake blood, while every woman in the greater Madrid area can wear dead rabbits problem-free?

According to my sociology professor, this – like most cultural anomalies in Spain – can be traced back to the poverty and oppression of the dictatorship. Think of it this way: No one really cares about baby foxes’ lives when they’re also worried about their own.

Of course, all that is changing with time. Last January, for instance, more than 100 naked Barcelonans doused themselves in fake blood and lay down “dead” in El Plaza del Rey to protest against Spain’s fur industry. A similar protest scandalized Madrid only eight months later.

I’m not sure any amount of protests with get las madrileñas to give up their coats. Lucky for them, with the bullfights and all, this new crop of animal rights activists have much bigger fish (… err, vegetables?) to fry.