I don't about you, but I thoroughly enjoy people watching - simply relaxing and eyeing the passing parade.
Here in Fuengirola, there is such a variety of different nationalities and interesting and quirky people, I could do this all day (if I didn't have to earn a living!).
I thought I would introduce you to some of the more unusual of our
local residents and visitors. I don’t mean to be nasty to these people,
so I won’t show you photos or mention any names, but they are just so
fascinating.
The German Lady
If you
didn't know better, you would imagine that this lady is just killing
time before her flight as she trundles her two suitcases up and down the
beachfront promenade. Probably in her late 60s or early 70s, her
appearance is always immaculate and she wears different outfits every
day. Her hair varies from blond to red, depending on the latest tint.
Looking at her, you would be convinced that she had checked out of her
hotel early and didn't want to head to the airport just yet, but then
one evening you enter the ATM lobby of the local BBVA bank and discover
said German lady settled and living there – and begging for money.
Unfortunately, the lady only appears to speak German, so it is difficult
to find out her story.
Sesame Street's Bert has a lookalike
Looking like an older version of Bert from “Sesame Street,” this
gentleman visits Fuengirola on a regular basis and always stays in a
local apartment hotel. He has stark features, which to me are somehow
reminiscent of an exclamation point. He always seems to be sitting at an
outside table at the hotel as I pass by and I can’t help but notice him
(he also notices me, by the way).
His gray/blond hair sticks up
rather like Bert's and up until now, he has always sported the rather
scarlet tones of a serious sunburn during his stay. However, on the
latest visit it seems he may have spent some time in a tanning parlor or
used some kind of chemical treatment, as he is, well, to say the least,
exceptionally overdone! Remember a couple of years ago, those images of
the tanning-mad woman from England? This guy's tan is so similar.
Quite honestly, I can only now describe him as a caricature of himself, if that makes sense.
Crocodile Dundee
A guy, hailing from Lisbon, Portugal, is living under a bridge just
down the beachfront from where I live. He delights in crafting sand
crocodiles next to the river that enters the sea at that point. Very
creative, he decorates the crocs using oranges for eyes and pieces of
white plastic cups for teeth, then spray-paints them a lurid green or
bright red.
Surrounding the crocodiles is a variety of different
objects rescued from the local garbage – plastic flowers, children’s
toys and such. Unfortunately for the crocodile guy, when the sea gets
rough, the crocs get washed away. Not to fear, however, as within a day
or so, like “The Terminator,” they’re back.
Come and visit us in Fuengirola to meet all the special people who live in these parts!
Since the original article (below) was published in May 2014, summer has, of course, struck and the noise levels at this awful hotel have increased. Despite a letter to the manager, after which he apparently "tested noise levels" (but never actually bothered to reply), the noise has just continued unabated.
Anyone considering moving into Calle Poeta Salvador Rueda in Los Boliches, Fuengirola is highly recommended to avoid the street like the plague that it is.
And by the way, when I reach my 70s, and hopefully 80s, like the English guests who populate this equivalent of an English old age home or Butlin's holiday camp, please don't let me sit in a foreign country, eating greasy English breakfast and listening to endless English trivia quizzes? Rather shoot me first... OK? Read on McDuff...
--
The Hotel Yaramar, right on the beach in Los Boliches, Fuengirola in
Spain is a great hotel - for tourists. For residents living in the
area, it’s more like living behind a large and very noisy factory. While
the hotel can make all that lovely loot from tourists, who cares about
the locals?
In December last year, the owner of my previous
apartment urgently needed to sell the property. I had two weeks to find a
new home, and his real estate agents helped me.
The third
apartment I looked at was really nice inside and was a few steps,
literally around the corner, from the beach. What could I say? I was
hooked. I did notice the back of the hotel across the road, but for some
very strange reason, I thought that would be quieter, less overlooked
and more private than having apartments opposite me.
Boy was I wrong!
During the winter months it wasn’t so bad. Other than some weird alarm
that goes off at odd hours and sometimes keeps on for quite a few
minutes, and trucks arriving to deliver stuff to the hotel promptly at 8
a.m. each morning, it was relatively quiet. At least the trucks didn’t
come on a Saturday or Sunday, so there were a couple of days I could
sleep late.
Oh, yes, and you can actually hear the
air-conditioning plant running 24 hours hours a day every day (you just
have to tell yourself it's merely the sound of the sea). Oh, oh, and I forgot to mention you can hear them washing the plates after both breakfast and dinner - what they actually do to those plates, God alone knows.
Then
the weather started warming up a couple of months ago. The sun came out,
and so did all the British tourists. The hotel has a pool deck, which
is directly up above and in front of me. Apparently, the British
tourists are mainly of the older variety and love to lie around the
pool, soaking up the sun and listening to English tour agents blabbing
out endless general knowledge quizzes along with silly, almost childish, stories.
I am also of the older
variety, but these quizzes bore the living daylights out of me,
especially when blasting out at full volume, and echoing around the
surrounding streets. In fact, anywhere in a six block radius, most days
you can hear every question clearly and concisely. I sometimes wonder if
all those tourists are stone deaf?
As a writer, I work from
home and for the most part, need to concentrate. Try concentrating when
all you can hear (with all doors and windows closed) is questions like,
“Which nursery rhyme character had a little lamb” or "Who was eating her
curds and whey when a spider came and sat down beside her" and other
brain-stimulating questions.
I even pondered getting myself a megaphone, and answering the questions from my balcony (at full volume), just for fun.
However, over the last few months I have tried everything. I have
phoned the hotel, I have emailed the hotel and I have even posted
comments on their Facebook page (hoping to shame them a little).
Occasionally, the volume goes down just a little, but gradually and over
time it goes up to its normal blaring and extremely irritating levels. I
even contacted Thomsons, the company who runs the English "entertainment," via their website and got absolutely zero response. I did later get a response from Thomsons' Facebook page, but as the people who messaged me were nothing to do with the hotel, this didn't help a bit.
I posted a glaringly bad review of the hotel on Tripadvisor and got the most pathetic response from Thomsons, where they said, basically, that I should have "done my homework" before moving there, that they have been running these quizzes for the last 14 years, and that they don't intend to stop. Really professional answer, guys. Really. No lack of "originality" there either, ROFLMAO. :)
It’s interesting to note that among the emergency numbers listed in the
foyer of my building, Hotel Yaramar, has a prominent position, so I am
probably not the first to complain. It's also interesting to note that I
work in travel
online, so my opinion of a hotel bears a little weight (haven't mentioned that to the hotel that though). My rating for this lovely four-star hotel is a
good minus-three for disrespecting the locals and I removed all traces of it from any of my websites.
I anyway prefer not to offer this kind of all-inclusive, adults-only (ancient, not sexy, you understand) accommodation. According to other negative reviews, the food is apparently awful (skin on porridge, greasy burned bacon, etc.) and certain floors apparently smell a bit musty, among other things.
Not really
surprisingly, there are very few apartments occupied on a permanent
basis in the block behind the hotel. Only two in my block of eight
apartments are occupied. Other blocks have maybe one apartment with
someone there on a permanent basis. Other than that, they are used by
holidaymakers, who really couldn’t give a damn as they are on the beach
all day.
I hate to think what it all sounds like to a
Spanish-speaking person. Basically all they would hear is “blah, bluh,
blah, bluh” in a plummy English accent. At least I can understand the
words – all of them, for the most part!
Noisy kids in the
street, cars passing, dogs barking, the normal, every day sounds of
life, are no problem at all. But these Thomson people must have been
born to irritate. In Spain you can denounce people for noise pollution,
but unfortunately only if said noise is after midnight.
I have even tried taking video footage to show them how bad it is, but my camera's microphone just isn't sensitive enough. However you can sort of get an idea from the video posted at the end of this article. In the video the male tour operator (who is the loudest of the lot) was telling the old dears a story about a duck, "quack quack quack." No lack of condescending attention there then. Quack, indeed.
As you may guess, come November when my contract comes up for renewal,
the girl will be on the move yet again. But at least I will be able to
take my time to find the perfect home.
OK, so I know its summer, and yes, there are lots of tourists here. I
also know that tomorrow is a religious holiday on the southern coast of
Spain. Despite this, I still say that supermarket staff must really
learn to behave.
There I was with my little basket on wheels,
minding my own business and just trying to get a few things I needed.
Please note, I didn’t even have one of those full-size trolleys, so I
had a particularly small supermarket footprint and I’m not exactly a
huge person myself.
Anyway, there I was, reaching for the brown sugar, when what do I hear from behind me but, “Perdóneme señora,” (basically excuse me, or pardon me, lady), in a rather strained and sarcastic young female voice.
I turn and there she is, a young supermarket employee sitting astride
one of those fancy (and large) ride-on floor polishers. She wants the
old bag to get out of her way so she can continue cleaning the floor.
This, mind you, at peak shopping hour, with hundreds of customers
milling around the store. What happened to “the customer’s always right”
and stepping back to let your client do their thing?
OK, so,
muttering to myself, I grab the sugar and head around the corner to the
coffee aisle. Just as I reach for my good and tasty Colombian, guess who
appears? Yeah, her again. It seems she went around the other way and
came in from the other side. She glared at me. I glared back, grabbed my
coffee, and stomped off. I’m really going to need that caffeine after
all this.
She then seemed to follow me wherever I went in the
supermarket, basically interfering with my heaven-sent “right to shop”
(I feel a protest coming on!). OK, admittedly, it might possibly be
because, while still in front of the sugar, I muttered in the Queen’s
English, “Who pays your bloody salary anyhow?” which she, just maybe,
understood?
But it wasn’t just her. There were others. I think I
mentioned that this was a peak shopping hour in the supermarket, loads
of customers, etc? Well, other members of staff apparently thought this
was the ideal time to replenish stock on the shelves in virtually every
aisle.
So besides trolleys, baskets, people, tourists trying to
work out what the Spanish for “washing detergent” or “milk” or whatever
was, we have added to the chaos loads of boxes and crates of produce.
Great fun. I heard one guy exclaim that we needed traffic lights to
control the flow, and he wasn’t far wrong!
To my tortured
imagination, this was a scene from one of those post-apocalyptic movies,
where everyone is rushing to grab the last of the food, or maybe a
scene from The Walking Dead, with the staff members playing the role of walkers. Whatever, I had quite honestly had enough.
Anyhow, I finally had everything on the list of essentials and headed
for the exit. There were three tills open. I headed for the one with the
shortest queue. Yeah, I know, due to Murphy’s Law, the shortest isn’t
necessarily the quickest, but I chanced it anyhow.
Just as I was within a couple of feet of the cash register, this massively-piled trolley, filled with enough food to feed a small pueblo, pushes in front of me. Driven, mind you, by … you guessed it … a member of the supermarket staff.
It seems some bright spark had made a plan and ordered online. While
they relaxed in comfort with a glass of wine, or in the pool, someone else rushed around the supermarket for them, putting everything through the till and then delivering it to their door.
Now there’s a plan. Next time I will cough up the delivery fee with
pleasure and let someone else do the work for me. No strain, no pain,
and everything to gain!
In the short documentary below, we can experience the ongoing resistance
in Spain to the economic and social crisis, as well as the effects of
budget cuts and austerity measures.
It tells the story of a massive mobilization
which saw millions of people converging on the capital city, Madrid,
March 22, 2014, and how people are self-organizing to survive.
While the initial protests that started in Madrid on May 15, 2011, were
the work of the 15M movement, now many organizations are involved in
ongoing protests, including groups fighting home evictions and trade
unions.
The documentary tells how the Spanish people are
struggling to cope with lessening social services and massive
unemployment and how they are turning to each other in an effort to find
solutions.
For those lucky enough to have a job, their salaries
are being cut. For those without employment, they find no assistance
from the government, as social services are both lessened and privatized, and unemployment benefits run out.
On a more positive note, we also hear about the proliferation of social
centers, self-organized food banks and community gardens being set up
to help and feed the needy.
With evictions a constant worry, we
hear the story of large-scale housing occupations by families, who have
been forced out of their own homes. In the face of need, creativity
arises as people find a way to survive.
While the Spanish
government insists that things are improving in the country, there is a
protest happening somewhere in Spain on almost a daily basis - you just
don't always hear about it in the news.
People are fighting to
resist the gradual destruction of public and social services and the
fact that the government makes no real attempt to solve the crisis for
anyone other than the banks themselves.
Finally, the film asks what the future may hold for Spain and its people.
The documentary was filmed and edited by award-winning independent
filmmaker, journalist and writer Brandon Jourdan during March and April
2014 and is part of the excellent and informative Global Uprisings
documentary series, which can be viewed here and on both Vimeo and YouTube.
As the population becomes more vulnerable due to the
continuing economic crisis in Spain, people are teaming up, joining
together to help one another.
They stress that it must not be considered
charity. What they are doing is what all human beings should do -
chipping in a couple of euros, helping out and ensuring no children go
to bed hungry at night.
An organization called Adintre is
working hard on the Costa del Sol. With a service and reception area in
the Las Rampas shopping complex in Fuengirola and an office in
Torreblanca farther down the coast, the organization is collecting
clothing and food to help the needy.
If you are visiting the
coast, you might find people standing at the entrance to supermarkets,
with a smile on their faces, and a trolley waiting to be filled. After
introducing themselves, they tell you what the most urgently needed item
is for the day and hope that you will buy it together with your
groceries.
Last weekend, they asked me for breakfast cereal,
today it was fruit juice; it costs so little to add a few extra items,
like some biscuits, chocolate milk or even some sweet treats for the
children.
The president of the organization is Joyce Gyimah, who
had thought for years of creating an organization to alleviate the
suffering many people are going through in Spain.
With the help
of Alfonso Perez Duarte (vice president), Maria Luisa Amoah (treasurer)
and Alexandra de Rorthais (secretary), Joyce has now founded the Adintre
Foundation (Andalucia Integra).
The group not only helps hungry children. They are also actively involved in many other aspects of life in Spain.
They offer a place for the homeless; they help young people become
socially integrated and, if possible, employed. Abused women can come to
the group for extensive assistance in cases of domestic violence, which
always tends to be prevalent in times of economic crisis.
They
also assist immigrants in the process of being integrated into society,
from any country. They do their utmost to improve the quality of life of
the elderly, who are also affected by the crisis, as pensions decrease.
With evictions being prevalent in the country, as people become unable
to pay their mortgage, the group provides accommodation for the people,
whether young or old.
As stated in their brochure and on their website, Adintre offers food, clothing, medicines, school materials and social assistance with love, respect and dignity.
If you live in Spain, please consider sparing a few euros per week to
help, or if possible, volunteer to work with the organization.
Just imagine if we all did the same and helped each other out. What a wonderful world this could be.
You know things are quiet when this kind of thing happens. Roughly
25 emergency vehicles responded to one little crime this afternoon, at
high speed, with sirens blaring.
There I was, crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing, minding my own business, when bee-bah-bee-bah,
I nearly get wiped out by a police tow truck. I scrambled to the
pavement safely, wondering what kind of emergency tow could possibly be
required that needs sirens and such high speed?
The vehicle
turned the corner, so, ever-inquisitive, I did too. I was then
confronted with flashing lights, police cars, police scooters and even
another tow truck, all with sirens blaring as they arrived. The whole
darn two-lane street was full of official vehicles. This happened
outside the Hotel Las Palmeras, near the beach in Fuengirola.
“Wow,” I thought, some major crime is going down right now, I have to
do my journalistic duty. So, adrenalin surging, I started asking
onlookers what was going on. Hardly anyone spoke either Spanish or
English (they were mostly Germans and Scandinavians on holiday) and no
one actually seemed to know. The police looked a tad too, well, you
know, busy and important, for me to dare to approach them.
I saw
two young guys about to get into a police car, one was holding his eye
in pain, the other opened the car’s trunk and put something inside, but
that was about it. “Nada más,” (nothing more) as they say in these parts.
On turning the corner at the bottom of the road I found out from a guy
at a bar that the two young guys had robbed a shop and had run around
that corner heading for the hotel a few minutes earlier.
They
apparently took a whole 80 euros' ($110) worth of stuff and what seemed
like the entire Local Police force in Fuengirola was there to solve the
heinous crime.
Heading down the beach promenade a couple of
minutes later, I saw two fire engines heading in the same direction. I
just laughed and shook my head. Enough is enough, guys. Really.
It does bring to mind a similar incident in Cape Town, South Africa back
in 1995. I had just moved into a second floor apartment and was
standing on my balcony looking at the view. I heard a loud thump, looked
down and saw a man lying on the ground in front of the garage doors.
My phone line hadn’t been connected yet and cell phones weren’t exactly
rife like they are these days, but someone phoned the emergency number.
A couple minutes later, the man stood up, brushed himself off and
looked around, just as the sirens started. If memory serves me
correctly, in that case there were four police cars, three ambulances,
two fire engines, one small emergency vehicle, three cops on motorbikes
and three tow trucks.
Turned out the guy was a little tipsy and
fell off the balcony. He was lucky and only suffered a few bruises, but
the whole neighborhood got to enjoy the show.
Funny thing, though, have you noticed that if you need them urgently, they never seem to be around? Why is that?
