The weekend: Saturday

We had a lovely day on Saturday when we went to visit Matt´s dad and Carolina. I enjoy visits to Nava as Carolina always makes us lots of tasty food. This time it was avocado vinaigrette, followed by courgette flan, potato and beetroot mash and French beans (all of the main course came from their garden), and for desert a piece of cooling melon, which was perfect as it had turned into a very hot day from a cloudy start. We also had something very interesting to drink which was some posh lemonade by Minute Maid (part of the Coca-cola company, unfortunately), made with lemon juice and pulp, sugar - no nasty sweeteners - does everybody know where aspartame comes from? No? Well I´m going to go off on a tangent here, so sit down, make yourself comfortable and I´ll tell you story:

Once upon a time some very clever scientists in the United States were developing a pesticide to kill all those horrible bugs that live on our fresh fruit and vegetables. One day, one of the clever scientists was going about his work and accidentally tasted the pesticide. Well, wasn't he surprised to discover that is was very sweet and tasted just lovely. So, the clever scientist got together with all the other clever scientists and decided that it would be a very good idea if they could sell the pesticide, which they decided to call aspartame, to drinks and food companies as an artificial sweetener. However, first of all, they had to ask the government for permission to do this. Now, the nasty government said "hang on a minute, you want to let people eat and drink a pesticide? We don´t think that this is a very good idea." So the poor scientists carried on their work with pesticides and put the aspartame plan to the back of their minds, but did not forget it. They were waiting for the opportune moment. A few years later this moment came. The people had decided that they didn't want the nasty old government any more but that an old film star was a much better idea for a president. The clever scientists were very excited about this as they had some friends who were friends with the film star. So they went to the government with their brilliant aspartame plan and this time the government thought it was an excellent idea and said "Well done, you clever scientists you. Of course you can sell aspartame as a sweetener and make yourselves and our companies a disgusting amount of money. Did someone mention cancer? No, I didn't think so". And so the clever scientists were given permission to sell their wonderful product, nobody got fat or lost their teeth any more, and everyone made a fortune and lived happily ever after.


And that, dear reader is the story of how aspartame came to our dinner table.


Anyway, to get back to this delicious lemonade. What made it extra special - apart from the lack of aspartame - was a the tiniest touch of spearmint. It was scrummy, and next time I have a spare few minutes I shall try and make some myself, although getting hold of spearmint might be difficult. I wonder if the peppermint from our garden would work instead?


So, we had a very tasty lunch and then went to a ´Medieval Market´being held in a village down the road. It was the usual fare, although I would've liked to have had my camera with me as there were people spinning wool and making silk and others in traditional dress doing Asturian dancing. There were lots of stalls with hand-carved wood and a mirror took my fancy until I saw the price. So we satisfied ourselves with a loaf of bread and some rather fine home-made, wood-smoked cheese which we had for dinner along with other bits and bobs, including Matt's own red tomato and ginger chutney, when we finally got home. We downed it all with (what I later discovered was) almost a full bottle of Lidl´s finest fino (a bargain at €1.49).


Saturday's dinner

Coming soon - 'The weekend: Sunday - John Mayall and The Bluesbrakers'

Does this remind you of anyone?

We were sent this banner at the academia, along with several others to dot around our classrooms, by the nice people at Macmillan at the start of the academic year.

Somebody there really doesn't like George Bush, which is fine by me.

Try this in Tesco and see what happens

One quick last post about Dawn and Rich's visit. This is also linked to what I have previously said about arrogant large shops.

What do you think happens when you walk around your local supermarket taking photos of all the legs of ham hung up and of your wife and friends looking at the cake section? In Rich's case he was asked, ever so politely, but very firmly, not to take any more: "You are not allowed to take photos in the store." On being told this, I looked around and discovered two more security guards blocking our exit from the store, and eyeing us very suspiciously, hands ready to grab us and the offending camera. Just to confuse them I gave them a big smile and a wave.

Matt had clashed with the security guards on a previous occasion whilst waiting for his mum to finish a shop. Being fed up with standing, he sat on the floor against the wall and soon a security guard appeared to tell him that this was most definitely not permitted. Matt being Matt, he gave his best salute (much to the amusement of the other guard who was watching from within the store) and promised not to commit such a heinous crime again.

On this latter occasion we paid and left quickly and we're now trying to avoid shopping in Alcampo - although it's very hard as it's by far the mot convenient place to shop in town.

Things I don't like about living Spain, part II

I've been feeling another Victor Meldrew moment creeping up on me for a while now. I suspect this was brought on by our recent trips to Media Markt with a broken DVD player.

For those who don't know, Media Markt is a European chain which sells all sorts of electro-domestic items, DVDs, CDs, computers and accessories, etc. The DVD player in question has stopped working while still under guarantee, so we took it back and were told they had to send it off to repair it, and that it would take between two weeks and a month to get it back. Six weeks later we were still waiting for a call to tell us it was ready to collect. Several phone calls to the store went unanswered so we went back one morning to complain only for it to be revealed that said DVD player had been returned a few days earlier. It transpired that they'd changed it for another repaired one as ours couldn't be fixed.

We returned home, tried the player and, lo and behold, it wouldn't respond to the remote. Ugh. Back we went to Media Markt, where they revealed that, although it was the same brand, and looked exactly the same as the original player, it was in fact a slightly different model from the first one. So we asked for a different remote, which seemed to be the most logical thing to do. Oh no, we were told, this was not at all possible - the player and remote had to go back to be fixed again. I enquired why they hadn't taken the remote the first time, or why knowing they were sending back a different model had we not been informed that the remote wouldn't work, but the girl at customer service couldn't tell me. So I asked for a complaint form (una hoja de reclamacion - for anybody needing one. Legally, all shops have to have them and hand them out when asked for). Only when I did this did she promise that if it wasn't back within 20 days, we could have a new player. I was quite pleased at this, the threat of a complaint form worked a treat and I shall be trying it again in the future if needs be.

Yesterday made it 21 days. We drove wearily, yet ready for a verbal battle, to our current second-least favourite store (keep reading for our number-one-of-all-time least favourite). It turned out that the player had only recently arrived in Barcelona to be fixed (why it had to be sent so far away I have no idea) so they, without us having to utter a single complaint (this time), offered us a new one. We had to pay the slight difference in price, but we got a brand-spanking new DVD player with a year guarantee (good news, because the old one was about to run out). Success, of a sort, although we had to earn it. Fnac, on the other hand has excellent customer service and I'd recommend anyone to buy there rather than Media Markt. We've taken two broken DVD players back there, one almost two years old, and they've replaced them both, without fuss, at the same time and with a further two-year guarantee. Now that is how you should treat your customers.

The worst culprit for appalling customer service we've come across so far in Spain is, by a mile, Ikea. The mere mention of the name now makes Matt froth at the mouth and utter expletives and I shall explain why:

When Ikea first opened in Asturias in June 2005, we got very excited at the prospect of cheap, yet stylish furniture for our new house and went and spent over €1,400 Euros there. One of the items were purchased was a €20 'universal' wooden toilet seat. Just over three months later it broke at a joint, so we returned to Ikea, receipt in hand, to ask for a replacement. We were not expecting the reply we got, which was a simple, yet emphatic, "no".

Most Ikea products, it turns out, including every single item on our €1,400 + receipt, only have a three month guarantee and they refused to change the toilet seat as there was, according to them, no design fault. We pointed out that neither of us are very heavy people and that we'd expect a product that apparently had no fault to last for more than three months when all we'd been doing was using it for the express purpose for which it was designed. Were we expected to return to the store every ninety days to buy a new one? But still no, they stood their ground and we stomped out of the store determined for revenge, although not before Matt had strutted round the store, seat in hand, proclaiming to anyone who would listen "calidad terrible, tres meses de guarantia" (terrible quality, three-month guarantee).

The same week we wrote polite letters to Ikea head office in Spain and to their headquarters in Amsterdam and included one of their adverts with a picture of an elephant standing on a chair that stated that they test all their products to destruction in order to ensure they're long-lasting - Matt artistically added a speech bubble with a question mark coming out of the elephant's mouth. We also visited our local consumer-society office and they promised to take matters into hand, First however, we were told we had to return to Ikea to get an official complaint form which we duly did, filled it in, had it signed at Ikea, signed it ourselves and took it back to the consumer society office and were told they'd sort things out for us. Incidentally, we also found out that the law that Ikea quotes on the top of its receipts (in Spain) stating that all items can be returned, in their original packing, up to three months later, is the very same law that states that all new products must have a two year guarantee, (although after six months the onus is on the consumer to prove that the item broke because of a fault in the product at purchase). This point of the law, of course, was not mentioned on the receipt.

Just after Xmas we received two letters, one from Amsterdam stating that they couldn't deal with the complaint and were passing it onto Spanish head office (we're still waiting for a reply to either letter that they received) and a letter from the Consumer Society in Pola de Siero (the area where Ikea is located) saying that our complaint had been passed on to them and that please could we go there within two weeks of their sending the letter to restate our complaint if we wanted them to carry on dealing with it. Also, we should now take the toilet seat back to Ikea for testing. We were fuming. As it was Xmas the letter had arrived over two weeks after it was sent, there was no contact number for the office and we had no idea where it was in Pola de Siero. We were also highly annoyed about having to take the seat for testing when it had been less than six months old when it broke. This was why, in a very large fit of pique, Matt took up the seat in his hands, raised it above his head and dropped it on our kitchen floor, where it promptly broke into several pieces which we burnt on our living room fire - at least it was good for something. Needless to say we've not been back to Ikea since and have no intention of doing so ever again.

Therefore, I would like to instate 'customer service in large, arrogant stores' onto my 'bad things about Spain' list. Ikea customers be warned.

To end on a happier note, we've never had any problems with retuning items to smaller, independent shops. We've always found them to be very helpful and have concluded that it's worth spending a few extra Euros in them for better quality and much better customer service.