Mr Grumpy

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By Mr Grumpy - Sat 23rd Feb 2013

 

When I moved to Spain my reasons for doing so were very few, and very simple :

1.) It was Spain.

2.) It wasn’t the UK.

And I am going to stick my neck on the line here and say that I was by no means the first to do so, and will be far from being the last.

However, I am just as much a guilty party as those who I regularly criticise, in finally ‘settling’ in Spain and then wanting to change so many things about the country. (We all know who we are)

Generally the Expat suffers the “18 month itch” : They start off by extolling the virtues of shopping at the local markets, eating at the local restaurants, banking locally and generally living the much fabled ‘Spanish lifestyle’. Further down the line, they then start lamenting the fact that they can’t find the right jar of Tahini in the local Supermarket, or the correct brand of Gluten-Free yak’s milk, or whatever, that they simply ‘must have’ for that Delia Smith recipe.

Then they move on to complaining that the local village doesn’t have a Lebanese, or offer vegetarian Croatian cuisine within spitting distance.

And then finally they decide that they require 24/7 Banking from their i-Phone, in English.

Before the 3 people who regularly skip across my blog comment (Hello Mum, I promise I’ll call you), I fully accept that I am just as guilty as many others.

Although I recognise my own hypocrisy, I think that it is essentially part of the Expat Psyche to have an inherent desire to change things. Things that in most cases simply do not need to be changed.