Sketches of Spain I

First, Spain is a different colour. France is green and grey, Spain is orange. Terracotta roof tiles, soils red or reddish brown, rosy stone.

Clothes: young Spanish seem more fashion conscious than the French, but don´t always dress as well - one sees the occasional clothing disaster, up-to-the-minute fashion that doesn´t suit the wearer. Pink shirts are in for men, windows are full of them and we see quite a few being worn as well. Glasses (ordinary, not sunglasses) are an important fashion accessory for the smart young man. Sideburns are in. No one, male or female, wears hats of any kind, despite the sun. No baseball caps, none of the hats currently in fashion for cool young guys in Melbourne. Only the Japanese tourists in their inverted flowerpot hats have covered heads.

Architecture: Juliet balconies everywhere, about a foot deep. Almost every window has one, even in hotel rooms, although the apartment we are renting in Barcelona has, unusually, a very large balcony with table, chairs and a place to hang washing, pegs supplied.

As one of our guidebooks says, the Spanish eat to live, not the other way round, and at first we were a bit disappointed by the food. We found one excellent tapas bar in Salamanca, but apart from that we had to wait until Barcelona to find really interesting gourmet food. Barcelona also has more non-smoking restaurants, and caters for vegetarians.

Traffic lights: Spanish lights cheep to indicate that the pedestrian light is green. It begins as "cheep...cheep..." then switches to "cheep cheep cheep" when you need to start running. And you really do. Unlike our long periods of flashing and non-flashing red before the lights change, in Spain you barely get time to finish crossing once the light starts to flash. As a result pedestrian behaviour is much better: no one starts crossing unless they are confident that the light has only recently changed to green.

Traffic: Despite dire warnings, we didn't find driving in Spain worse than France. French drivers are more likely to observe the speed limits, especially temporary ones for road works, but drivers in both countries are more tolerant of last-minute lane changes than driversin Oz. We note that the favoured marque of the lawless who drive at speeds of 150-200kph on the motorways is a black Audi. By the time you discern the distinctive four rings in the rearview mirror, you have about 2 seconds to move out of the overtaking lane.