Spain: - a country with almost as dainty portions as France

 Recently, Bilal and I made the train journey to Madrid and I finally got around to doing another blog post.

Apologies for not having posted an article recently.  As my regular readers will know, I am now in a courtship and it wouldn't do to neglect my boyfriend in favour of blogging.  Also, as I've often said, running one's own fashion magazine is never easy.  I'm always pursuing new business opportunities, as I am always keen to share the knowledge we Frenchwomen have about fashion.  Anything a Frenchwoman doesn't know about fashion isn't worth knowing!  Tee hee!  I don't always enjoy being away from my beloved Marseille, so I love the opportunities that modern communications and networks offer me to do business remotely, e.g. with WhatsApp (a pun on "wassup?", an English translation of "wesh-wesh?"), Facebook, Skype, e-mail, LinkedIn etc.

However, occasionally, there are times when face-to-face meetings are needed.  On this occasion, a face-to-face meeting was needed with a distributor in Madrid, the capital of Spain.  I am not particularly familiar with Spain, but I was aware that RENFE (the Spanish national operator) had started a daily direct train service in both directions between Marseille and Madrid.  The journey takes a little over seven hours, as a large part of the time is spent on the slow tracks between Nîmes and Perpignan: - our incompetent president has severely delayed the construction of the Montpellier-Perpignan route, supposedly for lack of capacity needs, but in reality because he has run the economy into the ground.  We French are the best at producing high-speed trains and planes, but as Mireille Guiliano likes to point out, Frenchwomen like to unwind and savour the moment, so I thought I would go by train.

Bilal took some leave and accompanied me to Madrid.  He was a bit apprehensive, as this was his first time travelling outside of France and Mali.  Travelling is just not something he has tended to do regularly, unless it was between Marseille and his family's lands in Mali.  However, as I will explain later, he found some things that made him feel at home.

In the seven-plus hours of the journey, the train stopped at the following stations: - Aix-en-Provence TGV, Avignon TGV, Nîmes, Montpellier, Béziers, Perpignan, Figueres-Vilafant, Girona and Barcelona.  One thing that is notable about Spain is that it has the longest high-speed rail network in the whole of Europe.  It would have had the longest high-speed rail network in the whole world briefly before being overtaken by China, but delays in opening the Madrid-Valencia line meant this didn't happen.  Some of the cities have no high-speed bypass routes, e.g. Girona, Barcelona and Madrid (the Yeles Bypass exists, but the trains slow down to 150km/h or so for this): - the entrance to Barcelona from the northeast in particular was extremely slow.  However, save for exceptions such as these, the whole of the route beyond Perpignan was high-speed.

I remember the route beyond Barcelona as being very mountainous: - if one looks on a map, one will see that the high-speed route is rather strange, but given the surrounding topography, it didn't look like there were many alternatives.  One other thing that is notable about Spain is that it is the most mountainous country in Europe besides Switzerland (in terms of total mountain area, I assume).  The line goes towards Martorell (the location of Seat's main factory and headquarters and where the Audi Q3 is produced) before curving towards Madrid.  As the line approaches Camp de Tarragona station, one can easily see the Mediterranean Sea on the left, though the train had no stops between Barcelona Sants and Madrid Puerta de Atocha stations.  The train sped past intermediate cities such as Lleida/Lérida and Zaragoza.  As the train drew closer towards Calatalyud station, it passed through the Sístema Ibérica (a mountain range) at its narrowest point.  After a few more mountains here and there, followed by a plateau with high mountains on the right, the train began its descent into Madrid.  Madrid was chilly at that time of year, though I am told things are very different in summer!  Still, we were dressed up for cold weather, so things weren't so bad.

Given my interest in food, there are many things that I am inclined to point out about Spain.  The most notable point as far as Bilal was concerned is how coeliac-friendly the country is.  Restaurant staff and shop assistants were never once bemused when asked about the gluten-free credentials of their food.  Also, food on sale in supermarkets often has a label indicating that it is gluten-free (useful to Bilal, as he doesn't speak Spanish) and supermarkets often have relatively large gluten-free food sections.  One of the people we met during the visit was familiar with the Catalonian town of Blanes, in which a store selling only gluten-free products named Soms Celiacs (Catalan for "We are coeliacs" exists).

The other notable feature of the Spanish food scene was the availability of food in different portion sizes.  There are three sizes in ascending order of size: - "tapa", "ración" and "porción".  The idea of the tapas culture is that one can try small quantities of food and go between different bars, sampling small amounts of lots of different types of foods.  Being the Impossibly Dainty French Woman, as far as I was concerned, a tapa was the size of a full meal.  During our first evening in Madrid, I ordered a few tapas and was shocked when I saw their size, given what I had been told about the tapas culture.

However, Bilal was with me and he ate the rest.  Because Bilal has coeliac disease, he needs to eat quite a bit more to gain the same amount of nutrients.  Many coeliacs are very thin because their bodies don't absorb food and nutrients very well, though other coeliacs are overweight because their bodies overcompensate and cause them to overeat.  Now, any Americans or British women reading this should bear in mind that not everyone who is overweight has coeliac disease or any other physiological reason why losing weight isn't so simple.  Most people who are overweight are that way because they are gluttonous, self-indulgent and not as impossibly perfect as we Frenchwomen!  So if you want to lose weight, stop blaming physiology and emulate the habits of impossibly perfect Frenchwomen such as myself.  MDR.

Though Spanish cuisine isn't as impossibly perfect as French cuisine, it was not all that bad and certainly a lot better than American and British cuisine.  Madrileño restaurants have a strong focus on fresh ingredients, especially when it comes to fish.  With the high-speed link to Valencia now complete, it is possible to be at the Mediterranean Sea using a train taking just 1h38m.  If I find I have more time on my hands, one interesting business venture would be to have people catch fish just off the coast of Valencia and then take them by train to a restaurant I would set up close to Puerta de Atocha station.  They would have a much more beautiful flavour than fish preserved in ice for a few days before reaching their target market!  Now that Bilal knows he has coeliac disease, rather than a narrow-minded digestive system when it comes to cuisine, he is more willing to try new foods.  He tried various other things that he found had reasonably tasty flavours.

Bilal started to feel homesick, as the two different hotels we stayed at were not in the ghetto.  We therefore decided to take the train to Seville.  The high-speed line to Seville was Spain's first high-speed railway line when it opened in 1992.  The route to Seville was very pretty.  We passed the depot in La Sagra, before passing Toledo (famous for swords), before going uphill slightly and crossing the plateau towards Ciudad Real and Puertollano, before heading in the direction of the Sierra Morena.  The terrain became particularly mountainous after the not-yet-opened Villanueva de Córdoba-Los Pedroches station.  After passing through Córdoba station (the train was non-stop), the train continued through the obviously-fertile Guadalquivir valley, with the Sierra Morena mountains gradually becoming more distant.  Two hours and twenty minutes after leaving Puerta de Atocha station, the train arrived at Sevilla Santa Justa station.

The old town was very pretty, though Bilal wasn't entirely at ease with the Giralda Tower, as it was built by the Moors and preserves the architectural styles that remind him of Islam, the religion he has turned his back on.  However, though he didn't like the Alcázar Palace for the same reason, he loved the Alcázar's gardens.  He enjoyed the area of the city with lots of modern architecture known as La Cartuja and found the Metropol Parasol de la Encarnación interesting.

After having seen various sights in the old town and elsewhere, Bilal and I travelled with Seville's only metro line to Primero de Mayo station, which was situated near two "de la zone" barrios known as Los Pajaritos and La Candelaria.  The former was where the hip-hop singer Haze grew up and the latter is where he filmed his video "La potenzia pa' tu carro".  Bilal was finally starting to feel at home!

Following our visit to these two barrios, we then travelled to the barrio known as "Las Vegas"/"Martínez Montañés" within Las 3.000 Viviendas, possibly Spain's most dangerous barrio.  I wasn't entirely comfortable and my visit to the barrio was a grudging concession to Bilal, who was only now ceasing to look nervous and starting to loosen up, given that he was back in da 'hood, MDR.  We also visited Pino Montano, the barrio Zatu and Acción Sánchez of the hip-hop group SFDK came from.

As Bilal doesn't speak Spanish, he had to relay his questions through me, with me speaking in English, as there was a small number of people in the barrio who spoke English.  A lot of his questions concerned life in their 'hood and vocabulary and he wanted to get onto subjects of evangelism, but we had to rush back to catch the train and.  Before we left, Bilal got some e-mail addresses for people he met in the barrio Martínez Montañés: - it is clear that he has made some lifelong friends, lol.

They parted with a fist bump/nudge/spud (whatever name one prefers).  We then walked back towards Virgen del Rocío station (shown with an asset inspection train of some sort), from which we caught a train to Santa Justa station, in order to catch our train to Madrid.  One thing that is quite nice about Spanish high-speed rail services is that they have an integrated ticket available if travelling with the high-speed AVE services.  What this means is that one can use the Cercanías services (similar in nature to France's Transport Express Régional services) for free.  All one needs to do is have the AVE ticket ready, enter the code from the ticket into the Cercanías machines and, hey presto, you get a free ticket!

We then travelled back to Seville.  I continued my business discussions in the city until it was time to take the pre-arranged train back to Marseille.  Bilal definitely enjoyed the trip to Seville, but he was becoming noticeably homesick and, if I'm honest, so was I, as I was missing the intense quality that only exists in French cuisine!  Tee hee!  Bilal said that if he lived in Spain and weren't thinking about marriage to me and having children, he would head straight for the barrio Martínez Montañés, but I guess this is one aspect of his character I will have to work on, as I would never go there without a big muscular dark-skinned man like him for protection.  We shall see how his nascent friendships with the hip-hop people there go, MDR.

Though Spain is not a wasteland when it comes to sophistication that the UK and USA are, I was overjoyed when the train pulled into Marseille St. Charles station.  As the old Wizard of Oz cliché goes, "there's no place like home".  We ate dinner at a Vieux Port restaurant and I enjoyed my usual dainty portions and pastis!  There is nowhere like Marseille, but it is spendid that we have these new train connections!