American in Spain

Recently I was contacted by InterNations, an organization I registered my expat status with several years ago and have since been diligently ignoring all their newsletters about meet ups in Madrid. They asked if I’d like to do an interview with them and to be featured on their site. I agreed, but then life got complicated, and they ended up having to nag me several times, but we finally did the interview and they published it. They’ve given me permission to re-post it here for your enjoyment. Some of my regular readers might not know my answers to some of these basic questions.
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The following is a document written by my father, Paul Rasmussen, about his trip to visit us in Spain in March 2013.

Tuesday and Wednesday

We dropped the dogs off at the kennel at 8:30 am, and an hour later we were at the Charlotte airport long-term parking lot. We flew to snowy Toronto, waited there for four hours, and boarded the flight to Dusseldorf around 5 pm. We landed in Germany at 6:20 am on Wednesday, enjoyed a croissant and coffee, and then waited three more hours for our flight to Bilbao. Our son Erik met us there, and an hour later we arrived at his home in Colindres.
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Two and a half years ago, we drove the seven minutes to the town of Limpias and very much enjoyed a walk along the river. I remember thinking at the time, “I should bring my parents here.” And last weekend, I did. The sky was clear and the sun was warming the cool spring air, and we decided to walk along the water in Limpias.

Limpias is positioned by where the Asón River begins to open up before spilling into the sea in Colindres, and Limpias still has a lot of artillery guarding the river entrance, presumably from the Spanish Civil War.
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Last week I took my annual golf vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to participate in the Myrtle Beach Classic, a golf competition among good friends that my father organizes every year in February. Since I started going in 2004, I’ve only missed one year (2011). Sadly, my good friend Jacob couldn’t make it this year, as he was called off on a business trip to Singapore. Careers can be so annoying sometimes! Despite his absence, fun was had, golf was played, music was made, and trophies were awarded.
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On Saturday, October 13th, my fifth anniversary, I took the Metro into the center of Brussels with Simon, and from the train station, we bought tickets to go to Antwerp. I like train travel; I miss it from my days in Denmark. It’s a lot more comfortable than traveling on an airplane. The trip from Brussels to Antwerp took under an hour. I had been impressed by the architecture of the Brussels train station, but then I was absolutely floored by the majesty of the Antwerp station.
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On the evening of Wednesday, October 10, my plane landed in Charleroi airport. That’s Brussels’ version of the out of town airport that the budget airlines fly to; London, Rome, Stockholm, and Paris have similar airports. I walked past customs and out into the arrivals area and began searching for my ride, an internet friend named Brian. After about three minutes of walking up and down the very small area outside a cafe, I saw Brian entering the doors. We shook hands and headed to his car, which had been parked for such a small amount of time that the parking machine didn’t charge him a euro dime.
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In preparation for our upcoming trip to the United States, I was double checking that everything is in order. After last year’s ESTA debacle, I want to be 100% sure we have my wife’s immigration approval number before leaving for the airport. So I did an internet search for ESTA to search for her approval number. What I found is a system of websites designed to scam unknowing foreign travelers out of their money.
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The following is a document written by my father, Paul Rasmussen, about his trip to visit us in Spain in June 2012.

Tuesday and Wednesday, May 29 and 30, 2012

Our plan was to take the dogs to the kennel at 1:00 and to leave for the airport at 1:15. That plan failed when we discovered the Pet Parlor was locked up tight with nobody answering the door or the phone. I put down two extra bowls of water for the three dogs and gave them a stern lecture about the need for rationing, but one of them is a westie, and I wasn’t optimistic. On the way to the airport I called my friend Tom, but he wasn’t home. An hour later he called back and said he would take care of things, so we flew to Spain as scheduled to spend time with our our son, his wife, and our granddaughter.
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Have you ever noticed how, on a commercial airline flight, the pilot always – without fail – informs the passengers of the speed and direction of the wind at the destination? I can understand telling us about the local time, temperature, and general weather (e.g. foggy, sunny, raining) at the destination. That’s useful information about how much clothing to don before exiting the aircraft.
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It’s not often that I think to myself, “I wonder what I was doing ten years ago?”, but when I saw on the news that the Queen Elizabeth II was celebrating her Diamond Jubilee, commemorating being the queen for 60 years, my mind immediately flashed to where I was during her Golden Jubilee ten years earlier. I very vividly remember watching the Party at the Palace on a small television in a little cottage we were renting for a week in the Scottish Highlands. That was my first year living abroad indefinitely, and I did quite a bit of traveling around the UK with my Spanish señorita who I’d just moved in with having only spent a few months together with her. For Easter that year, exactly ten years ago today, we decided to take her company car and head down to the southwestern coast of England, to a region known as Cornwall.
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