Global Citizenship: Cultural Integration and Excitation 

It’s only been a short time since my last travel blog entry, but a lot has happened since then, so grab your yerba mate and hold on tight. Springtime is sweeping through the Pyrenees, bringing a bounty of dandelion salads and wildflower vistas. As with the deciduous trees, the people are coming back to life, and commotion is in the air. And in the midst of all this brisk activity, we’ve really been caught up in the intercultural milieu, taking in our fill of new experiences and truly unexpected flavors. One has no choice but to adapt in these situations, so adapt we do. At work, at school, and even at the police station—especially at the police station—you have to feel the room, watch for the non-verbal signals, and try as hard as possible to conjugate correctly.

Early Integration

Education might never end, but it certainly begins at home and in school, and we all try to offer something. As the most thoroughly American member of the family, I take it upon myself to instill the free spirit of Geronimo into our children, as a part of their informal, home education. But what I really strive to share is the American legacy of art and entertainment. Every Halloween, and during particularly frightening thunder storms, I’ll read them a few stories from Edgar Allen Poe. Matinee viewings of Star Wars are another frequent occurrence in our living room. And once in a while we even enjoy a few episodes of the Three Stooges, or several hours of the Grateful Dead.

On the flip side, their mom assumes responsibility for preserving the East German heritage. Most importantly, and most challengingly, that means speaking German with them. English has always been the dominant language in the house, but now that we’re learning Spanish and Catalan, the German has faded into a distant echo. Not that it’s disappearing, mind you. Our daughter, after all, takes pride in her German, and really seems to recognize the value of it. Her little brother would rather build a lego space station or a popsicle stick Eiffel Tower, but he still gets a kick out of his German cartoons and Spanish fairy tales.

When it comes to German fairy tales, however, the real Wunderkind is Mille. She can’t get enough. The only thing she enjoys more is page from Greek Mythology. As loquaciously as I can lay them out, she laps them right up. With a mind infected, her own literary output is already growing prolific. Each week she presents us with another two or three illustrated stories, in some combination of European dialects, which she has produced at school.

One of the school’s biggest events took place just a couple weeks ago, following the festival of San Jordi (a celebration of Catalunya’s patron saint, who’s story will have to wait for another post). The Day of the World, as the school event was called, brought our kids’ school together with its four other partner schools from among the local villages, in order to glorify international art, culture, cuisine. The event includes music, dancing, eating and plenty of parental participation.

But when we heard that this year’s featured country was going to be Madagascar, we audibly gasped. How would we dress? What would I cook? Better yet, what would my wife cook?

I’ll tell you right now, she wasn’t going to make any excuses about never having been to Madagascar. Not a chance. And so when we showed up at the festival with an eye-popping platter of Madagascar Hissing Cockroach sourdough chocolate cake, they knew we were in it to win it. If you haven’t seen the documentation on Instragram, you’re missing out. It definitely overshadowed my sautéed tofu and sweet potato curry of coconut, lemon zest, fresh ginger, and vanilla bean, which I have to say is a pretty tough dish to overshadow.

As it happened, what we thought would be an all-day tribute to Madagascar, turned out to be a far more international affair. While our school—the transpersonal Montessori institute with all the freaky parents and the indigo children—had chosen to honor a remote island off the furthest coast on the farthest side of south east Africa, the other four schools came with traditional food and costumes from places like Mexico, Egypt and Japan. They could have asked us to make sushi, or even burritos. No problem! But then again, that Boston cream-filled Hissing Cockroach is something that will not be forgotten for many, many years to come.

Hot on the quivering tail of that exotic event, we were invited to a birthday party for one of the kids at school who was turning five. My kids wanted to go, and then they didn’t, but finally they did. And so we went, just the three of us. I suppose we’re all still a little uncertain about ourselves when we try to mingle with Catalunyans in these intimate social situations. But we had nothing to worry about. Turns out all the younger kids from school, those attending the 5-year-old’s party, really look up to Mille. And she seems quite comfortable in the role of leader, barking out orders at all of them, in her most dignified Catalan.

Meanwhile Max carefully examined everything, while I lurked near the snack table and gazed at the breathtaking view from our hosts’ backyard, and tried to look like I was thinking about something pretty important. But as it happened, not that much thinking was necessary, and despite the language issues, there was never any doubt about what was happening. It was a birthday party just like any other, with kids on the trampoline, kids throwing water balloons, everybody taking swings at the ceramic thing that was basically a piñata, and then a chicken landed on the birthday cake.

Procedural Obligations

Still, life in Catalunya is not entirely fun and games. If you recall, part of our cross-cultural integration has involved navigating the channels of foreign bureaucracy. After almost a year, my wife, a natural citizen of Germany, was finally granted official status to reside legally in Spain. When they told us that EU citizens can automatically live in any country they want within the EU, we didn’t really appreciate the meaning of the word “automatically”.

I believe I described the ordeal we went through trying to get a Spanish bank account back in October, one of many challenging steps. But dealing with the civil servants in the regional capital of Lleida proved to be even more demoralizing. The last two times my wife drove to Lleida to submit her application, she was basically turned away and denied any opportunity to present what was really a very straightforward case. She waited and prepared for months to get her documents in order for this third trip, all the while dreading another encounter with that grouchy curmudgeon of the Interior. But this time, he wasn’t even there, and somewhat anti-climactically, the green card was issued easily and efficiently, just like it always should have been.

So now it’s my turn. As an American, I can automatically get Spanish residency if I am married to a European citizen who has Spanish residency. So let me just explain what “automatically” means in this case. Because in this case it took my wife a year to get her residency, and Americans are not supposed to stay in Europe for more than three months as tourists. So, but in order to be eligible to apply for residency, I had to wait a year for my wife to get hers. No, the math doesn’t work. And we’d already been on the European work-exchange circuit for many months before reaching Spain.

So imagine my relief when my wife finally got her residency validated, and it was my turn to go down to the police station and ask them to initiate the paperwork for my residency application, and then present them with my passport, the passport that hadn’t gotten a fresh entrance or exit stamp in two years. Yeah, my relief was palpable. Palpitating would be more like it.

There we were, on the Group W bench, and as expected, the first thing they wanted was to see my identification. As the officer thumbed through my passport, we could see his eyebrows curl tighter and tighter inward. Clearly, he was slowly realizing what we had already long known. He just wanted to see when I had entered Spain, but the most recent stamp was from Frankfurt, exactly two years ago. We made every effort to explain ourselves, and he quietly excused himself.

That’s when I began to wonder about the specific nature of their detention cells. Would they have sheets, or would they just offer me a bare mattress? Would they cater to vegetarians, or would I be forced to eat ham three times a day? Maybe they would have overcrowding issues, and I’d get a lucky break and be sent home with a slap on the wrist.

Patiently we watched as the agent spoke with his commanding officer at the far end of the counter, periodically gesturing in our general direction. They spoke in hushed tones and nodded their heads with vigorous ambivalence. Perhaps this would be our last and only chance to make a run for it.

But then he returned to our desk and starting typing frantically into his computer. His colleague walked past with a questioning look on his face, and our agent just shook his head. “No tiene nada.” Roughly translated, that’s Spanish for “he ain’t got nothin.” My wife and I glanced at other. Was he checking the system for something I should have, or for something I shouldn’t? Either way, he was right. No criminal record, and no proof of anything.

Then he proceeded—as Spanish bureaucrats like to do—to explain to us what we already very well knew. And then to rephrase it, whether for our benefit with our impaired language skills, or simply for his own pleasure, it was never entirely clear. In any case, he wanted us to know that my status in Spain was not actually legal, but that it would be alright because I’m married to a European citizen. And furthermore, I would need to go to Lleida to get my residency card, although I would not be eligible for it an account of my illegal status.

He continued speaking in circles for some time, and finally gave us a phone number to call, a phone number we already knew didn’t work because it was the same phone number they gave my wife 10 months ago, when they sent her to Lleida for the first time.

So once again, the Gordian knot of Spanish bureaucracy intended to keep us tied up, in need of one document in order to get a second document, which would be required in order to get the first document. But we’ve been in this mess before, so I’m sure will find our way out, some sweet day.

Intercultural Training

Keeping with the theme of this article, I was hoping to tell you a little something more about our current project, which involves helping people from around the world immigrate and relocate to Canada. But I see that it’s getting late, and this subject might be better broached on another occasion. So for now, you can just ponder for yourself, over whether or not we are qualified to counsel and advise people who are attempting to move to another country without stumbling over every cultural and bureaucratic obstacle.

FURTHER READING: For more entertaining tales of cultural assimilation, check out some of the following stories.

• The Hilarity of Spanish Immersion
• First World Problems
• Paradise Found 
• The Absurdity of Spanish Immigration
• Life in a Spanish Village

AND THEN SOME: For more stories about our quest for quality education, check out this fantastic series of articles.

• Part I: A year without a principal
• Part II: Out of the classroom and into the wild
• Part III: Paradise Found