We finally replaced the secadora that broke shortly after we bought it last year, and learned a couple of expat lessons. Part of the reason it took so long is because we don’t speak Spanish very well so there was some miscommunication; even large corporations here often don’t have an English option for customer service, or not an always-available one. After we resumed laundry at home, it occurred to me to find out why laundry machines are so different in Europe and the US. I had been embarrassingly uncurious about this, assuming that the smaller living spaces resulting from denser housing led to smaller washers and dryers.

Wrong! If you think about laundry as an engineering problem, something I have actually been trained to do, you quickly realize that the amount of clothes cleaned, the amount of energy used to heat the water and rotate the drum, and the amount of time the process takes are design trade-offs. Europe as a society has chosen to run smaller loads for longer times in order to reduce energy use on a large scale.

If you take your clothes to a lavandería (español), as we did for about nine weeks, you find large machines that wash and dry in 30 minutes each. These are not available in stores. I experienced them during our first week while we were living in a hotel, and I was thrilled to find that soap was dispensed by the machine. It turns out that the chemistry of the laundry soap that works well in the slower, smaller loads is different from that needed for the faster loads, so the bugaderia (catalana) has to dispense soap, because the soap sold to individuals won’t work.

I am disappointed with myself for making an assumption and just going with it. This is a huge problem in our world today! I need to be more aware and precise.

Moving on to vignette numero dos. The weather is suddenly nice, so Sunday my husband and I went out seeking primarvera in Turó Parc, where we found a few things blooming. We hung out on a bench for a while and watching kids interacting with pigeons, balls, and bikes while the monk parakeets zoomed by overhead, often with blades of grass in their beaks, another sign of spring. The playground was packed, as was the kiddie merry-go-round we passed on the way there. Unsurprisingly this park has a history, which those so inclined can check out on Wikipedia.

That was mostly a photo vignette. Lastly, we checked out some of the skits from the first episode of SNL-UK, which I adored. It feels really fresh, maybe because the cast members have British accents? In particular, we enjoyed this skit about people going to Spain and then spending time in English-speaking pubs, which felt like looking in a mirror. After we watched it, well, later, when we stopped laughing, we were motivated to make some Life Changes: We may skip the Irish session tonight, and we’re definitely going to the gypsy music session on Wednesday. Spain awaits!