October 21, 2010 @ 12:41 pm
A few weeks ago, the Consulate General of Spain in New York along with the Times Square Alliance and Coolture Spain, presented Spain Art Fest 2010, an initiative to bridge the gap between Spanish culture, art and technology.
For two days, Times Square was filled with the works of Spanish artists living in NYC and featured “performance, sound, video, and multimedia projections and installations.”
The artists included:
Laia Cabrera
Antón Cabaleiro
Amadeo Peñalver
Itziar Barrio
Raúl Martinez — Detext
Antoñio Ortuño
David Maroto
Veronica Peña
Esther Acharaendio
Xavier Marrades
José Carlos Casado
Juanli Carrión
I love New York so much, and wish I had been there to experience this! If you want to know more about Spain in New York events, check out the website Spain Culture New York, they have a pretty good event calendar!
Can’t wait to visit NY, hopefully in the near future!
–Rocio
October 20, 2010 @ 11:29 am
On Monday, I traveled to Paris for a wine tasting where we were to showcase some Osborne wines. I was a bit worried, as I’d heard about the strike problems happening in the country due to the government wanting to delay the age of retirement to 62. The strikes are affecting the gas supply, so I thought it was very possible that my flight could be canceled.
So the good news is that my flight had no problems, I made it to the tasting on time and spent Monday tasting Osborne wines with French wine buyers and journalists. For a perfect ending to the day, we enjoyed a beautiful dinner at Lasarre, a very nice 2 Michelin star restaurant. Also, I realized that I definitely need to improve my French, at least for these occasions.
On Tuesday, I had a taxi pick me up very early in the morning to take me to the airport. I completely didn’t expect the taxi to take two and a half hours to get to the airport, so when I realized that I was probably going to miss my flight, I tried to book another one on the phone. And just what I had feared all along happened, due to the strikes all of the flights to Madrid were canceled, except for the one that I was about to miss. Also, because the expo SIAL was taking place, the city was packed and booking a room was an impossible mission.
Luckily, I had my guardian angel to help me out, and 20 minutes after the time the flight was supposed to take off, I ran to the plane like my life was in danger, and made it right before the doors shut. Once I was on the plane, the entire experience seemed like an adventure. I’m ready for the next one!
Do you have any crazy flight stories??
- Rocio
October 19, 2010 @ 11:03 am
One of the things most people think about when they think about Spain is the “Siesta” ( nap), and people still think we take one every day. The truth is that we have changed our way of life, and we’ve become so busy — especially in the city — that we can´t take siestas everyday anymore…
So here comes the shocking thing: A nap contest.
In order to promote the siesta and its health benefits, the National Association of Friends of the Siesta are holding a contest from October 14 to the 23 to see who sleeps the best nap. The contest will take place in a shopping centre and will be judged on several factors like: the originality of the sleeping clothes, the depth of the sleeping, the time of sleep, the intensity of the snores and even your body position while you take your nap. The winner will win 1000 euros (around $1400).
I don´t think I would be able to sleep with such a pressure!! You??
–Rocio
October 14, 2010 @ 12:15 pm
In a couple of weeks, harvest season in Spain will be done. From what I hear, it´s been a good year but vine growers are complaining that they’ve had to sell their harvests for nearly free due to the drop in wine consumption in Spain and the difficulties for most wineries to export their wines.
15 years ago, people in Spain drank around 65 litres per year/person. Now the figure has dramatically drop to 18 litres per year/person. The question is WHY????
Wine producers are trying to find out the reason and a way to reverse this trend.
The other question is WHAT ARE THEY DRINKING?? And believe me they are drinking something (you can tell this by the number of new bars in every city in Spain), but what? The answer is beer. The beer consumption in Spain has been growing and growing every year, and I guess one of the reasons is that it’s a safe choice and an uncomplicated drink.
Wine is something threatening to consumers. The shelves at the grocery stores are pretty intimidating (no way to find out information about any wine but reading the back label, which in many cases doesn´t help either….), the wine lists are organized by color and region, so there’s no way to know what the wine is like but to ask the sommelier or waiter. In this case, if you are lucky, they will know information about the wine and more than likely be so snobby that you wish you hadn´t asked.
So what´s next??
I think wine producers should try to help out a little bit, crafting products that are easier for new wine consumers, marketing the wines in a way that makes the consumer understand the wine, and promoting wine in more casual settings (and non-threatening environments) and lastly, trying to get the trade involved in making store shelves and wine lists easier to understand.
There is so much work to do to change the tendency the wine industry is facing, I think it’s about time to start!!
Let´s go, let’s get people into enjoying wine!!! Is it really that hard?
–Rocio
