Spain is not a real place
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This post did not contain any content.wrote on last edited by [email protected]
TBF, they're using central european time (which is centered on the border between Germany and Poland), even though they're at the western end of their own timezone (with several parts being over the border to the next one) if our timezones adhered strictly to longitude. If you subtract 1.5 hours from all Spanish times, they're considerably less weird.
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The last point does not hold. Spanish people I know eat dinner at 11 PM and breakfast at 7 AM. And they live outside of Spain, the timezone issue does not apply here. Idk when they sleep (Siesta? Siesta in Sweden/Germany?) Please explain.
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TBF, they're using central european time (which is centered on the border between Germany and Poland), even though they're at the western end of their own timezone (with several parts being over the border to the next one) if our timezones adhered strictly to longitude. If you subtract 1.5 hours from all Spanish times, they're considerably less weird.
Does school and work also start later?
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Does school and work also start later?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]School definitely does, and work does as well AFAIK. I doubt many people would be having dinner at 23:00 if most of them needed to be at work or school at 8:00.
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Have you tried adjusting your clock to local time?
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The last point does not hold. Spanish people I know eat dinner at 11 PM and breakfast at 7 AM. And they live outside of Spain, the timezone issue does not apply here. Idk when they sleep (Siesta? Siesta in Sweden/Germany?) Please explain.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Siesta would definitely make sense in Germany. It's not as hot as Spain, but it makes up for it by being very unprepared for summer in terms of architecture and the presence of air conditioners, it's quite humid and most cities are far away from the sea. Finding an employer who lets you do it is another matter though ...
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The last point does not hold. Spanish people I know eat dinner at 11 PM and breakfast at 7 AM. And they live outside of Spain, the timezone issue does not apply here. Idk when they sleep (Siesta? Siesta in Sweden/Germany?) Please explain.
Yep, siesta. 1-2h after lunch. A lot of places close for 2-3h in the afternoon. Some people work 7:00-15:00 without lunch break. Over all a lot of people can take a nap around 16:00 and power up before going out at 21:00. Those who can't don't stay up that late. Sunset is around 22:00 so in many places at 19:00-20:00 it's still hot outside.
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We spent about 7 or 8 years wintering in southern Spain. Malaga, Torremolinos, Nerja, Almunecar and everywhere in between.
It took us about three years to figure out the local eating schedule.
Breakfast is about 8-9am and anything with a lot of food is usually a tourist meal. The Spanish live on air, coffee and cigarettes.... if they're feeling hungry in the morning, they'll have a pastry.
Restaurants will seldom stay open beyond noon and won't open until six. If you're hungry at 3 or 4 pm? It's better to starve.
Any restaurant that opens at 6 is a tourist place that sells a lot of basic fast food stuff.
The good local restaurants start opening at 8 pm and local families start arriving to eat at about 9 pm. The entire family, three or four generations of them will take up entire tables and sit around eating drinking and talking until about 10-11 and a few until about midnight.
They eat solidly about one good meal a day and snack the rest of the time with plenty of coffee, pastries or cookies but never to excess.
It's why you will seldom find an overweight Spanish person of any age. They eat little and constantly move all day.
I miss that place and wish we were there right now.
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Restaurants usually open at 20 or 20:30, not 21.
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School definitely does, and work does as well AFAIK. I doubt many people would be having dinner at 23:00 if most of them needed to be at work or school at 8:00.
... you should eat two hours before sleep. You need 8 hours of sleep. You need time to get to and ready in the morning to get to work. This is not enough time (though I do realize that Spanish dinners are smaller)
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We spent about 7 or 8 years wintering in southern Spain. Malaga, Torremolinos, Nerja, Almunecar and everywhere in between.
It took us about three years to figure out the local eating schedule.
Breakfast is about 8-9am and anything with a lot of food is usually a tourist meal. The Spanish live on air, coffee and cigarettes.... if they're feeling hungry in the morning, they'll have a pastry.
Restaurants will seldom stay open beyond noon and won't open until six. If you're hungry at 3 or 4 pm? It's better to starve.
Any restaurant that opens at 6 is a tourist place that sells a lot of basic fast food stuff.
The good local restaurants start opening at 8 pm and local families start arriving to eat at about 9 pm. The entire family, three or four generations of them will take up entire tables and sit around eating drinking and talking until about 10-11 and a few until about midnight.
They eat solidly about one good meal a day and snack the rest of the time with plenty of coffee, pastries or cookies but never to excess.
It's why you will seldom find an overweight Spanish person of any age. They eat little and constantly move all day.
I miss that place and wish we were there right now.
I agree with your timings, but Spain has an obesity rate of over 20%, so I would say seldom is a serious underestimation.
Also, Spain is not a mystical domain filled with elves, of course people are lazy, over-eat, and snack in excess. They are human after all.
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Siesta would definitely make sense in Germany. It's not as hot as Spain, but it makes up for it by being very unprepared for summer in terms of architecture and the presence of air conditioners, it's quite humid and most cities are far away from the sea. Finding an employer who lets you do it is another matter though ...
Siestas are the one thing I miss back in the time I worked in a country that observed them. Nothing better than having a cup of coffee after lunch, taking a quick nap after, and waking up just in time for the caffeine to kick in. If I do that at my work now, I’sd probably be fired for sleeping on the job.
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I agree with your timings, but Spain has an obesity rate of over 20%, so I would say seldom is a serious underestimation.
Also, Spain is not a mystical domain filled with elves, of course people are lazy, over-eat, and snack in excess. They are human after all.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]The Spain we saw was about 25 years ago. We saw the old Spain that was just transitioning to the Euro. Our first visits, we were actually dealing with Pesetas which made it easy at the time because a Peseta was equivalent very close to the Canadian penny. 100 Pesetas was $1 CAD.
Malaga still had a lot of old world charm as it hadn't really changed in 30 years and looked like something from the past. The last time we saw it was about 8 years ago and now it looks like an American Disneyland .... almost like the Spanish pavilion for a world fair or something.
And that old culture is what I remember. People were still living with little and the generation at the time remembered what it was like to be poor and their parents only ever knew life as being poor or living with little. Plus the country is hot like the desert in the summer ... so all of it was conducive to everyone eating little because they didn't have that much wealth and the weather made it uncomfortable to want to eat too much.
I'm sure it's changed over the years but not by much.
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TBF, they're using central european time (which is centered on the border between Germany and Poland), even though they're at the western end of their own timezone (with several parts being over the border to the next one) if our timezones adhered strictly to longitude. If you subtract 1.5 hours from all Spanish times, they're considerably less weird.
Which funnily means the Spaniards tend to have dinner at the same time as the Portuguese, who use GMT and tend to dine at 8 PM.
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Spaniard here.
School starts at 9. Work can vary, but 8-9 is common.
Typical breakfast is coffee and a pastry, but some people will have something savory instead. Not the most common, though.Lunch is at 2pm. Restaurants usually take customers from 1 to 3.30 pm. If you have lunch at home, a proper meal is in order, but lately, less and less people can do this. So snacking for lunch during work days is becoming more common, sadly.
Dinner is at 9pm but there is a tendency to move this earlier, particularly when eating at home on work days. Restaurants take customers from 8 to 10pm, and a dinner out can last until past midnight.
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”breakfast” spots OPEN at 1 pm
I have finally found my people. I must go there.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote on last edited by [email protected]
Fun fact, Spain's unusual schedule is partially due to timezones! The country itself is literally an hour late, and is kinda stuck in either an idyllic summer lifestyle or a vicious labor cycle, depending on how you look at it.
Glance at a map and you’ll realise that Spain – sitting, as it does, along the same longitude as the UK, Portugal and Morocco – should be in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). But Spain goes by Central European Time (CET), putting it in sync with the Serbian capital Belgrade, more than 2,500km east of Madrid.
Being 60 minutes behind the correct time zone means the sun rises later and sets later, bestowing Spain with gloriously long summer evenings and 10pm sunsets.
But for many Spaniards, living in the wrong time zone has resulted in sleep deprivation and decreased productivity. The typical Spanish work day begins at 9am; after a two-hour lunch break between 2 and 4pm, employees return to work, ending their day around 8pm. The later working hours force Spaniards to save their social lives for the late hours. Prime-time television doesn’t start until 10:30pm.
Spaniards have traditionally coped with their late nights by taking a mid-morning coffee break and a two-hour lunch break, giving them the opportunity to enjoy one of the country’s most famous traditions: the siesta.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170504-the-strange-reason-spaniards-eat-late
Basically, they still take breaks (that have pre-timezone cultural roots) in large part because they start too early and because they work and eat and sleep late... but they work and eat and sleep late because they start too early and take long breaks and the sun sets late... so they get less sleep and need more breaks and naps to get through the long day....
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”breakfast” spots OPEN at 1 pm
I have finally found my people. I must go there.
Yeah, that is not true.
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Spain in also in the wrong time zone. Because of Nazis.
