On my second visit to
Madrid last week, I wandered the streets at night with Andrew, my half-
Castillian, half-American friend. We passed a guy named Alejandro, who works in the hotel at which I stayed,
Hotel Regente. He called to me in English as we passed each other on the street. He is 24, good-looking, and
other-team, but gregarious, platonic, friendly behavior between males is normal here, which contrasts with most (but not all) of
my experiences with American males.
I stayed out with Alejandro and his compañeros until 3 AM, but I ran out of energy then, just as they were ready to begin their night of partying . . . on a Sunday. (I feel SO not-cool-enough sometimes here in Spain).
Anyway, in almost cliché form, we got to talking about the weather. And in almost-even-more-cliché form, I said,
Well, you know, I've heard that the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain
which Alejandro had already heard before, so he interrupted me to finish my sentence for me. So I asked him if he knew what it meant (because he speaks only a little bit of English), and he replied with this:
Quiere decir que la lluvia se queda normalmente en los aviones, y por eso, casi nunca hay lluvia en España, ¿no?
or,
It means that the rain in Spain usually stays on airplanes [overhead], and that's why it rarely rains in Spain, right?
to which, after several minutes of laughing, and wondering just
how goofy he takes the British to be (as he learned the expression from his British customers at the
Regente), I explained to him that, no, it's
plain, not
plane, ya goofball.