Could a swim duck? says I.*

I am sure every major country has its share of small idiosyncratic nonsensical design issues. However, it seems that Spain, for all of its seemingly first world status, has quite a few. In my apartment, for example, there are a few random problems that conspire to drive me insane.

First, our electricity can be a bit fickle. By no means can we use the washing machine at the same time as the stove. However, now, it seems that even using the oven while using more than one burner on the stove will cause the power to short out. This forces the frazzled chef at the moment to run through the dark apartment to reset the power breaker, often several times in the course of one cooking session. The fear of ruining the dinner versus the fear of tripping over a chair and breaking your neck on the hard tile floor is a surprisingly equal contest. Especially if you hate the taste of burned garlic as much as I do.

Second, our hot water heater is in the kitchen. Which is absolutely fine for washing dishes, but a bit water wasting for showers, since the bathroom is quite far away, it takes a long time for the hot water to arrive. The main problem, however, is the fact that on windy days, you take the chance of dying in a gas explosion by washing the dishes (yes, I do use this excuse). The exhaust pipe is connected directly outside without any sort of wind protection, so the wind blows directly into it and extinguishes the pilot light on the gas heater. Thus, gas happily pours into the kitchen and into the unsuspecting (at first) nostrils of anyone within a few feet. Did I mention I live with a smoker?

Third, we cannot use our telephone and internet at the same time. Sometimes, if someone calls here, the internet will remain connected, but most often, and especially if we call out, we are forced to wait until the end of the conversation to reset the router and then continue with our stalking of people on facebook. This started happening after my roommate requested that the bill be changed to her name. The company told her that she would just have to sign up for a new account, which would take a month. After a month without internet, the new account still wasn’t set up, and meanwhile she was still being charged by the old one. When the technician came, he rerouted all the wires in the building, causing our phone calls to go to our neighbor two floors above. So the fact that he somehow made it impossible to use our phone line and DSL line at the same time is not a surprise and we are too scared to have them try to fix it, really anything is possible here.

Our building is also rather eccentric. Like most buildings in Spain, the front door locks from the inside with a key, in addition to locking automatically behind you. At night and on the weekends, our neighbors lock the door, which means we have to go down with our keys to let guests in (even though we have a buzzer, it only unlocks the regular lock). Sometimes when people try to leave, they won’t be able to get out of the building and will have to come all the way back up to ask us to release them. This can be especially problematic if we are discussing the recently departed guest in loud voices when they ring our doorbell. Oops. Also, in the case of fire, it is quite possible that you could forget to grab your keys, well, too bad. There aren’t any fire escapes and if the front door is locked, you become carne asada.

Elevators are other common death traps in Barcelona. Most people are timidly thankful for the existence of an elevator in their building, especially since Spanish floor labeling includes several named floors, making a fourth floor apartment actually as much as seven flights of stairs. However, no one can be fully thankful for the presence of an elevator here, because using one is a serious threat to your life and sanity. Apparently the automatic sliding doors the rest of the world takes for granted haven’t been invented in Spain yet as I haven’t seen a single elevator here without a set of outer and inner doors, both of which must be fully closed for it to operate. That’s just annoying though, except when the wind blows one of the doors open while you are inside (have I mentioned how drafty buildings are here?) and your elevator stops. At least it is probably very spacious, at least three by two feet, so you can almost sit down and wait for someone to rescue you.

Our elevator scares even seasoned Spanish elevator goers. First, it drops several inches and bounces slight back up when you step inside, giving you the comfortable feeling that perhaps the cables aren’t that tight. Then, it inches upwards while making a host of nearly human whining sounds. Certainly I have never heard a machine make such noises. Sometimes it jerks a bit for no apparent reason, or sometimes one side scraps along the elevator shaft, creating a sound like a thousand forks being scraped across a porcelain plate. You must be careful never to push a button more than once or it will refuse to move. Sometimes it takes you to a different floor, just for the heck of it. Sometimes it likes to have a little fun with its human cargo by stopping between floors or by keeping its doors closed. I guess I don’t blame it – the life of an elevator must be pretty boring.