El Peregringo

I don’t have the actual statistics, but my best estimate is that more than 50% of the passenger vehicles on the road here in Spain are diesel. What’s most interesting to me is the number of cars here that are diesel that simply don’t exist in the US in a diesel version. Fords of every stripe, Jeep Cherokees, Saabs, BMWs and more. From luxury to basic transportation, most of the cars and all of the trucks here are diesel.

In just a few days I’m headed back to the US and I have a couple of months to buy two vehicles to replace the cars we sold before coming here. I’ve been doing some searching and while there are a few diesel vehicles in the US, they’re pretty rare. I’m really hopeful that I can find a diesel for myself. Given my commute in the US, in which I hit 60 miles per hour within 2 minutes of pulling out of my driveway, and maintain 60 miles an hour until 2 minutes before pulling into the parking lot at the school, a diesel would be the perfect commuter vehicle for me. Most of the models I’m seeing are getting 45 miles to the gallon of diesel, which would mean that I could get back and forth to work on one gallon of fuel instead of the two gallons it would take me on gasoline.

Why is the US so backwards with respect to transportation? Our trains suck and don’t go anywhere, and our cars suck gasoline. I guess I’m focussing on the many negatives of life in the US as my return date nears, but forgive me if I continue to think that the US could have the best if we’d only get our heads out of our asses and get rid of the repubtards permanently.

I’ve just spent an hour trying to buy a train ticket with Renfe, the Spanish rail company. I simply cannot understand how a company, in this day and age, can get away with such an awful mess as their online system. Even using a Spanish credit card, it was virtually impossible to actually buy my ticket.

Things were looking good until I got to the point of actually charging the card. Renfe includes a disclaimer saying that the window that was going to open was from the bank and that if the user had trouble, that it wasn’t Renfe’s fault. I did have trouble, and I still blame Renfe for not having a better system.

Part of the problem may be with the Caja Navarra bank. They have the single WORST online banking I have ever seen. They don’t even include a valid doc type or encoding method in their html, and then once connected, they use frames in places they’re unnecessary and have spurious scroll bars in unlikely places. The National Bank of Middlebury has an online banking and bill paying experience that is orders of magnitude superior to the Caja Navarra.

So this post is in the “things I hate” category, but I want to make it clear that I don’t hate the catholic church. I just really really really dislike it. I do, however hate the control that it has in Spain. For someone who was raised with a constitution which establishes the separation of church and state, the system here seems to have been forged in medieval times and not updated since.

In the news recently I’ve been following a story that’s very disturbing to me. Here’s a link to a follow up version of it. The basic story is this: Even in public schools here, students are essentially required to take a “religion” class. Now the class is always called “religion.” It is not called “Catholicism.” It is called “religion.”

Now think about that. If you signed up for a class called “religion” how would you respond if the content of that class was 100% Hindu propaganda? 100%. No discussion of other religions, or of the nature of religion. 100% propoganda in which not only are you not introduced to other religions, but in which you are told that all other religions are wrong. Well, that’s the situation in Spain with the catholic church and its formalized relationship with the public school systems.

So a teacher at a public school in the Canary Islands, María del Carmen Galayo Macías, was fired because as a divorced woman, she lives with another man who isn’t her ex-husband. The catholic church fired her. She filed suit with the State. You know what? The State upheld the right of the catholic church to fire “religion” teachers, even though it is the State which pays their salaries! I find this absolutely unbelievable. María del Carmen Galayo Macías is not a nun. She’s not a member of any religious order. She has taken no vows. She’s a teacher who teaches the “religion” class, and from everything I’ve read, she even teaches the very narrow and bigoted curriculum as prescribed by the catholic church. But the church feels that she shouldn’t be teaching since she’s not “living the pure faith.” And the State upheld the church’s right.

Unbelievable. Is this horse shit or what? I expect, and sadly must endure, this forced indoctrination of my daughters since they attend a catholic school (I had no choice in this matter). They are apparently getting a good education in other areas, though I dislike the fact that the catholic church is forcing lies and bigotry down their throats that will take me years to undo if the damage can ever be undone at all. At least we have seven years back in real schools before we have to endure this again.