Meeting & understanding OFWs in Europe

Our editor has asked us to write about our falling down the escalator in Prague on our back with luggage and trolley falling on top of us. While this must have been the most embarrassing aspect of our holiday, it was by no means the most exhilarating part of our month and a half visit to Europe.

The annual sojourn began in 2008 in Paris, followed by Madrid, New York, Mexico City, then back to Madrid this year was envisioned as a bucket list for us to immerse in the culture of our favorite places while we still had the will and strength to do so. Our rules for ourselves were to travel alone where a close friend lived, travel during the cool May-June months, buy only roundtrip tickets from Manila with the rest according to our whim of the moment. Every year has been the same except for 2011.

We had journalist Ronald Constantino as well as jeweler Marlon Pedregoza sharing an apartment our Madrid friend Richard Signey chose for us. The sometime Manila theater actor and language teacher, now teaching English for the British Council had been our best movie and scrabble buddy in Manila together with Marlon until both decided to be OFWs abroad and left us without a quorum. It was therefore an exciting reunion for us with Richard coming in at midnight after his classes to play scrabble and with Ronald completing the quorum. Marlon is the colorful one, inventing words that somehow exist and serving as apartment cook. Signey is the brooding type. Marlon decided he would call us Bibsy Bubu, himself Baby Bubu, and Signey Bubu Arte. Ronald asks why we are all Bubus. No one knows apart from the irrepressible Baby Bubu.

From left: Arcangel Fernandez, Adolfo Timuat and Manuel Caceres

We also watched movies at the Filmoteca Española, the cheapest source of Film Classics in their original language with Spanish subtitles. Its schedule during our stay included Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane & The Magnificent Ambersons, Robert Stevenson’s Jane Eyre, Hitchcock’s Psycho & North by Northwest, Trauffaut’s Fahrenheit 451, Brian de Palma’s Obsession, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, Robert Aldrich’s Vera Cruz, Whatever happened to Baby Jane? & The Dirty Dozen, Spielberg’s ET, and even got to watch a 1977 Sophia Loren-Marcello Mastroianni Italian film without English subtitles but which we understood perfectly.

Upon return to Manila, this exposure to foreign classics made us line up for the French Film Festival at the Edsa Shangri-la. More of this and the Filipino participation in another article.

Apart from movies and scrabble that brought us together, we sampled food galore and at every nook and cranny would chance upon Filipinos waitering, cooking, at times even operating their own restaurants. Filipinos appeared to be favored OFW servers at the elegant but inexpensive chain in Central Madrid with such names as Public, Bazaar, Ginger, La Gloria de Montera & La Finca de Susana. As far as Santiago de Compostela near the Portuguese border, we were cared for by Allan Mendoza, nephew of Julie whom we met at Sunday Mass. Allan arranged for lodging above the Café-Bar Bituin formerly owned by a Filipina, took us to lunch at the A Casa da Viña where he worked and treated us to dinner at Las Cien Islas serving Filipino-Spanish-Chinese cuisine and owned by a Filipina on the day of our departure. Truly, everything Filipino style.

That’s me with Delight owner Tobias Erhardt from Germany

We watched Filipina diva Irene Sabas (sister of Jai Sabas) mount the ballet Giselle in Madrid with Filipino dancer Aileen Gallinera in the title role. Irene and husband David Campos have made Barcelona their home and that of their company Ballet David Campos. We met other OFWs like the Filipino nuns of St. Mary who help out at the day-care center Sta. Maria de Leuca near the Escorial in Spain. Pinoy guitarist Adolfo Timuat confesses to have sacrificed his marriage and family by choosing to live in Spain.

But if the Overseas Filipino Workers were visible everywhere, so were the Overseas Foreign Workers composed of visitors to Spain who stayed and stayed and stayed for one reason or another, but mostly because they had fallen in love with the country and its people. Barcelona, for one, is full of former Instituto Cervantes scholars who stayed and liven up the artistic landscape.

On our last day in Madrid, we strolled along the small and winding streets Ronald had come to enjoy that eventually brought us back home to the apartment on Calle Atocha. As usual, we lost our way and found a store called Delight at Barrio de las Letras with a colorful display catching our attention. We enter and find a friendly German manning the store and ask what had brought him to Spain and he answered “a woman,” apparently a Spanish lady teaching school.

With Ronald Constantino, David Campos, Irene Sabas and Aileen Gallinera.

Owner Tobias Erhardt had various handmade items for sale from women’s ceramic jewelry to children’s toys from Bangladesh. We commented that they seemed pricey at 20 Euros which sent him into a tirade about such stores as Zara and H&M that would sell the same products at 10 Euros after buying wholesale from Bangladesh workers who work and sleep in sub-human conditions and are paid 50 cents. “We may sell at even triple the price but the worker gets fare trade rates and are treated well,” he tells us. Apparently, we had an activist in our midst. Our mind flashes to Puerta del Sol, the country’s epicenter and ground Zero where protesters had camped asking for changes in government policies.

Tobias reminds us so much of this Danish OFW in Lipa, Batangas who fell in love with a Lipeña, married her and is now a certified Batangueño. Dr. Marichu Liwag made candles as a hobby until the Dane Morten Carstensen taught her to go global with Doc’s Candles. Obviously, the OFWs are the same everywhere; they will stay where the heart brings them.

Lessons from this trip? We no longer begrudge Baby Bubu and Bubu Arte their desire to live abroad. We miss them but like the Danish Morten, if he can’t go home to Denmark, then his family in Denmark will come to the Philippines. The couple have built Morten’s parents a home in La Finca Estate in Lipa City. We have visited Signey twice in Madrid and Marlon once in Mexico.

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Ronald with Pinoy OFWs Signey and Marlon who cooked macaroni dinner.