What I Bought in Spain

In an earlier post, I mentioned a few things I bought in Spain: there was the hyper-exhaustive list of groceries, the numerous postcards, and the small model of the Temple de la Sagrada Familia.

One purchase, however, is simply wonderful beyond words. It was inexpensive, ever-so-handy, most useful, and quite warm. Unfortunately, I have no idea with it’s called.

So let me see if I can describe it.

You know a scarf, right? How it goes around your neck and keeps it warm? This isn’t a scarf, but it goes around your neck and keeps it warm.

I suppose it would be called a neck-muffler. It’s a wide circle of material that goes over your head and settles loosely around your neck. Thus, it keeps your neck warm but you don’t have that annoying problem of the scarf unwinding and the loose ends flapping about and ultimately blowing off and landing in the gutter a block back behind you while you’re trying to walk to the bus stop carrying both your school bag and two sacks of groceries. Not that that’s ever happened to me. Recently.

But anyway…this wonderful neck-muffler is loose enough not to be annoying (it’s not tight and constricting), but it comes with drawstrings to tighten the top and bottom just a bit to keep out the drafts. It’s also wide enough to pull up to cover your nose and mouth if the wind is especially bad. For you all keeping track at home, it’s made of a soft royal blue fleece (that may actually be just a tad too thin) and it cost the terribly reasonably sum of €3. That’s less than £3 (probably about $5 or so…my brain starts to glaze over at all the currency conversions). Suffice to say, it was a very good purchase.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen them for sale anywhere else. And I didn’t see them around in many stores in Spain (just once at a market and once at a small store in Salou) but I did see a number of people wearing them.

So here’s my prediction: this could be the next big thing. Maybe I should invest in a sewing machine and some fleece…