Cold Comfort - Winter in a Mallorcan house

The afternoon coffee and cake is a German tradition. Walk the promenade of little Germany, Can Picafort, and, in summer, boards outside the bars will invite you to "Kaffee und Kuchen". Be invited into a German-owned house and you will be presented with a jar of coffee and a plate of pastries. A further German tradition is that houses in Germany tend to be like ovens. Germany has cold winters, but its houses and apartments are pretty much air-tight, they are like vaults, nothing can come in, nothing can escape. In Germany, there are laws obliging landlords to heat rental properties to a certain level. No-one, theoretically, be they owner or tenant, should freeze through inadequate heating.

It snowed, after a fashion, yesterday. A brief flurry, at sea level. It looked more like hail, but it was snow, some said. Meteorological definitions didn't matter, save for one - cold. Mallorca, unlike Germany, doesn't have cold winters. Of course it doesn't. Well not on a German scale it doesn't. But it has cold spells. Even during these, like the current one, daytime temperatures at sea level rarely fall to freezing, and when the sun puts in an appearance, it can still feel warm - outside. The problem is not outside, it's inside.

There are new German neighbours. Kaffee und Kuchen. It's a tradition. The icy state of the living-room, for them, most certainly isn't. Surprises there can be for those new to Mallorca: one that most do not bargain for is just how cold it can get and just how cold their newly bought houses might be. I hadn't put on the ski socks (to compensate for the stone floor) and the long-johns (to compensate for the air). The coffee cooled rapidly. Even the cream in the cake seemed to crystallise as though in a freezer.

There was a wood-burner, unused. There was wood, but lying next to it. The cost of wood is astronomical. There were radiators, not on. There has been publicity about the rising cost of electricity. Moreover, the room was large, open plan. The oil-filled radiators give out some warmth, but only so long as you're more or less sitting on top of them, which is not a wise thing to do. "Do not cover" is the warning they all carry. Gas, I said. Eleven euros for a bottle of butane. It might last a week. Possibly. That's not so bad, they said. Certainly against the cost of wood. Mind you, the one dehumidifer, the one that eats electricity, might need to be added to. Someone, a Mallorcan, rubbing his upper arms in a gesture of "qué frío", said the other day that the problem in Mallorca is the damp atmosphere. Clings, he said, in winter. Damp and then sometimes cold, like an invisible fog. This will be why damp course is a rarity, like insulation and double-glazing. All this in a country that is meant to have committed to energy efficiency and the saving of Mother Earth. Don't make me laugh, or make new German neighbours laugh.

There's no natural gas, they enquired. Not outside Palma. It will take them years to run pipelines across the island. Think of all the endless environmental discussions, the politics, the bankrupt state of state finances. And then there was a coincidence. An announcement two days ago that there are indeed plans to develop a gas network. That will teach me to go around saying it would take twenty years. Or maybe that might not be wrong. The announcement also referred to economic conditions and planning regulations. Projects have a habit of taking years to be implemented, and even when there is funding in place, agreement cannot be reached by competing political interests.

There's another German tradition, among Germans who have adopted Mallorca. And this is that they all seem to have read George Sand. A winter in Mallorca, and the health of Sand's poor old husband, Chopin, deteriorated because of the dampness and chill of Valldemossa. But that was when? Some time in the nineteenth century. A long time ago. When they had wood, but didn't have butane or electricity. And when they didn't have double-glazing or insulation, or natural gas.

These things take time, you know.

** (Last night it snowed. Properly snowed. Snowed as in covered the grass.)


Mallorca Daily Photo Blog
And while on matters German, yesterday I met Klaus Fabricius who does the Mallorca Daily Photo Blog (http://mallorcaphotoblog.wordpress.com) and whose work I first came across when I was alerted to an entry explaining and depicting the sea-grass origin of those kiwi-like, oval balls that proliferate on the beaches. If you have not been following Klaus's blog, let me issue a recommendation once more. It is highly informative and the photography is outstanding, as it also is on a sort of sister blog - Plantarium (http://plantarium.wordpress.com).


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.