BLOGG# on" contemplating while speeding on a Spanish train"

It is a well known fact that while travelling by air one reads but while travelling by train one looks out the window and contemplates and that is what happened  to me on the Bilboa-Madrid train. The scenery speeding by at 125 klicks per hour puts one into the space of serious musings that leans towards fantasy. As soon as the train hit the outskirts of Bilboa, we saw very fertile land- small agricut\ltural holdings with tiny shacks holding equipment. These little gardens were busily growing all the wonderful  produce we were sampling on our tapas- eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, not an inch of space wasted- how econonomically they use their space, and I thought of my native Alberta where space is limitless, and so little used. I wondered if it is true that geography makes the person. There we are, in that vast land, underproducing, wasteful, also somehat isolationist- and why not surrounded as we are by expansive nothingness. Not that I don't admire and love my prairies and find it exceedingly beautiful-but it must make a different kind of person from the Spanish, with their tiny plots and their clustered villages. When driving through the prairies, through the tiny towns and isolated farms, I wonder what they do in their spare time [Ihave never lived in a small town] and try to imagine them in the evenings walking down the few streets and doing- what? I imagine neighbours discussing weather, some gossiping, and sometimes perhaps having a secret liason in  an abandoned building. Now as I look at the passing Spanish villages I wonder how geography affects them.  Does it make them frugal,industrious, secretive, passionate and gregarious. I wonder too what they do in the evening?  I  imagine them discussing the weather with neighbours,gossiping and sometimes having a secret liason in an abandoned village. Well there you are-a a complete conundrum- perhaps we are not so different after all. Then I came out of my musings with a jerk! What am I thinking of!! Of course what they are doing in both places thousands of miles apart, is watching  television- probably here a Spanish version of  "The American Idol" I groaned and then became aware we were climbing into the mounainous region and then saw Picasso's Bulls.