A blog about Tenerife, Linedancing, Food, Shopping etc.

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Thursday, May 22, 2008

Spring cleaning


You almost get feelings of spring today when you look at our Canary neighbors.
They have hired a big truck bed which they have placed out on the street and now they are carrying out all the trash from the garage. Working very hard.
What they do reminds me of my home country Finland.
There people are cleaning everywhere this time a year when the snow has melted away.
They rake the lawn, and everywhere around the houses, and some people are even burning away the old grass down in the ditches. It's a hard work but it looks nice later on when the grass starts growing and the flowers start blooming.

Americans who visited us before, when we lived there, were amazed over how clean our country is. You hardly don't see any trash anywhere. And the most of the cables are buried in the ground.
Even old condemned building have been taken down.
If you are an owner of a rickety shed, or something like that, you probably will receive a letter from the government that tells you to take it down.
My dad was a tomato farmer and when he retired some years ago he got a letter that told him to take down the whole building when it wasn't in use anymore.
That was a big project when it was huge and the walls and the roof was made of pane.
But I think the government is right. The surrounding looks much more beautiful when it's gone.

I wonder if it's possible to get Tenerife clean anymore. Probably not.
People have been throwing all kind of trash in the nature and it's frightful how it looks in some places outside the town. It's refrigerators, washing machines, old rusty cars and all kind of stuff.
Some of the trash is deep down in the valleys and they probably would need a crane to get it taken away.
It seems like it's only the national park of Teide that is really clean. That area is carefully guarded by watchers.

Some years ago we went by car up to Teide with a couple from Sweden. The lady thought it would be nice to bring home a small stone of the green phosphor as a keepsake.
No problem! Clas said, and stopped the car and went out and took a small phosphor stone for her.
On his walk back to the car he suddenly was confronted by a guardian who told him to put the stone back where he took it. Such a disappointing!
We didn't know you are not allowed to take even a small stone there!
Now we know you can be fined for it and we were in good luck when we escaped only by the skin of one's teeth.

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