Visiting Lanzarote is an interesting situation for me linguistically, as I speak all three of the main languages that you hear on the island: English, German and Spanish.

Which language do you speak as a tourist? My rule of thumb is to use Spanish as much as possible - in supermarkets, shops and restaurants. Of course the people serving could speak to me in my mother tongue, but I find it better that way.

It can often be to my advantage as well. Some locals are more welcoming if you make an effort to speak their language. At Teguise market you can often get a better bargain for making the effort and an even better one if you are fluent in Spanish. In restaurants the waiter’s English may only extend to taking your order and presenting you with the bill - it may not extend to sorting out complaints.

Obviously if I’m talking to an English or German national, then I will talk to them in their language. But it gets very interesting when sitting in a restaurant where I talk in Spanish to the waiter, English to my parents and German to my wife! It can confuse the staff as well!

But it can also be very funny, as being able to read all three versions of the menu I often find translations that have gone wrong.

I just haven’t got round to learning Swedish yet…

The website Calle Lanzarote now has a sister site publishing in German: www.calle-lanzarote.de

On the German site, my wife Michaela will be writing about her first visit to the island last year and covering many of the topics that I have written about on this site such as I.G.I.C, pan y mantequilla, as well as restaurants and places that we visited.

She will not, however, be just translating articles from this site, but writing from her viewpoint and adding her own opinions.

If you can read German, please visit the site and read what she has to say.

A while ago I wrote about my experiences flying to Lanzarote with Iberia. Well, last weekend I had the chance to compare those experiences with Spanair when I flew to Madrid for the Great Madrid Escape.

Actually there is not much to choose between them in many areas - particularly in German language skills. Spanair cabin crews made the same sort of mistakes that the Iberia ones did, ie. they spoke in English far too fast for non-native speakers to understand, and on flights between Frankfurt and Madrid there are not too many of those!

But the real difference was that the Spanair flights included food. OK, so it was a couple of sandwiches and a small bar of chocolate, but soft drinks were included as were tea and coffee. This, for me, is what makes a big difference over the Iberia flights. I could rely on getting something to eat and it didn’t cost me an unreasonable amount to buy - it was included in the price of the ticket.

The ticket, by the way, was very good value for money!