As an expatriate in Barcelona during my mid-20s, I found many parts of life hard to understand—from eating supper at 11 p.m. to finding all the stores closed for three hours in the middle of every afternoon. But what baffled me the most was Spaniards’ sheer excellence at taking their vacation. Most of them abandoned any productive activity for the entire month of August, venturing off to the seaside or the mountains, and doing. . . well, nothing. And after this annual month of indolence, they returned victorious, radiating a deep peace. They were idleness grand masters, boredom virtuosos.
A very few years later, I would marry a Spaniard, learn both Spanish and Catalan, and adjust to the dietary routines and opening hours of my adopted country. But I never quite mastered the August vacation. Year after year, I tried to join with my wife either lounging on a Balearic beach or gazing at the mountains in a Pyrenean village. Inevitably, after about the first week, I wound up begging my wife to cut our monthlong vacation short—so that, for the love of God, I could do something.
Decades later, now living back in the U.S., I begrudgingly take brief annual vacations, but I assiduously avoid August trips to the Iberian vacation nothing-box. Lest you think I am weird (as she does), please note that I simply resemble most Americans, 55 percent of whom choose not even to use all their vacation days.
What explains this transatlantic cultural difference—both in general and in my marriage specifically? And who has the vacation thing right? Naturally, in answering those questions, I will seek to offer a completely impartial judgment...
