Jobseeking 2

As someone pointed out to me, I haven't said much about getting a job and working in Spain yet. This is partly cause I'd been a bit concerned about talking about employers etc but I'll just speak generally.

What it boils down to is this: if you are a native English speaker, you will be able to survive in Madrid. Even if you´re American, and don't have a work visa, you should be able to get by with particulares, or private classes. There are plenty of websites such as www.tuclasesparticulares.es that you can advertise on and by far most of the responses I've had are people looking for conversational English classes, so no training necessary. Theres also plenty of people looking for native speakers to look after or tutor their kids for cash in hand. However, if you don't have paperwork, expect no more than €10 an hour (which still isn't bad!).

If your a native English speaker with an N.I.E. number, in terms of employability and pay expectations, this beats a degree hands down! The demand for learning English is huge here and there are a load of companies and language schools competing for the various strands of business this produces, all seemingly always looking for teachers. You can expect between €10-€20 an hour for these jobs but some will want you to be autonomo, or self employed, which entails paying your own social security (€178 a month).

If your legal, a native English speaker and are fluent in Spanish... what job would you like? Every company wants more native speakers and you should just be careful not to undersell yourself!

I don't know why the demand for learning English is quite so high but in recent years I think there's been a lot of outsourcing to Spain and mergers with UK companies, and it certainly improves your job prospects as a Spaniard if you have good English.

My personal experience has been starting off at a kind of business English agency that sent me off to be embedded in various other companies to teach their staff, which involved some very good, if intense, training. However, they´ve only been able to give me 12 regular hours a week, which really isn´t enough, so I´ve just started wroking evenings at a language school as well. This is much more relaxed than the business side of teaching, and doesn´t involve any lesson planning which is a big bonus. I´m also working on contract for them which means they pay my social security, which works out very well for me! (Although I imagine I´m going to have a nightmare when it comes to filling in a tax return!).

I´ve really warmed to teaching English, I didn´t think I was going to be that suited to it, but now I really enjoy it and have become a bit of a grammar geek. The students are usually quite fun, especially if you have them week in week out at their work - its like a break for them. Spanish people have a good sense of the ridiculous as well so your often laughing your way through a lesson with them. I find it seriously satisfying when I see them improving as well.

So basically, if your a native English speaker, you´ll have no problem getting a job in Madrid (1st Conditional by the way), and if your an EU citizen with the right to work here, the pay is pretty good too. Not a bad way to ride out the recession I´d say, although I am very aware that the Euro may take a nosedive soon, while my debts undertaken to come out here are in Sterling...

I´m actually having all kinds of headaches with various bank accounts at the moment, due to various reasons, but the main one being that I´m in debt in one country and living in another! The caviat I´d add to what I´ve just said is not to expect to get paid instantly and bear in mind the start up costs like apartment deposits etc. I´m only just getting my first full pay cheque now, having moved here in mid-October but hopefully by mid January things should have levelled out a bit!

Travel Choas

Oh dear, its been a while hasn't it? Well, I thought my next post was going to be about going back to England and the strangeness of actually being able to speak to people properly, being able to find good coffee etc etc but no, it was not to be...

I was due to shoot straight off from work to the airport last Thursday, only to be reading about the huge amounts of snow falling in the UK from the BBC and friends Facebook feeds on Wednesday night. By the time I got to the airport, there was utter chaos at the KLM desk with one poor guy, who looked like he actually might have been the pilot of the plane, trying his hardest to keep his customer services face on while being yelled at in about 3 different languages. It's amazing how far a calm and friendly attitude gets you in these situations, and he came round to me pretty quickly when he noticed I was smiling and sorted me out very quickly. I might get to Northern Europe if I stayed in the airport for a day or two but the UK? Not this weekend, he said.

This left me in a pretty wierd situation though (bear in mind I was going there to answer bail!) and I had a tense day wondering whether the court would accept this as an excuse, but also unwilling and unable to book another flight (I am getting a refund, but I have to apply for it etc). And then, on Friday, Spain's air traffic controllers staged a surprise walk-out and grounded all air traffic in and out of the country for 48 hours, stranding thousands of people at Madrid airport and leading to the government calling the first 'state of alert' (emergency) since the end of military rule. Bearing in mind that they get paid six-figure salaries and decided to do this on the Friday before the 'bridge' holiday (I'll come back to this), people don't seem very sympathetic to their plight right now. Anyway, if I believed in fate, I would hazard a good guess that it didn't want me in Trafford Magistrates Court on Monday morning...

So, I didn't go back, and ended up getting sentenced in absence yesterday (I got a fine). Anyway, my travails aren't that bad compared to the other defendents pleading not guilty, who have a long trial ahead of them, and the other 6 who's trial starts in Febuary - you can support them and find out what happens here http://www.manchesterairportontrial.org/

Today is in the middle of the 'bridge' holiday - I've mentioned before the large number of public holidays in Spain, and this week there's one on Monday and one on Wednesday, hence 'bridge'. A lot of people take the Tuesday off and call it a week off anyway, hence their annoyance about the air traffic controllers.

Wintery Feelings

It's been getting colder and colder over the past couple of weeks, and cloudy days have become more frequent (although still below half), and today the first tiny flakes of snow started falling, which I'm now watching from whats become my local internet-and-coffee bar in La Latina, La Potente. It can still be quite warm in the sun, and I found myself sweating after walking quickly up to Puerta de Toledo yesterday, but out of it its bitterly cold. On the plus side though, it means its all feeling quite Christmassy all of a sudden. The Christmas lights are all on in the centre and there's a huge metal Christmas tree in the middle of Sol. They've really gone to town on Calle Mayor, with the air above your head packed with glowing rings nearly all the way from Sol to the Cathedral. There's a Christmas market in Plaza Mayor too, but it dissappointingly doesn't sell mulled wine.

Baby eel tostas, a Madrid delicacy

I went on another wonder round the El Rastro market, and Old Madrid in general yesterday, and got you a picture of the Madridian 'baby eel' tostas (although I still haven't plucked up the courage to eat any yet). I'm making it a New Years resolution to buy one thing from El Rastro every week - there's such a wierd and wonderful collection of stuff on offer, I really just want all of it! A bust of Caesar? Sure! A bronze walking cane? Absolutely! Yesterday I limited myself to a book of postcards of Madrid from the 50s to send to a friend I promised to write to (instead of just blog about...).

The cellar at Viva la Vida

I also stopped off at the amazingly decorated and super cool Viva la Vida vegetarian restuarant in La Latina, which operates a buffet system where your food is weighed at the till - although beware, the plates are quite heavy! The upstairs decor is pretty good and theres a lovely relaxed atmosphere to the place but the basement is even better, one of those arched cellar rooms, with the brickwork sprinkled in glitter and plants growing up the walls. The foods great too, definately recommended.

I'm having to go back to England this week for a court appearance - or as I like to think, I've been summoned back by Her Majesty (or at least her Prosecution Service). This has frankly proved to be a huge pain in the arse. Booking flights (as I've had to) for specific dates with two weeks notice is no easy, or cheap, feat and requires you to negotiate the web of lies and deception that is booking a cheap flight online. Quote: £150... actually £250... with 2 connections... and so on. I've ended up, exasperatedly, booking a return flight to Edinburgh for about £220, including a free unconfortable nights sleep in Amsterdam airport on the way there. Very frustrating. I wanted to get the train but for a return to London you're looking at at least £500. I think for Christmas, seeing as I've got time, I'll go by coach again which works out at about £160 return to London, but does take 28 hours each way. The idea of going back feels quite strange. I got my first real pang of homesickness the other day. Definately looking forward to a pint in a pub.

What's the court appearance for? Obstruction of a highway, during a protest at Manchester Airport. Oh the irony. To find out more or lend your support, please see the campaign website: http://www.manchesterairportontrial.org/, or Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Manchester-Airport-On-Trial/162820910424769?v=info.

Mustachioed goblets on Thanksgiving

On a (sort of) lighter note, tonight is El Clasico - Barca vs Real, which the Spanish press has been working itself into a frenzy for for weeks, only added to by Mourinho's posturing. Living near the Vicente Calderon, my two flatmates have become sworn Athletico fans, but personally I'm not so fussed, and I'm kind of rooting for Real, although they're are generally regarded as the team of the aristocracy here: they're part funded by the King (Real = Royal), Barcelona's Barcelona innit? We live in Madrid!

Ah, I nearly forgot, my first Thanksgiving was great! It felt like a practice run for Christmas dinner. I have to say, despite being initially sceptical, I was massively impressed by our host's veggie Tofurky! The objective, I was informed by several Americans is basically to eat until you can't anymore, wait, and then continue, which we did whist sporting fake mustaches and drinking from goblets found in our grandma flat. I'd decided to represent by dressing as Britishly as possible, complete with Union Jack hankerchief sticking out of waistcoat pocket and effecting my best 'ghastly' Prince Charles accent, but wasn't quite ready for the American reaction to this. I've never felt like such a novelty act in my entire life!

Tomato Frito Swollen Lip Syndrome

I woke up yesterday, with a bit of a start, to find that my bottom lip was about four times the size it was supposed to be. I mean, really huge, solid, heavy, and massive. Not the top one, not my mouth, just a great big wobbly bottom lip. I wish I'd taken a picture. After convincing myself I wasn't still dreaming by looking in the mirror in horror and wondering how on earth I was going to take four hours of English classes, I decided that it would go down and went to the internet cafe. After a bit of research, it seems that quite a lot of people get this, particularly when abroad, and its usually down to an allergic reaction to something. I'm not someone who usually suffers from allergies so I've been wracking my brains trying to think of what I ate or touched the day before but the only thing I can single out is a carton of tomato frito, which is basically tomato soup mascarading as chopped tomato. As allergic reactions go, 'tomato frito gives me a massive lip' is pretty ridiculous but that seems to be the case, although I'm a bit scared to try it again... just in case. Anyway, it went down in time to teach and not look too ludicrious so all was well.


2 weeks since I gave up smoking today and feeling alright about it. There have been moments where I've been so tempted and really had to work myself out of it, particularly in clubs. I never thought I'd say it, but I can't wait for the (partial) smoking ban to come in here in January! It really does make your clothes smell, etc etc

Tonight, I'm off to celebrate my first Thanksgiving round at an American friend's flat. It feels like a trial run for Christmas (although in this case a little more eccentric - fake mustaches and spandex have been encouraged, and the turkey is going to be made out of tofu).

Hitting the Bars, the Metro and some other stuff...

Finding a good bar in Madrid isn't hard because there aren't any, its more a case of finding them in the sea of other bars in any given area of the city. Admittedly, you'll find it easier in certain areas, Malasana for example definately has more than its fair share, but even there there's a lot of pretty average and downright crap drinking holes on offer too and it takes a fair bit of wondering back streets to find a gem. So with this in mind, and having some experience in these matters after designing and managing a bar in Manchester, I thought I'd start writing bar reviews on here too. (Although maybe this would make a good sister blog - My Madrileno Hangovers?). The problem is, I can't remember what half of them are called so it'll have to be an ongoing project, but heres the first batch.

Imperfecto, off Calle Huertas, Sol
This bright and colourful bar is definately from the Quirky school of bar design. Covered in random bits and bobs, its certainly interesting to look at, and has some interesting seating (although in some cases, for interesting, read uncomfortable. Not too busy in the week but there's usually at least one group of noisy locals in the back to give it a bit of atmosphere.

El Matador, Sol
El Matador is one of those Spanish cavern-like bars where the yellowy-brown colour of the walls matches that of the legs of Jamon hanging behind the bar. El Matador has taken very typical format and given it an edge of cool with a Matador skull and crossbones logo and lifesize Matador manaquin hanging off the wall, which means the tiny bars usually pretty jammed. Not too pricey, plus your canas come complete with sweaty chorizo and cheese tapas. Mmm!

Pandora's Liberia, West La Latina
On the bluff just south of the Cathedral, the potential view from this cafe/bar is somewhat blocked after dark by the trees and feral teenagers in the park opposite but inside its got a dark old-world feel, with a 'library' (well, bookshelf, don't flatter yourself Pandora) of mostly Spanish books at one end. Despite the fairly snooty staff, its a nice place to settle in for an evening... as long as you keep an eye on the tab! Tapas here means a curious but original collection of nuts, jelly tots and slices of melon. Mmm?

I've spent this week mostly catching up with friends and family on Skype - surely an expats best friend - and doing a fair bit of going out, including to watch Spain get thrashed 4 - 0 by Portugal. Interesting to see the reaction of Spaniards to this. In England, it would be a continual stream of shouted abuse, grumbling and opinion, whereas here most people just turned away and pretended it wasn't happening. I suppose when you've just won the World Cup you've got less to prove.


Other interesting/worrying things I've learnt this week:
- Men flashing women (mainly on public transport and in parks), as happened to a friend of mine on her way to work at 8am last week, is so common that they're known as hombres verdes (green men - as in mouldy).
- There is no word for strap in Spanish.
- It is near-impossible to find anywhere with the combination of wifi, a seat, and a plug socket in central Madrid. I've started using the wifimas thing that broadcasts from kiosks around the city. Tip - when signing up for anything on the internet in Spain, United Kingdom is Reino Unido. Took me a while, that one.
- Spanish music videos are almost as bad as Spanish pop music. Almost.
- Saying 'Buenas' is like saying 'Good day', but calling someone 'Buena' is saying they are good enough to eat. Watch your pronunciation.

I've had an idea about doing some kind of street theatre on the Metro. I got the idea after seeing a guy get on, playing guitar for a bit (which happens all the time), only for his friend, who no-one had noticed to burst out rapping halfway through and go up and down the carriage making everyone laugh (I had no idea what he was saying). Got me thinking about various performance stuff you could do -  not for money but just for an entertaining afternoon, and to make a few people days. So far I've only had a couple of ideas but got a few people making interested noises about it.

Things I (Dis)like about Madrid 2

Like:
The view from the Basillica de San Francisco
A night finishes at 6am
Random musicians and acts on the Metro
Tinto verrano

Dislike:
No cheddar. Anywhere.
Lack of customer service
The prevalence of the smell of dog shit
Spanish pop music. Eugh.

Just getting it out of my system.

Hitching to Barcelona, Quitting and Wrapping Things Up

Time for a catch up, coming in three parts. As someone pointed out to me, not having internet was one of the least important and least interesting reasons that I haven't posted all week – its everything else thats been stopping me rather than a lack of connection. But today I have nothing better to do than sit at my laptop outside a cafe (its still just about warm enough to do that) and work through my tinto verrano hangover (essentially wine and lemonade, very cheap and very available) by telling you, good reader, whats been going on over here in Spain. <this was written on Saturday>

Hitching to Barcelona

After a false start on the Friday, I set off early to hitchike from Madrid to Barcelona early last Saturday to meet my friend Simon who lives there and some other old housemates coming over for the weekend. Instead of going back to the place I'd tried the day before, I got the train right out to Guadalajara, quite a way out, and then a bus to the tiny village of Taracena next to the E-90 motorway. Unfortunatly this took rather longer than I'd planned and I was stuck waiting for a bus for half an hour in very autumnal looking Guadalajara. Autumn feels really weird in Spain. The trees are losing leaves, and you can feel in the air somehow that its that time of year, but the suns out and its actually quite warm. I find it quite unsettling!



Anyway, I finally got to the little Repsol petrol station that hitchwiki had recommended and set about chatting to people at the pumps with my 'Hacia Barcelona' sign complete with little Union Jack in the corner. People think its less weird that you're hitching in Spain if you're foreign, it gives you a non threatening reason to be doing something so odd. I've hitched in Spain before, on my way to Morocco on a sponsored hitch and found it fairly easy but it isn't really the done thing here (its much easier in Britain) and people do think your crazy, so to begin with I got a lot of shaking of heads and excuses about living locally but then a car pulled up, the driver got out, and I caught a strong whiff of cannabis and thought, here we go. Sure enough the woman told me to hop in, she wasn't going far, but it was a start. An unexpected side effect of my journey was discovering quite how much Spanish I knew. When your thrown into a situation like getting a lift, where the person doesn't speak any English, its amazing the things you come out with! I picked up a few new words with every lift I got as well, and got plenty of tips on pronunciation. I got dropped off at a bigger service station about 50k down with a parting 'Suerte!' (good luck!) and straight away realised that now there was no turning back, I was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, with no services on the other side of the road, and if I didn't get a lift, I was sleeping here. But after taking and then ignoring some advice on where to stand from the petrol pump guys, I got a lift with a lovely English speaking couple. The (heavily pregnant) woman was very chatty and I spotted her German accent straight away. It turns out she'd come to Spain to learn Spanish for 3 months and ended up staying for 8 years, meeting her husband and starting a life here. Made me wonder how easy it'll be to leave after living here a year...

If I thought I was in the middle of nowhere before, now I really was. The servicio they dropped me at in the beautiful red/orange mountains between Madrid and Zaragosa, with little castles perched on steep atolls and dramatic drops into vast valleys, looked very remote indeed. But no sooner had I sat down with a sandwich after a confusing chat to the service station guy about whether or not I was on my way to see El Papa (the Pope, who was in Barcelona on Sunday), when a guy wondered over and offered me a lift to just outside Zaragosa. It was now about 3pm and I was getting a little nervous about all the short lifts and getting another once it got dark but the chances of me getting a lift direct from this spot was pretty slim. He turned out to be a forest firefighter on his way to run a marathon with his wife in Zaragosa (it does tend to be interesting types who pick you up in Spain) and we chatted away in halting Spanglish whilst driving through more incredible scenery. Its basically downhill all the way from Madrid, Europes highest capital city, to Barcelona on the coast, and the land is continually dropping away from mountains onto vast plains that then drop off again, and all a fantastic reddy orange that looks amazing in the evening sun. There's a huge windfarm just above Zaragosa which is pretty impressive too. So I was feeling pretty good about how things were going when he dropped me off at yet another Repsol garage just outside of Zaragosa, with the sun just setting behind the hills. And thats when things started to go a bit wrong.

With it being November, darkness falls very quickly and the temperature drops dramatically when the sun goes down, and an hour later I was still there, shivering and trying not to scare drivers at the pumps. Every single one claimed to be going to Zaragosa and not past it. I really wanted to get a lift direct to Barcelona, knowing that it would be very difficult to get another, but after a while I was just trying to get out of that place. Having been there now for 3 hours, I was just trying to get into Zaragosa but by now there were hardly even any cars pulling in. You know things aren't going well when you find yourself looking up 'anywhere' and 'desperate' in your English-Spanish dictionary. At 10.30, four and a half hours after getting dropped off, I admitted defeat and traipsed over to a nearby motel that I'd scoped out earlier.

The next morning, I tried the same place for half an hour before deciding the damn place was cursed and heading down the motorway in heavy wind to see if there was another sliproad to try. There wasn't. My face stinging from the wind and cold, I headed back to the garage wondering if I'd have to go to Zaragosa and get a train. The first woman I asked looked at me like I was an alien, and then unexpectedly, after talking to her husband, beckoned me over. I don't think I've ever been so glad of a lift!

She turned out to be an opera singer, and spent a good part of the way practicing her English by explaining what the songs on the stereo meant (“Hee love herr, hee buy herr theeng, but she no love heem!”). They dropped me off at a servicio with Monserrat (“the heart of Catalonia”) looming nearby and trucks full of pigs, sheep and cattle headed for Barcelona slaughter houses giving off a powerful smell. A couple more short lifts (an old couple and a young guy on his way to a poker tournament – “suerte!”) and I was in Barcelona! It had taken 2 days and 6 lifts but I'd do it again, its certainly an adventure, you meet all kinds of people and get a good workout of your Spanish.

I met the guys at the palace on top of a hill with a great view over Barcelona, a good place to start, and we headed off for some patas bravas, which are a much bigger deal in Barcelona than Madrid. The next day we took a bike tour of the city with a very random tour guide, whose English drifted between heavily accented and incomprehensible and descriptions ranged from interesting to surreal to simply baffling. I'm not that big on churches but the most impressive thing was definitely Gaudi's cathedral, the Sagrada Familia, still being built about 90 years after it was started. The old side looks incredible, like the stones melting and dripping off and whole casts of characters, fruit baskets on the top and lizards crawling down the sides, while the other side has the whole story of the crucifiction embedded in it. Barcelona feels like a different country to Madrid. Spain's, a big country and it looks and feels very different from the centre, the culture, the architecture, the plants, the air. Also, everyone speaks Catalan, which for someone just getting their head around Spanish is a nightmare! All in all, I have to say, I don't regret moving to Madrid rather than Barcalona which I was worried I might. It's very pretty and lively and a great place to go on holiday but Madrid's just more of a fully functioning major city. The coach journey home wasn't nearly as interesting as the trip there, but I did manage to get international editions of the Independent and Guardian to keep me busy for the 8 hours.

Matt Peel this is your personal mention

Quitting Smoking

I've been planning on quitting for a while now, and in Barcelona I decided that I shouldn't put it off any longer. So I had my last cigarette before my classes on Thursday and gave the rest of the packet to a student. I could probably write 10 pages on quitting smoking but I'll try to keep it brief. I've quit twice before, once for 11 months and once for 4, both times going cold turkey after reading The Easyway to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr, which is actually a really effective method. But I just couldn't face reading it a third bloody time and surely I know the score by now anyway. Cold turkey is the only way in my opinion (read the book for reasons), and its 20 a day or nothing for me. Also, I'd just been having a conversation with Mike, who passed through again this week on his way to fly to Mexico after his boat trip didn't work out, about my belief in free will and choice, and realised afterwards that if I really believed that then I should be able to quit, so its now a point of principle as well!

Lee and Luke, smoking whilst drinking

Its a weird thing, quitting smoking. It should be easy. All you have to do is not do something, but of course its actually incredibly difficult. And yesterday I was struggling quite a bit and felt like a social retard. I felt pretty tense and just couldn't focus on what people were actually saying to me. I do find though, that when you're really feeling like one, it helps immensely just to say to someone “I really want a cigarette”. We had people over round ours last night (hence the tinto verrano hangover) with a good deal of fags being smoked, but I wasn't as tempted as I expected actually. I think I've accepted the fact that I'm going to do it now, which is more than can be said for Lee and Luke who are supposedly quitting too (“I'm allowed when I'm drinking”). It is amazing though how much you realise your life revolves around smoking. I include cigarettes just subconsciously planning what I'm doing – go to shop, smoke cigarette, get on metro – or I buy a drink mainly to accompany a cigarette, and that takes a while to stop doing. I woke up really angry this morning because I'd dreamt I'd smoked a packet of Marlboro reds (a 10 pack, it was a very precise dream) and was furious with myself. It took a good 10 minutes to realise it was a dream, and I was much happier (but still hungover) after, and I think its good that that was my response! I'll keep you updated anyway.

Tying Things Up

I felt like I had good reason to celebrate last night because I just opened a bank account and paid my Social Security which marks a bit of a milestone for me – I've now done all the 'set up' stuff to live and work in Spain. No more running around to tax offices and sorting details for work, or manically looking round flats, I feel like I can relax a little. Flat, job, NIE number, social security, bank account, accomodation paperwork, phone, internet (sort of). It's all time consuming, expensive and a bit of an ordeal for the non-Spanish speaker. Opening a bank account was pretty easy actually, particularly with an English speaking bank person (cashier? banker?), although apparently la Caixa, who I'm with, isn't actually a bank... I tried to get the bank person to explain this but all I could get out of her was “its not a bank, its a caixa, you don't have them in England”. Eh? It gives you a card and so on though so I don't really care.

So its been a bit of a ride but now I'm ready, I can relax, and maybe start Spanish classes. It's definitely been worth it!

Internet Down

Amoungst the trials and tribulations involved in moving to a new city in a foreign country is the matter of getting internet sorted for your new flat. We thought we were taking a crafty step around this problem when we bought a mobile internet dongle to share between the 3 of us. However, it turns out its not the most reliable of devices, to put it mildly, it´s quite expensive and has a limited download capability which means it can´t be used after your flatmate came home steaming drunk one night and decided to stream Leeds United clips for an hour...

So its not exactly a bloggers dream at the moment. Plus I´ve been locked out about 4 more times since the last post although I finally have keys now. So the story of my two day hitchhike to Barcalona and time there will have to wait til the weekend when I find somewhere with wifi (pronounced "whiffy" here, amusingly) and can write properly, it would take me about 6 hours on this keyboard.

Locked Out

For the third day running now, I´m locked out of my flat. At the moment we only have one set of keys between three of us which is proving pretty problematic! So I´ve wondered up to an internet cafe in La Latina (the bar I wanted to check out wasn´t open yet - Madrid time again) and gained a fresh perspective on where things are by coming a slightly different way. Its wierd how your first impressions of a place are so hard to shake. I´d decided in my head where certain places were in relation to others but got it a bit wrong because of subtly curving streets and so on but as I walk around more its all becoming a bit clearer.

I´ve spent the day unsucessfully trying to hitchhike to Barcelona to see some of my old housemates from Uni. I´d decided to hitch it after having a bit of a worry about money, and realised I´d not worry about the weekend as much if I didn´t spend 50 Euro on a coach (also after the journey to Madrid I wasn´t that keen on getting on another coach for 8 hours). But a couple of drinks last night turned into a couple more and then a couple more than that, and I ended up only setting off at about 1pm. Its a 6 hour drive to Barcelona and I didn´t want to get a lift after about 3.30 in case I ended up getting stuck in the middle of nowhere come nightfall, and by the time I´d got myself into a good position to get picked up, it was too late really. So I´m setting off early tomorrow to try again, now knowing exactly where to go, although I´m a bit worried I´ve lost my hitching mojo - thats the second time in a row (and ever) that I´ve not managed to get a lift (the other one was London to Paris). I got a good tip on where to go to get out of Madrid from Hitch Wiki (http://hitchwiki.org/), which has some good advice on hitching out of cities which is notoriously difficult. No doubt I´ll have some interesting stories for you after tomorrow though, and some thoughts on Barcelona after the weekend.

Spanish Bureaucracy

I´d heard rumours of the immense bureaucracy involved in getting anything done in Spain but hadn´t really given it much credence. People here don´t seem to pay much attention to rules when they think they´re stupid or unnecessary. For example the ´Perros No´ signs in the park up the hill from our flat is ignored so widely and blatantly that someone has graffitied over one of them so it now just reads ´Perros´.

However, going to get my NIE, Social Security and Autonomo (self employed) status sorted was another story. The forms you have to fill in are bad enough, although comparable to British ones, but its the sheer number of people you have to go and see, and get bounced back and forth between in various buildings that´s really impressive/depressing. The Social Security office is an absolute nightmare if you don´t speak Spanish (even if you´ve got a bit, the language on the forms is pretty incomprehensible) and if it wasn´t for a nice woman who took pity on my English ass I´d probably be back there today! Its more or less done now though, next stop on the organisation list: getting a bank account.

Another cultural anomaly I spotted yesterday - book vending machines. When you get the Metro you can near guarantee they´ll be someone reading a book on there, usually quite a few and certainly more than you´d see in England. I thought the vending machine was quite a, ahem, novel idea though, they´ve got the synopses printed on the side of the machine.

The clocks went back here the other day (as I imagine they did in England), and you really notice the difference when its actually sunny most of the time and you can see the sun setting. I´ve been getting some great autumnal Madrid pictures out of it though.







Things I (Dis)Like About Madrid 1

I want to build the ultimate pro and con list about Madrid compared with England, partly as a guide and partly just so I can have a bit of a moan, so I'll add things as and when they occur to me and compile them all at the end of the year, but heres a starter

Like: that people spend a good part of their lives standing or sitting on the street
Dislike: that they simply will not get out of your way when your trying to get past
Like: chocolate con churros
Dislike: that half-decent coffee is exceedingly hard to come by

We went out for Halloween last night, with our hitchiking guests (on a Madrid timescale: leaving the house at 1am) and wondered up to Sol dressed as burgulars, doing comically sneaky walks and hiding behind lamposts when people walked past. Fancy dress was thoroughly on show, ranging from the extremely detailed to the downright bizarre! After a few drinks at a mainly English bar, we ventured into a tile-fronted bar pumping music out that turned out to be the most Spanish place I've been in yet, with full on Flamenco music, complete with clapping and stamping on the dancefloor and pictures of bullfighters covering the walls. Great fun when you get into it!

The Roof Terrace, The Market and The Squat

I'm feeling much more like I actually live in Madrid now. I've settled into the apartment, bought some essentials (a stereo was first on my list), and started my job proper which has gone pretty well. I'm basically teaching the whole of a small financial services company out in a little very well kept suburb in north east Madrid. Its very like the training, but much less intense, with 4 hours of classes Tuesday to Thursday afternoons. I think they all think I'm a bit crazy (my teaching style is very animated) but they seem to be enjoying it. I find myself being absolutely terrified before I start an afternoons lessons, then when they start I go into teacher mode and it goes by in a flash and I walk out thinking that it was a breeze, only to be terrified all over again the next day!

We also realised that we've got access to our appartment building's roof terrace, from which you can see the Palacio Real, the Cathedral, the mountains and the Basillica de San Francisco which is just up a set of stairs behind our building where the local tramps go to sleep unhassled. The terrace is probably the best thing about the apartment, its a great place to have a beer and watch the sunset after work! We had a few people round last night for a mini flat warming, including two friends from Manchester who are hitching down to Lisbon to get jobs on a boat headed for South America.

The Palacio Real and Cathedral from our roof

Mountains in the distance

We all headed out today to see the famous and spralling El Rastro market, led by Melissa who's been in Madrid for a couple of years and knows her way around. First stop was for 'tostas', open sandwiches with various toppings - including a Madrid speciality only for the brave: baby eels - and a hangover fighting sangria from a bustling little place that serves nothing else. Then off into the market, which fills the streets and stretches almost halfway across old Madrid, selling everything from antiques to clothes to pornographic pocket watches. It's absolutely crammed full of people and you have to just flow along taking it all in. We stopped off in near Calle Mayor for chocolate con churros, another Madrid speciality which I still hadn't tried, fried pastry tubes dunked in hot chocolate so thick you feel you might be in danger of suffocation.

Inside the cigarette factory

After a quick stop off at 100 Montaditos, we went down to Lavapies to a massive old cigarette factory which has been squatted and taken over as a kind of huge social centre with a free shop, a bar, gardens growing veg and free classes in everything from Peruvian dancing to Russian (as well as one mysteriously listed as 'Gimp/Blender'). I have no idea how they've managed to make it work but it looks absolutely incredible! A great atmosphere, with people playing music together in the bar and generally hanging out. I want to start doing Spanish classes their and might offer to put on some English classes given my new skill set. I certainly want to find out how it works, I know people who have been trying to start a social centre in Manchester but have hit a bit of a brick wall, but if they came and saw this I guarantee they'd be right back on it. Anyway, I'll write more about this as and when I find out more.

I nearly forgot, I was on the radio on Friday along with my fellow training graduates. The company has radio and TV channels broadcasting to the whole of Spain and we got to be the guests on a show hosted by the guy in the videos they sent us before our interviews, a bit of a celebrity to us (sad, I know). So we chatted away for an hour, and only when it finished did he tell us it had about 400,000 listeners! Seems like a good way to get some experience doing that kind of thing though, and I think I might pitch a show if I can come up with a decent idea.

I don't like rolling all this into one big post so I'm going to try and write something here everyday or at least other day from now on, seeing as I'm only working 12 hours a week for now. Too much happens everyday to cover a whole week in a post!

A Scam and an Apartment

Unexpectedly, we have an apartment!

We went to look at a place with Luke's (new flatmate) girlfriend's mum who works in the Senate and she managed to convince the landlord to let us move in today, so we went for it, despite it being a bit of a grandma flat. Old mahogany panelled cabinet thing all down one wall, chandellier things on the ceiling and all of it. I reckon we can make it wicked though, I've got a couple of ideas to supe it up a treat. Its just south of La Latina, near Puerta del Toledo, the old city gate to Toledo, just outside old Madrid. We'd been manically looking for a place since Friday but most of the places we looked at wanted 3 months up front - 1st months rent, 1 month as deposit and 1 month in agency fees - and we just couldn't afford it. Then we found what seemed like too good a deal to be true on the internet, 300 Euros a month, great looking flat, being rented by a guy who had to move to London urgently and wanted to get the money quick. And then he started talking about transferring money through Western Union... hmmm. Soon enough we found another 300 Euro a month flat from a guy who had to move to London urgently and needed the money quick... yeah, massive scam. But when your desperate for a flat in a country where you don't know the score, I can see how a lot of people must fall for it, so potential ex-pats beware!

In the end though, we've decided to get this place, for 700 a month between 3, for a month or two while we find somewhere better. I start work tomorrow, and the thought of getting up in that hostel again was just not really an option! Its not bad though, and only a couple of minutes walk from La Latina which I look forward to exploring more thoroughly. We only had to pay 2 months up front as well, apparently pretty much all the flats advertised on the internet are through agencies that charge fees but ones with the day-glo orange 'aquilar' signs that you see in the street everywhere are just private lets so no fees.

I've had to run around getting my NIE number today so I can work, and I've got more to do tomorrow, going to the Hacienda (the equivalent of a City Council Centre Point, not a Manchester nightclub) to properly register as self-employed. If you didn't have a company sorting it out for you, I don't know how you'd get one, apparently it takes months. After that, I'm off to this company to teach some execs. Had two weeks practicing and got my lessons planned and so on so should be alright but I'm still a bit nervous.

I had a surprising moment in one of my practice classes which I forgot to mention actually. Doing a simple question and answer exercise, one student mentioned the new Health Minister. Before I knew it, I was facilitating a discussion (in English, advanced class) about the politics of the Spanish Health Department! Now, I follow British politics pretty closely, but I don't think I could even tell you who our Health Minister is, let alone get worked up about them! Subsequent conversations have confirmed that most people in Spain are incredibly clued up about politics and keep a very close eye on (apparently all of) their politicians. Since then we got told very clearly, in class: no politics, no football and no relationships. Apparently there have been fights over each...

Employment (and The House of Tiny Sandwiches)

Right well, I've got some catching up to do!

Firstly, I'm through the training course and starting teaching at a company on Tuesday! Its probably been the most intense two weeks of work I've ever done, including dissertations and bar openings, and where you're constantly being assessed and fear the chop at every turn. Although, saying that, the last week has actually been pretty fun, with us cracking up almost histerically (lack of sleep will do this to you) at regular intervals. Hopefully its going to start paying off soon too, although we only get our first full pay check in December.

Gran Via on the way to training in the morning

So for the past two weeks my life has consisted of getting up at 7.30, creeping around the hostel (still in the 12-person shared dorm), leaving in the morning cold before the sun is over the buildings but with beautiful clear blue skies, getting the Metro up to near the Bernabeu stadium, having 4 hours training in the morning, frantically adjusting lesson plans to fit the training through lunch, teaching 4 hours of classes in the afternoons, maybe if I was lucky going for a beer and tiny sandwich (more on this later) after work after the sun has gone back down behind the buildings, cooking dinner, and then doing around another 4 hours homework before getting to bed somewhere between midnight and 1am. In fact, most days, I didn't see the sun at all, despite there not being a cloud in the sky, as the entrance to the office was shaded by the enormous buildings. So today I've spent a day basking in the sun, reading a book and recovering from last night in a muraled square at the top of La Latina where I'm writing this from now.

I think I could probably do the morning commute through the Metro to the offices from my hostel blindfolded by now, although its absolutely packed between 8.30 and 9.30. I've become quite a fan of the Madrid Metro. Its feels a lot cleaner than the London Underground and more logical than Paris' labyrinth of tunnels. For some reason I've also found it suits an Ipod soundtrack of soul or reggae perfectly...

Anyway, both those who made it through training and those that didn't (and are still here) went out to celebrate last night (one who didn't make it has already got another English teaching job – there seems to be enormous demand in Spain at the moment), starting at a branch of La Cerveceria 100 Montaditos, or as we have taken to roughly translating it The House of 100 Tiny Sandwiches, which has become a bit of a habit. Basically, it's 2 Euros for a pint(ish) of beer and a montadito, or tiny sandwich, which given our tight budgets obviously has its attractions. They've basically taken the concept of tapas and put it in a breadroll, clearly a sound business plan as they've got branches all over Madrid and they're always packed in the early evening. The rest of the details of the night are a little hazy but included, a very small cocktail bar near Sol, a pretty cheesy club near Callao, and a very cool and cellar club with a really impressive lighting set up in the more respectable end Chueca, all with a bit of bottelon, or street drinking, in between.

The search for an apartment is now properly on. We looked round one yesterday in a great location but it was 1100 Euros a month (between 3) and they wanted 3 months up front which we just can't afford. One things for sure, if your looking to move to a new city, particularly if your not starting a job straight away, you need to have a good lump of cash available to cover all the set up and living costs. I opened a new bank account with Santander before I came, naively thinking that, as a Spanish bank it'd work as a Spanish bank account, which it doesn't, but they did give me an extra overdraft to play with which is (hopefully) going to see me through til the first paycheck. Luckily, one of the guys I'm looking for a flat with speaks pretty good Spanish, otherwise things would be a whole lot harder, although some of the estate agents do seem to have English speaking staff to show you round.

A good spot to write a blog from

I should be posting on this more regularly now I've got a bit more time, and I'll be sorting out the pictures tomorrow!

Slack

I've gone a bit quiet on this, simply because my training course is keeping me so busy (and I was so hungover on Saturday). I'm still on it though, which is good, although we've lost 3 of our number so far...

Seen a flat that we quite fancy near Alonso Martinez, looking round it this week, living out of a hostel can only be done for so long!

Normal service will be resumed when I don't have hours of homework every night.

Happy All Saints Day

So it turns out my second day of my intensive training course is in fact a public holiday, although no one seems quite sure what its for but its known, rather vaguely, as All Saints Day. Apparently there are absolutely loads of public holidays in Spain – I looked at a calendar, they're often more than once a month! From what I've seen, this seems to reflect the Spanish work ethic in general. Shops close at night (no 24 Tescos around) and most things apart from cafe and restaurants close on Sunday, even though there's still loads of people who would use them. There always seem to be more staff than is really necessary as well. It's an attitude much less orientated to making money than in the UK where your expected to work long and unsocialble hours in a lot of jobs. I, for one, love it, its more a work to live than live to work and probably leads to a much better quality of life.

The first day of the training was actually easier than I had expected. I thought we were being thrown straight into classes that afternoon, but we only had a morning session teaching us the method and style they use. So today I'm doing the homework (which is pretty long) and preparing for lessons tomorrow afternoon. They don't tell you what level the student your going to be teaching is so you've got to judge and adapt as you go along. It sounds quite exciting to me really! It turns out at 24 I'm the grandad of the group of trainees, most of them are 22 or 23, mostly in the same position as me although a couple have taught before. With it being a holiday today, we had the opportunity to go out last night and get to know each other a bit which was great and they seem like a good bunch. I think the less said about last night the better to be honest but we somehow decided to go out in Chueca, the gay district, which makes Canal Street look like an Essex stag do, and ended up seeing a little more of it than expected. About 8 inches more I'd say.

The entrance to Reina Sofia isn't quite Tate Modern but its pretty cool

For some slightly more cultural entertainment, I'd gone to the Reina Sofia museum on Saturday (its free after 2pm), which is the more modern of the main art museums in Madrid, with Picasso's Guernica being the main attraction. They also have a load of his preliminary sketches for it, intresting to see it developing. There's lots of old Spanish Civil War propaganda posters and photos too. My knowledge of the civil war pretty much goes as far as reading Homage To Catalonia by George Orwell so I'm curious to find out more after seeing those. It's easy to forget that Spain was a dictatorship until as recently as 1978. The thing I was most interested in seeing there, however, was their collection of Miro paintings, some of which my parents had around the house when I was little and apparently would hold me in front of to stop me crying. Disappointingly though, there were fewer than the guide book had made it sound, and they felt like a bit of a sideshow to Guernica which people were crowding into the next room to see. There is, however, a huge Miro on the building opposite my training offices which is pretty cool.

On with 'lesson planning' for tomorrow, I think they just throw you in at the deep end and see how you do to start with so its not too nerve racking but I'd rather not sound like a complete idiot!

Iberian Jobseeking

The hostel owner appears to have gone away for a couple of days, which is probably just as well as he'd have been distraught yesterday – it absolutely tipped it down! Rivers of water running down the streets. Apparently it only rains that hard once a year, and everyone looked very shell-shocked by the whole thing, particularly not being able to sit on the street at cafes. Jorge's disappearance also means that there's another guy on the hostel desk, with a very relaxed attitude to staying up drinking loudly in the kitchen til 5am...

Heavy rain in Sol

Anyway, the main thrust of this post is supposed to be about how I went about getting a job before I set off, for anyone wanting to do the same thing in Spain or probably most of Europe. The thing is, I can't exactly remember how I got it! I put a lot of time into first researching generally getting a job in Spain and then – having the obvious essential thing in most jobs would be speaking Spanish – searching 'English speaking jobs in Spain/Barcelona/Madrid' as well as bombarding every English or Irish bar I could find the email address for, regaling them with tales of my hardwork and enthusiasm for pulling pints and how I was 'ready to jump on a train tomorrow'. The latter turned out to be a bit of a dead end. I only got one reply from what must've been about 30 emails and when they realised I wasn't already in Barcelona, they said sorry but we need someone right away. In hindsight, it wouldn't have been as easy as just turning up – you need a NIE number before you can work in Spain and in big cities that takes about 2 weeks (you need an address in Spain as well so it would be difficult to get before you set off).

Searching for English speaking jobs inevitably involved wading through a lot of guff on Google but there were some good leads in it. Unfortunately this is where my bad memory comes into play - I also searched Gumtree and some other jobs sites and can't remember exactly where or how I found the Vaughan Systems teaching job but it was definitely the best one I'd found and I didn't hestitate to send off my CV (slightly altered from the bar version) and give it a go. I then had to go to London for an interview, feeling a bit stupid in my suit, which was fairly straight forward. It seems they're really just looking for enthusiastic and talkative people with decent English. The drawback, however, is that I haven't definitely got the job yet – the two week training is an ongoing assessment and only an average of 50% make it through, so I am out here on quite a limb as well as having invested a fair bit of cash into getting to London for the interview, buying some 'business casual' attire and time into learning all this grammar, and if I don't get through that'll all largely be in vain.

On my searches I'd also seen a lot of au pair jobs, but they were all looking for women so I stopped looking at them after a while, but just before I left, a friend sent me a link to an agency looking for both men and women (MCS) and they got back to me straight away, offering a family to go and stay with while being an 'English older brother' to their three sons. It sounded quite fun really, and I was sad to turn it down but it only paid 80 Euro's a week living allowance and they lived a little bit out from the centre. Still, I told the agency about my situation and said I'd get back to them if this falls through so at least I have a plan B. I actually met an American girl yesterday working as an au pair and she said it was quite good but at the same time there wasn't much opportunity to meet people or have your own space.

It can be quite a lonely experience, moving to a new city where you don't know anyone and especially where you don't speak the language but I've realised over the past couple of days the only way around this is just to launch yourself into it. Anyone speaking English, holding a dictionary or a guidebook is now your friend, and you can't be shy with what little Spanish you have – you just have to go for it and look like a bit of a fool talking in English if necessary, expressions and gestures can pretty much get most things across. I got chatting to a group of locals in a bar the other night and, although the guy I spent most of the time talking to didn't speak any English, I definitely understood that he was trying to get me to sleep with his sister-in-law!

Anyway, today's the end of my wow-isn't-Madrid-so-cool four day holiday and now its onto the actual everyday of living and working here. I'll let you know how it goes.

Wow.

Wow, wow, wow. I've been wandering round various places for the past couple of days, each one better than the last! Just when you think you've seen the main bits or are getting the feel for the place, you go to another neighbourhood and its completely different. The main bit of the city isn't very big, and large parts of it are pedestrianised (or the cars have simply given up) so you can stroll, largely uninterupted, across it in about 20 minutes. I don't have time to go into all of the places I've explored now so I'll save neat and beautiful Huertas, the winding streets of La Latina, the grand Palace Real, its guards with very odd hats and listening to the saxophone drift over the lake with the lions in La Retiro for later. 

Relaxing at Retiro

I think I've fallen in love with Malasaña, the bohemian mishmash of streets around the Plaza Dos De Mayo, north of Gran Via. The narrow streets are full of bars, cafes, clothes shops, history, grafitti and, wierdly, small dogs - old people with small dogs, young people with small dogs, punks with small dogs, small dogs on their own... they're bloody everywhere! But I digress. Malasaña, named after a seamstress executed by the French after being found with a pair of scissors during an uprising, is definitely somewhere I'd want to live. The bars are full, the streets are busy, the atmosphere's great and the people are a diverse bunch. This is going to sound very sad but I spent last night doing a sort of grammar bar crawl around there, nipping from bar to bar, whipping out my grammar books in each one and soaking up the atmosphere. It's great to <parents look away now> be able to smoke in bars again! Pretty much everyone seems to smoke, adding to the bohemian atmosphere of Malasaña in particular, and Madrid in general. There's a real street culture here, with bars and restaurants busy at all times of the day. Madrid seems to some extent to have resisted some of the uniformity of globalisation as well. There's the odd Starbucks and McDonalds here and there but far, far more independent little coffee shops, tapas bars and eateries.

A healthy sense of humour in evidence in Malasaña

I'm still getting used to the pace of life here – I've noticed that there's a distinct Madrid gait that makes people appear to be walking at normal speed when they are actually walking very slowly. As someone who walks quite quickly, this has led to me either nearly walking into people or walking in slow motion behind them looking a bit foolish! Also, although its officially on Central European Time, Madrid actually operates at about GMT+4. Everything is later: opening times, lunch, dinner, drinks, clubs, closing.

I got myself a Spanish phone yesterday - quite a linguistic test for me and the man in the Orange shop. I'd managed to muster “Yo tengo un telephone Ingles, pero yo quiero usar en España”, from my pocket dictionary, which turned out to be a completely useless phrase once we'd figured out the phone was sim-blocked. Anyway, we bundled through with the help of a translation website and I learnt a bit of Spanish along the way. I can just about manage “Una cervesa, por favor” without eliciting a “Huh?” from the barman now. I met up with some fellow Ingles earlier, on a trip to the notary to get my NIE number (national insurance number) who are doing the same training I'm starting on Monday and was relieved to find none of them spoke Spanish either! I'm a bit worried that I might just end up speaking English the whole time if I'm not careful though so I'm going to set myself the challenge right here, right now, of writing the last entry of this blog before I leave entirely in Spanish. (A double-edged challenge – I have to keep writing this til I leave as well).

Having spent two days here, it feels like such a fantastically different, lively and vibrant place I've pretty much decided that I'm going to stay here for the best part of a year whether I get this job or not!

Arriving

After writing the last post (written in a hurry from Manchester by the way, hence how I could have not yet left but also forgotten underwear), I calculated that, based on previous form, I manage to catch pre-booked transportation about 70% of the time, and that given that there were in total four changes to make (including getting up at 5am in London) I had very little chance of actually making it all the way to Madrid without some problem. But surprisingly, it did all go to plan.

A word about Eurolines buses: They will leave from the place they say, at the time they say, but past that, while travelling on them everything else seems completely incomprehensible. What is the driver saying? How long are we staying here for? Why have we taken a diversion through this tiny French village? What on earth was that woman thinking when she brought her newborn baby on a 15 hour coach journey? Well, I'm having a moan now, but to be honest I did quite enjoy it, even despite having to sit through a dubbed version of The Transporter 3 in very loud Spanish (it didn't really detract from the plot that much, especially once you've grasped the meaning of the word 'mierda' which makes up a good part of the script, along with <Statham punches man/woman/wall/car/himself>). I've always liked long journeys, I think it comes from my mum taking me on 15 hour plane journeys from when I was a newborn baby...

So I'm in Madrid, on the date I planned to be here a couple of weeks ago, feeling probably the most organized I've ever been. After a bit of a hectic journey through the metro system with my heavy bag and suitcase (there's a lot of stairs) and finding the hostel on Plaza Santa Domingo, I spent the early evening having a wander round Sol and La Latina and sitting in the sunshine in the big, open Plaza Mayor that apparently used to host all kinds of 'public entertainment', from bullfights to executions. The main entertainment for me tonight, however, was watching 'fat Spiderman' ply his trade. This essentially involves a rather portly man walking around the square in a cheap Spiderman outfit, comically inducing people to get their photo's taken with him for a small fee. He looked something like Dom Joly gone freelance, particularly when he rolled his mask up to his nose and sat down for a fag break next to some bemused teenagers. He was absolutely raking it in though. I estimated that while I was watching him, he must have been making upwards of 30 Euros an hour. Well, if this job falls through, there's always options I suppose.

Fat Spiderman doing his thing in Plaza Mayor

Anyway, my first impression is very much of a modern, living city where things are happening in every available space – every tiny alcove seems to have a taverna nestling in it - unlike, say, Paris where, although lovely, it can sometimes feel a bit like a historical relic where the modern day, almost apologetically, happens to be going on around it. This feels like a well lived in city made up as much of its people as its buildings, although maybe this is because most of them aren't that impressive (the buildings, not people). I realised before I arrived that I couldn't think of one landmark in Madrid, but thats not really what the place seems to be about. But hey, I've only been here half a day so I reserve the right to go back on all of this later!

Language is proving a bit of a barrier but I can feel myself already picking up words from overhearing conversations and having to find out how to say things. However, I'm in the odd position of coming to Spain and sitting here with an English Grammar textbook – you need it for this English teaching job because they teach English here like we learn French or Spanish at school, based on grammatical structure. I'd never even given the grammatical structure of English a thought before now, probably because its absolutely ridiculous – every rule has exceptions, and there's irregular bits all over the place. It's really like we just made it up as we went along, but I suppose that's what happens when you mash several languages together and let it evolve over time.

I'm off to go explore some other areas today, which is <gasp> cloudy. The hostel owner looked very glum about this this morning and told me “When it rains, we cry.” Good job people don't have that attitude in Manchester...

Ready? Set? Sort of.

I only decided to move to Spain a couple of weeks ago, in Paris actually, cheesily enough watching the sunset from the steps of Sacre Cour. Why move to London when you can move anywhere? I want to learn Spanish and want to move somewhere different, definately somewhere warmer, but not too far away. So, after a slight detour to Bestival, I sat down and started doing some research into moving to Spain.

I was going to need a job, money being a bit tight, so I thought I'd start there. First problem: I don't speak Spanish. A few searches for 'English speaking jobs in Spain' later and things weren't looking good, unemployment is currently around 40% in Spain and the essential thing most websites advised was being able to speak the language.

Undeterred, I set about finding email addresses for every English and Irish bar in Madrid and Barcelona (I hadn't made up my mind where exactly I was going at this point - wherever they would give me a job was my thinking). Eventually, after countless 'Enthusiastic UK barman seeks job' emails, I came across a couple of teaching jobs that didn't require any Spanish. I've never taught before but worth a try right? To cut a long story short, after an interview in London, I start training for Vaughan Systems in Madrid next Monday (more about this later).

Last minute travel plans ensued. Not wanting to fly (for environmental and luggage reasons), I tried to book a train which sounded amazing, like a hotel on rails: beds, a dining car, a bar, watching the sunrise over breakfast and all that. My advice: book it early! Last minute is near impossible, especially if your on a budget, so instead I'm getting on a Eurolines bus at 8am tomorrow morning for a gruelling 28 hour coach journey with no beds, no dining car, no bar, no sunrise and no breakfast.

Hostel booked for a couple of weeks during the training, I'm hoping to meet some people and find a flat before long. I've been thinking a good way to learn Spanish would be to move in with some non-English speaking Spaniards but on the other hand that might be a little too deep end. Anyway, I've got a couple of days to get orientated in this city I've never been to, before I start the (apparently very intense) training.

I have clothes, a passport, a laptop, a trumpet, and 2 pairs of boxers (I forgot the rest), wish me luck!