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!