The Journey Home

Having packed my two cases full to bursting, I had to lug them plus a big backpack across the metro system to Chamartin station where the Paris-bound tren hotel leaves from. Typical Spain, they waited until about 15 minutes before departure to display (and probably to choose) the platform it would be leaving from. I was a bit surprised when I got on to find I wasn't in a sleeper compartment but the (apparently only) carriage with reclining seats instead. I'm not quite sure how I managed that, maybe I was just assigned it when I booked. Anyway, there was plenty of room and the seats were comfortable enough. No power sockets though, disappointingly.

Off it chugged, north out of Madrid, leaving the four towers in the distance, through some beautiful mountain scenery in the evening sun, before emerging onto wide yellow plains that made for a pretty spectacular sunset. One thing was that it wasn't as smooth a ride as I'd expected. Walking down through the many, many carriages (about 8) to the buffet car, I had to hold onto the walls to keep my balance.

This turbulence didn't stop me from getting a pretty good nights sleep though. It was comparable to sleeping on an aeroplane I suppose, but with more room and more recline on the seats. I felt quite fresh when we were coming up through much greener France the next morning. No breakfast or anything by the way. I don't know if that's only for people in the sleepers but I saw no evidence of it.

The train arrived in Paris about half an hour late, turning the time pressure up a bit. I had about 40 mins to get from Austerlitz station to Gare du Nord in time for the 30 minute Eurostar check in. Unfortunatley, I'd forgotten that the Paris metro doesn't really do escalators and it was hard work heaving my suitcases up and down stair cases. I've only just got rid of the pain in my shoulders and blisters on my hands! I made it in plenty of time though, it only takes about 20 minutes if you are halfway decent at navigating your way through metro systems.

Boarding the Eurostar, (listening to a woman booming into a mobile "Yes, this is Mrs. Smith, I'm calling for Mrs. Johnson! Yes, Johnson!" in the Queens finest posh English accent- nearly home!) for a while, I thought I'd mistakenly booked myself onto first class. The Eurostar is seriously nice: big seats, power sockets, breakfast, but that's all just standard class. It was nice and everything but I couldn't help wishing it were a little less fancy and a little easier on the pocket. At £130, this part of the journey had cost more than the Madrid-Paris leg, and I don't really need Tropicana orange juice and ye olde English jam with my croissant. I'd rather sit on the floor and pay £30, but maybe that's just me. Maybe they should just have one paupers carriage where they pack you in?

Arrived in London at about 11am feeling pretty pleased to have made it with all cases etc in tact (I'm not good at catching trains on time) and after breezing through customs (they were on strike), I set off with my suitcases on our third capital city metro system in 24 hours. Luckily for my hands and shoulders, I wasn't going up to Sheffield (where my parents' house is) that day but just dropping the cases off at a friend's in Archway and then going straight to work at a festival (hence the delay in writing this).

All in all, I've got to say, it was quite a pleasant trip. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, but then again, not quite as romantic as I'd hoped either. I also realised, after taking Kate to the airport in Madrid, and having to do some comical last minute bag 'weight adjustment' ("I'll wear that and that, chuck these!"), it would have costr me a fortune to take all my stuff back by air. On Ryanair your checked luggage is limited at 15kg, and it's €20 for every additional kilogram. Mind you, I did struggle with the cases and it's not an option everyone would want to take (although my suitcases were old and not particularly fit for purpose).

For me, the train was definately the nicest way to travel. I like the journey, and don't like flying for environmental reasons. Also, I find airports quite stressful, and the restrictions annoying. The coach on the other hand, although considerably cheaper, was a little too long, and much less comfortable than the train.

So anyway, it's good to be back and I've been enjoying some much missed pleasures of England (fish and chips, bangers and mash, beer than isn't Mahou), catching up with friends, as well as spending a lovely evening in a picturesque Kent beer garden overlooked by some old hops chimneys.

It took me a while to take in the fact that everyone here speaks English. I found myself muttering and gesturing at waiters and cashiers in supermarkets for a couple of days but once it sunk in, the lack of any kind of language barrier has been great too, chatting away to barmen, taxi drivers and check out assisstants at will.

Catching up with friends and family (and gossip) has been amazing as well. People have got girl/boyfriends, split up, got jobs, changed plans and so on while I've been away and it feels weird to have been out of everything for so long. I also just went to visit my sister and see my nephew who was born while I was out there, which was pretty special. It's definately been the hardest thing for me, and it makes me wonder if I can do another year abroad already come September. Decision to be made very soon!

Heading For The Hills

I've spent many an hour sitting up on my building's roof terrace, staring out at the mountains of the Sierra de Guadarrama in the hazy distance, but somehow I'd never got round to going there until last weekend. I don't know why, they're only an hour and a half and €4.20 away on the cercanias (commuter train) and I do love mountains. Anyway, better late than never. After reading up on where to go here, me and Kate headed out to Cercedilla (that's "Ther-theh-deeyya" for those of you unfamiliar with Castillian pronunciation) on Saturday. The perenially unreliable weather forecast had been for rain but apart from the odd drizzly shower, it was fine.

The first impression you get when arriving in the mountains from Madrid is just how green everything is. The Madrid plateau is pretty dry and dusty, vegetation is sparse and the trees are small and low. Not so here. It took me a while (and a few weird insect sightings) to believe I wasn't back in the Peak District, perhaps near the Derwent dams. You often see the Sierra shrouded in clouds while the rest of the sky is clear blue, and the effect of this is clear to see - tall trees, ferns and moss. Moss! Sometimes you don't notice something's been missing 'til you see it again. It felt like we'd travelled a lot further than we had. It felt like another country.

Having arrived fairly clueless, we found a helpful guide to the hiking routes around the Cercedilla valley in the train station with everything from short easy ones to longer, harder and higher ones. We arrived fairly late in the day so we only had time to go a little way, but still ended up getting to a beautiful rocky outcrop with a great view across the valley after walking through fairly dense evergreen woodland. Our progress was, mind you, delayed by our first encounter with some Spanish cows that were grazing across the path with a calf in tow. Now, these aren't quite fresians, and after seeing a bullfight a month or so ago, I was pretty wary of the potential damage their horns could do! In the end they turned out to be fairly passive though.

Thick walls

We were staying in a lovely little 'Casa Rural' right opposite the station. These are essentially big country cottages split into hotel rooms, and not too pricey at €60 for a (really nice) double en suite room with breakfast. The enormous exterior walls must have been more than two feet thick, testament to how cold it must get up there in winter. Not expecting much, we set off in search of some vegan dinner for Kate. Lo and behold, before we even got to the main town centre, we stumbled across another, quirkier, Casa Rural offering a vegetarian menu who obliged us with some tasty wok fried veg. You get the feeling that Cercedilla is a bit of a haven for slightly alternative folk, a bit like I imagine Aspen, Colorado to be after reading Hunter S Thompson's autobiography. From what we saw it definately had a bit of an older ski-hippy feel to it. Over dinner, we discussed how it isn't exactly that Spain doesn't do vegetarian - it's often not too difficult to find a vegetarian restaurant - more that the standard non-veggie places will just not have any veggie options.

The next day, we headed higher up to Cotos on the amazing little mountain train that precariously winds it's way up the hillsides. The snowplow-equipped engine parked in the station demonstrated why the ticket price (€11.40 return) for this short journey was more than it cost to get from Madrid to Cercedilla. It obviously costs a lot to keep it open. Once it got going though, it was worth every centimo. Great views snatched between gaps in the trees and the amazing sight of the winding track ahead (while sticking your head out the window) were incredible, even if it feels a little hair-raising when it goes round a sharp outside bend! The word that kept springing to mind was Alpine. It almost looks like Switzerland in places, but the glimpses of the plain stretching out past the slopes reminds you where you are. There isn't much to Cotos, which means 'hunting grounds' apparently, only a couple of chalet type buildings with walker's restaurants. From there, there's a route, again on display in the station, to the summit of the highest peak in the sierra. We weren't quite equipped for, or up to, that, but there are pretty spectacular views on the route up to the foot of it too. This maybe isn't recommended for hay-fever sufferers though. You could actually see swirls of pollen blowing off some of the trees, and I swear you actually could see great clouds of it rising out of the woods across the valley.

After a bit more bovine bother on the way back from an angry sounding cow following us up a trail, and a quick beer and bocadillo outside one of the chalets, we caught the train back down the mountain, breathing in the lovely fresh mountain air, and then transferred onto the cercanias back to Madrid. There seemed to be some kind of singing club going on on the train, with a group of older men and women heartily (albeit not always tunefully) belting out evocative traditional Spanish songs with a guitar and encouraging the rest of the carriage to join in. They had a right old laugh when I asked them for a photo - "Take a picture of my wife, not him! He's an ugly bastard!" (or something along those lines).

Deluge

Back to Madrid where it promptly hammered it down with rain. It doesn't really do drizzle here, it either spits briefly or releases an absolute deluge complete with thunder and lightning. I got caught in one of these between classes the other week and ended up very wet on the metro. Spare a thought for those still camping out in Sol through this. They're still there, with a creative buzz still running through the square, although it does seem to be more of a hard core left now that the movement has spread out to individual neighbourhoods. They actually agreed a list of demands last week which makes for interesting reading.

I can't believe I've only got 3 weeks left, and only 2 weeks of teaching left. Looking forward to seeing home but also sad to be leaving Madrid. I think I'll come back and visit from (probably) Barcelona after September. I'll be writing some things summing up my time here and giving advice with the benefit of hindsight for potential Madrileños before I go, as well as a Best of Madrid post.

Meetings, Heat and Trains

On Saturday, the 15th May Movement (as the protests have become known), held local meetings in squares across the city. I went along to our local one at Plaza Puerta del Moros, where around 300 people were gathered, sitting and standing under the trees, sheltering from the midday heat. It is incredible how organised this movement is for a spontaneous thing. There was a PA system set up with mics and two sign language interpreters on hand. The mics are open to anyone and consensus decision making is used, which makes the process very slow but ultimately, I always find, more satisfying. I watched a discussion about whether to meet locally, how often, and where unfold at a crawling pace. The mood was quite light however, and people blocking decisions would stand aside if a large majority was in favour, and were rewarded with applause. Many of the speakers also made the crowd laugh and, although their purpose was serious, people weren't taking themselves to seriously, which I have often seen in similar meetings in the UK climate movement. It seems that the camp in Sol will stay for now, and the neighbourhood groups will meet weekly so it looks like this movement is here to stay.

 
I've had some interesting reactions when getting my students to do mini-presentations over the last week, from 'I'm going tonight' to 'They need to shut up and get jobs'. Mostly though, they seemed to sympathetic, largely agree with the aims of the camp and share their anger at the political system, but not necessarily agree with their tactics. The fact that there's a fair amount of cannabis being smoked in Sol came up a couple of times too (I'd noticed this when walking around as well). I told a couple of them that if they really wanted a three-party system, we could probably spare Nick Clegg for a while...

It's now getting really hot here, and you can see why people describe Madrid as being a place of extremes, either frozen or scorched. It's cloudier today but I realised the other day that it had consistently been hotter than the hottest summer's day you'd get in England for about a week. Most of the companies I work in have air-con but bussing round the city is becoming an increasingly clammy experience.

I've actually been feeling quite homesick over the last week or so. One of my friends summed it up well recently when they said "Sometimes you just get sick of feeling like a foreigner." It's very true, and I haven't been home since Christmas and that wasn't for very long. Really looking forward to being on home ground and seeing people over the summer. I cannot wait to kick back and shoot the breeze in a good old-fashioned pub. I've just booked my travel home, for the rapidly approaching end of June. I'm taking the train to avoid flying (for environmental reasons), for which I'm paying considerably more. £240 for an overnight from Madrid to Paris and Eurostar to London. Surely it could be made cheaper? It's also ridiculously difficult to actually buy a ticket, and I ended up having to have the tickets sent to my parents house in Sheffield and then sent out here for some bizarre reason. A subsidy to make it more attractive compared to flying would be nice, but at very least could they make it less of an effort to get yourself a ticket.

It will be an experience anyway... an 18 hour one.

A Day In The Life

I had a relatively quiet weekend that included a failed trip to Alcazar de San Juan to see a friend of my girlfriend who turned out not to actually be there... I can tell you however, that they will exchange train tickets without charging you again, which would definately hit a wall of officiousness in the UK. Alcazar? I wouldn't bother.

I thought it might be useful, for anyone planning on moving to Spain to teach English, to hear what a typical weekday is like for me at the moment now that I've settled into some kind of routine. I suppose in some ways it hasn't lived up to the ideas I had and in other ways it's exceeded them.

Torre Picasso in the early morn

So, I usually wake up around 9am, apart from Tuesday when I have to be up at 6 to go teach at 8. This has been pretty horrible until recently as it's still been dark and freezing cold on leaving the house and I have to trek across town on the packed (and still starey) metro, to the heavily concreted area near the Bernabeu to teach for 2 hours in the imposing Torre Picasso. Most days though, I spend the morning messing around, catching up on emails, planning lessons or doing the various things that life demands and when it's warm enough, having breakfast on the roof. Then from Mon-Thu, at 11.30 I have to set off for Aravaca where I teach 4 hours of classes at a friendly little company in the 'suburbs' (theres a little stretch of countryside between them and the main city). I go via the underground Moncloa bus interchange with another massive city gate sitting on top of it, often stopping off to photocopy some pages at the shop there where the two women are perenially amused at my foreigness.

The gate at Moncloa

These are classes that I get through the 'agency' company I work for, for which I have to prepare a lesson plan and lead the class in quite an intense way. On the bus there and back there are snatched views of the Sierra and the 4 huge towers that I keep meaning to go have a look at in the north of the city. After I finish I have an hour and a half to get some food and get to my other job at a language school near Plaza de Espana. I don't have to prepare anything for this and its pretty much a case of sitting and chatting to people in English for half an hour at a time. It doesn't pay nearly as well though! (€7 an hour compared to €17 an hour!). Still, it's handy extra income and being an independent teacher can be a bit of a lonely experience sometimes, so working in a language school has a nice feeling of actually working with other people.

This finishes at 10pm so its usually home for dinner and to relax or out for a couple of drinks (or more on a Friday). I have to say, I don't like working evenings and I'm hoping I can cut back on that soon, but I don't fancy getting up at 6 every morning much either! I don't know why they all want to start at 8, but I've turned down several offers of classes up by the airport at 8 because I just didn't think it was worth my while (an hour there, 2 hour class, an hour back) and I thought I'd just tire myself out. Anyway, all this is earning me around €1800 a month (although I have to pay €178 social security p/m) for roughly 35 hours a week, which is more than I need but is paying off some debts slowly but surely.

In other news, I found an English speaking dentist in Prosperidad, who told me I need to have some dental surgery done. I won't go into the details but it's going to involve stitches in my mouth (shudder) which might make teaching quite interesting for a week or so. It's quite a complicated proceedure and its costing €400 (its not covered by social security). It feels kind of masochistic to be paying all this money for someone to do horrible things to my mouth but I suppose its necessary. That's happening a week on Friday anyway so we'll see how it goes.

A strange thing happened to me on Sunday, I was cooking a vegan paella at my girlfriend's new flat (which is incredible: opposite Principe Pio, newly decorated, with a view over the river and the forest and not too expensive), when I forgot the English word for something and could only remember the Spanish - "do you have any...er, cominos?" Cumin! I'm feeling a lot more confident with my basic Spanish now and will happily break it out in shops. I do wish I'd had this level when I'd arrived though. Still weighing up moving, I've got some numbers that I'm going to call tomorrow (in Spanish) but on the other hand it is very cheap here (€230 a month) and the terrace is looking like more of a reason to stay now it's getting warmer.

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!