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| meanwhile, in spain |
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
My Housing Adventure, and an Afterthought on Coffee
I think I’m the only one in my program that has been homeless here three times. The university’s student services coordinator has told me I must have done something particularly wretched to deserve all that I’ve gone through these past three weeks, which is apparently more than average.
She was right to attribute the blame to me, but hopefully not due to my alleged past crimes. After viewing one apartment early on, quite frustrated, I gave up and decided not to look for more for a week. This was probably a mistake. The university here gave us until September 19 to find living arrangements and vacate the dormitory, so at the time I didn’t feel I was shortchanging myself too much. On the contrary, I thought I was saving myself some discomfort in the search by giving myself some time to reverse the summer’s Spanish skill atrophy. As it turns out, all the super awesome apartments went really fast, and all that seemed to remain were either super expensive or were occupied by super creeps.
Like everyone else in the program, I was homeless when I got here, but unlike them I remained homeless for almost the whole three weeks. At last I found something that might have worked. An apartment near the university, occupied by a recently graduated couple and a medicine student, had a room available for rent. The price was reasonable, it was near the university, and the roommates seemed amiable and fun. I said I’d take it, and they told me I could move in on the first of October, after they had done some painting and other improvements.
The day after viewing my apartment, I called back and asked what time I could bring the deposit over. They told me not to worry about it until I moved in, and that they had showed the room to a few other people. This confused me a bit, since I was under the impression that it was my room, but they told me not to worry, I’d probably get it. September 19th came and went, and, concerns assuaged, I moved into a hostel while my apartment was being painted. The hostel seemed nice—I had my own room with a shower and a balcony, and it was relatively cheap. This is the point where I was robbed. While at class one day, someone broke into my room and stole 200 euro and my precious, precious iPod.
Coming back to my room after class that day marks a turning point in these early weeks here in Spain. I had two possessions to which I ascribed an unhealthy amount of sentimental value. The first was my CRX (which I sold in August). The second, of course, was my iPod. It’s like when you’re forced to sell your first child into slavery so you can afford to go to Spain for a year, only to have your remaining child kidnapped when you get there. I’m extremely glad I had my computer with me at school at the time.
So that was disappointing. That was when this whole thing stopped feeling like a great adventure, and I started to feel like I was on an overly long vacation and I was very ready to go home. I didn’t feel especially safe in my hostel anymore, so I called my roommates to see if I could move in early, even if I had to sleep on a couch, or even if they charged me for every day until October 1st. There was no answer. When I called back later I got a recorded message telling me that incoming calls to their number had been restricted. Today, I still have no idea what happened. I can only assume that someone else took my room and they've been ignoring me. I couldn’t even go to their door to ask them, because I never got their address—when I saw the apartment they met me at a metro and they took me there in their car.
For a second time I was homeless. Still wanting to vacate the hostel as soon as possible, I called a guy whose house I had looked at earlier in my search. Happily, it was still available. Unlike almost every other home in Madrid, this guy had an actual house, in a sort of development colony thing between some apartment towers. It was slightly closer to my school, better connected to the metro system, with a beautiful garden and a façade and outward atmosphere that would have made it fit in at Hawk’s Cay, and above all, it was incredibly cheap—230 euro plus utilities. The reason I didn’t go with it the first time I looked at it was the interior. It was a bit run down, with water damage on the ceilings, exposed electrical work, grubby walls with peeling paint, and it needed to be swept pretty badly. Also, the guy. There was something a bit off about the owner, who also lived there. He must have been about 80, for one thing, but he was strangely enthusiastic about the prospect of throwing parties. The old guy and the other two who lived there were all students at the university, with the old guy working on his doctorate in Basque linguistics.
I told him that I had thought it over, and I wanted to take the room after all. It was a small room that looked out over the fantastic garden, an aspect I hoped would outweigh the negatives. So I showed up at his house, laden with all my worldly possessions on this continent, and hauled them up the stairs to what would be my room. Once there, with money ready to change hands, he began to fill me in on some particulars that living in his house entailed. He handed me a typewritten list of home improvements and their costs that “urgently needed” to be done, like building benches for the garden and reconstructing the fountain. Not only did he expect me to help pay for the improvements to his house, he wanted me to do them. He also handed me a list of some thirty house rules, of which I read only number 26: “You must leave the kitchen door closed. Mortal danger.” Naturally, I enquired. Turns out that the furnace and water heater, located in the kitchen, constantly leak carbon monoxide, and if the door is left open, the gas “rushes upstairs to the bedrooms within thirty seconds,” explained the guy.
Needless to say, at this point I was gathering up my bags to go. But the guy wouldn’t let me leave with even the most miniscule lingering desire to live in his house. He went on to detail how one of his former tenants is now on the point of being convicted for attempted murder, because, allegedly, he purposefully left the kitchen door open at night in an attempt to kill the old guy in his sleep. I immediately thought, “What the hell did you do to drive him to that point?!” I slowly backed out the door and made a break for it.
Homeless for a third time—and this time thankfully so, considering the previous alternative—I went to the student services coordinator to lament about my housing trouble. She directed me to a woman in whose apartment students have lived in the past, with high evaluations. I visited the same afternoon, and immediately gave her the 300 euro she was asking for (extremely cheap in Madrid). She’s a kind lady, late fifties or so, who shares her apartment with two other guys and now me. It’s the best located of all three of my almost-homes here, in the student-dominated barrio of Moncloa and Argüelles. My room is relatively large, and the whole apartment has cathedral-high ceilings, about twenty feet. She even does my laundry, and irons it. It's almost perfect. I would have preferred to live with other students, I think, but considering my other experiences, this seems to be an excellent arrangement. So now I have a home, and the homelessness stressor is at last dissipated. I celebrated just now by getting a coffee at Starbucks, which I feel is defensible because for every coffee I get at Starbucks (two so far) I get twenty or seventy at a proper Spanish café.
Afterthought on coffee:
The first coffee I had at a Starbucks here was utterly spectacular. I hardly think that it’s a credit to Starbucks, but rather to the people here who made it and the proximity of some of the world’s best coffees from Africa. I wish I were less prone to hyperbole in my everyday conversation so that I could now convey how unreservedly phenomenal that cup of coffee was. On the contrary, the one that I just finished (the celebratory one, from after getting that apartment), was among the worst I’ve ever suffered through, and definitely the worst one I’ve ever purchased at any Starbucks anywhere. I think it was brewed a few days ago and has been on the burner ever since. But, oh well. It just means that I’ll have to procure another celebratory beverage elsewhere. Probably a Mahou, a Spanish beer I enjoy. I’ll have to write an entry about beer sometime. It’s everywhere—from McDonald’s to the university cafeteria, and of course, the vending machine in the dormitory.
Please write me sometime. Ciao.
She was right to attribute the blame to me, but hopefully not due to my alleged past crimes. After viewing one apartment early on, quite frustrated, I gave up and decided not to look for more for a week. This was probably a mistake. The university here gave us until September 19 to find living arrangements and vacate the dormitory, so at the time I didn’t feel I was shortchanging myself too much. On the contrary, I thought I was saving myself some discomfort in the search by giving myself some time to reverse the summer’s Spanish skill atrophy. As it turns out, all the super awesome apartments went really fast, and all that seemed to remain were either super expensive or were occupied by super creeps.
Like everyone else in the program, I was homeless when I got here, but unlike them I remained homeless for almost the whole three weeks. At last I found something that might have worked. An apartment near the university, occupied by a recently graduated couple and a medicine student, had a room available for rent. The price was reasonable, it was near the university, and the roommates seemed amiable and fun. I said I’d take it, and they told me I could move in on the first of October, after they had done some painting and other improvements.
The day after viewing my apartment, I called back and asked what time I could bring the deposit over. They told me not to worry about it until I moved in, and that they had showed the room to a few other people. This confused me a bit, since I was under the impression that it was my room, but they told me not to worry, I’d probably get it. September 19th came and went, and, concerns assuaged, I moved into a hostel while my apartment was being painted. The hostel seemed nice—I had my own room with a shower and a balcony, and it was relatively cheap. This is the point where I was robbed. While at class one day, someone broke into my room and stole 200 euro and my precious, precious iPod.
Coming back to my room after class that day marks a turning point in these early weeks here in Spain. I had two possessions to which I ascribed an unhealthy amount of sentimental value. The first was my CRX (which I sold in August). The second, of course, was my iPod. It’s like when you’re forced to sell your first child into slavery so you can afford to go to Spain for a year, only to have your remaining child kidnapped when you get there. I’m extremely glad I had my computer with me at school at the time.
So that was disappointing. That was when this whole thing stopped feeling like a great adventure, and I started to feel like I was on an overly long vacation and I was very ready to go home. I didn’t feel especially safe in my hostel anymore, so I called my roommates to see if I could move in early, even if I had to sleep on a couch, or even if they charged me for every day until October 1st. There was no answer. When I called back later I got a recorded message telling me that incoming calls to their number had been restricted. Today, I still have no idea what happened. I can only assume that someone else took my room and they've been ignoring me. I couldn’t even go to their door to ask them, because I never got their address—when I saw the apartment they met me at a metro and they took me there in their car.
For a second time I was homeless. Still wanting to vacate the hostel as soon as possible, I called a guy whose house I had looked at earlier in my search. Happily, it was still available. Unlike almost every other home in Madrid, this guy had an actual house, in a sort of development colony thing between some apartment towers. It was slightly closer to my school, better connected to the metro system, with a beautiful garden and a façade and outward atmosphere that would have made it fit in at Hawk’s Cay, and above all, it was incredibly cheap—230 euro plus utilities. The reason I didn’t go with it the first time I looked at it was the interior. It was a bit run down, with water damage on the ceilings, exposed electrical work, grubby walls with peeling paint, and it needed to be swept pretty badly. Also, the guy. There was something a bit off about the owner, who also lived there. He must have been about 80, for one thing, but he was strangely enthusiastic about the prospect of throwing parties. The old guy and the other two who lived there were all students at the university, with the old guy working on his doctorate in Basque linguistics.
I told him that I had thought it over, and I wanted to take the room after all. It was a small room that looked out over the fantastic garden, an aspect I hoped would outweigh the negatives. So I showed up at his house, laden with all my worldly possessions on this continent, and hauled them up the stairs to what would be my room. Once there, with money ready to change hands, he began to fill me in on some particulars that living in his house entailed. He handed me a typewritten list of home improvements and their costs that “urgently needed” to be done, like building benches for the garden and reconstructing the fountain. Not only did he expect me to help pay for the improvements to his house, he wanted me to do them. He also handed me a list of some thirty house rules, of which I read only number 26: “You must leave the kitchen door closed. Mortal danger.” Naturally, I enquired. Turns out that the furnace and water heater, located in the kitchen, constantly leak carbon monoxide, and if the door is left open, the gas “rushes upstairs to the bedrooms within thirty seconds,” explained the guy.
Needless to say, at this point I was gathering up my bags to go. But the guy wouldn’t let me leave with even the most miniscule lingering desire to live in his house. He went on to detail how one of his former tenants is now on the point of being convicted for attempted murder, because, allegedly, he purposefully left the kitchen door open at night in an attempt to kill the old guy in his sleep. I immediately thought, “What the hell did you do to drive him to that point?!” I slowly backed out the door and made a break for it.
Homeless for a third time—and this time thankfully so, considering the previous alternative—I went to the student services coordinator to lament about my housing trouble. She directed me to a woman in whose apartment students have lived in the past, with high evaluations. I visited the same afternoon, and immediately gave her the 300 euro she was asking for (extremely cheap in Madrid). She’s a kind lady, late fifties or so, who shares her apartment with two other guys and now me. It’s the best located of all three of my almost-homes here, in the student-dominated barrio of Moncloa and Argüelles. My room is relatively large, and the whole apartment has cathedral-high ceilings, about twenty feet. She even does my laundry, and irons it. It's almost perfect. I would have preferred to live with other students, I think, but considering my other experiences, this seems to be an excellent arrangement. So now I have a home, and the homelessness stressor is at last dissipated. I celebrated just now by getting a coffee at Starbucks, which I feel is defensible because for every coffee I get at Starbucks (two so far) I get twenty or seventy at a proper Spanish café.
Afterthought on coffee:
The first coffee I had at a Starbucks here was utterly spectacular. I hardly think that it’s a credit to Starbucks, but rather to the people here who made it and the proximity of some of the world’s best coffees from Africa. I wish I were less prone to hyperbole in my everyday conversation so that I could now convey how unreservedly phenomenal that cup of coffee was. On the contrary, the one that I just finished (the celebratory one, from after getting that apartment), was among the worst I’ve ever suffered through, and definitely the worst one I’ve ever purchased at any Starbucks anywhere. I think it was brewed a few days ago and has been on the burner ever since. But, oh well. It just means that I’ll have to procure another celebratory beverage elsewhere. Probably a Mahou, a Spanish beer I enjoy. I’ll have to write an entry about beer sometime. It’s everywhere—from McDonald’s to the university cafeteria, and of course, the vending machine in the dormitory.
Please write me sometime. Ciao.
Addendum to the confrontation
In speaking with others involved in the early morning confrontation in the street, I discovered that my recollection of the event doesn't entirely conform to theirs. Which is to be expected, considering the circumstances. The two main differences are that the pink hoodie gang and the mean girls left before the Irish guys showed up, obviously because they were terrified of the prospect of fighting me. I also discovered that it was me who started it, and that my friends only then felt obliged to back me up. Naturally, I was quite pleased to discover this. I'm going to class now, I'll do pictures later this afternoon (for you, morning).
Monday, September 24, 2007
Something a little less dreary
I woke up early on Saturday to explore some. In the park near my hostel there is an ancient Egyptian temple, more than twenty-two centuries old. It was presented as a gift to Spain in 1968 for Spain's assistance in rescuing other Egyptian ruins from destruction by the erosion of the riverbanks they were built on. Today it contains a museum dedicated to itself, which can be perused with a satisfying degree of comprehensiveness in about twenty minutes. What is much more remarkable than the information in the museum is the way the setting sun glows on the stones, and its reflected image in the reflection pool that completely surrounds it. I returned later in the day to experience this.
After the Temple of Debod, I meandered through central Madrid on my way to the Royal Botanical Gardens. I could smell the garden from the street, which was pretty cool. It doesn't contain much in the way of flowers, or they aren't open presently, but it does have something like 5000 other types of plants from bamboo to Sequoia from California. I saw a very small pine tree with its own security camera, which was curious. A placard explained that it was a species of Australian pine that was believed to have been extinct for the last few million years, and having been discovered in unpetrified form in 1994 is incredibly rare. Also interesting was the greenhouse along one side of the gardens, which has several enclosures of different climates: desert, subtropical, tropical, and super wet. An exhibition of bonsai trees was on display, which was naturally quite excellent. If I understood correctly, they are normal trees that are painstakingly pruned over long periods of time so that they reach mature form in extreme miniature. A fellow student here has referred me to a website that details an analogous process that can be applied to kittens. The Internet is mean to cats.
After some further aimless meandering, I met up with some friends to get some food and enjoy "La Noche en Blanco," which literally means the "night in white" but equates to pulling an all-nighter. It was some sort of cultural event in which all the museums opened for special exhibits all from 9:30 pm to 6 am on Sunday, and many other events and exhibitions and culture things all over the city happened, too. There were 117 things to do in total. We had picked a couple we were going to try out, only to discover that everyone was participating. No hyperbole: there were hundreds of thousands of people on every street, several million in all. The metro was congested to a ridiculous degree. The streets were literally full of people. It's difficult to describe. We didn't do any of the events we had planned, but we enjoyed several of the gargantuan light-art exhibits. One was a tower in which all the lights in all the windows were on and constantly changed colors to form different patterns. Another involved projecting some sort of bizarre image on a gothic castle thing, which was reminiscent of watching bacteria undergo mitosis in time-lapse photography. It was pretty awesome. So instead of the museums we were going to hit up, we just got caught up in the extreme energy of the mob and we went bar hopping, at the conclusion of which occurred the misadventure previously chronicled on this site.
I got three hours of sleep after the sun came up on Sunday, then got up to spend the afternoon in the Museo del Prado. I felt a little guilty about hitting up the bars instead of taking advantage of the cultural offerings of the city, and the national museums are free on Sundays, so it was a natural choice. Prado is full of neat art, and it is all very old. By the late afternoon I was pretty cultured-out, so I bummed some Internet at the apartment of a friend of mine and did some homework. Then I slept for a long time. It was a long and eventful weekend. Pictures forthcoming.
After the Temple of Debod, I meandered through central Madrid on my way to the Royal Botanical Gardens. I could smell the garden from the street, which was pretty cool. It doesn't contain much in the way of flowers, or they aren't open presently, but it does have something like 5000 other types of plants from bamboo to Sequoia from California. I saw a very small pine tree with its own security camera, which was curious. A placard explained that it was a species of Australian pine that was believed to have been extinct for the last few million years, and having been discovered in unpetrified form in 1994 is incredibly rare. Also interesting was the greenhouse along one side of the gardens, which has several enclosures of different climates: desert, subtropical, tropical, and super wet. An exhibition of bonsai trees was on display, which was naturally quite excellent. If I understood correctly, they are normal trees that are painstakingly pruned over long periods of time so that they reach mature form in extreme miniature. A fellow student here has referred me to a website that details an analogous process that can be applied to kittens. The Internet is mean to cats.
After some further aimless meandering, I met up with some friends to get some food and enjoy "La Noche en Blanco," which literally means the "night in white" but equates to pulling an all-nighter. It was some sort of cultural event in which all the museums opened for special exhibits all from 9:30 pm to 6 am on Sunday, and many other events and exhibitions and culture things all over the city happened, too. There were 117 things to do in total. We had picked a couple we were going to try out, only to discover that everyone was participating. No hyperbole: there were hundreds of thousands of people on every street, several million in all. The metro was congested to a ridiculous degree. The streets were literally full of people. It's difficult to describe. We didn't do any of the events we had planned, but we enjoyed several of the gargantuan light-art exhibits. One was a tower in which all the lights in all the windows were on and constantly changed colors to form different patterns. Another involved projecting some sort of bizarre image on a gothic castle thing, which was reminiscent of watching bacteria undergo mitosis in time-lapse photography. It was pretty awesome. So instead of the museums we were going to hit up, we just got caught up in the extreme energy of the mob and we went bar hopping, at the conclusion of which occurred the misadventure previously chronicled on this site.
I got three hours of sleep after the sun came up on Sunday, then got up to spend the afternoon in the Museo del Prado. I felt a little guilty about hitting up the bars instead of taking advantage of the cultural offerings of the city, and the national museums are free on Sundays, so it was a natural choice. Prado is full of neat art, and it is all very old. By the late afternoon I was pretty cultured-out, so I bummed some Internet at the apartment of a friend of mine and did some homework. Then I slept for a long time. It was a long and eventful weekend. Pictures forthcoming.
A little more negativity
I was also robbed, and am now 200 euro and one iPod poorer. Balls! But the weather has been truly beautiful these last three and a half weeks.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Stage 3 of Culture Shock: Fight!
Last night I experienced something that I recollect now with feelings of incredulousness, which I hesitate to write about now lest this entry casts a specter of negativity over the otherwise positive things I could be and will be writing about instead. I was hanging out with a group of friends on a nearly abandoned street, having just left a bar (the results of which would have exacerbating effects later) when a fifty-something woman of Chinese descent was chased into our midst by a group of three or four teenage girls. The girls were shouting spectacularly rude things at the Chinese woman, and even grabbed a trash can and tried to run her over with it. Of course, we told them to stop. They responded with further rudeness. We persisted in our attempts to intervene, escalating the confrontation to a degree where the Chinese woman was able to escape. At some point one of the girls slapped my friend Clem in the face, and three or four teenage guys dressed in matching pink hoodies came out of nowhere to join the girls. Around this point my friends and I were throwing around some pretty rude language ourselves, and it began to dawn on me that the situation was rapidly degrading to a drunken brawl. Fortunately, also out of nowhere, appeared these three big Irish guys, who were on the side of not chasing immigrants and shouting racist things at them. This is about the time that the mean girls and the pink hoodie gang decided to leave. Somehow, before they left, they managed to lift friend Matt's credit cards and cell phone. We had an excellent chat with the Irish guys while Matt borrowed a phone to cancel his own and his credit cards (which already had a 3000 dollar pending charge--the credit card thieves here are really fast).
What an adventure. I'm sure there are better ways to handle that sort of conflict, but I think we chose one of the most interesting methods.
What an adventure. I'm sure there are better ways to handle that sort of conflict, but I think we chose one of the most interesting methods.
Monday, September 17, 2007
I'm in Spain
Here's a photo of me in front of the aqueduct in Segovia, a two thousand year old structure in perfect condition. This day was pretty fascinating, with the aqueduct, the five-hundred-year-old Cathedral of Segovia, and Alcázar de Segovia, a fantastic castle whose origins date back to almost 900 years ago.
Basically, after these two weeks in Madrid I'm so overwhelmed by new and incredible experiences that I just don't know what to write. If you would like to know something about my time so far here in Spain, please, send me a writing prompt! I would really appreciate it. I'm working on some photos that I'll put up later this week. I've taken nearly a thousand since I got here, so I have some sorting to go through before I post them. I hope you're all well. Hasta luego ("See you later" -- the commonest way of saying goodbye here, regardless of whether or not you harbor the slightest suspicion that you will see the other person ever again. It's good to have hope, no?).
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