Week 1

It seems bonkers to be once again sitting on an easyjet flight heading back to the UK after only 3 days in Madrid – but the world of marketing cereals is calling – and maybe it’s not such a bad thing to have a couple of days back in the UK to digest the experience so far.

It’s been brilliant and overwhelming in almost equal measures. I love where my flat is (Calle Monteleon) between the plazas Bilbao and San Bernardo. A cinema, Zara and Starbucks all within 2 minutes. I smile everytime I either leave or arrive at the flat, amazed that I have my own set of keys to one of these ordinary Madrileno flats with iron balconies and big heavy doors on a small ordinary street in the heart of Madrid.

So much is familiar (hence the Starbucks & Zara excitement – the fomer of which has so far been resisted – I’m saving it for a glum homesick day; but the latter has already supplied a rather swishy little red-riding-hood-style jacket). People are european, buses look the same, the metro is a simpler version of the tube, people eat sandwiches and drink coffee and talk on their mobile phones and hurry to work. But it also feels really different.

Perhaps the great thing about moving to a new place (and this is my first time of living abroad) is that you notice lots of small things – because these are the things that are so peculiarly different.

The highly polished wooden staircase up to my flat (3rd floor) – I’m sure things get scrubbed here more.

Graffiti everywhere (lots of it beautifully skillful).

The number of children in the city centre (on the main street closest to me – Calle Fuencarral – there are mini kids play areas with swings etc - right on the main street).

The late night and street culture (everyone out and about wandering and chatting and eating from 10pm onwards).

That lunch is exactly at 2pm… so at 1.45 the restaurants are empty and at 2.05 they are jammed.

That you have to show ID when you buy something in a shop with your credit card.

That people drink quarters of beer rather than pints.

That milk only seems to come in UHT.

How cheap cigarettes are (€2 ish) so everyone still smokes lots (someone was telling me as if it were big news, that you can’t smoke in Starbucks – they said it’s because they have this strange American company policy!).

The odd European way of dressing. Everyone kind of looks the same to me at the moment. They all dress the same – really a bit dowdy and uniform. And some older women still wearing those funny floral dress-coats.

In fact there’s not a lot of diversity – in the city centre you don’t see any black or asian or Chinese people at all. It’s only in the area called Lavapies, which is very odd coming from London, and gives Lavapies a real ghetto feel.

My Spanish flatmate (landlady!) Elena has been lovely and very welcoming. She took me out on Sunday afternoon with her friend Jose-Maria (I thought he was being formal and introducing me with his surname too – but no! He is the eldest son and has the same name as his father).

We did a café crawl of Malasana (breakfast in Café Commercial, sat outside having a drink, chatting and people watching in Plaza San Ildefonso, and then went straight to Plaza del Dos de Mayo to have another drink and a bite to eat. Was funny to literally walk from café to café (I would usually go for a walk and then stop at a café as a treat for having walked a lot!) but it was really great and lovely to be outside.

Jose-Maria has offered to do Spanish conversation swap with me as he wants to learn English. But I think mine needs to be a little better first as neither of us really speak a word which is challenging!! He told us (Elena translating) about a project he’s doing at work at the moment with an musician/artist who is going to be living in a glass house in Plaza de Mayor for a week (or longer?) so that everyone can watch the creative process 24hr/dia. Sounds a bit David Blane – but will be fun to go and see.

Also met a really nice man called Guille (William he said in English) in the Café Commercial on Monday morning. I’m going to try to make Café Commercial my local I think – it’s a bit expensive – but it’s got a great local feel to it, and everyone is in there reading their papers or having a quick shot of coffee before work (plus the waiter was very nice to me and laughed a lot when I asked for the Spanish version of the menu because I was trying to learn, and then couldn’t pronounce anything right! Zumo de naraja is pretty damn tricky!!).

Guille lives on the corner of my Calle. His job is doing tours of Madrid to teach people the names of the trees (“trees is my life” he said). He’d hurt his hand taking part in this huge game as part of an event when all the galleries were open all night. He said there were 400 people all playing a giant game – throwing wet clothes at each other. He climbed up high to get a good shot and fell off and broke his hand! I liked him a lot. He said “the trouble is when people grow up they forget how to play games – I think we all need to play more games”. Couldn’t agree more.

Enrolling at college has been somewhat challenging! Emma and I arrived on Monday morning at 10am with our shiny shoes and pencils sharpened. We discovered the Facultad de Bellas Artes at the very far end of the university area so had to walk 20 mins to get there. Only to find all the gates locked with chains and the doors bolted. “Manyana!” we were told with plenty of arm gesturing.

So we returned on Martes (Tuesday) to try again. We seem to have half enrolled! We need passports and passport photos to finalise it I think. Basically the day involved lots of queueing and waiting and not really understanding anything.

There is a huge notice board with all of the available courses across all 5 years of study with different professors doing different versions at different times of the week. We have to devise our own timetable and then take our portfolio to each of the professors and ask them if we may attend their classes. A really good system – since you get to cherry pick what you’re interested in. But pretty bloody daunting having to do it when you don’t speak the language!

We’re kind of guessing what we think the courses are and trying to work out the ones that are most practical. So far I’m gunning for:
Pintura II
Anatomia morfologica
Dibujo del natural I
Introduccion al color
Sistemas de analisis geometrico de la forma y la representacion

We went to a Bienvidos (welcome?) talk which was awful. Every professor in the faculty sat at a giant table at the front of a huge hall and talked into a microphone about their course. No pictures, no props. We had no idea what was going on, or even who was talking about which course. After about an hour and a half (even the Spanish students looked bored!) we sneaked out between professors.

The full extent of our language deficiencies kind of hit home at that point, and I hit rather a low. It all seemed a bit too hard work! Since it was 1.50pm we decided to go for lunch (early!). Only to find another complication. You have to queue at a machine, pay and select your food and drink from the buttons (all obviously written in Spanish!) and it then prints you a ticket which you hand into the very grumpy men at the counter who give you your food. We ordered the simplest things we could find (baguettes – una serano y tomates, una queso and agua) but clearly we did something wrong. Lots of shouting, arm waving and slamming of things on the counter and then another long wait. But eventually baguettes arrived. Major achievement for the girls!

Looking back on this now, it does seem funny how the smallest things become a really big deal. I’m reading ‘How to be a Bad Bird Watcher’ at the moment and it’s so appropriate.

Simon Barnes is explaining the notion of ‘Jizz’. It’s a birding term that ‘A Dictionary of Birds’ defines as “combination of characters which identify a living creature in the wild but which may not be distinguished individually”. Barnes brings it to life explaining how the more you look and the more familiar you are with things the less you need to actually see things to know what they are. You just know something because of a random collection of impressions (size, shape, movement, habits) that mean you can instantly relate to it. You can get it in a moment.

“But let’s have another bash at explaining jizz. You get up in the middle of the night busting for a pee. It’s not your own place, you have been royally entertained, and the thing to do is to get to the lav and back without waking the entire house. And God, it’s difficult: hands in front of your face, doors at odd places, the corridor twice as long, or perhaps twice as short as you had supposed. You bash your hip on a table and jar your shoulder on the door, and the desired retreat that is your goal turns out to be down a step that certainly wasn’t there when you went to bed. And then you have to get back – slightly easier, because you’ve learnt the route, but still tough enough.Now let us say that the position is reversed. You are the host, you have royally entertained your guest, and once again, you need a midnight pee. You stroll along the corridor at your ease, and back again. You need no light, you take no false step. You see that small metallic gleam: it is a doorknob, it tells you exactly the position of the door, the angle at which it is open; that slightly paler oblong is your destination. You ascend the waiting three steps without ever having counted them in your life, and your hand is there at just the right height to find the door-handle.That is the principle on which jizz works. […] You acquire the skill of jizz recognition simply by looking. By looking at birds you have already identified; because, you see, identification is the beginning and not the end of the process – and that is why birdwatching, good and bad, is the exact opposite of trainspotting. Every seeing is a moment of greater understanding. Every seeing makes the bird more fully a part of you, a part of your life.” (pp.124-27).

I guess I’m at the beginning of learning to look properly at things again. Trying to get the hang of the Jizz of the place. It’ll come I’m sure of it – and for now I guess I have to enjoy finding so many things amazing. Frustrating but amazing.