Friday 27 February 2009

Churros!!


Churros - that traditional, healthy Spanish breakfast of deep fried batter, usually dunked in thick chocolate - are actually quite hard to find in Madrid. Luckily Kate's Godmother, Tish, located the legendary Chocolateria de San Gines, which never closes so we were able to share this quintessential Iberian treat with her and Kate's mother, Cathy, during their visit.

Thursday 26 February 2009

You'll Never Take The Metro Alone

So there I was, sitting innocently in the Madrid Metro, having just said goodbye to Mother and Godmother and on my way to work, when mine and my fellow-passengers' senses were roughly assaulted by what felt like half the Liverpool FC travelling support.

The lads were in high spirits ahead of the big Champions League game against Real Madrid that night, but no matter how harmless their intentions, their sheer numbers, volume and boisterousness made them an intimidating prospect. I would have almost preferred a panpipes rendition of Sounds of Silence.

After hearing, "Eh, eh, where do we get off, eh, eh?" shouted up and down the carriage a dozen or so times, I realised the best way to be rid of their overwhelming company was to ensure they didn't miss their stop, which to my relief, was coming up.

I stood up "Hey, Guys," I rasped, struggling to make my ailing vocal-chords (laryngitis - again) heard above their racket. "Get off at Tribunal and change to Line 10 for Santiago Bernebeu."

"What's that, eh, eh, what's that?" asked one. I repeated my information. By then, we were pulling into Tribunal itself. My suggestion was relayed up and down the carriage.
"We don't get out here, eh, eh!"
"She says we do!"
"Eh, eh, no we don't"
"She's told us we do, eh, eh!"

Another of the Scouse heroes turned to me, "Who d'you support, eh, eh?" he asked, a note of accusation in his voice.
"Bristol Rovers", I said. He blinked and realisation dawned.
"Hey - you're English!!"
No shit, Sherlock.

Liverpool won the tie, a goal to nil, which was good news for keeping breakages and argy-bargy to a minimum in Central Madrid. The inhabitants of the area wouldn't have had much sleep though. Madrilenos may be famous for all-night partying, but even they need a bit of shut-eye on school nights. There would have been precious little of that with Merseyside's finest in town.

Sunday 22 February 2009

Boys and their toys

As part of the Carnival celebrations here in Madrid, Plaza Mayor played host to Frenchman Dominique Boivin and his toys. Well, one of them - a mid-sized hydraulic digger. Set to rather loud classical music this piece of modern farce... sorry... modern dance was entertaining if rather limited - as Kate pointed out there were only so many photos you could take of a middle-aged man riding around in a digger's bucket. We applauded, but 20 minutes definitely covered all the possible means of suspending yourself from a JCB arm while it whirls around.


We weren't quite sure whether Transport Exceptionnals (as the piece was called) was an elegy for Spain's moribund construction industry, a lament for a lost childhood fascination for all things mechanical or merely an emphatic riposte of penis-envy. Either way we both agreed that more sequins were required.

Saturday 21 February 2009

Carnival

The Spanish celebrate the beginning of Lent in style, waving goodbye to meat with the traditional Carnival ("carne vale"), a week's worth of celebrations every February.

While the Madrid celebrations are apparently tame compared to those of Tenerife and Cadiz, Kate and I were nonetheless pretty impressed by the turn out along Paseo de la Castellana, one of the longest streets in Madrid, as thousands of Madrilenos put on their fancy dress just to watch the parade! It was a lovely warm evening despite it being February as contingents representing South American countires trooped by.
Large mechanical puppets also formed part of the parade, several being in the shape of dragons. St George, however, was not to be seen.

There was definitely a gothic aspect to the whole affair, with witches, devils, skeletons and zombies all well represented among the bands, stilt-walkers, acrobats and party-goers.
This was probably in part a reflection of the Carribbean Carnival's voodoo roots, though we're sure a band of Orcs - or possibly the Finnish rock band Lordi - dashed past at one point. Quite where they fit in we're not sure.

Our favourite part of the parade however wasn't even part of the parade. Following on, just barely in front of the litter collectors, was a bunch of Brazilians banging their drums, dancing and having fun. Whether they weren't allowed to join the parade as Brazil was a Portuguese colony not a Spanish one, or whether they just didn't want to be official, we don't know but we danced along with them for quite a while before heading home.

Tuesday 17 February 2009

The horror, the horror

It all began with a bit of a cough on Friday morning, but by evening Theo was running a temperature and was definitely Not Well. Although he wasn't exactly burning up and dripping with sweat, he was definitely a few degrees warmer than was healthy and when his fever still hadn't come down by Sunday, we decided to seek medical help.

As we're not yet registered with a doctor in Madrid and it was a Sunday, the most sensible thing to do was head for a hospital, which we duly did. Theo was feeling too ill to cope with the Metro (which can be a trial even to those in perfect health) so we took a taxi.

The receptionist was quite nice and tried out a few words of her limited English, once she'd established our nationality. We were told to wait until called, which we did on the ranks of hard plastic chairs with several other mainly elderly patients and one youngish man, whose fever was clearly more advanced than Theo's and was likewise accompanied by an anxious wife.

We were soon summoned to another desk where Theo's blood pressure was checked and we were sent to another waiting room, this one with more comfortable (if somewhat worn and threadbare) chairs.

Next we were called into a consulting room, where Theo's temperature was taken and his symptoms outlined in Spanglish to three youngish, friendly, female medics. They had a relaxed air about them and were enjoying a lively discussion about another diagnosis, while making sure Theo stuck the thermometer under his arm rather than his tongue and establishing that his temperature was indeed a couple of degrees higher than normal.

So far, it was all reasonably laid-back and even entertaining at times - a far cry from the clockwork efficiency of the Luxembourg hospital which had treated my kidney infection last summer, but organised and thorough in a Spanish sort of way.

But for Theo, events tipped into nightmare mode when the three companionable doctors decided he should have a blood test.

Theo doesn't have too many chinks in his armour, but hypodermic needles can pierce through even his legendary self-assurance. His expression changed to one of nervous discomfort. We returned to the waiting room, where it was clear the staff were going to take his blood in full view of all the other patients and their carers.

Any remaining shreds of calm disappeared when Theo realised with dawning horror that they were not only going to take some blood, but hook him up to a drip. It was then that I realised he has a proper phobia of needles. Any attempt at self-possession in front of the rapt spectators went out the window and he dissolved into wide-eyed panic mode.

It was clear the staff, though sympathetic, were not going to take any notice of Theo's plaintive cries of, "nonononono..." I got sent out of the room for my own good, they reclined him flat in his chair and the drip was firmly hooked into his vein.

Poor Theo. I did my best to keep him occupied by talking to him about any nonsense I could think of, but it was clear it was costing him a huge effort to retain any semblance of calm.

The nightmare got worse as he was led to X-ray, wheeling the dreaded drip in front of him - wheelchairs and beds thundering past doing nothing to ease the torturous journey. When we made it the 8 yards across the corridor, he then had to remove his shirt and jumper - which is not a straightforward matter when hooked up to a drip, I can tell you.

Chest X-ray completed, we gingerly made the return journey to the waiting room, where the vaguely insane antics of mad old Jose - clearly a hospital regular - were distracting the other patients from Theo's plight.

Theo's hopes were raised when the drip finally ran out and we flagged down the next available nurse to take it out. This she did, but left the needle protruding from Theo's vein. He was almost beside himself. The nurse was very sweet, but told him he would have to keep the needle attached in case another drip was needed. Theo looked like he couldn't believe things could get any worse and was on the point of turning into Basil Fawlty about the whole thing, when redemption came in the shape of another green-clad medic. She told us the blood test and x-ray had shown nothing unusual and Theo should return home, rest and drink plenty of fluids. He had a touch of the 'flu - not man-'flu, real 'flu - but nothing more sinister than that.

The relief of having the hypodermic removed and being able to escape the Horror House of Huge Needles was enough to make Theo feel a bit better straight away. His face, previously shades of white, grey and green, gained a little colour. The saline drip had sorted out the dehydration caused by his fever and his headachey, nauseous feelings had gone. He even recovered sufficently to take a light stroll in the park. Under the warm Spanish sun, the previous three hours seemed like little more than a bad dream.

Friday 13 February 2009

Friday the F***ing 13th

The spooky business over the clock going cuckoo this morning should have alerted me to the fact that today was going to suck. It's Friday 13th after all!

Kate and I were eagerly awaiting the arrival of our first visitor in our new home, the lovely Ayesha, who was due to arrive from London at 11am today. It being Valentine's Day we'd arranged a date for her (!!) with one of my student's, Javier (well, he offered!) and we were planning a big night out tonight with a mixtures of Spanish and English friends. Unfortunately Ayesha missed her flight - not because she was late or anything, but because she couldn't find a representative of Ryanair in order to pay her airport tax. Grrrr!

She's probably arriving at 9pm on Saturday now - meaning we're going to miss the gig we'd planned to take her too where we were going to meet up with more Spanish and English friends.

Ironically enough, Murphy's Law is a topic I'm going to be teaching in class very soon....

Clock's gone cuckoo

Our bed has a little shelf on it, above our heads, where we put water, books, mugs of tea and our alarm clock. Unfortunately there's a little gap between the back of the shelf and the wall and so things, especially our alarm clock, regularly fall off. Usually it's just a case of the battery cover coming off, no big deal, but occasionally it completely disintegrates and has to be put back together. This morning, when Kate got at 6.40am to get ready for work was one such occasion. As I reset the alarm to wake me up at 8.30am I knocked it off the back. Crash. It flew apart. I managed to get it back together again and having just reset the alarm I knew what time it was - 6.45am - and reset the time accordingly.

I struggled to get back to sleep and in the end gave up, made myself a cup of tea, got back into bed and read for a bit. After a chapter I checked the time. 4.50am. What?! I 'd sworn I'd reset it. It occurred to me that having being half-asleep earlier I'd muddled up the clocks hands (big & little). With no other clock in the bedroom I'd have to get up and reset it from the kitchen clock.

I got distracted by various things so it was 10.37am when I got around to resetting in. The alarm clock, now on our desk, read 5.50am. I picked it up, held the dial, prepared to reset it and locked again at the face. It now read 10.35am. What?! I was pretty spooked. Either I was going crazy or the clock was haunted. I put the clock down again. It now read 4.30am. Huh!?! Ok, maybe I'm just too tired and I imagined that the clock said the correct time, my mind predicting what it wanted to see. I picked up the clock again. It now said 10.40am. I put the clock down very slowly. As the clock tilted, gravity took hold of the hands and swung them down to 4.30am. Phew! I wasn't going nuts.

The mechanism holding the clock hands in place had finally succumbed to years of being knocked onto the floor. I was relieved; I thought I was the one going cuckoo.

Shame though - that £2 clock has been Kate's for a long time and has served us faithfully all round Europe. It's practically an heirloom! Or at least, getting on for an antique.

Monday 9 February 2009

Spanish lessons

We went to our first Spanish lesson this morning. 9.30am up at the International House branch Nuevos Ministerios. Naturally, being English, we were muy punctuales. There were only 5 of us to start with, outnumbered by the trainee Spanish Teachers giving us our free lessons as they practised their skills on us. Susan - a Canadian au pair, here for 6 months, who spoke even less Spanish than Kate and I - Ababacar - a student from Senegal, who seemed far too advanced for this beginner's group - and Ibrahima - the youngest at 16, also from Senegal, here to play football. The teachers were very nice, confident and clear, taking us through ice-breakers and basics - introductions, numbers and the alphabet. Nothing we didn't really already know, but it was good to have the formal structure of lessons. Plus we get to practice our French after class with Ababacar and Ibrahima!!

Sunday 8 February 2009

A word from our sponsors....

Ad breaks on Spanish TV are weird.

Having a film or sports match interrupted by advertisements is annoying enough in the UK, but at least the channels there try to wait for a lull in the action or storyline before cutting to commercials, while many made-for-TV programmes actually build in the edit points with an ad break in mind. In Spain, however, not only are the ad breaks seemingly interminable (at least 10 minutes long) but they just interrupt at the most random points. Last night we were watching a film only for a key emotional moment to be interrupted by adverts. When the (at least twice as loud as the film) ad break finally finished it turned out there was only about 30 seconds of the film left to run - I was in the kitchen doing the washing up so missed it entirely. What was the point of an ad break then? On other occasions, the built in credits and re-caps designed to fit around a commercial break on imported American series are ignored, only for ads for cold sore creams to interrupt a key car chase.

I can only assume that it's all a ploy by the Spanish government to encourage people to leave their homes and spend money by completely frustrating their every effort to watch Television. Or, in a more mundane explanation, ad breaks are simply pre-programmed to come on at a specific time, regardless of what is happening in the programme. I prefer the first explanation myself.

Saturday 7 February 2009

The Business Empire Begins...

I am now officially self-employed. For the first time in my life, I am my own business. I quite like it so far - my home is my office and I don't have a boss telling me what time to come in and go home everyday.
That said, I have to keep my clients satisfied, my main one being the language organisation that sorts out my classes. Two of my classes involve an 0830 start on the other side of the city, which involves an 0630 get up time that is a good hour or so earlier than my natural preference. But it's also almost two hours later than the alarm-time for early shifts at my former job, so I console myself with that.
Despite my misgivings about doing the red tape thing at the Social Security office to complete my registration as a freelance English teacher, it was a breeze. I had correctly puzzled out the form, so didn't have to face any awkward questions beyond what I took to mean: "do you have a separate office address?" and "would you like to pay by direct debit?"
Being self-employed in Spain means you pay a base level (you can choose to pay more if you wish) of 244 Euros per month for your social security contributions and 15% income tax. Some of that could be refunded at the end of the year. With my current number of teaching hours it translates as working one week per month for the Social Security office and the other three for myself. I figure three out of four ain't bad.

Thursday 5 February 2009

Spanish Bureaucracy for Beginners.

I'm definitely coming down with Administration Anxiety Complex. Or filloutaformaphobia. Or something like that.

When I was living in the UK, my encounters with government bureaucracy tended to leave me baffled at best - efforts by the Plain English Campaign notwithstanding, their forms might just as well have been in Spanish, for all the sense I could make of them. Especially the annual tax self-assessment. I haven't had to do one for years, thank god, but the thought of it still gives me the horrors.

But bureaucracy that actually IS in Spanish is a whole lot worse. To be fair, I don't think Spanish red tape is too bad, compared with some places (German friends confidently tell me theirs is the worst and I suspect they're right about that). But officialdom is a dialect in itself and when it's a dialect of a language you find largely incomprehensible at the best of times - well, you can imagine the problems.

Unfortunately, I have no choice but to plunge into the administrative maelstrom if I want to actually get paid for my English teaching endeavours. The company I work for has given me several life-belts in the form of idiot's guides, step-by-step instructions and sample forms to copy out. But no matter how well-prepared I am, a single query from the person at the desk sends the teetering edifice of my understanding crashing onto my head.

Take today: I had to visit a local tax office - any would do, I was told - and hand in a completed form to register myself as an official freelancer, or autonomo. The first office, which I'd painstakingly researched, Googlemapped and pinpointed on the Metro plan turned out to have closed down. Some time ago, if the graffiti covering the door was anything to go on. Rather than leave the area straight away for the address suggested in the window, I decided to visit a nearby police station so I could change the address on my Certificado de Registro (another necessary document when it comes to being paid - with the all-important "NIE" number. People have killed for less.). "You can stroll into any police station and change the address", I'd been told. Except you can't. The policeman miraculously understood my explanation in halting Spanish of what I needed and gestured me and (an increasingly weary) Theo to another office up the street. We duly followed his directions and I joined the queue at the bustling building where they were processing extrajaneros. When my turn came, the woman at the desk babbled something at me several times. Eventually, the bored policeman beside her, treating me like the imbecile I must have appeared to be, wrote another address on a piece of paper. "Go here," he instructed. I nodded meekly and went out.

By this time Theo, who had heroically got up early to accompany me on my expedition, ran out of patience. Traipsing to three offices in a decidedly un-Spanish-like steady drizzle went above and beyond the call of duty. He gratefully took my suggestion to go home and left me to carry on alone.

The central tax office I eventually arrived at was huge and impressively high-tech. There was an automated and highly complex queueing system, which involved several different zones, large electronic displays, which looked rather like Airport departure boards and acres of desks, each with another electronic display, which lit up with the relevant number once the clerk was ready. None of the old, "cashier number six, please," nonsense of UK post-offices and light years ahead of the ticket-dispensing supermarket deli counter.

I painstakingly translated the instructions and pressed the button for my number. I sat and waited with a chatty South American on one side of me (I didn't need to know any Espanol to work out that she was complaining about how long it was all taking) and an English-speaking woman who either had a severe case of Tourette's or whose patience had been so severely depleted by the Spanish tax system that she'd lost the ability to communicate in anything except expletives.

When your turn came, the departure board gave you a little fanfare, which for those who had thirty of more ahead of them in the queue, was probably well-deserved. A neat and smiling middle-aged woman dealt with me and it all went swimmingly, until she pointed at a cross I'd made on the form and said something in a questioning tone. I responded like a landed fish. Despite patient repetitions by the clerk, I was still none the wiser, so eventually resorted to ringing up the Human Resources lady at my employer's in the hope her superior Spanish would untangle the problem.

It did - as an English teacher I was indeed IVA (VAT) exempt, whatever that may mean - my documents were stamped and I was free to go.

My next stop was to the comisaria to try and do the change of address on my Certificado de Registro. When I arrived the woman guarding the entrance took one look at me and gave a piece of paper telling me how the system had recently changed for Romanians and Bulgarians. Not very helpful, really. Eventually, I managed to convey to her the reason for my visit and was waved to desk 7. Once there, it all seemed straightforward, until I was handed yet another form to fill in and told I had to go and pay a ten euro administration fee at a bank.

Grumbling, I filled out the form using educated guess-work (I'm definitely getting better with all the practice) and traipsed off to the nearest bank. The cashier there said something unintelligible to me several times and after a while I got the message that I would have to return at another time. I tried another bank with the same result. After trying three more, I gave up. They had all allocated particular days and hours to the business of accepting government administration fees and most of them had stopped accepting that type of business at 1030. It was 1230 by now and I'd had enough. Deciding a partially-successful mission was better than an outright failure and needing to regroup, I turned back for home.

Tomorrow, with renewed vigour, I shall tackle the next stage - arranging my social security payments. I can hardly wait.

Sunday 1 February 2009

The quality of busking is a pain...

I used to really like Simon and Garfunkel. But my appreciation of their work has taken a bit of a dive since I moved to Madrid. It's not Paul and Art's fault. They weren't to know some of their most famous songs would be reproduced on panpipes to oompah backing tracks and inflicted daily on the Spanish Capital's Metro commuters.
Ordinarily, I really like music. I also happen to believe that deserving musicians should be rewarded for their efforts, and that includes decent buskers. But I do object to having music played at me whether I like it or not. At least with other buskers, you have the choice of walking past (with finger inserted in ear) or stopping to listen. When one descends on your carriage on Linea Circular with yet another muzak rendition of El Condor Pasa, Bridge Over Troubled Water or Sounds of Silence, you're stuck with it.
Most Spaniards have developed selective deafness and a thick skin when it comes to handing over money to musical hijackers. Which makes me wonder how many performances of S&G's Greatest Hits (panpipes interpretation) make it worth the hijacker's while.
Maybe I'm being intolerant. After all, riding the Metro isn't exactly the last word in fun and a bit of music is always welcome, isn't it?
No, it isn't. Those people who don't have a companion to talk to during the train journey seem quite happy to be left in peace to read, study or snooze. An over-loud, naff and unasked for soundtrack only serves to add to the other irritations of public transport, like over-crowding, delays and pick-pockets.
The other day, I think I had to suffer no less than four renditions of El Condor Pasa during my journey to work, each by a different busker, yet all sounding the same. Ye gods. If they must panpipe us to death on the Metro, is it too much to ask that they learn a different tune? Something by Pulp or the Sex Pistols or even The Spice Girls? If they could, if they only could...