living the high life - by Theo

Go to any city in Spain and high-rise, high-density living abounds. Our current apartment block is quite small, having only five floors - our first flat in Madrid (in Mendez Alvaro) was on floor 6 of 9. Naturally, therefore, the Spanish have evolved several unique adaptations for this.

The first concerns furniture removal. As many, if not most, of the stairwells and lifts of Madrid's older buildings are too narrow to accommodate large items of furniture, those who don't want to get a flat-pack from IKEA have to employ a specialist removals company. These guys raise up the wardrobe or double bed on a massive lift that resembles a fireman's ladder outside the building and in through the windows. Whenever I see one I always wish I had my camera on me.

Not everyone uses ladders though. Often when a job is too small to really need scaffolding you see workmen abseiling down the sides of buildings rather than trying to prop up a ladder in among all the washing lines festooning the walls.

Meanwhile, indoors, the residents of these high-rises make adaptions and alterations just like their ground-floor living neighbours. Having no garden in which to build a conservatory hasn't stopped them - they just build one (of sorts) by covering over the ubiquitous terrazas. A range of styles is available, as can be seen from our bedroom window. Our flat used to have two terrazas, but the back one has been converted into a kind of utility room/storage space, while the front one has been covered over to add an extra 6m2 or so to our living room. Which is a bit of a shame as it would have been nice to have had a little terrace of our own to sit out on during hot summer evenings - oh well, I guess we'll just have to go to a bar. Que pena!

our new flat

Our new flat is awesome! It was the last one we looked at - we saw five in total - and though it immediately became our first choice, we'd kind of forgotten how good it was until we actually moved in.

It's pretty large and very well equipped; for a flat to be 'furnished' here in Spain clearly means it comes with plates, pots and pans in the kitchen, meaning that much of the stuff we dug out of our parents attic is largely redundant. The spacious bathroom - many of those we saw were little more than corridors with a shower at the end - comes with both bath and bidet, while our sofa could easily accommodate any guests that don't fit in the spare room. We've got air conditioning, central heating and ceiling fans (none a given in Madrid, despite the massive range of seasonal temperatures) and a view out of our bedroom's covered terrace that looks like it came straight off the set of West Side Story. Even the decoration is good - prints of Dali's and van Gough's and a nicely toned down wooden floor - and at the least to obligatory sideboard is painted the same as the wall so doesn't dominate too much.

Almost better than the flat is the barrio, the surrounding neighbourhood. Mendez Alvaro, where we were living before, was great for public transport links and parks, but not much else - there was no atmosphere to the area. Here in Cuidad Lineal our quiet little street (free parking) is just round the corner from shady avenues lined with useful shops and atmospheric bars. We're a mere 5 minutes walk through pretty streets to the bustling Calle Acala, with it's miles of shops and metro stops. While we may technically be further away from the centre here, we definitely feel closer to the heart of Madrid.

new beginnings

This weekend heralds something of a fresh start for Kate and I in Spain. After nearly two weeks of job-less, home-less limbo enjoy the wonderful hospitality of our friends Kirsty and Juanmi in Vaciamadrid, we are about to move into a new flat and start new jobs.

We exchanged contracts on a lovely 2 bedroom apartment in Cuidad Lineal earlier this morning. Our new landlord and landlady are an elderly couple who live on the floor below, the flat used to be their son´s and their duaghter lives directly below us. Very much a family affair! It´s got everything we need, is reasonably close to the Metro and the surrounding area seems to be quite quiet while still hosting several lively looking bars and lots of amenities. Ironically enough it´s very close to the academy I was teaching at last term though, while I was very happy there, I´m glad we´ve moved.

The advantages of switching academies were immediately apparent when we recieved our timetables. Knocking off at 9pm rather than 10pm makes a huge difference and the kids classes last 50 minutes instead of 1 hour 20, which is going to be a hell of a lots more bearable. As the students will be drawn from the poshest barrio in town (Salamanca) they should also, theoretically, be better behaved than the monsters I was marshalling last term. In addition much of the lesson planning is done for us in advance; we just have to fine tune the plans provided to suit our own styles. However, the biggest benefit of our new posts is the 3 day weekends we get every other, we share two staurday classes with another teacher and never work fridays. We´re already thinking about some weekends away in Delilah...

flat frustrations

We´re beginning to understand why so many young (or not so young) Spanish couples tend to remain living with their parents for so long - finding a flat in Madrid is a frustrating and time consuming enterprise.

It´s not that there aren´t flats available - there are loads (one website - http://www.idealista.com/ - lists over 9 thousand) - it´s just that getting an appointment to view one and then actually putting pen to paper is a process that makes the Byzantine bureaucracy look straightforward. Despite our best efforts to arrange viewings by e mail and text message, it took the intevention of our good friend Cesar, who kindly made some phone calls on our behalf (after only 24 hours back in Spain our spanish wasn´t up to it) to get us some viewings. Meanwhile we sat around in Kirsty and Juanmi´s lovely new house, getting increasingly frustrated at our inability to do anything and more and more horrified at the lack of taste so many of the photos of flats to rent demonstrated. Some of the floor patterning would have induced migraines and, possibly, brought out any latent epileptic trends, while the Spanish obsession with massive sideboards seems to know no limits. These are by no means the worst examples we´ve seen!

I wonder if "Changing Rooms" could be tempted to do a Madrid espisode?

Anyway, after the third viewing (after being pipped to the post at the first flat we saw) we thought we´d found a flat and a barrio we´d be happy with. A reasonably spacious 2 bedroom apartment, not too pricey, with a very sympathetic landlady who just wanted us to complete a few financial tasks before we could sign. As well as a deposit and a month´s rent in advance, she wanted us to have a 6 month Aval with our Bank. On inquiry at our bank the following morning, we discovered to our horror that this essentially meant tying up 5000 euros in an account we couldn´t touch for a year, with a bank fee of 400 euros for the privilege. Ouch! So we´ve kept looking. We saw two more flats last night that we liked, the second one in particular, though unfortunately it´s an agency let and the office is closed until Monday 9am. We´ve now got a nervous weekend ahead hoping nobody else has beaten us to it.

Flamenco Fiesta

Last Saturday our flatmate Alex, who has just got back from Mexico, threw a party for some his friends, which - after Kate had got her guitar out and played a few enthusiastically-received songs - turned into an improvised Flamenco show in our kitchen. We filmed a little bit of it:

http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmXJnD6K95k

No idea what he's singing about, but it sounded pretty rude and clearly had the crowd in hysterics.

flat fiesta

This weekend was decidedly more active than the last one; after a week of working hard with Kate at training for her new job from 9 til 7 and me supervising classes of manic children, we decided to play a bit harder too. (Though not as hard as our flatmates it has to be said!)


We started off with a flat-warming party on Saturday night, inviting along friends of ours from both Pueblo Ingles and Vaughan Town, plus our flatmates. Apparently it's not really the custom to invite friends round for food - the Spanish tend to just meet in a bar - while starting things at 8pm is definitely not the usual way of things in Madrid, but the food at least was reasonably Spanish. Indeed my first efforts at Spanish-style tortilla and aubergine fritters were gobbled up with pleasing enthusiasm! We'd set up an ice-breaking exercise ("find someone who?" bingo) for a bit of fun and nostalgia (it's something we had played at Pueblo Ingles) and to get people talking, not that we needed to encourage them - they're a sociable bunch! Pete our flatmate got on the DJ decks and spun a little set, which started to make us think it might be nice to go somewhere for a dance. Cesar obligingly phoned a friend and had 10 of us put on the guest list for a trendy club, which we headed out to at 1am - still early by Madrid standards. In fact when Kate and I left at 3am we had to queue to get our coats from the cloakroom - because there were loads of people waiting to hand theirs in!! It was a great night and lovely to see our friends again.

Sunday lunch and curries are two great English traditions, though it's rare that we combine them. Today however, after a lazy morning, we ventured out to the Guru restaurant in central Madrid to meet an old childhood friend of Kate's, Kirsty Frost, her husband Juanmi, parents and aunt and uncle (all friends of Kate's parents). Kirsty has been living in Spain for 10 years now and she and Kate really enjoyed seeing each other again - our social circle here is rapidly expanding. Despite our protestations, we were treated to lunch. Again. If we have to buy back all the meals we've been treated to we're going to be bankrupted rather swiftly. Just as well Kate starts work tomorrow!

snow (and our new flat)

We woke up this morning to see gentle, thick flakes of snow drifting down past our window....

...and here are some pictures of our new flat....