Then we went upstairs and found dirty, stained carptets.

This is odd. Spanish people, in general do not like carpet. Trying to rent a house with carpet in Madrid is practically insane. The chances of getting the rental agreement signed are near impossible!

In a cold country carpet is nice, it keeps your feet warm in winter, but in a climate like Madrid’s that tops out regularly at 35-40ºC in summer? Carpet? Madness.

And a stained carpet to boot!

The funny thing is that the owners had just repainted the whole house and re-varnished the parquet downstairs.

“Do you think they’ll change the carpet?” we asked the agent.

“I doubt it,” she said, “they’ve just spent a fortune painting and redoing the floor in the salon.”

That’s like going on a date in filthy clothes, and saying, ‘it’s OK, I just washed my hair’ – chances of success = zero.

There’s one house that’s never going to go off the market.

(Reminds me of trying to rent a flat in Spain years ago, and being attacked by a savage Siamese cat – another flat that probably never got rented! Full story in Errant in Iberia!)

We just finished a 6,500 Km drive from Madrid, via San Sebastian (above) to the North of France, across to the UK, over the channel to Germany via Belgium, and back to Madrid via France and Catalonia again.

Here are some thoughts from the trip…

Collective Conscienciousness…

Every neighbourhood, town, region, city, and country, has it’s own feeling, a collective consciousness, based on many factors like standard of living, wellbeing of the population, employment levels, government, economic optimism and more…

Of all the countries we passed through this summer, including Spain, Germany far and away had the best street-level feeling about it. There was a sort of optimism in the air that you couldn’t help but notice, that wasn’t nearly as present in the other countries we visited.

In fact Germany seemed to be streaks ahead of the rest of Europe on many levels – prosperity, recycling, eco-friendliness, organic food, city streets clean enough to eat off! There was a palpable sense of industry, of forward motion.

After 5 days we were ready to abandon Spain and move there! But when we drove back across France, and finally crossed the huge mountainous divide at the Catalan border with Spain, the moment we passed the blue ‘España’ sign on the motorway, we smiled, and said ‘Home, at last!’

Back in Madrid things look very different to Germany. Apart from the grubby state of the pavements in our barrio, at least one more shop (a perfumería) has closed on our street since July, to add to the two (the photolab and the printers) that shut down for good at the end of June, knowing that with things as bad as they already were, they just couldn’t afford to make it across the empty summer divide to September.

The ‘feeling’ in our barrio though is still good. People seem to be happy. It’s nice to be back in a country where people hang out to chat on the street, where kids can make as much noise as they like and stay out late at night.

Where you can buy just one drink at a bar terrace table but sit there all night to chat to a friend if you want to, long after the waiter has taken your empty glass.

It’s nice to feel the hot afternoon air at the end of August, and the cool breeze at night. It’s nice to eat croquettas and tortilla, olives, calamaris, to not feel weird about ordering cerveza sin alcohol…

I arrived in Spain exactly 13 years ago. After our long haul around Europe, it’s good to be back.

Other Things…

Read: The wonders of a downsized life in Asturias…

The Kindle Experiment, update: Since publishing my book Errant in Iberia to the Kindle platform in June, it’s selling around 100 Kindle copies a month, about ten times more than it had previously been selling as a paperback. Some great new reviews on Amazon.co.uk too!

Above, another picture from our recent trip to El Boca del Asno. When you get down to rock and water level, nature is quite endlessly surprising!

Right, what I want to talk about: In the Boca del Asno post, I wrote the following…

…as usual so many people stick close to the car park, that within a few minutes walk up the river, you find yourself with plenty of riverside space…

But what I nearly wrote quite automatically was “as usual the locals stick close to the carpark”… until I suddenly realised how totally ‘us and them’ the locals sounds.

Hang on, I thought, I’ve been living here for nearly 13 years, I’m married to a Spanish woman, most days I’m fluent in Spanish, I eat, live, and pay taxes in Spain, hang out with Spanish people all day long, my son is going to a Spanish school… how on earth can I keep on talking about ‘the locals’ when I am one!

I may not be Spanish, but I certainly can’t continue to set myself apart from the Spanish by using language like that anymore, that much became totally clear in the instant I was about to write about ‘the locals’ again.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve become a local after all this time, or, more importantly, allowed myself to feel like one.

Perhaps the key question then is ‘How long does it take to really feel like one of the locals?’… and in my case, despite the fact I’ve been totally happy and integrated here in Spain for so long, the answer to that exact questions looks ridiculously long at ‘about 12 and a half years’!

Do you feel like a ‘local’, if you aren’t living where you originally came from, did it take you long to become one, will you ever become one? Answers welcome in the comments!

My intercambio lead me to a wife, and a life, in Spain, so you can imagine I am a fairly big fan of the whole idea! So I was really happy when I got an email from Foster Hodge, with an excellent account of his intercambio experiences. I’ve included the whole article here, it’s a great read:

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Mi Primer Intercambio - by Foster Hodge

After spending more or less a month in Madrid, working on my Spanish, learning the ropes of the city, and falling in love with a new and exciting culture—I decided it was high time to take the next step. I had received quite a bit of encouragement from friends and professors of mine that I should get myself an intercambio, or a language exchange partner.

I decided to put my nerves aside and posted an anuncio in loquo.com, a wonderful website that offers a wide variety of things from renting and buying property, to citas de Internet and intercambios.

To my surprise, a couple days after posting my anuncio my inbox was flooded with responses from young Spaniards who were interested in meeting with me for a language exchange…

I quickly came to the realization that there are way more Spaniards in Madrid trying to learn English than there are native English speakers trying to learn Spanish. This boosted my confidence a bit, and prompted me to realize that my skills as a native English speaker were sought after and highly valued in Spain’s vibrant capital.

The next step was to choose one of the madrileños that had contacted me, get in touch with them, and set up some weekly meetings to begin our intercambio. I decided to contact a madrileña that was the same age as me, and also had some shared academic interests. We shared a series of e-mails, talked a bit about our interests and schedules, and we decided that we would make a nice fit for an intercambio. She suggested that we meet in a couple of days at the statue of the Oso y el Madroño in La Puerta del Sol, a place where apparently todo el mundo comes to meet for intercambios.

Let me first put a couple of things in perspective. In the days leading up to my first intercambio, I was quite excited about the prospect of spending some time with a young madrileña. I had only been in Madrid studying for about a month or so, but I was learning fast and was sure that a positive intercambio experience would drastically improve my Spanish, and that my friends and peers would be amazed by my progress.

Additionally, I had yet to meet a Spaniard that I wasn’t fond of. My host family, my teachers, any Spaniard that I ran into on the street seemed to be remarkably nice and interesting. I had already made a lot of comparisons between the Spanish and the Irish. They are both groups of people who inherit intrinsically likable qualities. They quickly make you feel at one with their way of life and their culture. They are the kind of people that you can have a brief conversation with and already feel like you have known them for a lifetime.

Naturally, when the day of my first intercambio arrived, all of this excitement and all of these positive thoughts quickly vanished from my mind. As I was making my way to La Puerta del Sol, my shyness and lack of confidence in my Spanish abilities began to take over. What are we going to talk about? What if I can’t understand her Spanish? What if she can’t understand my English? What if I forget all the things I have learned over the last month?

This is my first time really applying the Spanish I have learned into a real-life situation outside of the classroom. Why hadn’t I thought about all the potential things that could go disastrously wrong during a first intercambio?!

I arrived to the statue in Sol a little bit early, anxiously looking around to see if anyone fit the description. No one yet. I wondered if maybe I still had time to run into a bar and grab a couple of cañas to combat my nervousness. The moment the thought crossed my mind a young Spanish girl came up to me with a big smile on her face and said, ¡Hola Foster! ¿Eres tú?

I stood frozen for a moment, first taken aback by the fact that this girl was absolutely stunning. She had big beautiful brown eyes, a wide welcoming smile, and the slightly prominent chin structure that many Spaniards tend to have. In retrospect, I am not sure why I was surprised by her attractiveness, because about 90% of the Spanish girls I have met are drop-dead gorgeous.

After standing star-struck for quite some time, I fretfully replied that I was in fact the one she was waiting for and asked her in my most nervous Spanish where she wanted to go to chat for a little bit. She proceeded to give me dos besos and asked if I would like to go to La Latina, one of her favorite barrios in Madrid. Before we had even reached La Latina, she had used her inherent Spanish pleasantness to make me feel at ease. To this day one of my favorite things about Spaniards is how comfortable they feel around you and how comfortable they make you feel around them.

We arrived at Cava Baja, a street in La Latina that is literally composed of only bars! I would guess at least 60 of them. I frequented the area consistently throughout my semester abroad and I still don’t think I went to an eighth of the bars that are there. We walked around a bit, peeking into bars and people watching, and then finally decided on a sleek modern looking café that was less crowded than some of the others.

We had a couple of cañas (which got me speaking less nervously), and we talked about everything from our childhoods to jamón ibérico to health care reform in the US and everything in between. We spoke in Spanish for about two hours without realizing how quickly the time was passing. I still have trouble describing how good it felt to really speak Spanish with a native Spanish speaker for the first time. I was actually expressing my thoughts and feelings while maintaining a solid conversation, and it was genuinely one of the most positive and healthy sensations I have ever had.

As we were moving on to our third or fourth caña, a group of her friends happened to walk in. They all introduced themselves and were very nice, and they were incredibly excited about the fact I was a native English speaker. They were all in the process of learning English so I suggested that we should all switch to English for a while. I was impressed by how well they spoke English and they complimented me on my Spanish as well.

We spoke in English for a couple of hours, they continually asked me questions and I gave them advice and taught them as much cool colloquial English from the deep south of the United States as I could. Eventually one of the Spaniards suggested that we go to a discoteca. I was slightly hesitant at first as I had never been to a discoteca, but they all assured me that it would be a good time.

And they were right, it was an absolute blast! Although I am not much of a dancer, I danced all night and had an amazing time. On my walk home, I thought back to earlier that evening when I was nervously walking to Sol and truly couldn’t believe that my first intercambio experience turned out to be what I still consider one of the best nights of my life.

After my first experience with language exchanges I became obsessed with them. I met with several different Spaniards three or four times a week and I can honestly say that I never had a negative experience. Often I would meet their friends and I would introduce them to mine. On more than one occasion I was invited to their house and ate meals with their entire family (I will admit that a meal with an entire Spanish family can be a nerve-wrecking experience!).

Eventually I stopped considering my intercambio as language exchanges as thought of them as simply going to hang out with my Spanish friends. And all my intercambios are friends that I still keep in close contact with well after my return to the United States. Above all, my intercambios taught me an enormous amount about the Spanish language and about Spaniards, and my time in Spain was an exponentially richer experience because of them.

—————–

Thanks Foster! Please feel free to reply to Foster, or to let us know about your intercambio experiences, in the comments below!

Also of interest for Spanish learners: “Top Ten Dead-Giveaways That You’re a Gringo Speaking Spanish, Even if You Speak Well …!”

Baby wouldn’t cooperate with his parents desperately needed siesta plan, so I take him for a walk around the neighbourhood, hoping some pram-(stroller)-time will send him to sleep…

…but it’s 38 degrees outside… and there’s only so much hill I’m willing to push him up and down in this heat… only 6 hours sleep last night… god I needed this siesta – we’ve partly gone out of the flat so Marina can get hers at least, and if baby sleeps from all this walking, well, that’s great too, I’ll deal with my rest-deficit later…

…too hot pushing him up and down this hill (even on the shady side of the street) though, so we dive into the local supermarket to get 2 bottles of water – it’ll be air-con at least, and we’ll kill 5 minutes.

So we get the water, and head to the front to pay… but something weird is going on… just as we approach the checkout, I see a female member of staff telling a male colleague to follow her ‘right now‘…

…they overtake us just as we reach the back of the short queue, and the male Supermarket guy goes straight up one of the two tall, young, barrio 20-somethings standing just in front of me, my pram and my baby…

Supermarket Guy to Young Guy 1: “Show me what you’ve got stuffed in your pocket…”

Young Barrio Guy 1 (moving to within an inch of Supermarket guy’s nose): “You want me to smash your face in?”

Me to Baby (reversing rapidly): “Let’s go and have a look at what’s at the back of the store…” (This was shaping up to be one PG scene I thought baby probably didn’t need to witness…)

So we head to the furthest corner of the store, as all the other male supermarket guys rush past us heading to the front following an emergency call from reception, and we spend the next five minutes at the back of the shop with me nonchalantly pointing out interesting hams and packets of milk and different kinds of butter to the baby, as all hell breaks loose at the front…

…how long till the police get here?! A few mums and young teenage girls are playing the ‘let’s see what’s at the back of the store’ game with me, until at last the commotion dies down, we give it a minute for safety, and I head back to the checkout, hoping to pay and get out before the bad guys come back… which, according to the scared-looking and 8 months pregnant checkout girl, is exactly what they have promised to do later.

Meanwhile the entire male staff of the store, and a couple of their female colleagues, are piling back in from the street, after the bad-guys made their get away.

A young supermarket girl: “They punched Juan in the face, and opened up his mouth.”

Juan then appears, looking pretty boosted on adrenalin, and shows everyone his split lip: everyone agrees ice in a plastic bag is in order.

Finally, just as we get our change, two young cops turn up, and the staff start telling them how the bad guys just left on a motorbike. The 3 more cop cars that turn up as we are on our way out, head off in search of the baddies.

Baby and I give up on the siesta and the stroll, and head home to wake mum up.

Thoughts:

- You know when you’ve had enough city for one year, and it’s time to get out for a holiday. Even if you weren’t sure, suffocating 38º heat and street fighting certainly drives the point home.

- Why on earth do supermarket staff have to challenge shoplifters – is the shelf-stacking supermarket guy’s split lip (and obviously the result could have been a LOT worse) – really worth the price of whatever can be stuffed into a stupid barrio kids pocket? Hey management, either put security in, or let the barrio guys get away with it, but don’t put your staff in the punching line (note: pregnant checkout girl said “those guys WILL come back later, this sort of thing happens here all the time, and I know when they mean it, those two were seriously crazy…”)

- One of the barrio guys apparently said he’d also bring his girlfriend when they came back later, so she could punch one of the supermarket girls for him. Nice couple. Honourable behaviour and all that.

- If this is meant to be a pretty nice barrio, and “this sort of thing happens all the time”, what’s going wrong?

- Happy Summer Holidays… We’re out of here soon, so this may be my last post for a few weeks.

- You never get a siesta when you really, really, really need it. When you want a siesta as badly as I wanted one today, it generally gets seriously shafted!

These situations include everything from the truly horrendous (speaking in Spanish to morticians after the death of a friend), to the exceedingly-important-not-to-get-it-wrong (negotiating the purchase of a flat, as related here), and the truly fantastic (getting through the technical Spanish of my wife’s pregnancy and the birth of our son!)

Whenever I felt in over my head, I just remembered the mantra: “At least it’s good for my Spanish!”

Over at our sister site Notes in Spanish, we are giving away lots of free videos and special reports this week that will, without any doubt, be very very good for your Spanish!

Download audio file (nfs76_summer_salad.mp3)
[Download MP3]

Been a while, but here’s another fantastico Notes from Spain podcast! It’s hot at last, we’re all loosing the seasonal depression that no-one knew you could get in Spain, I’m getting in trouble over how to eat salad, whilst coping with the biggest culture shock I’ve had in years: how to map my childhood experience onto the Spanish education system so I can make intelligent decisions about the future of my own offspring….

The key phrase to use here is ‘he tenido una bajada de tensión’, or for even more dramatic effect, una super-bajada de tensión, ‘bajadas de tensión’ (blood pressure collapse) being common amongst just about everyone in Spain when it’s hot, including it now appears, me as well!

Bajadas de tensión can be cured by various means, including: a) Rapid ingestion of Coca Cola/Sugary food, b) Doing nothing when there is lots to be done c) Telling everyone about your bajada, repeatedly d) all of the above. I’m getting good at this, and there have only been three days of heat so far!

On another note, as soon as the sun came out a few days ago, the Retiro park filled with people with bajadas de tensión stripped down to their underwear. Strapping young men in nothing but tattoos and tight boxers, women in bras and tangas (g-strings) – does this happen in your part of the world?

I’m sure it’s a more pronounced phenomenon than this time last year – am I just getting old?!

Apologies for the lack of illustrative photos to accompany this point – just think ‘slightly grungy lingerie ad with trees’, and you get the picture! Instead, here’s a favourite old photo of mine from 1998, of a man in the park selling chistes (jokes):

Anyway, that’s enough for today, I feel another super-bajada de tensión coming on, and I may barely make it back to the sofa…

In Spain the collection of neighbours in a flat block is called a ‘comunidad’? But I wander what that means?

In our case it means saying hello to everyone, chatting to the occasional neighbour, feeling safe about the other people in the building. But there isn’t much ‘popping round for tea’, or ‘could you look after the kids for a minute while I nip out for (fill in the emergency)’.

Part of that is our fault. If our lovely English neighbour at the end of the corridor is reading this, then a million apologies for not having you all round for that cake yet – we will soon, as soon as a weekend looks like a weekend!

But I suspect that in big cities people don’t just pop in and out of each other’s houses any more for a cup of tea, or look after each others’ kids at the drop of a hat – like they did in the old days, didn’t they?

Do you live in that kind of real, close-knit, sociable community? Does it exist any more? Can it exist in big cities? We’d love to live it better, but wonder if that world still exists these days, or if people just don’t have time any more…

I’d love to hear your thoughts, whether you live in Spain, Ireland, Australia, or Timbuktu!

Argentinian guy: That’s why this country is in such a mess.

Me: It drives you a bit mad. The other day I went to the bank, it was meant to open at 9.30, didn’t open til 9.45! A bank!

Argentinian: See what I mean?

Me: In the end you get accustomed to it.

Argentian: No, In the end you resign yourself to it…

I wanted to tell him to lighten up. There is a big difference between getting accustomed to something, and resigning yourself to it, and I think I prefer the former.

In fact I think I’ll redo my Expat manifesto, to add the following:

7. When living somewhere you don’t originally come from, don’t resign yourself to the differences, just smile and get accustomed to them.

[Note: Please don't use this post as an excuse to leave negative comments about Spain - they will be deleted! I've had enough trouble with that in the past!]