Hello dear readership- it’s been another busy and adventure-filled week in Madrid, the highlights of which I will lay out here! I´m typing in a hurry w/o proofreading, so forgive any glaring typos.
PART I
Monday kicked things off with an orientation session for FERE, the Catholic school organization that runs our student teaching program. The enthusiasm for teaching was palpable as FERE management types explained in detail the role we (the teachers) were to fill and the possible challenges to face along the way – I think all of us left the building genuinely & unironically inspired and ready to work. After first checking off the “open bank account” box on my to-do list at Barclays – good people there – I attended the first day of Masters classes in Alcala de Henares on Tuesday, and it too was successful: our first quarter (there are actually four of them in the ten months - if three terms receive the “quarter” label, perhaps then this program is based on “fifths?”) will consist of Art History and Techniques of Writing, which last is turning out to be more of a pedagogy class than a writing class. (This initially rubbed me the wrong way, but I suppose the pedagogy content will actually be more useful.)
I went to the first morning of student teaching at Colegio Sagrada Familia on Wednesday, where I will be working with three other American “auxiliares de conversacion:” Ellen Wilkinson, Kelly Thurston, and Abby Coffin (all of who will be awesome colleagues). We haven’t done much real “teaching” since Wednesday – mostly sitting in on class – but we’re getting our full schedules tomorrow, and apparently there may possibly be serious amounts of solo classroom time. This is intimidating. But everyone at SAFA is really nice, especially the bilingual director Dario, and I have a great feeling about the school already. Three out of four of last year’s auxiliares opted to stay in Spain at the end of year, which I’ll take as a testament to the program’s success.
Day two of Masters classes (Thursday night) also went well, but I worry that Art History will be much more brutal than I’d first thought – class was literally two uninterrupted hours of writing down dates, names and facts about such art phenomena as Doric columns and such-and-such vases (too lazy to check my notes to supply another sample name here) at a hand-crampingly fast pace. After class ended an incredible thunderstorm woke me up late Thursday night- Friday morning - in a state of sheer animal terror: once the adrenaline subsided and I decided our apartment building hadn’t actually been hit by lightning, the primal nighttime spectacle of the storm was amazing.
AND NOW THE REAL MEAT OF THIS BLOG POST, PART II
I spent basically the entire weekend enjoying the conclusion of the Vuelta a España, Spain’s answer to the Tour de France. Saturday morning I took an early-morning train north out of town with friends Eric and Sydney, transferring after over an hour to another more mountain-type train that bore us up to the isolated town of Navecarrado, a truly alpine-feeling village surrounded by a nature preserve. As we walked away from the train station towards town I saw the first names of cyclists painted on the tarmac: MOSQUERA SCHLECK SASTRE MENCHOV NIBALI etc. We had a four-km hike to get up to the top of the “Bola del Mundo” road where the race would end, and let me tell you now that Bola del Mundo is just beautiful. It was a one-lane (if that) road winding snake-like up the mountainside out of town: in places the surface was cobbled, in others it was as steep as 20% (!!), and a pilgrimage-like procession of fans trudged up out of sight, destination obscured by clouds. We ended up at around 2300m, far above treeline and in the heart of a frigid mountain fog. With the race not projected to arrive for at least five hours more, we sat down to enjoy lunch with our new Spanish friends Lasso, Fernando, Anders and Emilio (not sure about this last name). They’d brought a real feast: bread, tortilla de España (a scrambled-egg-like dish), chocolate, sausage, even donuty cinnamon things. The TV cameras returned to us three times to share the glory of this typically Spanish mountain meal with the raptly watching world. Lasso and Fernando especially were just hilarious: singing and dancing virtually non-stop, they shared with us not only food but jokes, slang, and wisdom. By the day’s end an interlanguage “slang trade” had taken place that introduced to both Spanish and English phrases much too crude to consider repeating here.
After a few hours in a warm alpine-type cafÈ with cafes con leche, we returned to the road to stake out our spectating spot on one of the most brutally steep ramps in the last two kms. From time to time the fog would part to reveal the extent of the crowd packed along the road far below us, waving flags and wearing costumes and generally having a great time as they waited. We heard on our tiny handheld radio that Mosquera attacked with great ferocity at the base of Bola del Mundo; a few minutes later we saw him emerge out of the icy cloud, a screaming double wall of fans stepping out of his way only at the last minute. The Italian race leader Nibali was right behind him, both going “full gas.” The rest of the race came through in ones and twos: Frank Schleck, Carlos Sastre, Denis Menchov, all wearing the pitiful grimace or 1000-meter stare of the deeply exhausted. One especially spent Spanish rider mumbled as he wobbled past us “empujame” [push me]; Lasso obliged, running alongside him for a good 15 seconds through the frantic crowd. As soon as they finished the stage - and despite the athletes still racing uphill - the first ones up the mountain turned around and rode back down the extremely narrow fan-choked road at pretty incredibly daring speed. The American star Tom Danielson descended by our group and I yelled to him “great work Tom;” he turned around to share a few seconds of eye contact and a big grin! (!!!!) All of us went down the road together: fans walking, fans riding bikes, pros flying through tiny gaps between fans at top speed, everyone sharing the aura of the race’s “Queen stage.” The clouds parted cinematically to reveal a spectacularly wild view below and around us. And as if all that weren’t enough, we ended up meeting family friends of the Sastres on the train ride down from Navecerrado who confirmed that Carlos really is as humble and genuine as he appears on TV. What an incredible day.
Today – Sunday – was the Vuelta’s final stage, a 12-lap criterium-ish race around downtown Madrid. Eric and I staked out a strategic spot at Plaza Cibeles and watched the day’s five-man break form, flourish, struggle and eventually succumb to the combined powers of the HTC-Columbia, Garmin, and Liquigas teams in the finals kilometres. Native Washingtonian Tyler Farrar won the final sprint over HTC’s Mark Cavendish; although I’ve never before been a big Farrar fan, it was pretty great to see him on the podium post-race. I experienced true American pride in Farrar’s victory in the heart of Madrid, a huge city that still sometimes feels foreign to me. Nibali won the overall GC and duly sprayed the podium girls with a comically oversized bottle of champagne. Cav won the green sprinter’s jersey and David Moncoutie the blue-polka-dotted mountain points jersey. In the chaos after the podium ceremony wrapped up we noticed nine XXL boxes of takeout pizza stacked up behind the Garmin team bus: the directeur sportif sped away before anyone else noticed their rude littering. Did I consider keeping one as a souvenir? Yes, but I immediately rejected the plan for sanitary reasons. Down the road Nibali and Mosquera were surrounded by huge crowds of exuberant fans and the mood all throughout Madrid was contagiously positive.
Anyways, it was a very good first week of class and student teaching, and an unforgettable weekend. This next week means the beginning of real full-time student life, so I’m glad the weekend was so full of fun.
Thanks for reading!
Take care,
-Dave
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Update #2 from Madrid!
It’s been one hectic week since last I wrote you. I’ve moved into an apartment in central Madrid with colleague and native midwesterner Ellen Wilkinson, I’ve bid farewell to the wonderful family who opened their home to me for the first week in Spain, I’ve attended orientation for the Masters program and started to get a feel for what our schedule will be consist of, and I’ve enjoyed Madrid’s “Noche en Blanco,” the official “night out on the town.”
Our apartment hunt was, to rely on a cliché, an emotional rollercoaster. First we would get excited about one online listing or another, then immediately suffer for our enthusiasm when our phone call (in awkward, halting, thickly foreign-accented Spanish) paid off only in a brusque “it’s no longer on the market” from the renter . On one occasion the number was evidently fake: the woman who answered hung up on me on my first call, and when I redialed (assuming my Spanish had confused her) and asked again if she was renting an apartment she practically yelled at me: “si eso es un broma, hágalo por favor con otro teléfono,” or “if this is a joke, please pull it on another phone.” My bad.
Once we finally got some appointments to check out apartments in person, we allowed ourselves to float a little on hope – only to run aground repeatedly on the jagged reef of disappointment. Why do two-bedroom apartments come with only one bed – not just once but on several occasions? What’s with the full-year contracts – isn’t Madrid supposed to be full of other international students who’d also prefer month-by-month? Oughtn’t you to mention it in the listing if your apartment building is noisily under construction and/or unsafe? And what the hell people, take your listings down once you’ve rented the apartment! Consider also the brief interaction I had with one would-be landlord who, immediately after promising to call within a few hours with his rental verdict (he didn´t), asked me – apropos nothing – “si [yo era] un judío” or if “I was a Jew" (sic re crass phrasing), citing my apparently Hasidic features and body type. After decades of proximity to close Jewish friends, it seems that the osmosis has finally kicked in.
Finally we found our ideal apartment: small, reasonably priced, very near the central Atocha train station, on a leafy street and facing in towards the quiet interior patio where indolent cats nap on cobblestones and bat at butterflies in the dappled sunlight. Our dueño Diego is a relaxed, wordly man who had no problem at all with the ten-month-only lease: success! That meant that Thursday morning was time to pack up, thank, and say goodbye to my host parents, the kind and elderly Candelas & Jesús. They really made that first week much easier and more enjoyable.
Various asides: the Retiro Park is really gorgeous when it’s windy and fall feels like it’s right around the corner. Also, I saw a young woman sitting by the side of the road with a goofy-looking wiener dog, so quite naturally I smiled at the duo in greeting. In response, the wiener dog charged and savagely nipped me in the leg.
Friday morning was our Masters orientation in Alcalá de Henares. Roomie Ellen and I met up with classmates at the Cercanías station in Alcalá and got to know them during the walk from the train station through the Plaza Cervantes to Instituto Franklin itself, which is housed in a gorgeous old building in the historic center. Honestly, the orientation didn’t give us that much new information relative to how long the whole procedure took – that said, it was a lot of fun to meet so many future classmates and learn even a little more about the program. I went out that afternoon to line up some houseplants for the apartment, and ended up in a florist’s shop in the Retiro neighborhood. The stern, elderly patrons of the shop were watching Friday’s stage of the Vuelta a España – Spain’s answer to the Tour de France – on the shop computer, and I caught the last two kilometres or so. Mark Cavendish won the sprint finish by several bike lengths and actually bunny-hopped in celebration as he crossed the line; the Spanish florists – visibly nonplussed by the whole thing – discussed w/ abundant gesticulation Spanish sprinter Oscar Freire (who finished 10th or so) before, during and after the actual sprint, at no point acknowledging Cav’s win or cocky victory salute. The euro attitude of it all was downright inspirational.
The weekend – our last before classes and student teaching being – has been chock-full of Spanish nightlife. Friday night we ended up in a bar in the La Latina area that I can only describe as a pastiche of both Spanish and non-Spanish cultural stereotypes; Polynesian masks joined Sancho Panza-themed artwork, Arabic script, and 1950s-U.S.A.-type iconography on every wall. The venue also offered an “Arab backroom and lounge chillout” [sic] complete with the requisite pillows and hookahs – all sarcasm aside, the bartender and patrons were super-friendly and the drinks both inexpensive and tasty. From there we wandered the old cobbled streets near Puerta del Sol, a region where bars entice you in by offering free rounds of shots or beers. American promoters take note: this technique works, but wandering patrons will abuse it with ease.
Saturday night – last night – was pretty wacky. It was the annual “La Noche en Blanco,” an official night out, and the city of Madrid scheduled something like 80 different “cultural events” around the city from around midnight clear through to 7am. 2010’s theme was “play,” and the event’s rhetoric suggested (to yr. correspondent at least) Bakhtin: all “privileged spaces,” “multiple voices,” “exploration of rules,” “carnival,” etc. This entailed stuff like enormous swingsets in plazas, public poetry readings, various musical performances, extra-late-night free access to National museums, and an (rumored but unconfirmed) enormous game of Twister. Our experience, however, was a bit different: we wandered first towards what was publicized as an “infinite summer”-ish thing – sand, “island in the city,” etc. – south of the Plaza Mayor. The streets were absolutely packed and everyone was carrying beer or wine; every street was effectively pedestrian-only. This was 100% a family event: kids, toddlers & straight-up babies enjoyed the city’s events with their parents and played soccer wherever there was room. The “Caribbean” plaza offered none of the expected steel drum music; instead, a DJ with a hand-held mini-turntable thing danced frantically to rude ultra-high-bpm techno beatz as more and more of the crowd joined him onstage. Our DJ lost his shirt almost immediately; he spent the last 30 minutes or so of his set also w/o either pants or underwear. Recall again 1. that this was a family event, and 2. that the DJ was hired directly by the city for his performance. We met some Australians and joined forces with them for the remainder of the night, questing north in search of the event’s (again unverified) huge McDonalds-playearea-style ball pit – failing that, we ended up at a bar until about 6am. The streets were still choked with Madrileños – and the kids were all still up – during the walk home. There´s no doubt about it: Madrid’s “La Noche en Blanco” definitely puts to shame every other municipal events I’ve ever attended.
It’s been good to get out and socialize this weekend, because the Masters program starts in earnest this week. I’m pretty darn excited to reenter the world of academia – the first quarter’s classes will be Techniques of Writing and Spanish Art History, both of which sound awesome.
Anyways, I feel that I’ve rambled with this update – I hope you still enjoyed it. Thanks for reading!
Take care,
-Dave
Our apartment hunt was, to rely on a cliché, an emotional rollercoaster. First we would get excited about one online listing or another, then immediately suffer for our enthusiasm when our phone call (in awkward, halting, thickly foreign-accented Spanish) paid off only in a brusque “it’s no longer on the market” from the renter . On one occasion the number was evidently fake: the woman who answered hung up on me on my first call, and when I redialed (assuming my Spanish had confused her) and asked again if she was renting an apartment she practically yelled at me: “si eso es un broma, hágalo por favor con otro teléfono,” or “if this is a joke, please pull it on another phone.” My bad.
Once we finally got some appointments to check out apartments in person, we allowed ourselves to float a little on hope – only to run aground repeatedly on the jagged reef of disappointment. Why do two-bedroom apartments come with only one bed – not just once but on several occasions? What’s with the full-year contracts – isn’t Madrid supposed to be full of other international students who’d also prefer month-by-month? Oughtn’t you to mention it in the listing if your apartment building is noisily under construction and/or unsafe? And what the hell people, take your listings down once you’ve rented the apartment! Consider also the brief interaction I had with one would-be landlord who, immediately after promising to call within a few hours with his rental verdict (he didn´t), asked me – apropos nothing – “si [yo era] un judío” or if “I was a Jew" (sic re crass phrasing), citing my apparently Hasidic features and body type. After decades of proximity to close Jewish friends, it seems that the osmosis has finally kicked in.
Finally we found our ideal apartment: small, reasonably priced, very near the central Atocha train station, on a leafy street and facing in towards the quiet interior patio where indolent cats nap on cobblestones and bat at butterflies in the dappled sunlight. Our dueño Diego is a relaxed, wordly man who had no problem at all with the ten-month-only lease: success! That meant that Thursday morning was time to pack up, thank, and say goodbye to my host parents, the kind and elderly Candelas & Jesús. They really made that first week much easier and more enjoyable.
Various asides: the Retiro Park is really gorgeous when it’s windy and fall feels like it’s right around the corner. Also, I saw a young woman sitting by the side of the road with a goofy-looking wiener dog, so quite naturally I smiled at the duo in greeting. In response, the wiener dog charged and savagely nipped me in the leg.
Friday morning was our Masters orientation in Alcalá de Henares. Roomie Ellen and I met up with classmates at the Cercanías station in Alcalá and got to know them during the walk from the train station through the Plaza Cervantes to Instituto Franklin itself, which is housed in a gorgeous old building in the historic center. Honestly, the orientation didn’t give us that much new information relative to how long the whole procedure took – that said, it was a lot of fun to meet so many future classmates and learn even a little more about the program. I went out that afternoon to line up some houseplants for the apartment, and ended up in a florist’s shop in the Retiro neighborhood. The stern, elderly patrons of the shop were watching Friday’s stage of the Vuelta a España – Spain’s answer to the Tour de France – on the shop computer, and I caught the last two kilometres or so. Mark Cavendish won the sprint finish by several bike lengths and actually bunny-hopped in celebration as he crossed the line; the Spanish florists – visibly nonplussed by the whole thing – discussed w/ abundant gesticulation Spanish sprinter Oscar Freire (who finished 10th or so) before, during and after the actual sprint, at no point acknowledging Cav’s win or cocky victory salute. The euro attitude of it all was downright inspirational.
The weekend – our last before classes and student teaching being – has been chock-full of Spanish nightlife. Friday night we ended up in a bar in the La Latina area that I can only describe as a pastiche of both Spanish and non-Spanish cultural stereotypes; Polynesian masks joined Sancho Panza-themed artwork, Arabic script, and 1950s-U.S.A.-type iconography on every wall. The venue also offered an “Arab backroom and lounge chillout” [sic] complete with the requisite pillows and hookahs – all sarcasm aside, the bartender and patrons were super-friendly and the drinks both inexpensive and tasty. From there we wandered the old cobbled streets near Puerta del Sol, a region where bars entice you in by offering free rounds of shots or beers. American promoters take note: this technique works, but wandering patrons will abuse it with ease.
Saturday night – last night – was pretty wacky. It was the annual “La Noche en Blanco,” an official night out, and the city of Madrid scheduled something like 80 different “cultural events” around the city from around midnight clear through to 7am. 2010’s theme was “play,” and the event’s rhetoric suggested (to yr. correspondent at least) Bakhtin: all “privileged spaces,” “multiple voices,” “exploration of rules,” “carnival,” etc. This entailed stuff like enormous swingsets in plazas, public poetry readings, various musical performances, extra-late-night free access to National museums, and an (rumored but unconfirmed) enormous game of Twister. Our experience, however, was a bit different: we wandered first towards what was publicized as an “infinite summer”-ish thing – sand, “island in the city,” etc. – south of the Plaza Mayor. The streets were absolutely packed and everyone was carrying beer or wine; every street was effectively pedestrian-only. This was 100% a family event: kids, toddlers & straight-up babies enjoyed the city’s events with their parents and played soccer wherever there was room. The “Caribbean” plaza offered none of the expected steel drum music; instead, a DJ with a hand-held mini-turntable thing danced frantically to rude ultra-high-bpm techno beatz as more and more of the crowd joined him onstage. Our DJ lost his shirt almost immediately; he spent the last 30 minutes or so of his set also w/o either pants or underwear. Recall again 1. that this was a family event, and 2. that the DJ was hired directly by the city for his performance. We met some Australians and joined forces with them for the remainder of the night, questing north in search of the event’s (again unverified) huge McDonalds-playearea-style ball pit – failing that, we ended up at a bar until about 6am. The streets were still choked with Madrileños – and the kids were all still up – during the walk home. There´s no doubt about it: Madrid’s “La Noche en Blanco” definitely puts to shame every other municipal events I’ve ever attended.
It’s been good to get out and socialize this weekend, because the Masters program starts in earnest this week. I’m pretty darn excited to reenter the world of academia – the first quarter’s classes will be Techniques of Writing and Spanish Art History, both of which sound awesome.
Anyways, I feel that I’ve rambled with this update – I hope you still enjoyed it. Thanks for reading!
Take care,
-Dave
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Update #1 from Spain
It’s Sunday evening here, so I’ve been in Spain for nearly four days. So far everything is off to a great start! The flight(s) over went fine – freak thunderstorms delayed my Dallas-Madrid leg, but with a nine-hour flight a two-hour delay doesn’t matter so much. I sat next to a professor at the University of Alicante on the way over: a good way to switch into full Spanish conversation mode. (In-flight entertainment on the way over included, by the way, both “30 Rock” and the excellent “How To Tame Your Dragon.”)
Thankfully I had a friend to meet at the airport: Juan, a previous guest of the Monaco Glynn household and so a one-degree-of-separation family friend. Thanks Juan! He gave me a ride from the Barajas airport to Alcalá de Henares, the town near Madrid where I’m currently staying with a one-week homestay. My host parents are wonderful: Jesús and Candelas, a very kind elderly couple. Conversations with Candelas re: feminism, religion, politics have allowed me to practice my castellaño at home as well as on the streets (both literal and figurative) of Madrid.
The evening of my arrival in Alcalá de Henares I took a stroll around town to start to get my bearings. By happy coincidence I ran into Ellen – program-mate and colleague at the school where we’ll be teaching English – near the Plaza Cervantes. We got a beer at one of the many cafés along the cobbled & pedestrian-only Calle Mayor – outdoor seating, of course – and enjoyed the warm, bustling evening: the whole town was out strolling by about ten. In the Plaza Cervantes a concert was taking place to honor Alacalá de Henares’ senior citizens, the highlight of which was certainly the glistening & nubile male backup singer in skintight white pants who held a microphone but – despite that accessory – abstained from singing altogether and instead danced sensuously, like the charmed Moroccan cobra of popular imagination, downwind of the fog machine. I cannot say yet whether this is a typical senior-citizen-honoring tradition.
I began the next day (Friday?) with a successful cellphone hunt (655.20.14.54), then went into Madrid proper via the Renfe light rail line. It’s about half an hour into town, which commute will suck when I have to make it back to Alcalá de Henares twice a week for Masters classes. I visited the Royal Botanical Gardens first, a lovely downtown oasis of green populated by feral cats that hunt the garden’s many songbirds. My repeated attempts to befriend these cats were rebuffed. However, my spirits were lifted as I left the gardens when two separate Spaniards asked me for directions(!) - and, better yet, I was able to give them(!!). Next stop was a tapas bar for lunch and conversation with a pair of Australian women. From there I visited the Buen Retiro park (massive, beautiful) and met up with Ellen for the Prado museum’s 6:00-7:30pm free entrance, which was of course excellent. Then we met up with more classmates – Megan, Kristin, Ivan, Laura, AnnaLaura, Claire – for tapas, drinks, and a fun evening. What a relief to meet great people from the program so early on!
The weekend has gone well too – a full day of apartment-hunting yesterday, followed by another evening in central Madrid for wine and dinner at Kristin’s apartment. Today we returned to the Buen Retiro park and then the Retiro neighborhood for late lunch, and since then it’s been a quiet day, which is really pleasant.
No luck yet in terms of apartments, but I’m still optimistic. And I’ve totally forgotten to take any pictures so far, but once I get some quality shots I’ll be sure to share them.
Thanks for reading, and follow this blog for further updates!
Take care,
-Dave
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)