españa profunda

I've moved!

2007-06-12T16:09:00.000+02:00

I've decided to change sites to see how I do with the whole WordPress thing. Here's the new address of España Profunda: http://katieprofunda.wordpress.com/

Definitely let me know what you think.

The best croquetas I've ever had

2007-06-03T20:07:00.000+02:00

One of my very favorite neighborhoods in all of Madrid is what I call Conde Duque, the area between Calle Princesa and Malasaña (map). Just recently I also discovered that it is also home to the best croquetas I've ever had. La Tabernilla de Amadeus (C/ Cristo, 2--marked on the above map) sits on a tiny little street right near the Centro Cultural Conde Duque and has a lovely terraza during the summer. And the croquetas de jamón are, simply put, amazing.

Mi parque

2007-06-03T20:04:00.000+02:00

When I was looking for a place to live in Madrid nearly two years ago, I based it largely on living near a park where I could go running. I ended up near the Parque del Oeste (map), which I have completely fallen in love with. I call it mi parque and I really do feel a sense of propriety about it. I know the early morning dog walkers, the older couple who hit a tennis ball back and forth on one of the trails, the parks maintenance workers in their fluorescent yellow and blue outfits.

Parque del Oeste slopes downhill from Moncloa and runs along the western edge of the city. It's great for running because of the dirt paths, the hills, and the lack of cars. It's also a perfect place to go for a stroll, lie in the grass, read on a bench, have a picnic, or box (?! left).

Parque del Oeste is quite different from the famed and (also) beautiful Parque del Buen Retiro. To begin with, it's not in the center of the city and therefore attracts much less traffic. I like to think of it as a little "wilder" than Retiro, in part because it's a little more off the beaten path. Though it's still quite a civilized place; so civilized, in fact, that it is home to a rosaleda (rose garden), which this year was absolutely fantastic. Seems that the cool, rainy spring we've had here has done wonders for the roses, which (when I went to see them two weeks ago) were in full bloom and stunning.To check out the Parque del Oeste, I recommend starting at one of its ends: (the Moncloa metro/bus station or the Templo de Debod) and wandering.

Argentines in the 'hood

2007-05-23T17:43:00.000+02:00

One of the most exciting places to open in my neighborhood this year has surely been Todo Empanadas. At the corner of Vallehermoso and Fernández de los Ríos (map), the little empanada place has been doing a steady business since it opened in October 2006. Run by a bunch of Argentines, Todo Empanadas delivers, does take-out, and has limited (bar-stool) seating in its interior. The empanadas are made to order and extremely tasty; among my favorites are onion and cheese, and tomato, basil, and cheese. They also make various with meat and a vegetable empanada with spinach. At 1.50 euros each, they can easily become an addiction. They've become a delivery favorite among my roommates (half a dozen is the delivery minimum and you'll want two or more). And just today I tried the dessert empanada: a little crescent of fried dough filled with dulce de leche. To die for. If you're in the 'hood, call 91 44 44 748 to order.And speaking of dulce de leche, another Argentine joint called KIBO Dulce y Salado, on the corner of Galileo and Donoso Cortés (map), sells some amazing alfajores for under 2 euros.

Finally, if you're ever near Retiro and hungry, make a trip to Trenque Lauquen. It's a tiny little Argentine pizzeria with a lovely terraza in the warmer months and it takes empanadas up a notch: these ones are baked, not fried. The crust is light and flaky, and the spinach empanada, flavored with raisins and spices, is particularly memorable. This place will cost you significantly more than Todo Empanadas, but it's worth it for a sit-down meal right across the street from Retiro. Make sure to check their schedule; I've been disappointed by it being closed at least once.

Peñalara

2007-05-21T20:20:00.000+02:00

As any Madrileño who loves the outdoors knows, we've got the mountains right in our backyard. Literally. In an hour by car, bus, or train, you can access some truly beautiful wild areas with fantastic hiking. I am a huge fan of La Pedriza, a natural area full of mounds of granite perfect for climbing and hiking. But a couple months ago, an adult student of mine piqued my interest when he recounted having spent part of his weekend attempting to climb Peñalara, the highest peak (2,430 meters) in the Sierra de Guardarrama, the mountain range closest to Madrid. This weekend, mi chico and I made our own attempt and succeeded.

You begin the ascent to Peñalara from the Puerto de Cotos, a mountain pass at 1,830 meters. It's only an hour in car from the center of Madrid, and can also be reached by train. We didn't have the highest hopes for our day--the INM predicted a 90% chance of rain and the sky was gray and threatening above as we began our uphill trek. Above the treeline, the wind began to whip against us with such a fury that I was afraid we'd be blown off the slope. But it didn't rain. In fact, we noticed as we got higher, the wind was blowing the ugly rain clouds away from us and onto the plains of Castilla-León. So we reached the summit quickly (it's a 600 meter ascent in a only a few kilometers) and continued on our loop down the other side of the summit and up a rocky pinnacle called Risco de los Claveles and down, down, down until we reached the first of several glacial lakes that would mark our return route.Soon enough we were walking through a meadow filled with wildflowers and flowing streams. Waterfalls cascaded from the rock walls below Peñalara, and the sun came out in a hole in clouds above us. We ate lunch by the lovely Laguna Grande before heading down the easy trail back to the car.

The circuit hike took us about four hours not including stops. Be forewarned that it's extremely popular (like most of the Guardarrama). We had a lot of company on a day with relatively bad weather. That student of mine hadn't made it to the top because of worse weather. A steward at the Laguna Grande told us that two years ago there were seven deaths on the peak due to winter unpreparedness. Best times to go are May, June, and September.

San Isidro

2007-05-20T20:35:00.000+02:00

I love May in Madrid. Terrazas take over the sidewalks and plazas of our fair city, the grass and trees are green, the parks are full of flowers, days are long, and it's not too hot yet. And then there's San Isidro. He was a saint, a farmer (labrador), and a very good excuse for a party. That's right: he's Madrid's patron saint, which means that on the day that he died (May 15, 1130) everyone gets a holiday in Madrid!

The festivities started a bit earlier for me and some lucky friends. A colleague of mine is from a tiny town in the province of Cuenca, and there they also happen to have good old Isidro as their patron saint (for reasons unclear, maybe for the agricultural nature of the pueblo?). I've been lucky enough to spend two years attending the fiestas in Villaverde y Pasaconsol, which consist largely of dancing all night and eating all day.
The most emblematic part of the fiestas in the pueblo is the toros. But they aren't full-grown toros, just vaquillas (little cows). All Saturday afternoon people enter the miniscule ring (composed of a whole bunch of truck beds) and run around with the vaquillas, trying not to get gored. The part I don't really like is that then they kill a couple--I didn't stay to watch that part. But the following morning, a bunch of people get up early and spend the whole morning guisando (cooking) the meat in gigantic pots. And then the whole town has a huge picnic with the meat and whatever people have brought: tortilla and plenty of bread, wine, and fruit.

Back in Madrid the party really got started on the Monday night before the holiday. The bars and streets of La Latina were completely packed, people were dancing chotis in the street at 1 a.m., and there was plenty of general merriment.

And on San Isidro, hordes of people head to las praderas--the meadows--at a park named after the saint that lies in the southwestern part of the city (metro Marqués de Vadillo). I spent all afternoon there with my roommates and friends, eating pasta salad and watermelon and enjoying the good weather. Children and adults dress up as chulapas (with their long dresses and shawls) and chulapos (with their black-and-white checked caps) and, for a day, Madrid celebrates itself.

Mother's Day

2007-05-06T20:36:00.000+02:00

Today is Día de la Madre in Spain, in honor of which a couple of friends and I ran in the Carrera de la Mujer, a race for only women that raises money for cancer. Think Race for the Cure, Spanish style. The race shirts were orange, and the line to get water at the end was outrageously long. But even if it was less a race than a human obstacle course, tons of women came out for it. More than 12,000, in fact. It made me so happy to see so many Spanish women out exercising on a beautiful Sunday morning, that I'll ignore the fact that I had to wait half an hour to get water after I finished. To top it all off, the race bag came with an awesome amount of stuff (including another t-shirt, a towel, a Comunidad de Madrid Buff, and magazines ranging from Cosmo to Runner's World).

Election shenanigans

2007-05-06T19:40:00.000+02:00

Election season is upon us here in España. I'm not incredibly informed, but I like to keep abreast of important developments, like the one I wrote about the other day. And we've got a new one today.

Good old Rafael Simancas, the socialist candidate for the presidency of the Madrid region, has a bone to pick with someone. In what appears to be an honest mistake, the metro station that shares his last name (a stop on line 7) has disappeared from the latest edition of the metro map. Granted, they've been opening what seems like 11 new stations every day for the past weeks. But Simancas is still open. At least that's what the neighbors say.

This weekend, the current president of the Comunidad, the right-wing Esperanza Aguirre, inaugurated the extension of line 7 to the far eastern reaches of our fair city, only making the elimination of the poor Simancas station from the map a little more suspicious.

Simanca has promised not to change the name of line 4's Esperanza station when he's president. But, he says, he will name Madrid's best golf tournament after her.

The worthwhile Algarve

2007-04-26T18:09:00.000+02:00

Portugal is not España, but we share the peninsula with her. And it was about the only place on the peninsula that didn't receive rain during this year's Semana Santa. The Easter holidays were a real washout for those who had gone to Spanish coast to lie on the beach or to Sevilla to watch the processions.

Alex and I spent the long weekend meandering through the (rainless!) Algarve, the southern coast of Portugal (map), in search of the less-beaten path through the region. We fell in love with some places and others made us cringe and get in the car and keep driving. The area is popular with good reason, but, as we found, there's a lot more to see beyond the big overdeveloped and tourist-ridden cities like Faro, Albufeira, and Lagos.

So, if you, like us, prefer to experience a more authentic Algarve and find secluded beaches and so forth, I have two main recommendations.

1. Just east of Faro you'll find the largest fishing port in the Algarve. It's called Olhão and it's not a prettified place. It's real and gritty, and full of Portuguese who make their living fishing in the Atlantic Ocean. There are two pensão in town, and the very helpful owner of ours gave us the ferry schedule to the islands just off the coast of Olhão. The ferry cost about 3 euros round trip, and was filled with Portuguese heading home to the island with their dogs and shopping bags.
We spent an idyllic afternoon on the Ilha da Culatra, where the fishing community is alive and well, sidewalks are the only streets, and the beaches are pristine. Having not eaten lunch, we headed for the first restaurant we saw after getting off the ferry. The waitress there didn't speak English or German, and there was no menu. She asked, in Portuguese, if we wanted fish or meat (how could we even think of eating meat on this island?)--I chose tuna and Alex swordfish. She brought out an appetizer of some of the most delicious steamed clams I'd ever eaten (above). The fish was grilled with green peppers and onion and very tasty. She also brought out a fresh green salad and crusty bread. We washed it all down with cerveja Sagres, which is remarkably good. She charged us 20 euros for everything.
We then wandered out to the beach, which we had to ourselves. After sitting in the sun for a while, we set off down the beach for Farol, another cluster of houses at the other end of the island, where we'd be getting the ferry back to Olhão. Farol, home to a lighthouse, was just as charming, but clearly more of a weekend house-type place, without the fishing business of Culatra.In Farol, the ferry unloaded what seemed like hordes of people, equipped with food and supplies for Easter weekend on the island, and we boarded the noticeably lighter ferry to ride back to Olhão, the setting sun and a trail of seagulls behind us.
2. Go west! After Olhão, the farther west you can get, the better. The highway ends, the hillsides covered with high rises cease, and there is generally more vegetation and fewer people as you head towards Sagres, the closest town to Cabo de São Vicente, or the southwestern most point in Europe. The coastline between the two places, about six kilometers long, is composed of stunningly high cliffs and the waves that batter them. The landscape is fantastic. A highly recommended beach is Praia da Beliche, about halfway between Sagres and the Cape, full of surfers and people enjoying its beautiful, wind-protected cove (below).We stayed in Salema, on a recommendation from a friend who had been and described it as "two streets with one hippie bar." When the highway ends soon after Lagos, you must take a national road to get any further. Salema is off this two-lane road: you drive several curvy kilometers towards the coast until the road ends and you're in Salema, which sits right on the beach. It's a tiny little town that's getting bigger thanks to construction of apartments up the hillside opposite the town proper. But it's not spoiled (yet) and there are so many fewer people than at other spots, that even if everyone is English or German, it just doesn't matter because the beach is so lovely and it's so peaceful.

Alex and I went to the Algarve with no reservations anywhere. We found a place to stay by wandering Salema's only street until a sign offering an apartment for rental caught my eye. We ended up renting a room in a two-bedroom apartment with a terrace, a well-equipped kitchen, and spacious living room for only 35 euros a night. (The man rents the place in August for significantly more.)We spent our last day in the Algarve in our own little cove in Salema, shielded by rocks on either side, until the tide got high enough that we knew it was time to leave.

"English for all"

2007-04-26T09:00:00.001+02:00

I found the above clipping in yesterday's El País. Elections in Madrid (for mayor and president of the Comunidad) are in just over a month, on May 27. I was most interested in a promise made by Rafael Simancas, the socialist candidate for president of the Comunidad (region), that "100% of young madrileños will speak English" thanks to the implementation of the bilingual program in public and concertado (parochial schools that receive some funding from the state) schools until the year 2015. In order to achieve this promise, Simancas proposes investing 320 million euros during the next two legislatures. As an auxiliar de conversación in a public school, I'm part of that goal already (and some of that money goes to people like me!).

Road safety

2007-04-22T21:35:00.000+02:00

April 23 through 29 is United Nations Global Road Safety Week. I discovered this when passing my local government offices in Moncloa and seeing the above life-size model outside. People stopped to check it out, and I'm sure it made all of them think, just a little bit. I hope you do too.

Almanzor

2007-04-18T21:50:00.000+02:00

I spent last weekend in a beautiful snowy place just two hours from Madrid: the Sierra de Gredos. A friend invited me on an expedition to Almanzor, the highest peak in the Sistema Central, or the chain of mountains that crosses the Iberian peninsula from Lisboa to Valencia. Almanzor is 2592 meters tall, or 8501 feet, and my friend had been wanting to climb it for some time.

I knew nothing about the peak before he mentioned the trip, and I read a bit about it in the links he included in his emails. But for whatever reason, I didn't fully digest the information. When, on our first day out, we arrived at Los Barrerones, a flat spot high above the Circo de Gredos (the Gredos Cirque), and my companions pointed out Almanzor -- an amazingly beautiful peak, a rocky horn rising from the cirque -- I thought, "How the hell are we going to get up that?"

It looked, for all means and purposes, like the Matterhorn. You know, one of those breathtakingly high peaks that you can't even fathom how people climb. Much less you.

None of this is to say I am inexperienced in the mountains. I have spent plenty of time in the hills but, above all, climbing the 4,000 footers of the Adirondacks and completing long circuit hikes, like the Alps Haute Route and a circuit of the Torres del Paine in Chile. Ascending peaks in the winter is very different, especially when you have to use an ice ax and crampons and the vertical drops are enough to make your stomach flip.

We got a bit of a late start on Saturday morning from the Plataforma de Gredos, the parking lot that gives good access to the area. The original idea had been to walk to the refugio (about two and a half hours), drop off our heavier material (sleeping bags, extra clothes, etc.) and then continue up to the summit of Almanzor (another couple hours) before descending to a hot meal and bed at the refugio.

We arrived at the refugio sometime around three o'clock. After eating something and getting our gear ready to ascend, it was nearly four. Dinner would be served at eight. On the advice of several people sitting outside the refugio we decided to postpone our summit attempt to Sunday morning. We'd start early, the snow would still be hard, and we'd be well-rested. So we spent Saturday afternoon heading up the trail to Almanzor to practice with our crampons and ice axes.

But on Sunday the group was ready to give up: one member had awoken with a sore throat and another's boots were completely soaked through. I couldn't help thinking that it would be a real shame to not even give it a try. So I said that. The sore throater said he had no problem waiting several hours for us, so the remaining three departed uphill, over the snow-covered rocks, under a cerulean blue sky.

The landscape of this area is just fantastic. The refugio is situated at the southeastern end of the Laguna Grande, a beautiful lake (above) surrounded by the peaks of the cirque. It had been snowing the week before, so everything was covered in snow. But since the sun was shining all weekend, the snow got soft during the day and hundreds of little streams began running. One of the benefits of going in the winter is that there's tons of water--and the sounds of it--everywhere. There are several waterfalls en route to the summit. In summer, apparently, it's a bit of a rocky wasteland with not a drop of water in sight (except for what's in the lake) and quite hot.

Shortly we were far beyond where we'd reached the previous afternoon, moving slowly and making sure that with each step the crampons and ice ax were in place. The trail just keep getting steeper and if I looked back, I started to fear the way down. One of my companions had commented on Saturday that she thought we had gotten quite far in our practice session. This was an illusion--it's not much distance to the summit (a kilometer or two) but, from the refugio, you have to climb nearly 600 meters up in that distance.

Pretty soon we could see the Portilla del Crampón, the tiny pass one has to cross to reach the last pull to the summit. But there were still a hundred meters or more to that point. The vertical drop was making me really nervous, and I decided I'd had enough. Luckily, there was someone coming down and he didn't mind at all having a little company on his descent. He calmed my nerves quite a bit and admitted that the mountain "está empinado" (is steep). The descent wasn't nearly as harrowing as I imagined.

An hour after I returned to the refugio, the two who had headed on to the summit returned. They hadn't summited, in part because one had lost feeling in his feet and also because they would have needed a rope to do the last bit. By the time we made it back to the car, we were exhausted and sunburned, but totally happy.

We'll be back for you, Almanzor.

I'm published!

2007-04-15T23:20:00.000+02:00

Somehow, the piece I wrote on Extremadura a year ago caught a travel editor's attention nearly a year later. Here it is.

Semana Santa on the highway

2007-04-11T00:12:00.000+02:00

For the past several years the Spanish government has mounted a huge traffic safety campaign for the Easter holidays. Between Miércoles y Jueves Santo (the Wednesday and Thursday before Easter Sunday) there are more cars on the road than at any other time of the year in Spain, which produces, as you can imagine, a good number of accidents.

I remember being completely shocked a year ago when, just starting a week-long road trip, my boyfriend and I were greeted on the highway by computerized signs reading, "Más de 100 personas morirán en la carretera durante esta Semana Santa (More than 100 people will die on the highway during this year's Holy Week)." Chills ran up my spine. Holy crap, I thought aloud, that's really morbid. My boyfriend shrugged. "That's the point," he said.

Basically, the Dirección General de Tráfico is looking to scare people into being careful on Spanish highways. This year's campaign theme was "Hay muchas razones para no matarte en Semana Santa. Elige la tuya y hazlo (There are many reasons not to kill yourself in Holy Week. Choose yours and do it)." The reasons in the ads range from "Because you dig a girl at work" to "For your mom's croquetas" and "To not break your head open on the asphalt." The signs we saw on the highway this year included "110 people dead in Semana Santa 2006," "Lo importante es volver (The important thing is to return)," "¿Tienes prisa? (In a hurry?)."

Vamos, enough to make you think a little.

But is it working? The DGT's press releases show that for the past ten years, the number of deaths caused by accidents on the highway have exceeded 100. The hope was that for this year the number would be less than 100, in part because of the implementation last summer of the carné por puntos or driver's license points. Every driver with a Spanish license is allotted 12 points, which he or she loses by committing traffic infractions. If you lose them all, you lose your license.

This year there were 106 deaths, just four less than last year.

What does this mean? That Spaniards are just dangerous drivers? I don't know. But this year, the victims came closer to home: two were the parents of a good friend. The figures may look just like numbers, but when you think that every one of those was a life, the numbers start to look a little different.

Torrijas!

2007-04-02T19:41:00.000+02:00

It's Semana Santa here in España (that would be Easter Week for you non-Spanish speakers) and what's on the menu? Torrijas! Torrijas are French toast, Spanish style. Meaning made with olive oil. That's right, instead of frying the milk- and egg-soaked bread in butter, you drop it into a pan of hot olive oil.

I helped my boyfriend's mother make them yesterday morning. She had three bowls: milk, egg, and cinnamon-sugar. She dipped the day-old bread into the milk bowl, then the egg, and then the oil-filled pan. When the bread had turned a lovely golden color, she dunked it into the cinnamon-sugar bowl and covered it with the stuff. I ate the leftovers this morning with bananas and strawberries on the side. ¡Qué rico!

10 Reasons NOT to go to Fallas

2007-03-24T20:02:00.000+01:00

Last weekend I went to Valencia with three friends for Las Fallas. What's that you might ask? To put it simply, Valencia's crazy fire festival. Because mi chico is Valenciano, there's always a good excuse to go. I had gone last year with three different friends and had a blast (one of them, now back in the States, said it was her favorite trip from her entire year in Spain), so I decided to return.

This year, however, was a little different, in part because two-thirds of my friends, clearly not too well-informed on the subject, decided, shortly after arrival, that they didn't really like Fallas. What's not to like some might ask? Well, I'll give you 10 reasons why you may not like Fallas. I was a huge fan after last year. This year, I decided it partly has to do with the company. But, in general, I would say it is almost impossible not to have a good time.1. Don't go if you don't like fried food. Valencia in Fallas is like a fried food convention. Every corner has a vendor selling some fried goodness: the typical churros and porras and the more special (and more delicious in my opinion) buñuelos: fried rings of moist, chewy dough made with pumpkin and sprinkled with sugar. All of the above are to be taken with chocolate, por favor.

2. Don't go if you have a problem with loud noises. One of the biggest parts of Fallas is the petardos (firecrackers). Virtually every child, adult, and grandparent is armed with these suckers and a mischievous grin. They'll throw them at your feet, in a crowd, anywhere. My friends have compared this phenomenon to being in a war where everyone's happy. But you won't be happy if loud booms bother you a lot.
3. Don't go if you don't like being around lots of people and sometimes in huge crowds where you feel like you can't move. Valencia's population of 1 million doubles during Fallas. People are everywhere, which to me makes the city seem livelier than normal. But it can overwhelm.
4. Don't go if you don't like to go around looking at huge papier-maché statues that are often political or social satires. If you think that's boring, stay home! Many of these statues are amazingly detailed and are trying to make a statement. There are special artistas falleros who literally work all year creating them--only for them to be lit on fire at the end of it all.
5. Don't go if you don't like fire: playing with it or being near it. As I said earlier, even the tiniest children are armed with lighters and a box of firecrackers, so there are plenty of flames and sparks around. Not to mention that the climax of the festival is the cremá, or the "burning"--every single falla in the city is lit on fire and burned (don't worry, they wait 'til the firefighters are there ready with hoses).

6. Don't go if you don't like fireworks. On the last four nights leading up to the cremá, there is a huge fireworks display known as El Castillo (the Castle) in the old river bed in the center of town. They tend to be quite good. If you like fireworks, that is.

7. Don't go if you don't like paella. Valencia's typical saffron-colored rice dish with meat and veggies is on every menú del dia all over the city during Fallas. There's also a huge quantity of paella being cooked over wood fires on the streets every evening. If you go, you will have a hard time not eating it.8. Don't go if you don't like to drink and dance in the street. To me, this is one of the essences of Fallas, the verbenas: outdoor bars often accompanied by a stage with live music or a DJ and, if you're lucky, a scantily clad young lady dancing up there and shaking her thang. This last bit has shocked many of my friends. All I can say to you is that the Spaniards are very open people when it comes to bodies.

9. Don't go if you don't like gunpowder. Every day during Fallas, there's a huge firecracker display called the mascletá, in which a group of pyrotechnics commissioned by the city release hundred of kilos of gunpowder in an intense aural display that will have your insides vibrating. It lasts about five minutes and is extremely loud. But if you listen closely you'll hear that the pyrotechnics have rhythm: this year we heard one that sounded like a train approaching.10. Don't go if you don't like seeing people in old-fashioned and very elaborate dress. Falleros and Falleras and their dressed-up children are one of the highlights of the whole shindig. The embroidered dresses, lace shawls, fancy shoes, and Princess Leia-like hair-dos make great street entertainment.

El Musical

2007-03-23T17:30:00.000+01:00

That's right--this is a musical with a capital "M." What am I talking about? The project we've been working on since October at school. The Wackadoo Zoo!
One of the English teachers at my school visited our "twinned school" in England over the summer, and saw them perform a very cute little musical called "The Wackadoo Zoo" about a zoo where the animals make the wrong sounds and a linguistics professor comes to try to fix them.Since this year we're doing music class in English for the first and second graders, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to prepare a musical with them. What does that entail? We know now. Adapting the musical for our young English students. Teaching five songs as well as some fairly complex choreography(!). Teaching lines to our four narrators and the Professor. Spending lunch hours painting trees, making bushes, planning, organizing, and more planning and organizing. Tons and tons of work. You'd never guess.And sometime right before Christmas we found out about a theater competition for bilingual schools. So we entered. The big performance for the jury (and parents, friends, kids from other schools, etc.) is on Tuesday morning at 10.30 at Colegio La Salle San Rafael (C/ Fernando el Católico, 49 for you Madrileños).
Who knows if we'll win. There are ten other schools competing, some of them veterans of the competition. We do know, however, that every single first and second grader will appear on that stage on Tuesday morning, singing and dancing like a lion, monkey, pig, sheep, or cow and we'll be really really proud of them.

A breath of fresh air

2007-03-22T19:34:00.000+01:00

The other day as we left school at midday to rehearse the musical with the first and second graders, an elderly man wearing a cap asked R and I if the children were "saliendo o entrando" (going or coming). He asked with a tone of nostalgia in his voice, as if remembering when he left school in the middle of the day to go home and eat. And he proceeded to tell us that he had gone to the school also when he was young, and had many fond memories there. After all, he said, it's where he cut his teeth. He told us stories of playing frontón on the patio and swimming in the indoor pool (which no longer exists).

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he mentioned the year 1934 and some "hijos de puta" in the same breath.

My interest was piqued even more.

"When did you attend the school?" we asked. "Before the war?"

"Before and after the war," he replied, smiling. (That is, the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.) He described to us the interior of the school as he remembered it. I asked about the twin staircases, one in each wing of the building, that I had been told were from the days when it was separated into a boys part and a girls part.

He explained that during the Segunda República, the boys and girls had been mixed, but when "los hijos de puta fascistas" gained power after the war, they were separated again.

I'm only sorry I didn't ask for his telephone number to really do a thorough interview with him. I'm going to keep my eye out for him.

Of an Italian restaurant

2007-03-12T22:39:00.000+01:00

I love a restaurant recommendation, especially when it becomes a new favorite.

An adult student of mine recommended Pulcinella as an Italian restaurant with great Neapolitan pizza and ambiance--enough to pique my interest. My boyfriend and I went Sunday night and shared a pizza and a plate of pasta. I started with the pizza, and it was really quite good--thin, but doughy crust just a little burnt in places on the bottom and fresh toppings. But the pasta was really something else--we had ordered the strascinati alla norma: oval-shaped pasta with requesón (ricotta-like cheese), eggplant, and San Marzano tomato sauce. It was unbelievably good.

But it wasn't just the food that was good. The restaurant has an intimate, homey feel to it and the service we had was really well-executed. We had an early dinner reservation (yes, 9.15 p.m. is early for Spaniards for dinner) and shortly after we arrived the place had filled up. There was plenty of wait staff, our food arrived promptly, and the waiter didn't think twice when we asked for glasses of water (on a number of occasions restaurants here have told me that they don't serve agua del grifo--tap water).

I have rarely, if ever, felt so satisfied with both how I was treated and the quality of the food in a restaurant in Madrid.

Sunday

2007-02-25T21:30:00.001+01:00

I dreamt vividly of winter last night. Real snowy, cold winter.

The day dawned gray here in Madrid, with the same 40-50 degree F weather we've had all month. I had arranged to meet a friend in La Latina for the post-Rastro bar-hopping scene. Right before I left the house, it started pouring. By the time I surfaced at the La Latina metro station, the sun was shining hot--perfect for meandering among the crowds along the Cava Baja, to Calle Almendro, stopping in a few bars for cañas along the way. And at the end of Almendro, we found ourselves in the Plaza de San Andrés. Beginning to warm up to its springtime role, it was full of 20 and 30-somethings, sitting and soaking up the sun (when it didn't disappear behind the clouds), drinking liter bottles of Mahou, smoking...We grabbed a bocadillo from a nearby bar and joined them.

Winter color

2007-02-21T16:35:00.000+01:00

Tale of a bus

2007-02-13T21:04:00.000+01:00

I have never been so happy to return to Madrid as I was this morning at 7.

I left the country this weekend--bussed it up to Bordeaux to see some friends. And almost didn't make it back.

I never intended to blog about this trip--it being to France and all. But the Spaniards managed to screw things up in another country.

The gist is this: a group of five (including me) got left behind in Bordeaux on Sunday night when our bus never showed up at the stop. I couldn't understand it: my ticket clearly said that the departure point for the bus at 22.15 hours Sunday was the exact place we waited in vain for two hours.

Turned out that the bus, which arrives from Paris, had gone to another stop in Bordeaux. The stop changed three weeks earlier due to works in the area around the old stop.

(A note: some of us think that Madrid is always en obras, but Bordeaux makes Madrid look good. Granted, they're putting in a new tram line, but wow. At left see just a glimpse of the works and rain that is Bordeaux.)

Regardless, Alsa, the Spanish bus company, neglected to advise us of the change in stops. Indeed, in their Madrid offices they didn't even know the stop had changed, which explains why my ticket said what it did. Perhaps the fault of the drivers?

What boggles my mind is that on Sunday night the bus may have picked up some passengers better informed than my posse and me, but they were missing FIVE, which is no small number! Wouldn't it have crossed their minds to at least check at the old stop?

At any rate, my newfound friends and I finally boarded the bus to Madrid last night, a day late. The trip was uneventful except for 1.30 a.m. at the Spanish border, when the Basque police boarded to check our passports and promptly removed two people who we could only assume didn't have the sufficient papers to enter España.

But we arrived safe and sound. I went straight to the Alsa office in the bus station (what luck that it opens at 7!) and was received by an extremely nice woman who handed me complaint forms to fill out and assured me that the higher-ups will get back to me within twenty days, with what I hope will be willingness to reimburse me for their neglect.

Wintry weekend

2007-01-29T23:00:00.000+01:00

In light of the fact that a number of people sent me this week's New York Times Travel section's 36 Hours: Madrid, I thought I'd share with you my own 48 hours in the city.

Friday

14 hrs
1) LUNCH IN THE 'HOOD

There's nothing better than discovering a new and different place to eat in your own neighborhood. I'd walked by Raíces del Mundo ("Roots of the World") a number of times before a friend suggested that we eat there. Raíces is a restaurant and fair trade store where you can also take world dance classes or see a show on weekend nights. A rare find in my very Madrileño neighborhood! With the 8-euro menú, we each had a salad from a different place in the world (the New Zealand contained kiwi, soy bean sprouts, lettuce, and a yogurt dressing), a tapa (like a Chilean empanada or a Mexican enchilada), and a drink. The food is good and a welcome change from typical Spanish fare. (An added bonus is that it's around the corner from my school--great for the days when you just can't stomach the thought of food from the comedor.)

16 hrs
2) SPANISH HISTORY LESSON

Wandering through the eclectic Conde Duque neighborhood (just south of my own) en route to buy movie tickets for later in the night, we decided to stop and check out an exhibit at the Centro Cultural Conde Duque. The exhibit, Misiones Pedagógicas (1931-1936), is both eye-opening and well-executed. The so-called Pedagogic Missions, carried out in the pre-Spanish Civil War era of the Segun da República, were destined to bring culture (in the form of art, film, literature) to small villages throughout the interior of the country. The highlights are photographs of villagers completely entranced by Charlie Chaplin's silent movies, copies of art from the Prado, and books from the traveling library. In a documentary about the project, an elderly woman recounts a memory of her work as a missionary: "When I arrived, the villagers shouted, 'Communist! Communist! Communist! When are you going to bring the movies?'" For me it was fascinating to learn about this facet of the Second Republic, the most progressive era in Spanish history--too progressive, perhaps, considering the ensuing war and dictatorship.

20 hrs
3) A MEAL AT ANY HOUR

Forget worrying about strange Spanish dining times: at Cervecería 100 Montaditos you can eat a delicious and cheap meal for under 5 euros at nearly any time of the day or night. This chain is sort of like a Spanish version of fast food: beer, wine, and olives appear on the menu along with 100 "montaditos"--tiny baguette sandwiches filled with everything from jamón ibérico con tomate natural to smoked salmon and cream cheese (salmon ahumado con queso Philadelphia). Almost everything on the menu (it's like a chit--you check the sandwiches and drinks you'd like, bring it to the counter, and they call you when it's ready) costs 1 euro, making it a very economical place to eat. We had dinner at the branch in La Latina with a friend who wanted to eat something before an evening flight.

21.30 hrs
4) THE SECRET GARDEN

On a night that was positively chilly--temperatures below freezing with an unbelievable amount of wind--we wandered into El Jardín Secreto (C/ Conde Duque 2) for something warm before seeing a late movie. Normally, this place is so packed on weekends that you have to reserve, but luck was on our side. Everything on the menu (hot chocolates, teas, shakes, cocktails, desserts) looked so good, we had trouble deciding. After enjoying a Persian chocolate and an "Orient Express" tea, we hurried across the street to the movie theater.

23 hrs
5) SPANISH CINEMA

It's been quite a year for Spanish film. Penelope Cruz is the first Spanish actress in history to be nominated for best actress at the Oscars. But Volver didn't make it into the best foreign language film category--a different movie did. Guillermo del Toro's Oscar-nominated Laberinto del Fauno is still playing at Cines Princesa in the Plaza de los Cubos (just north of Plaza de España). I highly recommend it.

Saturday

12 hrs
6) GET OUT OF TOWN!

One of the best things about Madrid is the ease of leaving it for the day. Since it decided to snow everywhere in Spain besides Madrid this weekend, we decided we couldn't miss seeing it. Our destination was the walled city of Avila, best known for being the home of the mystic Santa Teresa, an hour and a half northwest of Madrid. The snowy Sierra de Guardarrama came into view almost as quickly as we got going on the A-6 highway. As we climbed to a pass in the sierra, the temperature dropped to -4 degrees Celsius (it had been 7 degrees C in Madrid) and, descending the other side, trees were laden with half a foot of snow. In Avila the temperature was -2 and the streets were still snowy. We wandered around inside the walls, enjoying the frigid but sunny day, and ate a bocadillo on a bench outside St. Teresa's convent. We made sure to try the famed yemas de Santa Teresa (candied egg yolks) before heading back to Madrid.

21 hrs
7) DINNER FOR TWO

Madrid is full of fantastic and varied places to eat, but sometimes there's nothing better than a homecooked meal. For under 20 euros at the neighborhood supermarket, we made a feast of fresh ravioli with a hearty homemade tomato sauce, garlic bread, salad, a nice Rioja, and even ice cream. Cheers to that.

Sunday

12 hrs
8) ART FOR ALL

Though I'd considered joining the crowds at the Rastro (Madrid's amazingly enormous Sunday flea market), some friends convinced me to do it indoors at the Reina Sofia. So we ogled Picasso's Guernica, cubism, and surrealism alongside the hordes--the museum's free until closing at 14.30 hours. An unexpected discovery was a room on the 2nd floor with photographs of Madrid during the Civil War (which I swear were a new addition!).

2.15 hrs
9) FOOD WITH A VIEW

With a group of Casa Granada novices in tow, I returned to my beloved Sunday lunch place. We were a big group and luckily arrived just in time to beat the rush. Just as we sat down, hordes of people started piling into the rooftop dining room. We ordered a series of delicious raciones and enjoyed the relaxed and smoke-free (!) ambiente. The views across the southern sprawl of Madrid will never cease to amaze me.

Teruel existe

2007-01-21T20:12:00.000+01:00

One of the wonderful things about Spain is the concept of the puente. Now, by puente I don't mean "bridge" in the typical sense of the word. I mean, the Spanish puente: the long weekend, mini-break, what have you. I'm talking about several days of vacation thanks to a Tuesday or Thursday holiday "bridged" to a weekend by calling Monday or Friday off as well. In the States they've avoided those midweek holidays by moving many major holidays to a Monday. In Spain, they aprovechar (take advantage) of any excuse not to work.

The month of December was very kind to us working people of Spain. In addition to the Christmas holiday, the 6th and the 8th of Spain are national holidays: Constitution Day and then Immaculate Conception. This year those dates were a Wednesday and a Friday, and we got a lovely five-day break stretching from Wednesday through Sunday.

Knowing that we'd be traveling to the United States during Christmas and running around seeing dozens of people, Alex and I decided to use the puente de diciembre to get lost, literally, where we would know no one and where, in fact, there would be few people at all.

We decided to go to Teruel, a province northeast of Madrid, in the southern part of Aragón, a region that stretches all the way north to the Pyrenees and the French border. There's a joke about Teruel that says, "Teruel no existe" (Teruel doesn't exist). The provincial capital, also called Teruel, is the only one in Spain without a direct train connection to Madrid. The whole province suffers from depopulation and is generally considered one of the more remote and isolated places in Spain--it also normally registers the lowest temperatures.

But we were intrigued. There must be something there, we thought. For the first part of the trip, we weren't too convinced. We had rather blindly picked to stay in a town that, as we soon discovered, had very little merit. It wasn't pretty, it was tiny, and the whole area was not very picturesque. At least our lodging was decent and we did manage to do some hiking.

Our impression changed completely when we continued to our next destination--deep in the heart of El Mae strazgo, a beautifully wild and inaccessible part of Teruel. The scenery suddenly became stunning: hills and valleys, deep gorges, rock spires reaching to the sky. This area, especially, has decreased dramatically in population in the last century. It was common for us to drive through towns with half the houses abandoned.

Our destination was the Hostal de la Trucha -- the Trout Hostel. The approach was fantastic. We headed through a gorge, hugging the cliff walls in Alex's Clio and then arrived at the closest town to our hotel--Villarluengo. Perched on a rocky outcrop where the gorge opened, it was a truly spectacular sight. We had to wait an hour to eat at one of the town's two completely packed restaurants before descending a wildly curvy road to first a piscifactoría (fish farm) nestled among the trees and then to the eagerly anticipated Hostal.

The place is styled like an old-fashioned hunting lodge. You enter into a huge wooden-beamed room with a small bar on your right, the reception desk straight ahead, several couches, and lots of tables and chairs. On each side of the great room are enormous fireplaces. Each iron chimney hangs from the ceiling over a wood-burning platform. Taxidermist's stuffed animals are perched and mounted throughout the hotel. Our room had antique-looking furniture and red- and black-patterned wool curtains and bedspreads.

I was extremely curious about the history of the place--seen from the road above we thought it was a bunch of abandoned buildings. The weekend receptionist happened to be from the neighboring and tiny village of Pitarque and told us quite a bit. She explained that what is now the hotel had first opened in 1789 as the first banknote paper factory in Spain. Later it was a successful textile factory, among whose buildings included a church and a school for employee's children. In the post-Spanish Civil War era, the factory ceased production as bands of robbers roamed the countryside and robbed the factory's goods. This was accompanied by a general flight of people from the mountains of the Maestrazgo to the cities. The towns in the area became shadows of what they once were.

In those years, some entrepreneur took interest in those abandoned factory buildings and the clean waters of the Río Pitarque to establish the Hostal de la Trucha there around 1970. Together with the Pitarque-fed fish farm that sends kilos and kilos of trout to Zaragoza daily, I imagine the hotel owners don't do too badly for themselves.

In addition to getting some nice hikes in (the area is full of beautiful, well-marked trails and breathtaking scenery, like the Organos de Montoro, seen below), Alex and I visited a tiny town that the woman in Pitarque's tourist office had recommended. The town, Montoro de la Mezquita, has ten inhabitants. We got out of the car to look around and encountered virtually complete silence. A boy played with a ball in the street; we could see two men tending to their fields below town. On the way out, however, we noticed that a municipal bus stop.

We asked Inma, the receptionist at la Trucha, about Montoro and she explained that the population has gotten so low that Villarluengo had to adopt the town. The public bus stops in Montoro twice weekly. Oddly enough, but perhaps because it has such a tranquil and removed setting high at the head of a valley, it is home to two casas rurales (similar to country bed-and-breakfasts), which probably more than double the town's population when they're busy.

Inma herself went to school in Pitarque until secondary school, when she had to go to Teruel capital. Of the school in Pitarque, she told me, "It won't last even five more years. It will disappear."

The schools and inhabitants may continue to disappear, but the tourism infrastructure appears to be alive and well.

The return

2007-01-20T15:17:00.001+01:00

I was struck by the dull dark grayness of the Madrid sky when we emerged from the metro midday on January 8. It was a gray unlike anything I'd seen before: oppressive, thick. All the cars and buildings looked like they'd been covered in a layer of dust, dirt, and soot. The air reeked of a mixture of diesel fumes and cigarette smoke that seemed to hang in the intersections where pedestrians waited for the light to change and tried to keep warm.

Maybe it was that I was exhausted from the overnight flight and attempting to sleep in the few hours between dinner and the inedible breakfast. Maybe it was that I was coming from the smoke-free paradise known as the United States. Maybe it's that Madrid needs a good rain to clean the soot off the façades of the buildings and the dog crap from the sidewalks.

The flight

2007-01-20T14:27:00.000+01:00

December 21st was a day that will live in infamy. My boyfriend and I got to Terminal 4 of Madrid-Barajas Airport two hours before our flight, waited in a long line to check in, and then were informed that our flight--purchased more than two months earlier--was overbooked.

"I'm sorry," the man at the counter said. "It's something the Americans do."

He worked for Iberia, which handles American Airlines' Spanish flights.

He sent us to another counter where a different attendant spent over half an hour looking for other flight options for us. Our original tickets would have sent us through Chicago and then to the nation's capital--something I wasn't too thrilled about, but had accepted for the incredibly cheap price of the ticket. But this gray-haired airline-passenger-anger veteran worked some magic and got us on a flight to New York five hours later, and then booked us two flights to D.C.: one with a short connection and a second one standby, but with a longer connection time.

He then sent us to the Iberia information counter where, he said, they would give us our money. Money? Oooh. And, yes, within ten minutes a bespectacled woman was handing us each 300 euros for the inconvenience and a voucher for a free meal in the airport during our wait.

Dang right.

Of course, in New York we missed the first flight because it took our bags so long to come off the plane. And we almost didn't get on the second (and last) flight to D.C. because we were on standby. But we did, and by the end of the night we were hugging my parents at National Airport.

Apparently, giving out money for your wait is part of some European Union legislation. I suppose it's a way to avoid getting hammered by hundreds of furious airline passengers.

I'm baaaack

2007-01-17T22:58:00.000+01:00

Now that took a while. Updating the ol' blog has been on my to-do list since I returned from the States nearly two weeks ago. Looks like it took spraining my ankle to change the tone of my weekend from skiing (indoors), parties, cleaning, and organizing to sitting at my computer with a bag of frozen green beans strapped to my ankle.

As for the lottery, we didn't win. We did, however, get reimbursed for the second number that several of us bought because it shared the same last digit as the winning number. Better than nothing.

La lotería

2006-12-15T00:10:00.000+01:00

But perhaps the biggest deal about Christmas in Spain is el gordo. The national Christmas lottery. Last year I couldn't wrap my mind around people's obsession with this dang lotería. I'm understanding more and more.

The way it works is that there are lots and lots of numbers to be sold. And schools, companies, bars, stores, et cetera, have numbers--the same number every year. My association with the lottery, of course, is through my school. Number 41975 is ours and all the teachers buy a part of it. Last year, under pressure from my colleagues, I bought a décimo (a tenth) for 20 euros and played. We didn't win. But we did get our 20 euros back because the big winner shared the same final digit as ours.

The idea of the lottery is nice, I've decided. You play as a group and it's a whole camaraderie thing. People's favorite words to utter this season are, "¿Y si nos toca?" ("And if we win?") And they are also the words you think when you find out that the school's number is agotado (sold out) and you don't have your décimo.

That's what happened this year. They ran out of our number! Oh, the scandal! If we win and a quarter of the staff didn't get a chance to buy their part? The principal, herself, was left without a lottery ticket for our number.

It was the talk of coffee break.

Knowing that surely our number would win this year, the year in which a number of us don't have it, the assistant principal took action. She asked those who already had their décimo to sell half of it to we poor souls and bought us décimos in another number to sell half to the people who'd shared with us. So now six of us have 10 euros in the school's number and 10 in another number, which we're hoping will be lucky.

The drawing is December 22nd. ¿Y si nos toca?

La cesta

2006-12-13T21:26:00.000+01:00

Christmas has hit Madrid in a big way. Lights are everywhere (Madrid apparently has spent several times the money on lights as any other Spanish city), the belén (nativity) has been constructed in the entrance of my school, stores are open on Sundays, Papa Noel climbs store fronts and dangles from apartment windows. (The other day I witnessed a three-year old boy yelling up to a stuffed Santa perched above a store awning. He was telling him what he wanted for Christmas. His mother looked on patiently.)

Even in workplaces the joys are many. Yesterday I lugged home my cesta de navidad ("Christmas basket") from the security company where I teach classes three hours a week. For my three hours, I get the same cesta as the full-time employees. Not a bad deal.

It was so heavy, however, that I almost expired carrying it through the metro and the four blocks to my apartment. Thankfully one of my students gave me a ride to a metro station just a couple stops (and the same line) from where I live (normally it's a 45-minute trip with a long walk between two different lines). But Oh. My. God. Said basket contains six bottles of various libations: 3 wines (two red, one white), 2 bottles of cava (Catalán champagne), and one of whiskey. Then you've got four tablets of turrón--a typical Spanish Christmas sweet made out of almonds--, cookies, chocolate covered almonds, and cans of olives, hearts of palm, pineapple, and peaches.

The cesta is tradition here in almost every company. My roommate got one too: with a jamón (that is, a cured pig's leg) and cheese, among other things. My students at the security company, though, were complaining about the one we received. One of them said, "Well, the wine is drinkable."

I don't care. I'm thrilled.

Vergüenza

2006-12-12T22:58:00.000+01:00

This afternoon we, the auxiliares de conversación of Madrid, had a so-called "briefing" with officials from the U.S. Embassy. Last year they didn't bother to make contact with the nearly 100 of us working in Madrid.

The meeting was largely unhelpful, and quite disheartening. The director of regional security presented first because one of the higher-ups at the Embassy was late. He spoke to us about safety in Madrid--mostly things that were complete common sense. And then, noting terrorism, he said, "Al Qaeda is a presence in Spain. They were behind the attacks of March 11th. ... After all, Morocco is just south."

I didn't know that Moroccans were particularly important members of Al Qaeda.

When a girl mentioned that she'd been to Morocco several years ago and had an experience where she was lucky not to have her passport stolen, the security director responded, "We are talking about the Middle East here."

Oh, really? I thought Morocco was in Africa.

An organic buffet and some carrot cake

2006-12-04T22:22:00.000+01:00

The other day a friend and I were searching for a place to eat. (In Spanish the way you talk about the midday meal (la comida--"the meal") is not "to have lunch," but rather just "to eat" (comer)). So if I say we were looking for a place to eat, in my Spanish-ized way of thinking I mean we were looking for a place to eat lunch.

Well, it was a little late for lunch (though Spanish lunches are relatively late there's a short window: 2-4 p.m.), so we'd already gotten turned down at one place. But lo and behold, across from the failed attempt on Calle Huertas, we discovered a fabulous organic market and buffet where we salivated and debated over how best to ration the chickpeas, seitan, and veggie lasagna to keep our plates down to a reasonable price (it was 1.80 euros per 100 grams). The food was delicious--flavorful and filling without being meat or fried--and a welcome change from typical Spanish restaurant fare. One of the best things about the place was that there was also a tiny dessert buffet with some yummy-looking carrot cake--not exactly the most popular dessert in España. We shared a piece and were completely inspired to make our own.

So we spent Sunday afternoon grating carrots, chopping walnuts, beating the cream cheese icing by hand, and trying to fit two layers of cake into my tiny oven. At the end of it all we had assembled a beautiful (and really tasty) carrot cake. The recipe is from the Frog Commissary and loved by my mother. We found it online and modified it slightly.

Two, of many, great things about Madrid

2006-11-29T23:11:00.000+01:00

1. El Tigre is a bar in the center of Madrid (C/ Infantas), just off of Gran Vía, and in the über-trendy and gay barrio, Chueca. But this bar is neither trendy nor gay. It's always bustling -- and with good reason. With a 1.50 euro caña (small beer) you get a plate full of whatever's on the grill and more: patatas bravas, croquetas, jamón, egg, fried peppers, cheese. The guys behind the bar yell orders constantly, while pouring beers, and move as if bartending were a choreographed art. You have to fight your way to the bar and perch your plate wherever you can, but a tasty and filling meal for under 5 euros (that's three cañas) and great ambiente are worth it.

2. Casa Granada is a rooftop terrace restaurant hidden atop an ordinary and totally unassuming apartment building. You have to be in the know to find the place, just north of metro Tirso de Molina, and once you've buzzed up, ride in the elevator plastered with signs begging riders to adhere to the four-person limit. It's within spitting distance of the Rastro, La Latina's gigantic Sunday flea market, which makes it the perfect place for a meal after navigating the crowds and t-shirt stands. You might have to wait a while for a table, but you'll be glad you did. What else is there to do on Sunday but eat and drink? And meanwhile, you can order a beer and wander out to the terrace for amazingly grand views of Madrid and her suburbs. The raciones are delicious and inexpensive. For two, a plate of pimientos de padrón (tiny peppers fried in oil and sprinkled with sea salt) and one of calamares were more than enough, and cost 11 euros.

Coal

2006-11-27T09:39:00.000+01:00

And the Christmas season officially begins.

This morning I awoke to the sound of something heavy being dropped down a hole. When I got downstairs for my run the building entrance was a mess. The floor was covered in sawdust and a metal track, along which two men were wheeling enormous wheelbarrows heaped with coal. Of course: we'd been without heat all weekend, and these guys were delivering coal to get our smelly heating system started again. In and out they went, carefully monitored by our diminutive doorman, dressed in the blue coverall he dons every morning to mop the entrance.

I'm now showered and breakfasted, and I think they're finally getting ready to leave. We should have enough coal to last the month.

Lunchtime politics

2006-11-21T22:37:00.000+01:00

Today, school lunch got a little heated.

One of the great perks of my job is that I eat in the school dining room every day for free. We're a small group of teachers that stick around in the middle of the day for lunch (there's a two-hour break). It's convenient and relatively cheap for the other teachers, and it's a full Spanish lunch. That is, the size of (or bigger than) an American dinner. First course, second course, salad, fruit, and yogurt. The kids eat this too. It's really a far cry from school lunches in the States. There's actually a woman cooking everything at my school. That's not to say the food is out of this world, but it's good enough, and it's a huge meal that saves me a lot of money. But this is just background.

The point is that today at lunch we were seven teachers in the cozy room where we always eat. Somehow the conversation turned to Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator, and the principal began to lament the fact that statues and monuments to Franco have been (or are being) torn down. And that Spain's current president, the socialist Zapatero, should be blamed for it. The religion teacher then chimed in to say that it was a crying shame, and that people don't give Franco enough respect. (Yes, Catholic religion is still taught in Spanish public schools. It's not obligatory. The few kids who don't go in my school are Muslim.) He added that Spaniards lived very very well under Franco. And then two of the younger teachers commented that Franco shouldn't be maligned as much as he is, that the monuments are a part of history. The conversation moved very quickly, like all of these teachers were excited to have discovered that their colleagues shared their views.

I was sitting there feeling my face get hot and that the room was just way too small for the seven of us. Then the school's youngest teacher spoke up in response to the religion teacher, saying that come on, not everyone lived well under Franco. The other assistant (who's also American) and I fidgeted in our seats. I said I certainly had heard Spaniards say some not very nice things about life under Franco. The bell rang and the conversation continued until the youngest teacher said, "Wasn't that the bell?" I sighed inwardly. The other assistant and I walked out of the room shaking our heads in disbelief.

I've been thinking about lunch all evening. It is a known fact among teachers at my school that there are plenty of conservatives among our ranks. The principal and the religion teacher are extremely devout Catholics and they're also some of the oldest in the school. The three of us who kept our mouths shut mostly during the conversation are the youngest working at school. And we are not at all Catholic.

But the point is that Franco was a dictator. He killed people. He isolated Spain from the rest of the world (both politically and econimically). He disallowed political parties, the country's other languages (Galician, Catalán, and Basque), and most press. He imposed strict Catholic mores on all aspects of Spanish life and above all, in the public schools.

Yo flipo.

Oddly enough, tonight I encountered another interesting, but not quite as uncomfortable conversation. After yoga, I stopped by a little market to pick up a few things. The owner, ringing up a customer, was commenting, "Everyone says people in the United States live better than we do. But it's not true. We live well here." The customer nodded his head in agreement, as the owner turned to me and explained that he likes to engage this guy in conversation, sorry for the hold up. I offered that I was American. The owner continued, saying that, yes the Spaniards live well. They shouldn't complain so much. For example, the laws are much stricter in the United States. Here in Spain, we get away with a lot.

I had to agree. Despite my daily complaints or all the Franco lovers out there, life in Spain nowadays is not too shabby.

Clementine postscript

2006-11-21T22:16:00.000+01:00

On Sunday, I lugged 5 kilos of clementines on the bus from Valencia to Madrid. They came straight from the trees in Castellón, the province north of Valencia. If only I had a way to get them back into the States...

Oh my darling clementine

2006-11-15T19:51:00.000+01:00

Clementine season has begun. I couldn't be happier to be spending it in España for the second time 'round. The lovely specimen of a fruit in the photo came from a market in Valencia. It was delicious. I mean, really, what could be better? Totally portable, peelable, seedless fruit. Clementines are like candy with vitamins.

My mom always used to buy crates and crates of "Clementines from Spain" in the winter because we would go through them so quickly. And they're not that cheap in the States. In Madrid, I can get a kilo for under 2 euros and they are a staple in my diet from November until early February.

Infiltrados

2006-11-13T20:51:00.001+01:00

Ever since I arrived in Spain I've been fascinated and disturbed by the culture of movies here. The market is widely saturated by films from the U.S., but in their dubbed and title-changed versions. And the Spaniards wonder why their level of English is so far behind the rest of Europe? American movies and television dubbed into Spanish are certainly a culprit.

This weekend I saw the excellent film The Departed. Spanish title? Infiltrados. That is, "the infiltrators." Can we possibly lack any more creativity? As I refuse to pay to see a dubbed movie, I saw it in its original version with subtitles at my favorite theater, Cine Ideal. I can't stand when the lips moving and what I'm hearing don't match. Also, I value the actors and the nuances of the way they speak. I don't want to hear some Spanish man or woman whose voice sounds curiously the same as every other dubber but not like anyone I actually know or hear on the street.

The Spaniards I know who balk at seeing a movie in versión original argue that they don't like reading subtitles and that dubbing is necessary here because so much is imported from the States. I never thought twice about seeing a subtitled movie in the U.S.--it always felt so exotic. Hearing the actors' voices, even if I didn't understand a word of what they were saying, seemed an important element of their characters. I encourage my English students to go see movies in versión original. Even if they are reading the whole time, their ears are taking in some English.

I do like to read the Spanish subtitles here because I'm interested in how they translate things. In The Departed it was a lesson in translations of vulgarities. Watching that particular film, however, made me realize that no matter how much I bash dubbing, there are great shortcomings to subtitles as well. The Spanish I was reading at the bottom of the screen seemed so formal in comparison to the foul-mouthed Boston accents coming in my ears. There is no way the translator could ever capture all the slang spit out by Mark Wahlberg or Leonardo DiCaprio. But, at least we could hear what their accents were like.

Today I had another adventure in the world of dubbing. We took about 100 kids from school to see a free movie at an international children's film festival here in Madrid. We arrived slightly late and I was surprised when I entered the theater to to hear that the movie was in English. I do work at a bilingual school, but my kids have a long way to go. But no, there was a voice coming from the back of the theater--in its dull monotone I thought it was someone directing us to our seats. No no. It was a guy reading a translation of the film into Spanish, just slightly behind the English dialogue. You know, like an interpreter at a meeting between politicians from different countries. They'd turned down the volume of the original so we could hear this guy's completely boring voice and it just about put me to sleep.

The second graders seemed entertained enough by the pretty inane and poorly animated version of the nutcracker story. The fifth graders were definitely fidgety for most of the time. And no one laughed at any of the jokes.

I voted

2006-11-06T20:46:00.000+01:00

The Spanish mail system came through just in time. I'd been anxiously awaiting my absentee ballot for weeks and had virtually given up on its arriving today in time for me to both fill it out and postmark it before the end of business.

But I ran home in the middle of the school day to check the mail, and there it was. The doorman, to whom I'd explained the situation earlier, was exhilarated.

Who knows if my vote will count, but it's on its way back to the States.

La calle es de todos

2006-11-05T19:10:00.000+01:00

The street is for everyone. I saw these words stenciled on a building in the center of Madrid while wandering around with a friend last week. It seems an appropriate thing to say about Madrid, where so much life is concentrated on the streets. I'm not just talking about the homeless people here, who sleep on benches, building entrances, and in parks, or the crippled beggars who sit in the middle of the sidewalk on Gran Via and ask for change. Or even the groups of teenagers who congregate in the alleyway under my window late at night. I'm talking about all Madrileños, old and young, Spanish and foreign, pijo and alternativo. I'm talking about the West Africans selling pirated DVDs on the streets and in the Metro entrances, the gay couple embracing outside the Palacio Real, the Pakistani man smoking a cigarette outside his non-smoking locutorio, the Ecuadorans picnicking in Parque del Oeste every Sunday, the Peruvian musicians playing in Sol.

I'm talking about Lavapiés, probably the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in the center of Madrid. I was there three times in the last week--one night for a kebab, one night for Indian food, and today as we looked for a less crowded alternative to La Latina to eat outside on this cloudy, chilly, but not rainy day. It was just our luck to come across a terraza with an empty table just north of an enormous drum circle congregated in the plaza. Now, Lavapiés has become semi-trendy among Madrileños who dig the ethnic food and the alternative Spanish tabernas, the art and music scene, and the wonderful old architecture. But whenever I go there I can't forget what one of my female Spanish friends told me once: that she had been really interested in taking a flamenco class at El Horno, a dance center in the neighborhood, but had ultimately decided against it based on the fact that the class would end around 7 p.m. and the streets would be full of immigrants just standing around and looking at her. I couldn't help thinking that it was a terrible shame to give up the class for that reason. La calle es de todos, ¿no?

Washing

2006-11-05T19:01:00.000+01:00

These municipal workers are busy washing the street right outside my apartment. This was during a sunny interlude between two rainy weeks in Madrid. What is most amazing to me is that they wash the streets even on the rainy days. But they're worried about the lack of water in Spain?

Halloween en español

2006-11-02T23:07:00.000+01:00

Easy like Sunday morning

2006-10-29T14:01:00.000+01:00

The deluge is over. Madrid is back to its normal sunny self, at least for the time being. The weekend has been gorgeous and the Madrileños are out in full force, doing what they love best: getting dressed and having a drink at one of the hundreds of terrazas in the city. Families with hordes of children dressed in the cutest Spanish kids' clothes, couples young and old, singles with a dog or a book or a paper. They're having a beer or a clara or a café con leche, accompanied by the ubquitous plate of patatas fritas. It's Sunday--what else is there to do?

On Sundays, Spain virtually shuts down. Generally the only businesses open are bars and restaurants, bakeries, and pharmacies. You can find convenience stores open in the big cities. So, what to do? Eat and drink, of course. Sit in a bar or a terraza, people watching, being social. Pasear with your new baby in his 800-euro stroller, stopping every hundred meters or so when someone wants to ogle your adorable addition to the world. Play tennis, go running, clean the house, do laundry. More or less typical weekend things, with a Spanish flair.

I spent Sunday morning running a race--the second annual Retiro District 10K. I did it last year, too, but under notably different circumstances. I'd been unable to sign-up because they'd capped it at 2,000 runners. But out in a bar the night before the race a friend suggested that what the hell? We'd run it anyway, just without numbers. And we did, after sleeping about four hours. Well, this year I made sure to sign up early and go to bed at a reasonable hour. No biggie that I signed up, though. I arrived to pick up my timing chip on race day, and they apologetically informed us that the chips for race numbers 1300 and up had been stolen. Huh? Yes, it's true. So we ran without chips and lined up after finishing to report our times to a woman with pen and paper. No problem.

My main problem with races here is post-race. Maybe I got spoiled running all those New York Road Runner races in Central Park, which run like clockwork and dependably feature huge tables of water and some sort of food just after crossing the finish line. Lamentably, at none of the four races I've run here has food played a role for we poor hungry runners. But on several occasions you could cross the finish and drink a Coke right away! You had to wait in a long line for your goodie bag with one puny bottle of water. When I cross the finish, I want to gulp down several cups of water in quick sucession. I don't want a Coke, or a Nestea, or whatever sugary drink is sponsoring the race. And I definitely don't want to wait fifteen minutes in line to get the tiny bit of water that's in my race bag. Why does Coca-Cola sponsor the races I've run in Madrid? Where are the bananas, apples, and bagels for chrissake!?

Concrete schoolyard

2006-10-26T16:20:00.000+02:00

Recess is a whirling chaos. On the "patio," the concrete schoolyard ubiquitous in Madrid, children are throwing themselves at each other, down the slide in the tiny playset, or on the ground, as is the case with the majority of the three-year olds who waddle around like tiny penguins with snotty noses and pint-size clothing. Dramas are acted out daily on the school playground, complete with accusations, tears, and denials.

I never went to school in the center of a city (well, until college in New York), so I spent elementary school on expansive playgrounds with fields, lots of play equipment, and serious amounts of space to chase boys.

Here in Madrid, everything is confined to a smaller space, and tensions run high on the concrete schoolyard. The seven-year old second graders are the big kids, towering over the likes of the pre-school children, concerned with scoring a goal at all cost and hardly noticing if they knock over one of the waddlers or send a ball flying at the head of one the teachers who has recess duty. The first graders were five-year olds last year, and still waver between pre-school immaturity and joining the big kids' game. So they dangle from the tiny, overcrowded playset, waiting for the right moment to go for the ball.

The three-year olds still don't know they actually go to school, and stare with mucus-filled faces at the more experienced kids whizzing around them. Or they fall over and entertain each other on the concrete. The four-year olds are too cool for the three-year olds. They know how this playground thing goes, and have the guts to run around with some of the bigger kids and tattle on those who commit offenses. The five-year olds play among themselves--confident in their position as oldest of the infantil classes. They only call the teachers' attention when one of them gets knocked over and all of her friends make sure that she's properly attended.

At 11:30 the bell rings and it's all over. Until tomorrow.

Vaya

2006-10-23T21:03:00.000+02:00

Tonight I'm walking home from the metro after my conversation class with some guys at a security systems company, and I'm totally in another world ... listening to my music, checking out all the store windows that have been so cruelly enticing me in this month in which I am poor poor poor. And, boom! I've run into someone. I whip around, shocked out of my reverie, and remove one headphone just in time to hear "Eres tonta, eh!" (You are stupid!) out of the mouth of the older woman I bumped into. Hey, did you think I was planning to run into you? I may be distracted, but I'm not stupid.

Photographic ramblings

2006-10-22T18:05:00.000+02:00

I wanted to explain a little about the photos I've posted because they represent some of the things that I love about Spain.

The top photo is of the Palacio de Cristal (Glass Palace), an exposition space in Retiro, Madrid's most civilized city park. I never get tired of going to see the Palacio because I love how I can see the leaves of the trees through the palace or the different ways the light plays on the panes of glass. Last June, I was in the park with some friends and we stopped by the Palacio to enter the free exhibition called "Breathe--A Woman Mirror" by the Korean artist Kimsooja. The floor of the Palacio was covered in mirrors and all the windows were covered by a translucent film that turned them into a prism. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to shoot photos inside. We had to take off our footwear and they provided socks so we could wander around atop the mirrors. It was quite the reflective exhibit.

Actually, Retiro was bustling that June weekend. It was the Feria del Libro de Madrid (the Madrid Book Fair), which had hundreds of stalls of Madrid publishing houses and bookstores, author talks, etc. Great fun to wander through--it's two weeks at the end of May/beginning of June every year. It also contained the notable globalizing presence of a Ben and Jerry's stand, which hit the spot.

The other Retiro happening was Yann Arthus-Bertrand's La Tierra Vista Desde Cielo (Earth from Above)-- an outdoor exhibition of enormous photos from around the world, all of which are accompanied by an informative caption. Many photos are taken to illustrate environmental problems or interesting geographic or man-made features. The photos are stunning. Hundreds quotations of statistics about the horrible impact of 21st-century humans on Earth are also part of the exhibit. Many have to do with the United States (i.e. Americans consume 478 times the amount of gasoline as developing nations ... statements in that vein).

Retiro is a wonderful place--both a retreat from Madrid's congested streets and a cultural center. But I feel a little more affinity with the Parque del Oeste, which lines the upper western side of the city center. It's closer to where I live; I run its hills and trails. When I first moved here, I considered Retiro Madrid's Central Park--though it's much much smaller than the New York version--and Parque del Oeste a little more Riverside Park-like (without the river*). It's less civilized in a way, less manicured than Retiro. Parque del Oeste slopes downhill from Moncloa (a huge transport hub) and never sees the kind of human traffic Retiro does, so it somehow feels a bit more personal.

[*A note about rivers: Madrid's biggest defect--in my view--is its lack of any serious body of water. We have a river, it's called the Manzanares, and most people have probably never seen it because it's either so low or the construction workers are busy moving it around in an attempt to enlarge the M-30--Madrid's Beltway. But, the Manzanares has its encanto. It starts way up in the sierra north of Madrid and I've bathed twice in its frigid pools and falls. You'd just never know that from looking at the pathetic thing snaking along the western edge of the city.]

The second photo you see is from my favorite place in Barcelona--el Mercat de la Boqueria. Spain is full of markets, but this is the loveliest I've seen. The stands are mostly standard market products: fruit, vegetables, nuts and dried fruit, seafood, meat, bread and pastries, candy, etc. But the sellers seem to take a pride in their products that I've rarely seen: beautiful and careful arrangements of numerous varieties of fruits and veggies, nicely displayed meats and huge hanging hams, fresh seafood on beds of ice. And then you've got bars where you can get a bite to eat and a glass of tinto and, my personal favorite, the Organic is Orgasmic stand. It's run by a woman named Antonia who, apparently, loves delicious, organic food and serves it up at the market and at a nearby restaurant (that I haven't had time to patronize). They've got a very tempting salad bar at the market and the delicious tapas that you see on the left. I eat at least once at their stand when I've been to Barcelona.

Speaking of Barcelona, it's a really vibrant, interesting place that I enjoy immensely. It has a huge rivalry with Madrid. People are always comparing the two cities. I've spent about a week total on separate trips to Barcelona, and I've lived in Madrid for 13 months, so I can't really compare, but I have observations about differences in BCN. For one, it's got a much bigger alternative vibe than Madrid--tons of skaters, tons of dreads, piercings, tattoos, food like the stand I just wrote about. It's a little punkier, a little dirtier, a little earthier. Don't get me wrong: it's also got plenty of class and swank and businesspeople and the like. But I would estimate that Madrid has more. (I haven't even mentioned the football rivalry ... the two teams face off tonight for the first time this season.)

The last photo in the sidebar is taken at the spectacular Praia As Catedrais (Cathedrals Beach) beach on the northern coast of Galicia (Galicia is the northwest region of Spain). I traveled with my parents through the north of Spain last month and every Spaniard who heard we were going to Galicia told us this beach was a must-see. Well, it is. Rock pillars rise out of the blue sea, huge as towers. Waves crash against the rocks, and it's all very dramatic. We'd been following the coast since Llanes (in Asturias, just east of Galicia), and it was the most beautiful beach we saw (though there are plenty of gorgeous spots along the way). The Galician government has just declared it a natural monument, which I suppose will help protect it.

Before last month, I hadn't been to the north of Spain. On the trip, we spent most of our time in Asturias and Galicia, and both places are beautiful--and as different from central and southern Spain as you can imagine. Green green green. And rainy. Between driving crazy curvy roads, hiking through a breathtaking gorge in the Picos de Europa (left), beach crawling, wandering through old city centers, and eating, we had more than our fill of activities for the eight-day road trip. But there's a lot more exploring to be done up north...

Intro

2006-10-20T19:58:00.000+02:00

Spain and I have a love/hate relationship. It's been a year so far with plenty of ups and downs--but we're still together. I learn new things and discover new places every single day thanks to my intimate involvement with the bustling, polluted, cranky, and cosmopolitan capital. I walk its streets. I teach its kids. I ride its metro and buses. I run in its parks. I know its bakers, its bar owners, its dentists, its supermarket cashiers. We're still getting to know each other, though. We've got time.

I've been thinking and talking about blogging for a long time. Sort of like how I thought about yoga a lot over summer vacation, and recommended it to my friends. Without actually doing it. (My yoga teacher loved that one--hey, we could call it "katie-asana.") But the time has come--back to work, back to yoga classes, time to start blogging.

Right now we are experiencing a nearly unheard of phenomenon in Madrid. Rain. It's been raining since Tuesday. Thank goodness, though. We need it--Madrid is notoriously dry.

Yesterday, crossing a busy intersection in the rain, I reflected on the frequent use of vulgarity here in good old España. A man crossing ahead of me, nearly run over by a guy who was oblivious to the fact that we had the right of way, smacked the car's hood and yelled, "¿A dónde vas, coño?" That is, "Where are you going, cunt?" Only in Spain.