Siesta or sloth

I’ve been here over three weeks now and I still haven’t acclimatised to the heat.

It’s not a topic that will get much sympathy from anyone in northern Europe, although I hear the sun is rumoured to have recently come out for 5 minutes in Woking.

Here, the daily 12-hour baking seems unrelenting. The deeper we plunge into the infierno (hell) of summer, the worse it gets. It’s taking some getting used to – not just the heat, but the way it forces you to adapt your lifestyle.

In the UK, where (for most of the year) daylight hours are rarer than hen’s teeth, I run around trying to make the most of my time. Try running around here, and you’ll break into an instant sweat.

The sun forces you to live at a more relaxed pace (anyone who knows me well will doubtless reckon this is a good thing). Some afternoons, it’s so impossibly warm that lazing in a darkened room is as much as you can manage. In my first week, my language classes were conveniently in the afternoon, meaning I could find shelter in the air-conditioned inner sanctum of the school.

Recently I haven’t had this luxury. In general, air conditioning (particularly in private homes) is far less common than in the US. I think this is a good thing, though. Constantly changing temperature between blast furnace heat and a chilly 16 degrees never does your hypothalamus any favours.

Nevertheless with only six weeks to get under the skin of this city, this country, its people and its language, I have to work fast. But it can still feel like I’m not making good use of my time here. Every day I walk the precarious tightrope of energy level management; do too much and I risk utter exhaustion. It’s simply impossible to spend all day on your feet, running around in the sunshine.

As a solution, I’ve started giving in to the temptation of the siesta... the first step on the slippery slope to a destroyed body clock, no doubt. I’m far from having perfected the art, but so far I think the optimal length is around 2 hours. I figure that the siesta exists for a reason – living the Spanish way (up early and late to bed) is impossible without one.

The heat is as dry as a sauna, so madrileños are mercifully spared the perpetual stickiness of more humid climes. But it still saps energy, traps you indoors, and obliges you to keep your lips permanently glued to bottles of cold water. I even bought a sun hat this weekend, in Europe’s largest flea market, ‘El Rastro’. Apparently I look like an extra from a 90s boyband. Drastic steps.

I’m adapting to this slower rhythm of life, but only time will tell if I find the perfect balance before I leave.

Less rambling and more scribbling to come...

Spanish of the Day...

no tener pelos en la lengua - to be a straight talker. (Lit. 'not to have hairs on your tongue'.)

un quisquilloso - someone who is picky, moany or pessimistic (particularly relating to work).

El viajero (The traveller)

I’ve been known to ramble a bit about the Spanish high speed rail network. The thing is, it really is that good.

My recent weekend excursions allowed me to put to the test the very high impression of the AVE network that had been instilled in my mind since the sleepy afternoon back in 2005 when Mrs Cochrane tried to excite her Period 7 class about Spanish cosmopolitanism. At the time, it seemed improbable to my world-wise teenage brain that Spain would be able to beat the French or the Germans at their own game. (I’m overlooking the fact that the British in fact invented trains.)

The reality is as good as the PR makes it sound. The stations and the trains are impeccably clean, faultlessly punctual, and the service is with a smile. There are even airport scanners awaiting you before ‘boarding’, if only to further heighten the sense of adventure.

To take an example: for centuries an arduous trek through baking hot, barren desert (the same criticism could still be levelled at the gridlocked A-6 motorway), the 90km journey to Segovia has been reduced to a 20-minute commuter hop.

Unveiled at the peak of Spain’s rampant development in the so-called ‘noughties’, the network is a poignant reminder of the good years. Gleaming high-speed stations glare out across the plains from the outskirts of many Spanish cities, whose inhabitants complain about being unable to afford tickets. (In my experience these complaints aren’t always justified – at least not over short distances, which are around 20€ per return journey).

If you talk to locals you find that transport in Spain is a polemic issue. The journey from Madrid to Barcelona (about 600km) is served by a much-publicised AVE link, but everyone you speak to prefers to trek out to the airport and take a flight. Apparently it’s cheaper. While people complain the train tickets are too expensive, the AVE operators complain that the line is underused which keeps prices artificially high. Meanwhile, the fifteen flights a day between the two cities do a roaring trade. Not exactly a “green” state of affairs, then.

Out on Madrid’s streets there are no signs of the typically Parisian kamikaze scooters who risk their own lives and those of every pedestrian within 100m in a quest to nab the perfect parking space. People instead continue to use their cars to get everywhere – even for the most impractical of short hops. Noise pollution (and actual pollution) are rife in Madrid, particularly in the centre. No signs of a ‘congestion charge zone’ on Gran Vía, which is rumoured to see 55,000 vehicles a day.

The noise pollution is something that’s struck me the most about being here – but it’s a topic for another post.

Less rambling and more scribbling to come...

High-speed rail station in the middle of the desert, just outside Segovia

Spanish of the Day

poner a alguien a caldo - to give someone a piece of your mind. (Lit. 'to put someone in the soup')

sacar de quicio - to drive somenoe round the bend. (Lit. 'to unhinge')

El dominguero (The day-tripper)

A few days without a blog post I know... a busy weekend so now I’m playing catch-up.

I’ve spent my first two weekends in the Spanish capital visiting cities other than Madrid. This isn’t at all to say there’s a lack of stuff to do here; rather, that we are surrounded on all sides by some of the most beautiful cities in Spain... Segovia, Toledo, Aranjuez, Salamanca, Ávila (to name but a few). Spain has always been seen as a cultural treasure trove, and these are some of the country’s finest jewels. Collectively they represent the crucible of the Spanish language and culture we know them today.

Now they are within easy reach of the madrileño day tripper thanks to the wonders of Spanish high speed rail – the AVE network. AVE is one of those clever little acronyms of which large organisations are so fond these days. While the initials stand for Alta Velocidad Española (literally, ‘High Speed Spain’), the word ave itself means ‘bird’. Clever, that.

The two cities I’ve visited so far were Segovia and Toledo. They felt vastly different, yet both were similarly infused with the rugged, dusty beauty of Castile – Spain’s ideological and geographical heartland.

Segovia sits about 90km northwest of Madrid, on the high plains overlooked by the snow-capped Guadarrama mountains. Like most ancient Spanish sites, tourists are primarily lured to Segovia by its castle, the Alcázar (from the Arabic, ‘al-qasr’). The original castle, again like most ancient Spanish sites, was destroyed by Napoleon – but its 19^th century replacement has all the visual spectacle of a Disney castle, perched romantically on a high promontory with battlements, turrets and dreaming spires.

The city itself is something of a one-horse town, its main street essentially linking the castle at one end to the breathtaking Roman aqueduct at the other. As a tourist you stroll from the aqueduct to the castle, marvel at the sights, eat some nice food and then get on the train home. It felt like an unusually systematic environment, one which gave up its treasures perhaps too easily... both to the camera and the imagination.

Toledo was the complete opposite. Once you plunge into the winding medieval streets of this former capital, rarely does a camera-friendly vista open up before you. Navigation in the maze of alleys is a nightmare; the city does its utmost to hamper any kind of planned itinerary, preferring instead to traps the unsuspecting day-tripper in its atmospheric streets until you start to understand the silent, baking hot magic of the place.


Toledo was, incidentally, the home of celebrated Spanish painter El Greco. (He was, as the nickname suggests, more Greek than Spanish  – but this is kept largely quiet). I cannot recommend the El Greco Museum highly enough; located in a specially-restored replica of the artist’s house, it made for an intriguingly different setting in which to discover new works of art when compared the sterile, air conditioned galleries of the capital.

The problem with day trips is that they only last a day. You board the train and are whisked home to the concrete megalopolis before beauty and silence have had time to soak into you. I’m still looking for that patch of serenity here – I feel the Retiro park may be a good place to look.

Less rambling and more scribbling to come...

The fairytale spires of the Alcázar in Segovia

The silent, dusty magic of Toledo's narrow streets

Spanish of the Day

no estar católico - to feel unwell. Again, the influence of Catholicism on the Spanish language is evident.

otra manera de darle la vuelta a la tortilla - another way of looking at it. (Literally, 'another way of spinning the tortilla'.)

Nueve meses de invierno, tres de infierno...

'Nine months of winter, three months of hell...'

An old madrileño saying I heard the other day. It refers to the unforgiving climate I’m currently ‘enjoying’.

Europe´s highest capital sits 650m above sea level on Spain’s central plateau, from whence it is alternately frozen and baked each year. At the moment I’m experiencing the latter half of that phrase – the tres meses de infierno.

I’ve been here for 11 days now and I’ve yet to see a single cloud. It’s disorienting. Distressing, almost.

The week before I arrived, a heatwave trapped the city indoors, with temperatures still at 33 (91) at midnight. The July sun is something best feared, not worshipped. I’ve found it has this marvellous capacity to heat up the buildings, the pavements, the roads... so that by 7pm this concrete jungle literally becomes an oven, baking its unfortunate inhabitants from all sides. Coupled with the smells, the pollution and the other standard fare of any large city, it’s pretty unpleasant. (Though I doubt I’ll receive much sympathy from any drenched readers in the UK).

It would be frightfully English to write a post entirely about the weather – so that’s exactly NOT what I’m trying to do. It’s been interesting to hear different reactions from different cultures – the complaints and exhortations wafting past as I walk through the foyer each morning. Let me distil a few for you.

There are the Bulgarians, cruising along unfazed... the Taiwanese, overjoyed at the ‘dryness’ of the heat... the Germans, complaining about the pollution, the ‘glare’, the pollution again... the French, complaining generally... the Brazilians, still disoriented by the fact the days seem to go on forever (in Brazil the amount of daylight is uniform all year round)... and then there are the English, who, possessed at the mere sight of sunshine, frantically strip most items of clothing and hurry to plonk themselves on an available patch of grass like roast spuds in an oven. The madrileños look on knowingly, as the white slowly turns to pink.

Look at anyone who’s grown up in a hot climate and you’ll see they fear the summer sun, not worship it. In Spain, the siesta exists for a reason. Suffice it to say I won’t be hurrying to copy the baking Benidorm Brits anytime soon (I’d only turn a charming shade of pink anyway!)

Less rambling and more scribbling to come...

Just another day in Europe's most reliable urban furnace...

Spanish of the Day

hablar por los codos  - to talk a LOT. (Lit. 'to talk out of your elbows')

salir de cañas - to go out for drinks. A way of life.

El camarero (The waiter)

The lesser-spotted camarero madrileño. Habitat: behind the bar, back infallibly turned. Temperament: naturally reticent but easily provoked.

Love him or hate him, the average Spanish waiter will probably never leave you indifferent. I’ve come across all sorts so far in my first week, from the classic bow-tie-wearing scowlers to the over-chatty types, eager to talk about the football, the weather, declining standards in dress sense, the colour of the pavement. The smarter bars with a younger clientele often have younger waiters to match. This is not to say these will be any friendlier than their older counterparts, but in general they tend to be more attentive.

The stereotypical madrileño bar or café has older waiters squeezed into white jackets and bow ties, drifting between the tables and practising the remarkable art of seeing everything and nothing at once. I went to one of these last weekend – El Café Comercial – mainly because the Lonely Planet guide told me it was worth a look.

It’s a grand old place stuffed full of brown leather benches, marble columns and smartly-dressed folk. My experience was what we might typically call ‘authentic’, and should ring a few bells for many of my fellow twentysomething year-abroaders - a typical example of the daily confrontation with awkwardness that is ‘life on the year abroad’.

Arrive. Push wrong door (it was a ‘pull’, not a ‘push’). Succeed with other door, fumble to remove sunglasses in the marble obscurity that lies within. Wait awkwardly for several moments before deciding to take up a table yourself.

Wait awkwardly for waiter to come over. Wait a LONG time. Discover should have waited to be seated. More awkwardness. Order coffee and ask about wifi. Wish you’d asked about food, too.

Waiter brings coffee and wifi code. Log-in to wifi. Discover it’s slow. Look at bill, casually tucked under coffee cup. Discover you’re being charged for the aforementioned slow wifi. Cheeky.

Wifi runs out in two hours... this means ordering overpriced food to make it worth it. Requires further awkward conversation with waiter. Fail to attract waiter’s attention. Sit waiting for google to load.

Coffee drunk... google still loading. Waiter nowhere in sight.

American theatre producer George S. Kaufman perhaps put it best. “Epitaph for a waiter: God finally caught his eye.”

Spanish of the Day

morirse de hambre - to starve to death

ponerse como una vaca - to put on weight (literally: to make yourself look like a cow)

El paro y el rey (The King and the dole queue)

The paro is Spain’s unemployment benefit. It enjoys a near-iconic status in Spanish society, and the more I was told about it today, the smaller the gap between my jaw and the floor. I’ve yet to see a better example of the peculiarly Spanish open-mindedness carried (perhaps) to the point of excess.

“I’ll work on the coast for summer, then I’ll go back on the paro for 8 months... then after that I’ll use the money for travelling maybe...”

Such a life plan is not uncommon; the stigma of the classic British dole queue is nowhere to be seen. So while the London’s newscasters keep barking on about the record levels of unemployment (double the EU average, by the way), many of Spain’s 20-30-year-olds seem content (for now) to bounce back and forth between temporary jobs and unemployment benefit.

Roughly speaking, the on the paro you begin by earning 70% of your previous salary. 180 days later, this drops to 60%, then after another 180 days it falls again... and so on. To say that the monthly bill that lands on Government desks is rather sizeable would be an understatement. But particularly amongst the swathe of students and young left-wingers, the paro continues to be cherished as a symbol of the Spain’s acute sense of fairness and collective spirit.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the Spanish royal family. They could not be further away from the life of a typical thirtysomething madrileño, and that ‘open’ mindset I keep harping on about. (I’m still searching for a better word than ‘mindset’. Suggestions welcome)

There’s Queen Sofía, a permanent London resident (the Spanish press seem in denial about this) who only returns to Madrid for official occasions. Then there’s Prince Felipe, whose many supposed 'mistresses' make for an easy press target. Finally, there’s the bumbling Bourbon himself, Juan-Carlos, recently seen hunting endangered animals in Botswana at the expense of unnamed Arab sheiks.

Juan-Carlos may have been responsible for the transition to democracy, but it was Franco who nominated him in person as his successor. This connection to Spain's turbulent past could be seen as a symbol of an enduring elitism, and is often overlooked – perhaps by wishful thinking. In any case, the contrast with the chilled-out attitude of Spain's youth is an interesting one. 


On the one hand, continuing signs of the past's divisions. On the other, a relaxed society championing the ‘collective spirit’ approach to life. Always more under the surface.

Less rambling and more scribbling to come.

Spanish of the Day

para más INRI... - 'as if that weren't enough...' A peculiar turn of phrase bearing the hallmarks of many a Catholic upbringing - INRI being the initials above the cross that you spend most of your time in Mass staring at.

pijo - adjective denoting (usually with bitterness) the yellow-trouser-wearing set of Madrid's bourgeois neighbourhoods

Whirlwind first 48 hours...

Well let’s see if I can keep this up, because everyone always says how hard it is to keep a blog.

Last Sunday I moved to Madrid for the summer. Here I’m going to put up scribbles and anything that strikes me about my time here, about the city, about the people.

So Madrid is probably not the first to come to mind on the list of great European capitals. But while it lacks the self-conscious chic of Paris or the urban swagger of London, it’s sheer vibrancy more than makes up for it. I’ve been here one week, and already I’m intrigued.

It’s a city that defies classification. Sure, it has grand old buildings, tourist-ridden pavements and all the cosmopolitan little cafés you’d expect from a capital city. But it’s also distinctly lacking in the ‘world class landmark’ department. And for me, after having lived in Paris all year, I have to say I find the ‘concrete grid’ effect rather uninspiring too. I also can’t work out if I think it’s filthy or not.

But my whirlwind first 48 hours made for an appropriate introduction to what really matters here – the madrileño way of life. There was the kamikaze taxi driver, weaving through lanes of motorway traffic at 150km/h like an Alonso wannabee. There was the obligatory awkward first meeting with suitably exotic flatmates (in this case, Brazilian) – only to be partying like an idiot with them a matter of hours later. And then there was the 250,000 people pouring out of every bar and club onto the Gran Vía, dancing in the street ‘til the sun came up, because Spain had won the Euro 2012 football championship.

A well-timed first night in the city, then. But look around you and you realise something: the economically crippled, woe-ridden Madrid of the international press couldn’t be further from the truth. A chat with a local revealed one insider’s view: Spain has never had a great economy. But it does have a lot of welfare – it’s a country that tries hard to be fair, after having spent half of the last century being distinctly unfair. That this “system” – to our eyes impractical and over-inflated – stays intact is more important than yet another ominous headline in the FT. “So there’s a crisis... that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy.”

She was right: there’s no woeful staring at the floor from the people I see in the street. Okay, so my neighbourhood is anything but what you could call ‘difficult’ – but the sheer numbers last Sunday evening spoke volumes of Spain’s insatiable quest to party. Some will no doubt say this characteristically relaxed attitude is in part responsible for the current situation. But that’s a socio-economic debate for another (more qualified) blog – and to be honest I don’t want to add another voice to the ranks of online doomsdayers.

What struck me most about last weekend is how much Spain needed that victory – it needed an excuse to celebrate and defy the media negativity. For me there’s something admirable in it all: we British would do well to chill out a bit.

Less rambling and more scribbling to come.

Spanish of the Day
un gato - a 'cat', but this is the term also used to denote pure madrileños - that is to say, people who've lived here for generations, which in a city of immigrants (domestic and international) is rarer than you'd think.

guiri - madrileño slang for 'foreigners'. Like me.