Back to Madrid again - my birthday, the sun, and a bunch of Germans

Th street sign for Miguel's apartment

I arrived back to Miguel and Ricardo's apartment on Wednesday night absolutely shattered, but glad to be somewhere that felt somewhat like home. Thursday and Friday passed like a blur filled with sleeping, unpacking, and getting settled back into the city again. I had been told that the next step in the visa saga was to book an appointment back at what I call Foreigners Office number three, so I rang on Thursday morning, only to be told that the first available appointment was in the middle of June. JUNE. As in, three months away from today and six months into my year-long working visa June. I couldn't believe it, so I rang the government contact person that the NZ Embassy here had put me onto. A couple of emails and phone calls with her office later, I was told to not worry about an appointment, just go and ask for Mr So and So. On Friday night a couple of their friends came to stay for the weekend, so after a quick dinner at the local chinese place we went to Ricardo's brother's apartment for drinks with him, his flatmate, and some other friends. Eventually the SingStar came out and I had flashbacks to the time I rediscovered joy that is spanish speakers singing along to the Spicegirls. Our Czech friend Jiri announced it was time for him to leave, and I was a tad tempted to head out the door with him, but instead I decided to stick around for a couple more hours and simply inflict my poor singing on everyone else in return.




Gran Via, the main avenue in Madrid packed for Noche de los Teatros

  Saturday was the Noche de los Teatros, or Night of the Theatre, a huge celebration where every performance group under the sun either takes to the street, or for the top-level theatre companies, puts on a performance at a discounted rate. We wandered around the streets for a bit, mostly shopping and sussing out the crowds, it seemed like everyone in Spain was in Madrid for the day, and then Miguel and I got tired and sat down for a beer at a bar terrace. After another drink with everyone else we went to check out the Goethe Institut (German Culture/Language Institute) gig, readings of poetry. We scored some sweet free posters from them, kinda cool because I have posters from the Goethe Institut in Wellington too. The building here in Madrid is amazing, they have their own logo-shaped water feature out the front.

Goethe Institut water feature

Sunday and Monday were pretty straightforward, I spent the days running errands and cleaning up the house and on Monday morning I went to Foreigners Office number three. I was a bit suspicious about this 'Just ask for Mr So and So' business, as normally they have security guards and appointment reference numbers and machines that spit out a number for you to wait for even though you had an appointment, but I walked in, asked for Mr So and So, and ten minutes later he'd gotten some forms for me, told me to fill them out and sat me down in front the lady that I made a big scene bursting into tears in front of last time to try and get some actual help. When the lady next to her leaned over and said "ah, you were here before right, you're the one that cried", I thought crap, they remember me, but the first lady was quite nice and ten minutes later I walked out of there with the golden ticket in my hand, a paper temporary ID card with an NIE! An early birthday present. Then it was off to the airport to get my other early birthday present because....

Hauke, me and Miguel

.....Hauke came to visit! Him and his friend Feli came for four nights, to be there for my birthday and have a bit of a holiday after their exams. It was the first time that my two best friends, Hauke and Miguel, had ever met, so it was a huge occasion. I had to laugh because no sooner had they arrived than we had to admit to them our original plan for dinner fell through, and as Miguel can't cook for shit and I was too busy running around in excited little circles, Hauke and Feli ended up in the kitchen cooking for Miguel and I.

Me in front of the blossoms

Five people in a shoebox-sixed one-bedroom apartment is not a good fit, so we woke up on Tuesday, my birthday, after not too much sleep at all, had breakfast, and made a picnic lunch to take with us. We took the metro towards Casa de Campo and got out just before, to walk along the River Manzanares (it really isn't that impressive) a bit and check out a bunch of cherry blossom trees before we headed into Casa de Campo itself. Everyone in Madrid was raving about how cool these trees were and I couldn't understand the fuss, I guess when you grow up in a place like Canterbury cherry blossom trees aren't too special, but they were pretty cool and Hauke got some good photos of us in front of them with his flatmate's portrait lens.

Feli and Hauke at Casa de Campo

Casa de Campo is a huge park in the middle of Madrid that used to be the private hunting reserve of the royal family. And I mean huge, it's 1700 hectares. To put it in perspective, Hagley Park in Christchurch is 165 hectares. In it is the zoo, an amusement park, a lake for watersports and heaps of resturants, and probably some other stuff that I don't know about because its just too big. We walked to the lake and had our picnic lunch and a nap in the sun there, watching a bunch of kayakers in the lake, obviously putting their work siesta time to good use, and some freaky green parrots building an epic nest up in a tree. Coming from Germany, Hauke and Feli couldn't get over how hot and sunny it was, up around 25 degrees at only the very beginning of Spring.

the Teleferico over Madrid

We took the Teleferico back into the city, something I'd wanted to do since I first got to Madrid. Its the most horizontal gondala in the world, it goes for 2.5km but never higher than 40m above the ground. The view was quite cool, you could see all across the city to the snow-capped mountains. We stopped back at the Templo de Debod on the way past, and then continued walking up through the city to get to home. Seeing their awe at Madrid really made me smile.

Me and my cake

That night a whole bunch of people came around to the house for my birthday, Annabella and Jose Angel, Jiri, Alejando, Olga (who Hauke knew in NZ) and german intern Ben, two Spanish guys who I've met several times but whose names I can never remember...the tiny apartment was packed, and although I had been really stressing that Hauke and Feli couldn't speak Spanish, everyone there was really friendly and either spoke english or german with them. I was also stressed because so many people didn't know each other, but everyone made an effort and it was so great to see friends together considering I'd only been in the city for three weeks in January. I had prepared a whole lot of different tapas and apart from a minor broken-glass-landing-in-the-food incident, everything went really well. I had set myself a mission beforehand, to make a speculoos flavoured cheesecake as my birthday cake (kinda sad making your own cake, but as Miguel pointed out, probably better than him trying to make me one) but as speculoos doesn't exist in the english-speaking world, finding a recipe online proved impossible, so I kind of mixed together a couple of recipes for different things, added the speculoos myself and hoped for the best. Miguel wanted to decorate it, so I left that up to him, and both him and Hauke lit the candles and handed it to me, and I got Happy Birthday sung to me in three and a half different languages!



Olga, Hauke, me and Feli on my birthday

 After everyone had left Hauke, Feli and I headed out to check out Madrid's Tuesday nightlife. Hauke mixed a bottle of coke and whisky together (everytime I see him drinking from the bottle like that it reminds me of the night I caught him on video taking swigs from one, insulting me and then starting the 'Sorry...mate' craze) and we walked slowly along into town. Anyone who has been to Madrid will know that the streets around the centre are full of people all night, even on weird week nights, and we met a couple kicking a ball around that got quite friendly and chatted away. They invited us to drink with them somewhere, but we figured they were actually pretty boring and gave them the slip. We actually went to meet up with another German who was in town, a girl called Steffi who we'd known as a backpacker working in Wellington. It was quite cool to see her again two years later, and to hang out with some other foreigners she knew there in an Irish bar playing club music somewhere. Just one of those nights when nothing extraordinary happens, but its an awesome night. We walked home and stopped for pizza at the 24hour pizza place on the way, that place is amazing because it turns out most of Europe does not buy into the 'fast food open late for drunken revellers' like Wellington does and you cant buy late night food in many major cities, and we wound up back home at 5.30am, not bad for a Tuesday.

I can honestly say that I had the best birthday since I finished primary school, it was just an awesome day, to have Hauke (and Feli!) here in Madrid, to spend a great day out in the sun with them, and to then have a cool celebration with friends from different walks of life, just perfect.

Hauke and I in front of AFS Spain's office

Waking up a couple of hours later on Wednesday morning was less than perfect, but the night before Hauke and german intern Ben had hitched a plan for us to go out to the AFS Madrid office to have a look around, catch up with one of their workers, another Olga, who we knew from her visit to AFS NZ a couple of years ago, and to have lunch. There is something cool about me and Hauke meeting because of AFS in NZ, becoming so close, and then meeting again in Spain to years later and going to the AFS office there. We headed out there and killed some time lying in the sun on top of the dirty metro stop building, which is a good indication of the shape we were in that day, before Ben met us and led us back to the office. Its a tad different from the current AFS NZ office, in that its a lot less professional looking, a lot smaller and cramped, and a lot less tidy and organised, but the staff were really friendly and Ben showed us around. Hauke and Olga chatted away, and then I talked to her a bit about volunteering (she was very enthusiatic about it but never got back to me, but I had been warned that AFS Madrid is a bit of a nightmare) and then we met the other Olga, Olga who went on exchange to NZ, and went for lunch at a local Japanese resturant.

Feli, Miguel and I walking home after dinner in Plaza dos de Mayo

After Ben went back to work Olga came into the city with us, and we went to the Catedral de la Almudena but it was closed, so we just wandered around for ages, looking through the suburb of Latina, Plaza Mayor and back through the centre of the city to the apartment, where we crashed out for a nap. After Miguel came home we went out for dinner, sitting outside at a local bar in the Plaza de Dos de Mayo. We split a couple of typical dishes, mostly quite good but I wasn't a huge fan of the Morcilla, or blood sausage, even if Miguel didn't tell me what it was until after I ate it, it just had a weird taste and texture.

Hauke and I up Catedral de la Almudena

Thursday we were feeling much better, and we headed back to the Catedral to the Almudena, the huge cathedral next to the palace that I visited last time in Madrid. This time, I found out you actually are allowed to take photos of the view, so we got some much better shots that the ones I had surrupticiously taken on my last visit. We visited the Mercardo de San Miguel, the oldest covered market in Madrid that still has this beautiful cast iron building from a hundred years ago, now a tourist destination filled with fancy stuff. We grabbed some bits, mostly bread and cheese and sat down in Plaza Mayor again to eat in the sun, and wandered around shopping before heading back to the Plaza de Dos de Mayo.

Hauke and Feli sitting in Plaza Dos de Mayo

This plaza is a couple of blocks away from the apartment, and named after a Spanish uprising against French occupation on the 2nd of May, 1808. The plaza is now the centre of Malasana, with bars and pubs and little stalls selling second hand stuff around the outside and playgrounds for kids. The only time I've seen it empty is first thing in the morning, otherwise its filled with old men sitting around, kids playing, people letting their dogs run around, and later on in the night, hundreds of people drinking. Chinese people walk around with trolleys full of beer for sale, its like an outdoor bar that comes to you, very convinient. We sat there drinking some beer and watching the dogs, Madrid must be full of tiny little apartment-sezed dogs that all come to play together in this Plaza because theres heaps, all running after the same ball or playing the dog version of tag.

Me, Hauke and Feli in Plaza Mayor

Annabella and Jose Angel were coming again for dinner and drinks, so Hauke and Feli cooked some nachos and with Miguel and we just sat around drinking and chatting until the early hours, when everyone went to bed and Hauke and I went off clubbing again. We sat for a hour or so in the Plaza again, drinking some more beer and just talking. I had never actually gone clubbing in Madrid before, so we pulled out a handy guidebook and I let Hauke chose a club to go to. Unfortunately the Brazilian place he picked was a huge fail, so then it was my turn with the guidebook and we went to Teatro Joy Esclava, a club inside an old 1800s theatre. We had to pay 15euro (30NZD) to get in, with a free drink, and then drinks after that were 11euro (22NZD) so while it isn't cheap, its pretty much on par with the rest of Europe, and we took our revenge by stealing two glasses to replace ones that got broken that week at home. Another stop on the way home for pizza, and another 5.30am bedtime.



Me, Hauke and Feli at Retiro park

 On Friday we made another picnic lunch and took it to Parque de Buen Retiro, the park I fell in love with in January. We picked a spot, and again spent the day lying around in the sun, eating, drinking, talking and sleeping. I was a bit stressed before the two of them came about being a tour guide in a city I'd only known for three weeks, but I guess after the weather in Germany four days of lying in the sun was perfect! Then it was back to the apartment to grab our stuff before heading back to the airport.

Parque de Buen Retiro

One of the things that excited me most about Hauke coming to stay was the fact that after spending three weeks entirely relying on him to show me the way and how to do things and to speak Germany back in Austria and Germany, now it would be me knowing my way around and how to speak the language in Spain! But, after four days he had picked up quite a bit of Spanish, enough to buy his own icecream anyway, and I had to laugh when we were on the metro to the airport and I pointed out that I'd managed four days without getting us lost - two minutes later I was sitting calmly there, watching people leave at a stop when Feli asked me in alarm, but shouldn't we be getting out here, everyone else with suitcases is! Fail Claire, Fail. It's funny how empty the tiny apartment feels without the two of them here, you can actually walk around and there isn't someone sleeping n the kitchen floor when you get up, but it was great to have them here, just a really cool week.

More photos are here.