May in Amsterdam

Ollie, Pepi and me playing in the paddling pool

This blog seems to be dying a silent death! I just got a bit too busy living life to spend any time writing about it, you'll understand why when I catch up on posts! But I am determined to get up to date, if only in brief as a record for myself, and now some I'm having some really cool new experiences. So here goes!

I don't have too much to say about May in Amsterdam, after Hauke was here for Queens Day I got quite sick, eventually being diagnosed with bronchitis, so I spent a lot of time at home trying (and failing) to shake the cough. I did manage a trip to Warsaw in Poland over the second weekend of the month, but I will write about that in another post.

Rollerderby in Amsterdam

I watched Rollerderby for the first time. I'd often thought about playing it myself, as I'm quite aggressive on sportsfields and used to take great pleasure from shoving my elbow into an opponients side while the referree wasn't looking, but I never really new much about the game. Turns out, the point is to go round and round in circles, with one person from each time trying to get to the front and go around the fastest, while the rest of the opposing team tries to block you from doing so. It actually wasn't very exciting viewing after the first couple of rounds.

Ollie on a really hot day

The weather got really really hot for a while, and I spent a lot of time hanging out in the sun with Ollie, splashing around in the paddling pool with both kids, and sitting on Anissa's terrace in the evenings with a few drinks. The nice weather really lifted my mood and made me happier to be in Amsterdam over summer...

...until one morning Jacquie told me that my visa application had been rejected and I had 28 days to leave the country! There was no indication that there would be any problem, so it was more that a bit of a surprize. Their basis for rejection was that Rogier and Jacquie could not prove that they could financially afford an au pair, as their only income source was earned in Luxembourg. Seems a bit silly to me, given the whole borderless Europe thing, but I've heard a lot about the Dutch visa office, and it seems a total mess, turning down a lot of visas for random reasons after they refuse to process visas via their embassies and make you fly all the way here to submit the application.

"Who me? Of course I wasn't playing with it.."

After I got over the initial shock, with the help of a lot of red wine and some amazing friends and family, I actually came around to the idea, and decided that while I would miss Ollie and Pep like crazy, I wasn't really keen to spend much more time working for their parents and was glad to leave Amsterdam. While I had a lot of "wow, look at the clogs/tulips/windmills/cheese, its so cool to be in the Netherlands" moments, I never really felt at home there.

too cute!

I'm going to make some horrible general-
isations here, and say that the Dutch are quite cold people who are hard to befriend and have very different concepts of manners and childraising than I am accustomed too. Unlike some of the other au pairs, I wouldn't say they're rude, because I think its just a different way of doing things, but definitely the lack of pleases and thank yous started to bug me, as did their way of letting their children run wild and do whatever they want unpunished when young, figuring at some point when they grow up they will work out the proper way to behave

Our boat trip, pulling up at the windmill brewery bar

A good example was when I was having lunch with Anissa and a very flashy woman dining with a friend ignored her preschooler while he disturbed the rest of us, and then turned around to order another diner to shut the door, without adding a please or thank you anywhere. I know it seems minor, and the kind of thing you see in most countries, but it seems so much more prevalient in Amsterdam, if not the whole of the Netherlands. Overall, its not a culture I could see myself integrating into. Also, I don't think Amsterdam is my favourite dutch city. The blatant sex, drugs and drunken debauchery gets annoying after a while, as do the hordes of tourists that constantly get in the way. It isn't a big city, but feels quite spread out with different bars, resturants and parks all over the show rather than in a orderly centre, so that it becomes a hassle to do things. I much prefer Haarlem or the Hague.

Me and Anissa at the windmill brewery

And finally, having to move turned into a good opportunity to see a little of somewhere else for a couple of months, before I head to Gottingen in Germany to work in September. Initially, my mind was spinning with all of the possibilies, and I looked at spending the summer in the south of France, or Turkey or Greece. After finding the Netherlands hard to settle down in, my heart really wanted me to go back to Luxembourg, where I felt at home, knew my way around and had friends. I spent hours every day for weeks looking at profiles of families and places to go - hence the lack of blog posts! But, in the end I listened to my head over my heart (and my desire for sun and surf) and agreed to go to Munich for a couple of months, as it would allow me to improve my German. More on that later...

Me perched on the stern

Moving also meant I had to cram four months worth of plans into just one month! Just after I found out I would have to move, Anissa surprized me with a day out on a boat cruising around the canals. This is something I'd always wanted to do, not just go on the tourist trip in the big barge, but be on a little motorboat with a bunch of friends, drinking and partying as the dutch do on the weekends. A friend of hers had gone in with his coworkers on a boat for a year, so he took a bunch of us out for the day. We had perfect weather, and after a stop to get petrol (service stations in Amsterdam have back entrances, steps down the the canal water level so that boats can pull up and get gas, cool ay?) we picked everyone up and spent the whole day cruising around.

Faces of horror as we ventured out into the rough open sea

Memorable moments were me offering to take driving over while someone had a ciggie, and subsequently crashing into a moored boat, heading out into the open sea and then reaslising we were a bit too small for it, then running out of petrol and having to refuel in the middle of the harbour with the waves crashing over the sides and the big boats steering around us, pulling up at the windmill brewery bar to stop for drinks, and the many interesting locations we stopped to pee, including Willem just sitting on the stern and peeing overboard. Willem also ended the day on a funny note by falling into the canal while trying to moor us.

Willem overboard in the canal

I also visited a beach with Jana, at IJBurg, some man-made islands just on the edge of Amsterdam. Its not a beach I would recommend, like the rest of the city its horribly windy, has a view of the suburbs and industrial area rather than open sea, and was a bit icky. I was feeling really sick that day and didn't enjoy it as much as I normally would have, and also managed to get sunburnt. I think my skin has been dutchified, as last summer I spent a whole week lying in the sun in Sicily with no sunscreen on and didn't get burnt at all, this year I had a low-SPF on but still got burnt by the dutch sun, surely one of the weakest in Europe! Not cool!

Me on the beach at IJBurg

So May was not my best month this year, it really drained me emotionally and saw me get really sick physically. Finding out I would be moving again was hard, facing the fourth time I'd have to pack up and start all over again in a little over a year made me realise that this whole nomadic lifestyle is getting old, and I am beginning to crave a solid base, a house I can feel at home in and some close connections with people. It also proved my theory that trying to plan anything while on an OE is a waste of time - six months ago I would have told you I would spend the summer in Luxembourg, a couple of months ago I would have told you I would spend the summer in Amsterdam, and now here I am off to southern Germany! My new mantra is life live by a Plan B - Plan B is what you think you could do, if everything works out right, no doors close to you and no new doors open to you. Plan A is what you actually do when everything turns to shit or you get a better offer! So lets hope my new plan works out better than my previous ones!

More photos are here.

Happy New Years - ending the year in Luxembourg

Christmas Market in Luxembourg Ville

I sit writing this at 11pm, at home alone with the kids and already a bottle of champagne down since they went to bed three hours ago. Christmas and New Years have kind of been a non-event for me this year, but I will get to that after I recap what's been going on in November and December, with links to the other blogs posts I've written about events along the way.

Me and Pepi on the train

After visiting Liege, London and the south of Luxembourg, the second half of November was pretty uneventful really. I managed to make it over to Saarbrucken in Germany to visit the Christmas market, and then the last Tuesday of November I had a 'Big Day Out' with Pepi. He'd visited the train station with me and Rogier when I collected my ticket to Strasbourg, and wanted to go on the train so bad that I promised him I would take him the following week.

Pepi on the playground in Noertzange

So on Tuesday when Ollie had gone for his nap we took off, taking the bus to the station and then the train to...who knows where! Despite trying to plan everything carefully, we pretty much just got on and got off at a stop where I could see a playground within walking distance! Pep didn't mind, he was quite excited about being on the train, we could have stayed on there for much longer than we did but I (correctly) thought that we were pretty close to hitting the French border. We ended up in Noertzange, population less-than 1000, resident ice-cream shops less than 1! After watching some diggers and 'Bob the Builders' at work by the tiny station, we walked down to the playground and I chased him around for awhile. By this stage he was getting quite anxious about missing Mama, so I tried to distract him with icecream, which turned into a huge fail as there isn't a single shop selling icecream in Noertzange. So, back on the train we went, and then it was onto a bus, then onto another bus after the first one crashed with a car (he didn't notice a thing!) and finally we reached the city, where the Luxembourg Christmas Market was in full tilt. A ride on the merry-go-round and miniature train later, we brought a scoop of icecream and finally took the bus home, where I collapsed exhausted - he had fun, but hauling a four-year old around in a push-chair and dragging that thing on and off the train and over the overpass is hard work!

cookie scrabble in my french class

I began December with a trip down to Strasbourg in France to see Hauke, but again, the first couple of weeks of the month were pretty quiet. I baked a cake with the kids, dismally failed an end of year French test (as did the rest of the class, and we can all continue, so not too concerned!) and then celebrated Christmas with my french class two weeks running. The french teacher isn't really a professional french teacher but an economist doing it in his spare time, so I think throwing two parties with us was much more fun than planning two more lessons. The first time, we celebrated 'Belgian Christmas' heaps of different Belgian sweets and a kind of scrabble, making french words with cookie letters. The following week we joined with the advanced class, and everyone had to bring something from their country. My pavlova looked like a cowpat both in size and colour, so I made a last minute dash to the supermarket and doled out marmite on bread instead - and yes, I did notice a few people spitting it out into their napkins!

Josh drinking Gluhwine at the Lux Ville market

December saw me meet Josh, an american accountant who has recently moved out here, and we've become good mates. He's introduced me to egg-nog, and led to me heading out to the Christmas market for Gluhwine and to Liquid for Jazz and Blues night a fair few times this month. Through a friend from the Dominican Republic/Spain, I've also met a big group of latinos, mostly Mexicans, who are living here and all party at the local spanish bar. I don't know how I didn't know that they were here until now, but I've since spent several tequila-fuelled nights dancing salsa with them until the early hours of the morning.

Band at the Christmas Market in Differdange

After developing a compulsion to collect Gluhwine mugs from every Christmas market I go to (these things are hideous and too small for a decent coffee, no idea what I will do with them back in NZ! Gluhwine party anyone?), I jumped at the chance to visit Differdange, a town of about 10 000 close to Esch-Sur-Alzette and Dudelange in the South of Luxembourg with a mate Markus from Austria and his greek neighbour. Turns out Dudelange or it's Christmas Market isn't all that interesting, but I scored a bizarre mug with a old guy sitting on a bench smoking on it, watched Markus do a couple of rounds of a fake ski slope, and had a bit of a day out.

Letting Pepi play with my makeup

The end of December saw snow fall a couple of times, but nothing compared to what I expected. Last year there was about a metre on the ground here and in Germany, but this year it didn't stick around for longer than a day, the snowfields within a couple of hours of here are still closed, and the weather forecast for tomorrow predicts 11degrees. Watching Ollie play in his first snowfall was a highlight of the month, as has him learning how to say my name. He can't quite do the whole 'Claire' thing yet, so I'm now known as 'Car', ever since I woke up one morning to him banging on the door wanting me to come and play, shouting 'Carrr, carr, carr' over and over. He sounds a bit like a crow really, but it's so cute, and it gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling to know that I mean enough to him for him to learn my name pretty early on in his vocabulary.

I headed back over to Trier in Germany for an afternoon, to pick up a few things in the shops and check out what I'd heard was a great Christmas market, but again I was kind of disappointed. I think once you've seen one Christmas market here in Europe, you've seen them all, and especially after being at the really pretty market of Gottingen with Hauke and all of his friends, others kind of fall flat.

Lena and I drinking peket at the Christmas Market

I also went back to Liege just for an afternoon, to sort out some visa issues. As of late December, my Spanish working holiday visa has expired, and I am kind of an illegal immigrant. I'm exploiting a loophole that allows New Zealanders to have three months in each of a long list of European countries, rather than restricting us to three months in the whole of Schengen like most foreigners are, but this is kind of tricky considering your passport never gets stamped to say when you arrive or leave each of the countries. Normally you can bluff you're way through this kind of thing, but because I want to apply for another European visa at some stage I don't want to risk any issues further down the line. So, I went to Belgium to ask for a piece of paper saying that I had arrived there.

Memorial to victims of the grenade/shooting attack in Liege

Given my experiences in Spain, I was pretty dubious that it would work, but I rocked on up at the Liege Town Hall with Lena to do the translating, and asked for a Declaration of Arrival, normally only given to those on a real long-term visa. She asked "do you have proof of how/when you arrived in Belgium?", "Do you have proof of a visa?", and "Do you have proof of address?", I answered no to all three, and apart from a scary moment when the fake address I gave her turned out to be an apartment building, she just shrugged her shoulders and gave me the paper anyway - totally unlike Spain! Now I see how Belgium managed to survive over a year with no government! So unless they realise I was never at that address and give my name to Interpol, I reckon I'm safe for another three months! Lena and I spent a little while at the Liege Christmas market, where I scored yet another mug but this time shunned Gluhwine in favour of Peket, a kind of hard alcohol made from distilled grain in Liege, and shared the sobering experience of walking past the broken bus shelters and huge memorial to the victims of a grenade and shooting attack in Liege just two days earlier.

Ollie as a fireman/pirate/princess/spartan

And finally, like I said, Christmas and New Years have kind of been non-events for me this year. Christmas in the Netherlands is celebrated quite differently. There, Sinterklaas, or Santa Claus, sails on a boat from Spain on December 5th (Why Spain? Because centuries ago, Spain was the End of the World) accompanied by Zwarten Pieten, or Black Peters, black men with bright red lips and feathers in their caps that help deliver the presents. Sinterklaas leaves children presents and cookies in their shoes after the 5th - along with various small things, he left Pep and Ollie a toy kitchen this year, very cool!

Princess Pepijn

The night before Rogier and the kids went to join Jacquie in the Netherlands for Christmas I gave them my present, a big box full of dress-up clothes. I'd been planning this for ages, but as usual things didn't go quite to plan, and I found it really hard finding articles to put in it - what I did find I collected in the UK, Germany, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and mum posted me some from NZ! I also wanted to put it in a wooden chest and paint 'Dress-Up' or something on the side, but Ikea has been sold out of wooden boxes for months, so its in a temporary fabric box for now - as usual, the kids are playing with the box as much as with the present inside, so I doubt it will last long! My attempt to use the present as bribery for good behavior for the day failed dismally, with me hauling a kicking and screaming Pepi out of the doctors office at one point. I had to laugh at all of the mothers with placid babies sitting there glaring at me, I was thinking "just you wait, one day this will be you!". The kids seemed to have settled on 'Fireman Ollie' and 'Policeman Pepi' outfits, but initially they were both into the barbie high heels and girlie necklaces, was very cute!

Christmas Eve at Hardy's

So, they all headed off on Christmas Eve, the day when most Europeans actually celebrate, and I spent the day nursing a hangover and trying to sort myself out to head out for dinner. I had dinner with two strangers via couchsurfing, Hardy from Germany and Nicolas from Brazil. Hardy did a great job of hosting us, making salad followed buy wild pork and vegetables, and I made brownies with strawberries for dessert. It was another late night, followed by a 6am wakeup call to skype family back home, so I was struggling with the idea of heading out again on Christmas Day, but I made it to Markus' house for Christmas lunch, a big affair with ten of us, and a massive collaborative meal of lamb, beef, veges and salad, followed by a couple of different puddings and Austrian Christmas cookies. We represented about eight different countries, so it was quite an interesting day. Hardy and I attempted to go out that night, but there wasn't too much happening and we were both quite tired and called it a night around 2am, and then I rounded off my Christmas holiday by spending the next two days obsessively cleaning the house, even washing all of the kids' armchair covers and the inside of the fridge.

Christmas Day at Markus'

I'm not too upset about spending New Years working, New Years has never been my thing anyway, as I usually find it to be quite disappointing. Jacquie and Rogier went to Maastricht in the Netherlands this afternoon, so I spent the rest of the day with the boys, baking scones and building obstacle courses around the house. The went to bed without any problem, and somehow didn't wake during the tremendous noise of the fireworks half an hour ago (its now 1am!) although Pepi has been up since and is now waiting for me to come and sleep in the big bed with him. At least I'm not spending New Years alone...

So I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years in  whatever shape and form, and all the best for the year to come.

And greetings from Pepi..

London take two

Lissa, me and Philippa at the bridge

Last year working as an advisor at Victoria University I had two coworkers, Lissa and Philippa. Lissa has spent the last six months living in Germany (I visited her in Erlangen in July) and Philippa has been in London all year (I visited her there in May). We'd talked about the three of us meeting up for awhile, and finally one weekend in November we did.

Poppy wreath outside Westminster Abbey

Lissa and I both flew from Frankfurt Hahn, my absolute favourite airport (or not, its a former army base in the middle of no where, turned into a trashy airport for low-budget airlines, I've flown in and out a couple of times). In theory it should have been an easy trip, as there's a direct bus there from Luxembourg and only a quick flight from Germany to London, but I'm amazed that I made it there! After a morning of all the errands I had to do here in Luxembourg going wrong, I left the house late and missed the bus I needed to take to catch the airport bus, got there by taxi with only seconds to spare, and then our bus to the airport got stuck in roadworks and Friday evening traffic and I barely made it through check-in!

Lissa outside Philippa's place

The next hurdle was getting in and out of the UK itself. Last time I was there I was placed on an alert list due to all of the fun and games I was having with my spanish visa, so I was scared that they wouldn't let me in this time, given all I have to prove that I have a visa is a laminated ID card. A surly looking German man studied this for a while, and then let me through and onto the plane. After we landed in London Stansted, we waited in the 'Non-European' queue watching two immigration officials rigorously interrogate everyone. Finally our turn came, and after several minutes spent swearing that I was studying Politics in Madrid on exchange and explaining who we were visiting, what job she did, and what her life plans and star sign and childhood pet's name were, we were in!

oldtimer band at the local pub

We managed to bus from the airport to Mile End station, and Philippa met us there and took us back to her flat. She's moved since the last time I was there, and is now living in a very Coronation-St-type two story, three bedroom place inhabited by five-and-a-half kiwis and with another on the couch - nine New Zealanders sleeping in a three-bedroom, one bathroom place in central London, true OE style! This house had once been inhabited by the Horror Handyman from Hell (fancy your light switches inside kitchen cupboards, anyone?) and the toilet had decided to stop working this weekend too, fun times. By this point, it was around 11pm UK time, so midnight our time, and we were quite shattered, but we did make it out for some food and a drink at their local, a crazy old-timer looking place with an amazing band made up of elderly men with what little grey hair they had left at a rock-star long length (check out the bassist in the photo).

our Yeoman tour guide

On Saturday morning Philippa and her fiance James took us out for breakfast and coffee at a wee cafe in a park somewhere near their place. The weather wasn't bad at all, after it being 3-8degrees most of the previous week in Luxembourg, having 18 degrees in London felt like heaven, and having a real Latte made by a kiwi barista was amazing! We then went to the Tower of London and did the tour inside. These tours are run by the Yeomen Warders, who, I was surprized to learn, actually live with their families inside the Tower. Imagine being the teenage son or daughter of a Yeoman Warder and asking a taxi to take you home there after a night on the town! The one who did our tour was absolutely hilarious, and earned extra respect from us for referring to Australia as 'one of the islands in the New Zealand group'.

the 'White Tower' of the Tower of London

I learnt a few things that I didn't know about the place. The Tower has a reputation for being a prison, but was actually designed as a royal residence and usually only had high-profile prisoners kept there for very short periods of time, and actually the first prisoner ever held there escaped. It was built in 1078, but there was no purpose built prisoner accomodation until 1687. The Tower was last used to hold prisoners during WWII, with Hitler's deputy the final one. The Tower of London also has seven capitive ravens living in the grounds, legend has if the 'six ravens' are lost or fly away, the Tower and the Crown will fall. The seventh bird is the reserve. There is even a 'Ravenmaster' Yeoman that looks after them and feeds them meat every day.

Spanish food at Borough Market

So, we did the tour, looked at the Crown Jewels, saw some old armour (that King Henry VIII had some serious allusions about the size of his own crown jewels!) and then wandered down to the Tower Bridge, where James left us. We went to the Borough Market for lunch, that place is amazing! It has foods from all around the world, both cooked meals and things like specialist cheeses and bread to buy. As much as I love markets here in continental Europe, its cool to have fifty different types of food in one place, rather than just fifty stands selling the same cheese and olives. Lissa and I had paella and Philippa chowed down on some German sausage.

View from the London Eye with Westminster in the bottom right

We went up the London Eye, something I'd wanted to do since the last time I visited. It's like a giant slow-moving ferris wheel, you go into a pod with about 15 other people and it does a thirty-minute circuit up and down again. It was quite cloudy but still very cool, and a nice change from walking up the windy stairs to reach the top of church bell towers! We walked over past Big Ben and Westminster, where they had war Remembrance Day memorials going on, and took a quick look at Buckingham before going back to the river bank for the Lord Mayor's Parade fireworks. They were quite cool fireworks, but from where we were sitting the Eye completely dwarfed them, and made it all kinda underwhelming.

Fireworks beside the London Eye

We met up with James again, and their former Aussie flatmates, and went for a drink and then to Brick Lane for curry. Brick Lane is full of curry shops, and the waiters stand outside the doors and make deals with you like free wine and 20% off if you come to their place. We went to what these guys consider to be the best, and it was really good (I tucked into some especially spicy stuff!) but what made the place was the decor - the walls were covered in huge paintings of erotic mythological scenes, apart from one wall that had a big painting of Diana instead. Weird. We left this place extremely full and not feeling capable of heading out, so we went back to the flat and hung out there with some flatmates and some of their friends for a bit.

Xmas lights on Oxford Street

Sunday was shopping day! We had coffee at another kiwi-barista place and then took the bus through town to Oxford Street, the road that almost bankrupted me last time I visited London. This time I was a bit more savvy, and didn't buy anything until we got to Primark, where I splashed out as one only can in a place where pants cost no more than five quid. A couple of hours later we managed to free ourselves from the grasp of Primani goodness and stumbled out to find darkness had fallen and the street full of Christmas lights. We headed up to Piccadilly to take a quick look, and then spent our final evening in London having an amazing chicken roast with all of the trimmings thanks to Philippa's awesome cooking. It felt quite weird to be sitting around with so many kiwis, eating something so kiwi, with english-speaking TV playing in the background after over ten months here in Europe!

Roast chicken dinner

Monday morning we flew back to Frankfurt. Thanks to Lissa's much more sound planning skills we managed to get a bus out to the airport without being stressed when we got stuck in early-morning traffic, but most on the bus didn't seem to be in the same boat and one man got really aggressive. I was looking forward to landing back in the immigration-slack EU, and sure enough I had no problems walking in with my flimsy Spanish ID card, but Lissa got held up a bit - her German visa was granted on the basis of her husband being here for work, and the woman demanded to know where he was (at work...can't a girl take a trip without her man to hold her hand?) and then we were back in the 2degree cold of Europe, and I was back to Luxembourg and small children once again.

More photos of London in November are here.

Madrid Again - The Visa Saga Hath Endth

The holy grail...a Spanish ID card

So last time I was in Madrid, back in March, before I quit and returned to civilized lands, I was finally given a temporary NIE and told that to get a proper ID card that permitted me to remain and Spain (and therefore in the whole Schengen Area because there are no border controls) I had to return in 40-45 days, hence the return journey. I ablogrrived at midnight on the Wednesday, no problems at all with border control here, and just managed to get the metro to Annabella and Jose Angel's place before it closed at 1.30am. We pretty much went straight to bed.

View from my spot in retiro

We got up the next morning and had breakfast and then lunch before I made a move, with the office reopening at 4pm after siesta. The address was a bit strange, they list no street number, just the street itself, meaning you gotta pick a direction and just walk until you get there, although I asked the security guard at the metro stop and found it pretty quick. All the foreign-looking people walking that way with papers in their hands was a good giveaway. Turns out it is actually a detention centre for illegal immigrants, a huge prison-like building with big walls and stuff. Pretty scary looking.

I walked through security into the office. Normally, when I go to Foreign Offices, there is a line at the front desk (and sometimes I line outside waiting to be let in to get to the front desk even!) waiting to check in and get a number to wait in another yet another queue to see someone at another desk, but this time there was no line at all for the front desk. Surely I wasn't at the right place then. A Foreign Office with no line?

My spot in Retiro

I went up and asked the girl if I was in the right place to get my NIE ID card, and she replied that I was and asked for my temporary one and passport. She took them, checked my name, opened a filing drawer, took out a card, and handed it to me. Just like that. I stood there a bit stunned and asked her if that really was all I needed to do, and she nodded, and I still stood there a bit stunned. Was this really the same government that had spent so long insisting my type visa didn't even exist, now giving me an ID card so easily? I later decided that the lack of line at the final Foreign Office is due to a lengthy, ridiculously difficult and expensive process - most people were either still stuck back in the lines at the first offices or had given up all together!

So now I have a Spanish ID card permitting me to stay until the end of March. The Visa Saga hath endth. Although its the ID card of an exchange student, meaning if I want to actually work in Spain there are further chapters to the drama, as I would then have to take any contracts to another office and go through a currently-undefined process to get permission to actually accept them. Mmmmm. At least having an ID card that says 'Estudiante' means I can try to get student discounts here in Belgium.

view from my spot in Retiro

That outa the way, I brought a heap of beer and food and headed back to Annabella and Jose Angel's to celebrate with them. I made curry for dinner, I thought it wasn't spicy but it nearly killed the two of them, and then we spent the rest of the day just drinking and talking. I didn't do much on Friday either, I got up late and went for a haircut after lunch, a cheap place down the road with some lady that cut it in about ten minutes and didn't try to make conversation at all, not even to ask where I'm from. Then I headed off to Retiro, back to the spot I've claimed to read and lie in the sun some more. Finally, I went back to Olga's aunt's place, to meet Olga and grab the big bag I'd left behind and say hi to her aunt, and then I had a late dinner, tried to repack everything into a bag and suitcase of 15kg each and only 10kg carry-on, and then it was off to bed.

It was my tenth trip out to Madrid airport, and my eight flight in and out of Madrid on Saturday in four months, I'm a pro at it now. I just scrapped through with my luggage, luckily they didn't weigh my carry-on, and then it was back to Belgium!

My last week in Madrid, and my decision to leave Spain

'Se Vende - For Sale' window in Malasana

After such an intense and sleepless week with Hauke and Feli, I fell quite ill over the weekend, and spent the whole time in bed. Come Monday I was feeling a lot better, but I've been left with a nagging cough that just won't go away. Also come Monday was the realisation that I was now broke, jobless and homeless in Spain, and nearly at the deadline I'd set myself for sorting out the visa thing and finding a job with no end to the visa process in sight. Even though I have a bit of paper with a NIE on it, I still can't work; I first need to wait 40 days, get the real NIE, present my job offer at Foreigners Office number four, then complete further steps to be confirmed once I make complete all the others. After a long wait while they determine said steps of course. Highly likely to include demands like qualify for the European Buracracy Championships next autumn and fill in a forest's worth of paperwork while doing a one-handed headstand. I had to get out of Miguel and Ricardo's apartment too, the saying 'Three's a crowd' definitely applies when you're talking about a one-bedroom shoe-box sized pad.

Glorieta de Bilbao, the corner by the aparment in Malasana

So, I decided to skip straight to what was originally my post-Spain plan, and try to find work as an Au Pair. I figured even though I'm not great with kids, can't drive and as I haven't babysat since highschool, have no references, as native english-speaker I would have a pretty good shot of sorting something out, meaning I could start living and working somewhere straight away without having to worry about waiting for the whole visa thing to be sorted out, as Au Pairing is under the tabe, and just keep plodding along with the visa thing so that I have permission to stay in Spain, or even anywhere in the Schengen Area, for the year.

Calle Manuela Malasana

So I signed up with three online Au Pair/Nanny websites (if anyone is interested, the sites are here, here and here. I don't really understand how two of them work at all, but apparently if you remember to at least log in everyday your profile will be one of the top ones families see when you log in. For more help, flick me an email). I find the definition beween Au Pair and Nanny really blurry, but I did find out that Nannies generally get paid more. Initially I was looking at doing this within Spain, and amongst the five or so offers I was recieving daily, there were a couple in Spain, the most promising being a family from Israel who were just moving to Barcelona, looking for someone to do a lot of housework and look after two young girls. I spoke to the woman a couple of times on the phone, but then I got an email and a phone call from a man in Antwerp, and within the next 24hours had made the decision to leave Spain and move to Belgium, with a flight booked for four days later. After spending well over a year planning on working in Spain, the snap decision to leave really made my head spin!

Metro station I used to take in Malasana

In the end though it came down to the fact that I came to perfect my Spanish, something that I wouldn't achieve with an English-speaking family in a area of Spain that speaks Catalan, not Spanish. If I wasn't going to be improving my Spanish, then I should really think more carefully about what family I wanted to live with, work for, and raise the children of, and what location would be better to live in. That decision was easy; the family in Antwerp seemed much more flexible and friendly, much more relaxed and open to working out a way that worked for us both, rather than me just fitting into their mould, and just generally, seemed to see me more as a person rather than as just someone they employ to take care of the kids. They would also give me more holidays, and from Belgium I can travel anywhere else within the country for $10NZD on the train, and easily get to the Ryanair airport, whereas from Barcelona to Madrid costs over $200NZD and while there is a Ryanair airport there, it doesn't have flights to many other countries. So to Antwerp it was then!

Plaza Dos de Mayo

I spent the week jobhunting in the mornings, then picnicing in the spot we found at Parque de Retiro the Friday before, staying there sunbathing with a book for a couple of hours, then jobhunting some more, and sometimes going for a walk to enjoy the hot weather and have some time to think. I spent a couple of evenings in Plaza Dos de Mayo again, it really is a nice place to just sit and think and drink a beer. I really can't ge over how hot it is here! Most days are between 25 and 30degrees, but I think if you're out in direct sunlight its hotter, it's just exhausting. I can't sleep with the window open and its only the beginning of spring, summer must be a nightmare here! I did get a little bit of a tan though, much needed after two consecutive winters. On Thursday I went to Annebella and Jose Angel's house for lunch and to spend the afternoon chatting away over beer, as it would be the last time I would see them for awhile, and on Friday I finally admitted that the 'summer clothing' I had brought from NZ was not even 'spring clothing' in Madrid. I went shopping for a pair of shorts and ended up with an armful of clothing that I thought would both be a lot cooler, and a lot more kid-proof than the stuff I've been wearing.

View from inside the school yard

Friday evening I packed up and moved out, as other friends were coming to stay at the apartment and I was off in a couple of days anyway. I went to Olga's (exchange student in NZ in 08-09) aunt's house, and the two of us had chinese for dinner with her aunt and cousin, and then chatted all night, it felt like a sleepover, very fun. Saturday we headed off to meet up with some of Olga's friends. First, we went to meet a girl who was just finishing some Scouts stuff at a school somewhere. Scouts here in Europe is different from Scouts in NZ in that here its actually really cool to be a Scout and therefore many more people do it. They do cool things like form bicycle aerobatic troups and go on ski trips. The schools here are also quite different, well in appearance anyway. Most of them seem like small prisions, with huge walls toped with curles of barbed wire. Olga reckons the Ministry of Education actually copied prision building plans as a cost saving measure, she's probably not far off. The city ones are in taller buildings, often with three or more stories of classrooms, and just a small concrete yard out the front.



Picture of a Tapa from Google Images

 We went with the scouts to a bar where they sell a beer with a free tapa for abot $5NZD, with a huge list od options like a small hamburger or chicken wings. You get one with every drink, so if you drink enough, you get a sweet free dinner. Probably a good time to explain the history of Tapas actually, ages ago when men would ride horses to bars out in the countryside, the publicans would worry about them being too drunk to get home, so they started placing something on top of glasses for the people to eat with their drink, like a pieec of bread with something topping it. Tapa means lid in spanish, so as these bits of food looked like a lid on the glasses, voila, Tapas. Pretty good tradition really, I like that you always get something to eat with you drinks, even if just a basket of chips. Might be why Spaniards can drink so much without rolling around in the gutter like kiwis do.

Ardanda del Rey - not that the whole town looked like this!

Afterwards, we headed to the house of another friend, in the wopps, a small town called Arganda del Rey on the outskirts of Madrid. There were five of us there, with only Olga and I being over 18, but it being a small town we managed to wheedle our way into the local club. It was kind of strange to be in a club, with girls wearing high heels, in this Rangiora-sized town, and as the drinks all cost about $20NZD, no one at all was at the bar, everyone was just standing around in groups talking. Until Olga and I let four under-age kids loose in there. Suddenly there was a whole lot of crazy dancing going on the in middle, even a congo-line of three to the toilet, and we were the centre of attention. Olga and I tried to dance in a much more restrained manner on the sidelines, and we headed back to crash at the friend's house around 5am.

shot of the Gym at the school

We headed back to Madrid the following day feeling quite tired, and arrived back at Olga's aunt's apartment for lunch. She cooked a typical Spanish rice dish for me to try, and Olga's family and german intern Ben came over. It was nice to sit and talk, and to watch some of them get beaten by the 8yr old at the dance games on Wii, but I was really shattered and took a nap in the afternoon while they went off to see a new baby somewhere. I tied up and packed up again, and spent the night chatting to Olga's aunt. I really like her, and I really appreciate the way she's let me stay and has offered for me to come and stay whenever I like, in fact she is storing some stuff for me until I head back in May for part-whatever-we're-up-to-now of the Visa Saga. So Monday I was off to Madrid airport for the eighth time, this time calling it quits on a country I never really got, and off for a new adventure!

More photos are here.

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.