Beautiful day

Sometimes there are no words for just how beautiful the world is. We having nice weather here in Madrid today (only about 30C right now) and I took a walk to one of my local yarn stores.

The city was very photogenic today, so I took my camera so that you could come with me. I am going to let the photos speak for themselves.

Enjoy, and have a beautiful day too.

 

 Giant pencils! How cool is that?

Menu

The word "menu" in Spanish does not mean the same as in English. If you were to ask for a Menu (as in list of items to order at a restaurant) in Spain you would say "Por Favor, dame una carta". Here in Spain "menu" is a term for fixed price multi-course meal. Usually you find menus during lunch time.

Lunch is the by far the biggest meal of the day here, and can take hours to eat. In fact the term "to eat" or "comer" is the same word used for lunch in Spain. The lunch break starts around 2-3pm and can last until 5-6pm. The average worker gets 2-3 hours off for lunch, and it is common to take a leisurely lunch out with friends, or to go home and eat a big lunch with the family and then nap afterwards. Speaking of naps, the whole 2-3 hour lunch break is called "siesta". This can be important information if you ever visit in Spain. I am still getting used to the schedule. All shopping (with some exceptions, including groceries) should be done between 10-2pm and 5-8pm. If you want a sit down lunch you will have to wait until 2 (possibly 3pm, depends on the place).

So, for example, the menu in the photo above has a choice between two dishes for the the first course and a choice between two dishes for the second course, and way down at the bottom notes the price (cut off), and that the menu also includes bread, a drink, and a dessert.

You will find that in Spanish restaurants leisurely placed is the norm. You will have to ask a waiter to bring you another drink, or to bring you the check. They will let you sit and enjoy your meal slowly, and have a long talk over a cup of espresso at the end of the meal. They will not bring you the check, until asked. HAHA I am just passing that along. It was a little hard for me to get used to, and my Spanish husband is getting used to it again after his ten year stay in the States. They might let you sit until closing, I am not sure I have never tried this. "Dame la cuenta, por favor" should do the trick.

A walk through Barrio de Los Austrias

For those of you that do not know (I certainly did not) Madrid is split up into "Barrios"or neighborhoods. You do most of your errands and shopping within your own neighborhood. (I am sure it is the same for many big cities, this is however the first big city I have ever lived in.)

This is a very brief photo tour of a small part of Barrio de Los Austrias, which is he neighborhood around the "La Latina" Metro stop. An awesome friend of mine set up a photo scavenger hunt for me, and it has been helping me get out and see parts of the city that I might not have seen otherwise for years. This neighborhood was very charming. A lot of Madrid's building are just not that old. This neighborhood was not only very photogenic, but had a graceful antique air about it.

Príncipe de Anglona Garden, an 18th century Count's courtyard that was part of the scavenger hunt. As it is completely walled you have to either know that it is there or stumble across the one entrance during opening hours.

 A charming view of 18th century buildings with a church tower, and palm trees. Like I said, a very photogenic neighborhood.

 This next one below is a striking scene from the courtyard of el templo de San Andres

 Madrid is a deceptively hilly city. Most of the time you really do not notice. This neighborhood is an exception.

 I really love the unexpected wooden door in Europe. I can not get enough of them.

Stuffing my head

This week for me has been really, really full of un-tangible stuff.

I mean how does one mark progress in a new language on a daily basis? It is really not possible. 

I am also busy applying for jobs.

One bright note on DH's job front is that we will be able to call Madrid home for a longer than we originally expected. This is GREAT news. I have been moving around too much, I need to, long to, put down roots.

I have not had much opportunity to explore my new city on my own recently, but I wanted to post, so here are some photos form a couple weeks back.

ATOCHA

One of the unexpected pleasures of Madrid is Atocha station. Here you can get trains to almost anywhere is Spain. My DH found this treasure when he first came to Madrid from Barcelona about 10 years ago. All of the trains now run underground, so what to do with the old train station building with all of it's windows?

Build an indoor garden with street lights, walkways, and a pond for the turtles in the back.

Settling in

Although I pointed out earlier that my brain had finally worked out that I am here to stay - not just on vacation. I feel like this week marks the time where I finally feel like I am settling into my new life and country.

That is not to say that going to the grocery store does not still give my a flutter in my stomach, but at least I have been enough to know the routine. I feel like I am making friends now and have finally had the time to seriously start applying to jobs.

Things take SO MUCH time when you are in a new country, heck they took a lot more time when I moved to a new city in the US! Ok here is an example: going tot he grocery store is only about a 5 minute walk from my house. You are new to the neighborhood so taking time to look around and get the feel of the area can take a long time in and of it's self. You look for what the buildings look like, where the post office boxes and recycling containers are, where the cars are going to pop out of (you spend a lot of time doing the last one). So your walk takes about 10 for the first couple of times.

Now you are at the store and have successfully navigated around the guy asking for money. You take your old-lady-wheeled shopping cart to the lockers and lock it up as it is not allowed inside the main part of the store. This can now take 2 minutes, before it could take around 7 as you look for the appropriate coin deposit in your purse, then turn around and go back to the cart as you realize you have forgotten something like bags. Something I really like about Spain is that now a lot of the food stores charge you for bags, therefore giving an incentive to bring your own and cut down on waste (up until recently I was not very organized and forgot my bag frequently.)

Now you are in the store and have a basket for your purchases. Of course this is Spain so everything has a different name then you are used to (both brand and common names) but the biggest time suck is figuring out what to buy. I am a non-traditionally raised American, so I tend to cook healthy meals from various parts of the world. This has been something that is really hard to wrap my head around here in Spain. Even though there might be more international people around (being in Europe and all) there is less access to international food. And by international food I mean non-Spanish cuisine ingredients. You Americans out there reading this might think that your grocery store isn't very international, but I assure you some of the smallest grocery stores I have been to in the states (and I have lived in a lot of places there) are more international than some of the biggest stores here. The food is not bad...it is just different. More on Spanish food later, the point is that everything is so new and different it can take you an hour to choose what to make for dinner. Now that I am more used to what is available in certain stores I can head straight for the items that I want.

The checkout lines are needlessly long. HAHA I am telling you right now that hard thing for me to adjust to here well be the laid back attitude. I have long realized that I have the American tendency to want things NOW, but this is pushing me to my limits. Spain has a whole difference Cadence of life which will take a huge mental shift on my part.

You bag your own groceries here, and that has been tricky to try and figure out how you are going to have the time to put things on the very small conveyor belt, bag and, pay (especially with your old-lady-wheeled-cart locked up by the front of the store) in a smooth way. I have to admit I have yet to figure out just how to do this dance, especially as I tense up for any questions or conversation the cashier might say to me in my second language.

Then there is the walk home, the ride up the elevator, the find where to put things in your tiny kitchen.

Going to the store 2 hours, meals you bought for = 2. Which means that you get to do it all over again tomorrow. HAHA but like I said the timing is getting better. Really the relief is knowing where all of my time is going to. Between going to the store and getting four hours of Spanish in - that is a full days work! ;)

whosebear

whosebear, a photo by gemmadw on Flickr.

My bear!
This is the second year that I had been knitting for the Mother Bear project (http://www.motherbearproject.org). This is the first time that I have even seen one of my bears (ok so only 3 so far) out in the 'wild'.

I am really excited that both Dr Gemma (of the Cogknitive podcast) and Amy (mother bear founder herself) spotted this bear in the pictures for me.

This is going to be a good day.

El Dia Corpus Cristi

So today is my first 'holiday' in Spain. I put the holiday in quotation marks because I have heard from various sources it is just an excuse to have the day off. It is not a national holiday but it does effect my providence of Madrid. For those of you who may not know Madrid is a city in a providence called Madrid. Just like for NYC you can have New York, New York, you also can have Madrid, Madrid.
The holiday does not effect me much as my work-o-holic husband is working at the office today anyway. So I am doing my usual thing of, looking for a job, cleaning, laundry, and putting in a couple hours of Spanish. It is actually really nice to have some sort of routine again my life has been so topsy turvey lately.

Today I am going to do a pretty post and talk about my Park. I live within a reasonable walking distance of  El Parque de Berlin. The park is not surprisingly a park dedicated to the city of Berlin, Germany. As the park is within walking distance to the local German school I am sure there is some interesting history that ties everything together, but maybe more on that another day.

This park is a good size, pleasant, hilly, and green with fountains, basketball/futbol courts, and plenty of benches. There are nice bars with plenty of outside seating on one side of the park, and a bar even in the park itself (Madrid has a crazy number of bars).  But by the far the coolest thing about this park, it is thing that strikes you first as unimpressive:

I need a closer shot of the fountain one day. But it is just three cement slabs with graffiti on them. Very ugly at first glance. However, when you read the plaque in front of them they become suddenly valuable, beautiful and poignant.

Can you guess what they are?

Pieces of the wall, the Berlin Wall.
See what I mean?

The area around the Berlin Wall fountain is Very pleasant to sit with lots of chestnut trees, pines, magnolias, and roses. I am very happy to live near such a beautiful park.