Meet the Mole People

As an English teacher who teaches private, in-home lessons, I spend a lot of time getting from place to place. In a city the size of Madrid, the only way travel quickly without spending hours hiking between appointments or waiting on an endless number of bus transfers is to take the Metro. On any given day I spend between two and three hours underground. I'm starting to feel a little like the famous "mole people" of New York.

I do a lot of different things to try to pass the time. Sometimes I read, sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I just stare and drool. Studying Spanish is easy because I can just listen in on someones conversation. The bulk of my time is spent reading, and I typically finish two or three books a week because of my second job as a professional subway rider. Though, this is not always possible when the train gets crowded at rush hour. It can be a little awkward turning the pages when some strangers ass is acting as a paperweight.

Excuse my dorkiness for a moment: there are 294 Metro stations in the city of Madrid, 284 kilometers of tracks, last year people made 649,977,853 trips (nearly 2 million each day). If your average rider is underground for only 20 minutes, a conservative estimate, about 36 million minutes of human life are spent underground... every... single... day. By comparison, a person who lives to age seventy five has lived for a little over 39 million minutes. Hundreds of lifetimes are spent underground each year. We are the mole people, the Morlocks, "terrifying monsters from a lost age!" It's a little scary to think about.

Needless to say I also waste some metro time thinking about random statistics.

The point I'm trying to make is that a lot of life goes on in the metro, which means that the people watching is prodigious. It's one of my favorite pastimes. Beggars, thieves, drunkards, women breast feeding, Peruvian flute bands, Mickey Mouse in an Uncle Sam style American Flag suit (I shit you not). They're all there. Now I know where Goya got his inspiration for his curious and often grotesque portrayal of humanity. You name it and I've seen it on the metro.

Pickpockets are definitely something to be on the lookout for, but they usually only work later at night. They're generally easy to spot. To begin with, it's a dead giveaway when someone stands right next to you on a virtually empty train. A lot of them are addicts of one form or another and you can pick them out by their thin build and hollow eyes. The other type are those that look odd in nice clothing, or a little overdressed. (although, I suppose I look a little odd and uncomfortable in nice clothing when I'm going to teach a business English lesson). The overdressed thief will often drape a jacket over his arm to conceal the movement of his wandering hand. This isn't meant as a warning against riding the metro. Unless you are in the category of drunkards, or just congenitally unaware of your surroundings, you should be safe.

Another group to watch are the elderly women. In the late spring when most people have already stashed away their winter coats, you can still observe loads of old women in fur coats and scarves riding the metro no matter how hot it is. It could be seventy or eighty degrees and I could be dripping sweat like a broken faucet but the wizened old lady next to me will be drawing her seal skin a little tighter. I also enjoy watching them shoulder check a half dozen people out of the way with enough force to lay out a pro hockey player in order to get an open seat. I understand that because of their age they get tired easily, but in Spain most people will readily give up their spot to an elderly person rendering the whole aggression thing entirely superfluous. I've never seen someone hustle like an old woman for a metro seat. Here's the best part: those same women that go through all that effort to sit down will almost always stand up and push their way to a spot in front of the door two or three stops before they have to get off. Totally pointless.

With all the time I spend on it, I've gotten pretty close to the metro and even... grown to love it. No matter where I have to go the metro is there for me, magically whisking me away in its characteristic armpit stench to another far-flung part of the city. If nothing else, at least the trip will always be stimulating.

Storage Wars - A (not so) Epic Tale

As one of my favorite works of cinema of all time begins, "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."

And from there on out my story gets a lot less epic, though, still entertaining.

About 5 months ago as we were preparing to go back to the states for the summer, we realized that we needed a place to stash our copious amounts of books, clothes and electronics that we had accumulated over the course of the year. Thankfully our good friend Michelle and her roommates had decided that they were going to keep their apartment, and she volunteered her room for a summer storage space. And of course, as soon as the four people using the room were thousands of miles away, things began to go awry.

Michelle's roommates, who had the lease to the apartment, decided that they weren't going to stay in that apartment after all. After about a week of being back in the states we received an e-mail alerting us that all our stuff was is "storage," but we had no idea where the storage unit was, nor had we any idea how much of a shit show it would be retrieving it.

When we cam back to Spain in the middle of September, one of our first priorities was to find the storage unit. We had our winter clothing there, our laptops and adapters, our teaching material... basically everything that we would need to get back into the swing of things. And not to mention, finding our possessions was just one task on top of finding an apartment, which in Madrid in September can be like entering the Thunder Dome with Master Blaster (two tenants enter, one tenant leave).

We were naive enough to think that we could just waltz into the storage place and pick everything up, but that would have been too easy. To begin with, we needed an appointment because everything was in one of those portable storage units that the company brings to your door and then takes back to the warehouse. The woman we made an appointment with acted like no one had ever done that and that she was really going out of her way. After that we needed a letter from Nicole (Michelle's former roommate), who had the storage unit in her name, granting us permission to rifle through all her crap and dig ours out of the pile. It never really seemed to sink in for Nicole how much valuable and important stuff was in storage. She had all her important things at hand, so why should she care?

After the fist three weeks we had managed to put those two things together. By this point we had made a little game out of the situation which came to be known as "Guess where all my shit is?" Whenever the four of us were talking about things that we really needed, inevitably the previously mentioned question would arise to which there was only one answer. The situation was getting more desperate as both Michelle and our other friend Kristen were preparing for a trip to Oslo. Needless to say they needed their warm clothing. We googled the location of the storage unit and it said it was quite a way out of Madrid, but we could take the metro to get there. So we called to make an appointment for a Friday when we could all make the trek. That is when we learned that the storage unit had not been payed for in the month of October, and if it wasn't payed for the unit would probably have its contents auctioned off. After a lot of bad noise, Nicole was forced to pay the rent.

The next weekend, we made another appointment for Friday. And of course, another bump in the road. Not only was the warehouse outside Madrid, it was half way to Toledo, about 40 minutes by car. What we saw on google was only the company headquarters.

Take three, and this time we had a reservation for a car. We got up at six in the morning and took the metro all the way out to the airport, found the car rental place, and then realized that they only rent manual cars... and none of us could drive manual. Of the four of us, only Kristen is skilled with a manual transmission and she was at work. We called everyone we knew that might be able to help us out, but waking up at 8 AM to a telephone call asking you to drive to another state isn't exactly a tempting offer. We considered hiring one of the prostitutes that hangs out in our plaza, but I could only imagine how that conversation would have gone: "Uhh, excuse me, ma'am, do you know how to drive a stick shift... no, not like that, I mean a car... no, no sex involved, we just really want our stuff back."

Monica stuffed into the back of the rental car

Finally we decided to give up and try to take a train to the town and just carry back what we could. As soon as we got back to the apartment to regroup and buy train tickets, Kristen called us and said that she could leave work to drive... so back out to the airport, a forty minute metro ride. And from there on out everything seemed to finally go well. After all we had been through I thought that we would probably get there only to find out that a piece of flaming space debris had fallen out of the sky and destroyed our storage unit, and our storage unit alone, but we hardly even got lost on our way out there. When we finished rooting through all the boxes and found our things we crammed it all into the little Volkswagen Touran, with only inches to spare, and drove back to Madrid, finally victorious in the storage wars.

Beer Run

This weeks topic: Introduction to the Illicit Purchase of Beer (A Primer).

It's a warm night in the plaza and everyone is sitting in a circle enjoying a congregation of friends, but at some point all the cups go from being half full to entirely empty. No metaphor intended.... Someone has to pony-up and buy some more beer for the greater good, for conversation and for general well being. In most places this would constitute an obstacle after ten in the evening, when all the dispensaries of oat soda close their shutters, even though the night has just begun. But not here. Not in Spain. There are, in fact, several solutions to this problem.

But before the solutions, a little background. After the too-long-lived fascist General Franco died, there was a sudden outpouring of liberal youth culture in Madrid that produced a signature style of painting, film, literature and music, called the Movida madrileña. On of the favorite pastimes of the newly liberated young people was basically sit in plazas with a big bottle of some sort of alcoholic beverage and share it with friends, a tradition which came to be known as the botellón (big bottle). Though the Movida is long gone, people still enjoy spending the night together in the open air conversing and avoiding the unreasonably high prices charged at clubs and bars. Sometimes there are even street performers and musicians to add a little ambiance. I've seen four piece bands consisting of guitar, violin, flute and accordion, jugglers that will toss around anything you give them, and even people offering five minute massages. Spending a few hours in one of Madrid's hundreds of plazas is a phenomenal way to see first hand what the locals do on a Friday night.

Now, back to the conundrum: the paucity of beer. Here are the ways this issue can be solved:


Solution 1: A Friends House - Often, when meeting friends, the plaza chosen is centrally located for all the participants so everyone lives near by, and much of the time someone has some bottles of beer in their fridge. This is the least imaginative answer to the puzzle because all it requires is for one of the group to scurry back to their flat and return with some of their reserves.

Solution 2: Street Vendors - Any plaza worth its salt will have a number of highly organized street vendors working the crowds in the attempt to make a few extra euros. Somehow, even though they spend all night in the plaza, their beer remains constantly cold, perhaps by some ancient trick of the trade not revealed to outsiders. If you look closely you will see other people from their clan keeping a lookout for police, indicating that this is most certainly an illegal activity. At the drop of a hat all of the vendors in a plaza might simply disappear at speeds that would put most ninjas to shame, signaling the arrival of the authorities. As soon as the police lights go away, the vendors slink back out from the shadows and continue their illicit trade. A sudden vendor evacuation is a truly amusing and awe inspiring sight to see if executed by professionals.

There are other species of vendors too. Some prefer to take the passive approach and let the customers come to them. They will stand on a corner and quietly advertise their wares to passersby. These are my favorite people to buy beer from because they often have some sort of magic trick which turns five euros into a six-pack of watery lager. Sometimes they will hide their hooch in a plant pot down the street, or under a construction scaffolding in a seemingly empty fast food bag. In most cases there is a certain degree of showmanship in watching them pull a cold six pack out of a top hat or from behind your ear.

Solution 3: The Speakeasy - I only know of a couple of these places, but they can be almost as fun to patronize as the previously mentioned street vendors/beer magicians. They are little convenience stores open late and you can spot one by the twenty year old canned goods and yellowed advertisements in the window. A lot of times it looks like no one has purchased a product in years, or on the other side, the shelves are almost completely empty and anything that was in any way edible was purchased while Franco was still alive.

When you ask for the goods, one of the proprietors of the establishment will go out front to keep an eye out while the other fishes around through ice-cream and frozen pizza to produce a couple of bottles of beer. If you want wine from them this is even more fun. It often involves climbing a ladder to move aside either cleaning products or Wheaties cereal boxes with Babe Ruth on the front, depending on whether you want red or white wine.

After you've payed you have to do some secret agent level smuggling (upon the insistence of the owners) and very conspicuously hide the giant liter bottles under your coat or hat. It would be mildly embarrassing if it weren't so ridiculous.

Beer fortress erected in Plaza San Ildefonso. The only qualification for entry was not wearing pants.

If you come to Madrid and want to meet some locals and experience the true madrileño night life there is no better way to do so than in a plaza. And if you run out of beer (which you inevitably will), you now have a basic idea of how to readily lay hands on more and have a little fun at the same time. The quicker you procure the black-market booze, the quicker you can triumphantly return to the circle, like the hunter back to the tribe, and continue your evening in the company of good friends. Which, in the end, is what the botellón is all about.

Things here are slow...

As many of you out there probably know, about a year ago I decided to move to Spain in order to teach English and do a little traveling on the side. As a freshman guiri, slang for white foreigners in Spain, there was a lot for me to adjust to in that first year. From the language which I knew very little of thanks to a lot of nap time in sixth and seventh grade, to  impossibly minute proportions of appliances, to the general pace of life, I was basically reduced to being an infant again. And the general pace of life thing... that is where I want to kick this off.

Anyone who has spent a reasonable amount of time in any major metropolis in the US knows that there is a typical bustling pace to everything. Everyone walks, talks, eats, lives, etc. at a brisk pace. I grew up in and around Chicago so I am no country boy by any stretch of the imagination, nor am I a true urbanite. Most of my formative years were spent in the vast stretches of suburbia that encircle the city. None the less, I am familiar with the accelerated life that prevails in America.

Whenever I am walking down the sidewalk I find myself overtaking everyone in front of me as if they were standing still, and, well... a lot of the time they are. If I had to describe the speed at which Spaniards walk I would call it a slow, aimless meander to a complete stop. Which, if you like to cut things a little close with your commute, can be a serious problem. Often, when running late to a lesson or appointment, I find myself cursing under my breath as I wade my way through a sea of knobby-kneed octogenarian nuns, push over dwarfs, topple strollers and maybe punch a kitten or two in order to make it on time. You have to do terrible things to get somewhere on schedule.

And it's not just walking. Absolutely every activity in the Spanish day is preformed at a sauntering pace. On my way back from a recent trip to Berlin I couldn't help but notice that out of the dozen airlines that were assigned to that particular terminal at the airport, Iberia, the principle airline of Spain, was not only the only check-in counter with a line, but the line stretched halfway around the terminal. It goes without saying that if you have to deal with the bureaucracy here, you have to enter some god-forsaken limbo of a ministry filled with stacks of inane paperwork and people who generally don't give a shit about their job, and it is here you can expect to spend the next eon or two.

Though this comes off initially as ragging on the Spanish lifestyle, it is meant to be more a cathartic moment for me. I just need to get this out of my system. In reality I think that this "take life as it comes" approach is a drastic improvement over the work-yourself-to-death mentality that causes so many Americans to have heart attacks and strokes and buy guns to shoot everything at their office each year. Perhaps it is no accident that many Spaniards live to superannuated stages. This year I need to learn to slow down a little. Who cares if I'm four or five or twenty minutes late? Most of my students could care less, so there is no reason for me to build up massive pit-stains in an attempt to appear "professional," or "punctual."

The title of this blog is meant to be a reminder to me to do exactly this... Slow The Fuck Down! It is a sort of saying here in Madrid... mañana. "Oh, you say that you need that ASAP?" mañana. "It's of critical importance, now is it?" mañana. "You think your having a heart attack and need emergency medical assistance?" mañana.

By the way, mañana means tomorrow.