Hola Madrid!

We arrived in Madrid on Tuesday and we have been running around trying to get things organized before school starts on Monday.

Our apartment is in Chueca, right in the center of Madrid.  I am paying way to much for the place, but it is a bargain compared to New York, and I wanted to be comfortable.  I was not going to schlep off to Ikea the moment we arrived and start assembling furniture.  We are going to be here for 10 months so we packed a lot.  We had 8 bags weighing 50 lbs each, and I conveniently forgot to tell the boys that our apartment is a 4th floor walk up, so we had to haul 400 lbs of luggage up the stairs upon our arrival.  

I rented the apartment through "Friendly Rentals".  I could have gone the AirBNB route, but I wanted to communicate with someone about the right apartment and right location for us.  The apartment is very attractive but it looks like it was designed for people who only stay the weekend.  There is no laundry hamper, no ironing board (although there is an iron!), and while there is a washing machine there is no dryer or drying rack.  Clearly no one has ever ironed or washed clothes here.  I brought pictures to remind me of home and family, and books to read, but there is only one shelf in the entire apartment and it is in the kitchen over the sink.  The showers are super luxe, but no shelving anywhere; do I really need to keep my soap on the floor of the shower? Perfect for a glamorous weekend, but not great for longer stays.  It is marketed for 6 people, but there are only 22 hangers; we have a year's worth of clothes with us but we each get 7 1/3 hangers.   This is what my huge closet looks like right now.  I have two hangers to use and I have to decide which shirt or jacket wins the prize of the hanger.  Of course there are no hooks either.

Tuesday we spent unpacking and resting.  We did a little exploring.  The Mercado de San Anton is literally next door, and we had lunch there, which was nice.  It isn't the biggest market but they seem to have nice stalls so I'm sure I'll be getting my meat and fish and veggies there.  We walked to the Vodaphone store to get SIM cards for our phones, but they needed our passports which I didn't have so we will have to go back.  We found a cheap dive where to have dinner, a Turkish place called Bósforos (Calle de Hortaleza, 6) where the staff is nice, the food ok, and the TV blaring.  It was fine for what we wanted.  The boys had pizza, and after Non Ray's I can't imagine why they would order pizza.

Wednesday we needed to get out to the boys school for a uniform fitting.  We called UBER and a Tesla picked us up, which made the boys very happy.  Our driver, Jefferson, said he would wait for us at the school because it is kind of out in the sticks and it might be difficult to get a car back.  This was our first look at the school, and it seemed fine.  I really know nothing about it other than [a] instruction is in English, [b] there is something religious about it but I don't know what, and [c] the boys were accepted.  The school is far away but there is a bus that will pick them up near the apartment at 07.30am and bring them back at 05.30pm. 10 hours a day of solitude for yours truly!

On the ride back Markus sat in the front seat with Jefferson who let Markus pick the music.  The boys played all sorts of stuff that I'm sure Jefferson had never heard of, and the boys were rapping along to whatever it was they were listening to (I was able to recognize Frank Ocean, but alem disso I had never heard the music nor would I want to hear it again).  I'm sure it was the most entertaining ride Jefferson had ever had.  

Jefferson dropped us off at the Respiro offices, which will be a lifesaver for me.  The UBER ride cost us $70 RT and I have to go out there on Thursday (orientation Markus) and Friday (orientation Andreas).  I can't spend $70 every day just on UBER.  My friend Ana told me about Respiro.  Because I am not Spanish with an identity card I had to go to their offices, but Respiro is a ride sharing service.  They have cars littered all over Madrid (and all of Spain).  I can reserve a Fiat 500 for just €2/hour, which is hard to believe.  I had to be ready with a car because in the evening Markus had soccer practice with his new team, which is far away in the opposite direction of school (although far away in Madrid is 30 minutes, and in Brooklyn it seems to take an hour to get anywhere).  Respiro gave me a card the size of a credit card and we headed home.

The walk was about 30 minutes and we got hungry on the way.  I didn't want to go somewhere nice, and the neighborhood we were walking through looked rather posh, so I looked for something cheap.  We found it!  Cafeteria Villalar (Calle Villalar, 4) was a nice little hole in the wall with a filling meal and low prices.  When we arrived there was just one other person there, and they seated us way in the back behind a column, which set a few alarm bells ringing in my head (why would they seat us so far in the back?).  The boys as usual wanted hamburgers and fries but I asked the waitress in my broken Spanish for something typical.  She brought us three huge bowls of lentil soup with sausage that could have been meals themselves.  Really good.  All three of us enjoyed it.  We also had salad and some croquetas which seemed to have been filled will mashed potatoes and specks of ham, but really who knows what it was.  And we had flan for dessert.  It was perfect.  I was really needing a Veselka-esque meal and this hit the spot.

In the late afternoon I went to pick up my cute Fiat 500 and Markus and I drove to soccer practice, in Alcobendas, which is totally on the opposite side of Madrid from the school (of course).  The car was cute and I am thankful my parents taught me how to drive a stick.  Their motivation was that I might meet a cute girl with a hot red sports car that I should be able to drive should the need arrise.  That particular need didn't arise, but I love driving a stick.

Markus has practicre on Mondays and Wednesdays and on those days I will have to pick him up from school and drive him to practice because he won't make it in time if he has to come to the center of the city.  We met the soccer coach and Markus had 90 minutes with his new team.  He liked the team, scored a goal or two during scrimmage, and seems happy.  We have two games this weekend, Saturday at 03.00pm and Sunday morning at 09.00am.  Maybe I would have wanted to go exploring in Sevilla or Granada or San Sebastian on the weekends, but this is more fun, more local.  These cities aren't going anywhere, but Markus will be a kid for only so long.  So I'm quickly in the groove of being a chauffeur for teenaged boys.

It was a long day.  We didn't get home from soccer until 10.00pm, but we are in Spain, so we do as the Spanish do.  We went out to dinner at 10.45pm at Le Coco, right across the street (Calle de Barbieri, 15).  Service was nice, food was good, maybe a bit expensive to be a regular place to have a meal, but we are going to keep exploring.