Resident cards, and other news
Soon after we returned from the US, I met up with Ana on a Sunday and we had a magnificent day. First we met at La Paloma (Calle de Toledo 85) near the La Latina metro stop. It is a small bar packed to the gills with people, all stuffing themselves with amazing shrimp and downing lots of beer. The place was jammed but we managed to eat well; finger lickin' good stuff. Then we wandered down the street to El Rastro, where the massive flea market is. I'm not a big flea market fan, and I had stumbled into El Rastro before where I only saw a lot of junk, but Ana took me to the area where the furniture stores are, near the corner of Bastero and Carnero, and that was fun. We met up with some of Ana's friends, Sara and Enrique and their son, and we walked around for a while. Then we ended up at Los Caracoles (Calle de Toledo 106) where we slurped snails and drank vermut. That's Thelmo in the picture below, Sara and Enrique's son, inhaling snails. Then, to top off an already great afternoon, we meandered over to an area called Los Austrias, where we sat outside at Plaza Paja and had a declicious lunch of tomatoes and other delectables (from Tio Timon, if I recall correctly). What a great day! I look foward to doing that same path again on another Sunday: stroll, eat & drink, stroll, eat & drink, stroll, eat & drink.
We were running around in winter battling Spanish bureacracy. As I wrote before, in December I had screwed up and was told I needed an appointment to be fingerprinted for residency cards right away, but the first appointment wasn't until 25JAN, so when the day finally rolled around the boys and I took the train to the designated police station to be fingerprinted. The station is an old jail, about a 10 minute walk from the Aluche station. It is quite a challege to figure out where to go becasue the address on all written material is "Av. de los Poblados S/N", where "S/N" means sin número, or "no number". How is anyone supposed to find a place on a huge road without the address? A little sleuthing online helped.
Our appointment was for 6pm and the place closed at 7pm, and of course it was raining, so we walked in the rain along a long road to get to the station and when we got there I was told that I needed proof of payment, so they handed me a form. I would have to run back to the train station, find an ATM machine (of course there is no ATM at the police station), enter all sorts of numbers and pay the fee, then bring the receipts back by 7pm. So I rushed in the rain, madly entered all sorts of information into the machine, and dashed back with everything I needed. Or so I thought. The paper with the payment instructions said each fingerprint would be €15.60, but in my haste I had read €15.00, so I had underpaid by a measly €0.60 for each of us. We would have to come back another day. AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH! The boys didn't have school that Monday so we came back then, waited in a huge line, but finally got everything taken care of. We were told to come back in 30 days to pick up our cards.
As luck would have it, the boys were going to Andorra to go skiing with their school before we would get our residency cards, so we would have to go back out to Aluche and pay a different fee for an authorization to travel while the residency cards were getting processed. Andreas and I went out there one afternoon with all the paperwork and the correct fee receipts, but I was told I would have to come back with Markus because each person has to be present to get the authorization. The thought did cross my mind to just walk out the door with Andreas, have him turn his shirt inside out, and then come back again pretending he was Markus, but there were more downsides than upsides. The next day I drove out to Pozuelo to pick him up from school, drove to Aluche, schlepped to the police station (which doesn't have any parking of course), waited in line, submitted the dcoumentation, schlepped back to the car, drove back to Pozuelo, and then home to Chueca. Good god. Of course in the end no one asked the boys for any documentation returning from Andorra, but better safe than sorry.
While the boys were in Andorra, I flew up to Oslo to visit family. I spent a few days with Jack og Gerd, my uncle and aunt, in Oslo and met up with my cousins. I had a great lunch with Inger Lill at the Bristol Grill (Kristian IV's gate 7), an old fashioned place oozing with history.
The Norwegian's definitely have great flair with their sandwiches. I also had the chance to have dinner with my cousin Kirsten and her husband Einar and daughter Henrietta at their beautiful home. It was great to catch up with them. One thing I really want to take advantage of is my new proximity to Oslo. It is a great city and I have so many great childhood memories from there. And Oslo was as beautiful as ever. Cold, snowy, and beautiful.
I also took the train down to Gøteborg to visit family there. I stayed with cousin Helene, but had a great meal with Tante Mona og Onkel Rune, and cousin Nina, and her sons Felix og Max. It is funny but the Olympics were just starting and I remember in 1994 I stayed in Gøteborg during the second week of the Lillehammer Olympics (I was lucky enough to go to a few events in Lillehammer, despite the insanely arctic conditions). I have fond memories of watching the ice skating with Tante Mona, her uttering "Nei, men Herregud" after each fall. Now my favorite expression på norsk og på svensk is "Nei, men Herregud." It was great to see them all again. I hope all my cousins will come down to visit me in Madrid one of these days...
The boys came back from Andorra and I came back from Oslo on the same day, and soon it was back to the grind.
I am still keeping myself busy with Spanish class every day, 10.00am-01.00pm. I am really enjoying it and my Spanish is getting great, but at the same time I really know nothing. I am determined to be strong enough so that I can have some Spanish friends and speak in Spanish. One day... I have also continued to have crowds over for dinner. Bring an appetizer and a stranger, and I'll take care of the rest. In January I make Momofuku Bo-Ssam and learned new Spanish trying to talk to the butcher. In February I made a vat of Pad Thai and a vegetable quinoa stew. I really love having people over for dinner.
Andreas continues to play tennis, and is doing well at school. First semester he was in the IB program which ended up being a bit soul-crushing. We worked an entire weekend to prepare for his math finals and the results were poor. We decided to "downgrade" to the American program and now his grades are excellent. It was a good move. I have him registered now with the Spanish tennis federation so hopefully in April he will start competing. I had signed him up for a tournament arranged by his current tennis group, but it was much too basic for him - he won the whole tournament. He needs to play against stronger kids.
Markus is still unable to play in league games, which is getting annoying. I understand that the teams don't want to have non-Spanish citizens playing when there have been some cases of imported players who were basically abandonned without much education or anything after not making it to the next level, but I am living here with my sons, and we all have residency cards now. What could the problem be? Markus dropped out of his school team because we thought he would have conflicts with league games, but he rejoined the school team and has joined a municipal non-league team, so we have gone from 2 practices and no games per week to 7 practices and 2 games on Saturdays. It is chaos but fun, I love going to the games. Both teams are much older than Markus but he can hold is own.
OK, so two big pieces of news. First, we did go back to Aluche (I think that was something like the 8th trip out there) to pick up our residency cards. We are official!
The second is that since we are going to be in Madrid for a while (how long, who knows?) we needed a new apartment. We spent months looking and we saw a lot of weird places. I really wanted a terrace, but in the end a social kitchen was the most important thing for us. There are a lot of apartments in Madrid where the kitchen is in the back, hidden behind a warren of doors, and that wasn't going to be the place for us. We also toured two apartments where there was a toilet inside the third bedroom, which was really weird. My awesome real estate agent/now friend Julia said this was typical for families that have live-in help, but it was alien to me. I wasn't sure if they were bedrooms with toilets or bathrooms with beds, it was weird. In the end we found a big place (perhaps too big) on Calle de Almirante, still in Chueca. The place isn't furnished so right before Easter break we went to Ikea, bought three beds, and spend hours and hours assembling them. We are all on Easter Break now, out of Madrid, but we have a lot of work to do. We really have three beds, three chairs, and nothing else. I'll have to go back to El Rastro to do some furniture shopping!
