Getting Settled in our new apartment, and other news

So we moved into our new apartment just days before we left to tour colleges in the US, and now we are finally getting a bit settled.  When we left we had purchased three beds and three chairs, and really that's all we had.  We are really happy with the location.  The street is gorgeous and central, close to the pool, close to Spanish class, and close to the bus stop for the boys.  Spring is here and the view out the living room windows is beautiful.   We are just one floor off the street which I wouldn't have thought would be great, but the trees are practically growing into our windows.

I had also purchased two blow-up beds becausee our great friends from New York, Joe and his boys Justin and Darius, were coming for a visit.  We had a great few days with them, they are adventurous guys and took the city by the horns, while I had to crunch with work having been out of town for nearly two weeks.

I have been spending time in El Rastro finding furniture.  IKEA is a great place, but our apartment on Barbieri was completely IKEA-fied.  I bought one of those Kallax shelving units, but I didn't want to buy anything else at IKEA unless I really was in a pickle.  El Rastro is the flea market area of Madrid, and while it is very crowded on the weekends, things are peaceful during the week.  Apparently, the neighorhood name comes from the Rastro (trail) of blood that would roll down the streets from the slaughterhouses uphill to the river below.  Must have been a great place to hang out on hot August days during those times.

I found an amazing table which fit perfectly and should be great for dinner parties.  I found it at Vintage 4P, just wandering around El Rastro.  Surely I paid too much, but it was exactly what I wanted and I have the great ability to forget about the high priced purchases I make soon after buying things.  Denial!  I had been looking for good chairs but everything was in the €250 range, which was too much when I wanted 10 chairs.  I decided to just march into a store that didn't have fancy lighting or well dressed shopkeepers, and I immediately found a dark and dusty shop with chairs and tables stacked floor to ceiling.  An Argentinian guy, Claudio, showed me around and I found 10 great chairs which matched the table perfectly.  He cleaned them up and polished them for me, and I paid €30 per chair.  The chairs remind me of the chairs my dad would come home with when I was growing up.  My dad was a contractor in San Francisco, doing a lot of work at restaurants that had suffered from kitchen fires.  We had lots of great stuff from restaurants, and my dad had lots of connections with the top restauranteurs of San Francisco.  It feels like home, having these chairs.

Another great find in El Rastro is La Oficial, on a really cute street, Calle de la Ruda.  Here they sell 2nd hand ceramic plates and dishes by the kilo, which is great.  I got all my dishes here for a song:  mugs and dinner plates and sandwich plates and bowls, probably cheaper than IKEA.  Nothing matches and it looks great.  Big score here.

I also needed a big couch, and what I needed I would never find in El Rastro because all the stores are so tiny.  I did find something and I was lucky.  Ana invited me over to her new studio in a part of town I had never been to.  It was great to see her new place.  She did a brilliant job, see picture below.  She took the garage door to the studio, took out the center section, and put in glass to bring light in.  She does her photography work here and I think she can walk there from her apartment.  Also starring in the picture is my Respiro car for the day.  I have mentioned this a hundred times I'm sure but I wouldn't know what to do without Respiro.

Anyway, I wandered around the neigborhood a bit and found a nice furniture store with a great couch, SCV Estudio, so we should have that delivered soon.  The couch wasn't cheap, but I couldn't find anything I wanted anywhere.  I'm really looking forward to relaxing on a nice couch instead of a half deflated air mattress.  This is what our living room looks like now.  Hopefully the tape will be replaced by a big couch soon.

The boys are currently sleeping on air mattresses in the living room because we don't have internet yet.  On 01APR we contacted Vodafone and they told us that within 20 days we would have internet.  7 weeks later and we are still waiting.  In order to work, I signed up for a work-share space just around the corner from the house.  It didn't cost much, just €121/month I had access to a shared space with wifi and printers and scanners.  It worked out for a while.

The trouble was is that this is Spain, and the culture is different.  Repeatedly I would be in the middle of a quiet room with a half-dozen other people working in silence and suddenly a group of people would barge into the room and hold a ridiculously loud conversation.  One thing about the Spanish, they are LOUD.  It didn't seem to occur to them that other people were in in the room enjoying the tranquility.  Another problem is that everyone's internal temperature seems to be 20 degrees colder than mine.  Most of the rooms were achingly hot & stuffy.  When the room emptied out I would open the window, but invariably when people came back they would close the window without even asking anyone.  Strange.  I don't think the Spanish are that considerate or friendly.  They live a good life, but they have their faults.  They are nice, yes, but friendly?  Not really.  Considerate, definitely not.  But they are most certainly enjoying their lives.

I went to the shared space for a month, but didn't renew because Vodafone agreed to give us almost unlimited data with our mobile phones until our service was installed, so I'm using my mobile phone's hotspot even now as I write this  The boys are sleeping in the living room because the phone reception is poor in the bedrooms.  7 weeks waiting!   Hard to imagine.  Every week or two I get an automated text message from Vodafone that someone will be calling within 15 days.  Hilarious.  Never happens.

Mid-April I had a brilliant night with Ana and Murat.  They invited me to attend a concert at a small club within walking distance of my apartment, so I went with an open mind.  In my experience, if you see go to a concert of someone known you end up with nosebleed seats and don't enjoy the experience.  If you see someone unknown you get amazing seats for a song and sometimes the band sucks.  But on the rare occasion I see someone in a small club that is amazing, the experience is unforgettable.  I remember back in the mid-90s, a friend at Varig, where I was working, invited me to join her at a club on West 21st St in NYC to see a show, a show I knew nothing about.  It turned out to be D'angelo, and there couldn't have been more than 100 of us.  It was amazing, the Brown Sugar tour.  What a great night.  I will never forget that.

So I met Ana and Murat at the Wurlitzer Club off Gran Via not knowing what to expect from the band, The Yawpers.  At the very least I would hang out for a few hours with some great friends, but the concert was amazing, loud and punky and gender-bending and nuts.  Again, couldn't have been more than 150 people there and we were nearly touching the stage.  It was an amazing show and I highly recommend their concerts.  The Yawpers, from Denver.  Ana took the amazing picture below.

I'm still taking Spanish 3 hours per day, and some weeks are better than others.  But I still go because I need to hear Spanish, it is convenient, and it doesn't cost that much.  Plus I love learning languages.  I'm still far from being able to meet Spaniards and talk about the weightier things in life, but it will come.  I have been using my middle name, Olav, with a Brazilian twist, Olavo, in Spanish class, because I really am not a fan of "Federico".  Olavo is an unsual name in Brazil, but it isn't completely unknown.  Here, however, they don't know what to make of it, and even when I spell it out at Starbucks I end up with some hilarious drinks.

Ana invited me to the Conde Nast Traveler annual awards dinner, which was a big soiree but I didn't really have anything to wear, so I went to the fancy shops in Salamanca to find a suit.  Unfortunately, Spanish men have completely different bodies than me.  I am built like a luimberjack while Spanish men could be mistaken for oversized pencils.  The suits looked ridiculous on me, but I found a nice shop Hackett where I got slacks and a blazer.  I paired it with a shirt I had had made in Togo and funky shoes I bought up the street from my apartment.  Ana looked hot as always.  The party was in an amazing room at the Casino de Madrid.  It was a great evening.  

My cousin Inger Lill and her friend Ellen came to vist from Norway and we had so much fun together.  It is always great to have guests who are ready to tackle the city on their own.  We had great meals and great walks, and when I was busy the girls went exploring and shoe shopping; I think at one point they had purchased one pair of shoes for each 4 hours they had been in Madrid!  And that wasn't on the first day!  I took them to a few haunts that Ana and Murat had taken me to, places like Sanchis near Retiro Park and El Estragon, a vegetarian restaurant on the beautiful Plaza de la Paja.  It was great having them.  The night before they left we went to a dive bar in the neighorhood to watch the Eurovision finals; the place was empty except for us but it was fun watching the Norwegian getting applause from the Norwegians.

The boys are well and continue to be happy here.  Andreas is really working hard at school and his SATs.  He knows this is the critical year and he is anxious about his grades, which is great.  Hopefully his grades and tests will be strong enough to get accepted to UNR.

Markus is doing fine as well, his grades aren't that great but I have been focusing on Andreas since this year is so important for him.  Markus I think has finally found a soccer team that is working well for him, and it is his school team.  He was practicing a bit with the team in Alcobendas, but he still isn't federated so he was getting frustrated not playing in any games.  Someone else on the team said they would help get him federated but we have to jump through a lot of hoops, providing endless documentation.  In the meantime the Alcobendas team introduced us to a municipal team also in Alcobendas where he could play games, but the level wasn't strong enough and it was a schlep to get to the games and practices.  

While waiting to be federated, Markus is playing on his school team, and by some miracle we seem to have stumbled into something perfect for him.  Apparently, the school where the boys go, Aquinas American School, has a soccer program and there are a handful of kids who have moved to Spain to study at Aquinas and play soccer with their soccer academy.  Markus is only in 8th grade but is playing on the high school team.  His schedule is different so he isn't practicing with the rest of the team, but starting next year he will practice and play.  He is the starting striker for the team in games, and below are some videos from recent games.  He is playing with bigger, stronger kids which is great for him.

The team is a good fit and it is ridiculously convenient for him and me because practices for high school kids is immediately after school, so I won't have to drag him to practice in the boondocks.  On top of this, the Aquinas team has apparently become an international academy team this year for Getafe, a big soccer club in Madrid.  It seems the big clubs want to develop talent locally but there are lots of kids who aren't federated and play in their own league.  So even if he doesn't get federated this may be the best place for him.  He is happy.

Last week I was in Togo for work, and my flight back was via Dakar.  I arrived in Madrid at 03.50am and had to take Markus to the semi-finals in the soccer league at 08.10am, so I was completley wiped out.  I didn't know who we were playing, but it turns out it was the American School of Madrid (ASM).  

So a little background before I continue.  When we decided to move to Spain one of the priorities of course was to find a school for the boys, but I was an ocean away.  I didn't know where to start.  I couldn't dump them in a local school, they are too old for this; they don't speak a lick of Spanish and they couldn't sacrifice a whole year learning Spanish.  I have a great friend in Rio de Janeiro, Sonia, who grew up in Madrid and she recommended that we apply to ASM, where she went to school.  She said the boys would thrive there, so we applied.  After weeks of back and forth, submitting this and that, this was the reply we received:

Thank you for applying to the American School of Madrid.

The Admissions Committee has carefully reviewed your children’s files.   

Based upon their analysis, the Admissions Committee feels that it would not be in their best interest to attend the American School of Madrid. 

We regret to inform you that we are unable to offer enrollment for Markus and Andreas for the fall of 2017. 

We are sorry to disappoint you at this time.

Thank you in advance for your understanding.

Sincerely,

The Admission Team

I was so angry receiving this.  "... it would not be in their best interest..."  What the hell does that mean?  For a school with nary a black face on their website, how could I not interpret this as being totally based on race.  Talk about tone-deaf.  They could have just replied "we are sorry but this late in the application process we have no seats left".  Instead, they had to give a dig to the fact that the school isn't right for the boys knowing little about them except their race.  In the end we are much better off at Aquinas.  It turns out that ASM is full of kids of diplomats and soccer stars.  We are better off in a different environment.  But still that email stung.

So who is Aquinas playing in the semi-finals?  ASM of course.  I knew I would be emotional as soon as I heard this, but Markus didn't know and that was for the best.  When we arrived the ASM kids were on the field warming up to loud rap music, which is typical, rich white kids appropriating black street music.  Anyway, the game was tight.  I was expecting to lose, assuming that the powerful rich team would persevere, but it was close from start to finish despite the fact the ASM kids looked to be a head taller than the Aquinas kids.  At the end of the first half, it was Aquinas Bears 0 - ASM Racists 0; I didn't know their mascot so I figured the "Racists" was a good a guess as any.  

The second half remained close, but near the end Markus scored a goal and the game ended Bears 1 - Racists 0.  The only black kid on the field, a kid probably 3-4 years younger than most of the ASM kids, had scored.

As they say, revenge is a dish best served cold.

Happy spring to all.