Once again I made my way to the embassy early in the morning. And once again I'm sure I drew all sorts of ire as a cut to the front of all the people waiting at the embassy gate. The day included few novelties as compared to the previous day, except that a new intern arrived. I've made the decision that I'm going to err on the side of caution when talking about the embassy, at least until I no longer work there. So you'll have to settle for vagaries, I'm sorry.
Let me describe, though, the stuff that's safe to discuss: it seems to me that everything at the embassy is task-based and completely self-motivated. There are no people looking over your shoulder making sure you're working - I could get on my email or facebook if I so desired - but everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing and enjoys doing it. I suppose that's entirely because it's such a hard career to get into - a nearly year-long process of interviews, checks, and exams - that all those who don't care that much don't even bother to work there. The result is a really quite amazing community.
There's an embassy cafeteria that I like very much. Every morning there are breakfasts and coffees and juices available (most things for E1)....Also let me explain this: I cannot for the life of me figure out how to write a Euro sign on my laptop. I'm going to use "E" instead of the Euro sign, please bear with me... like I was saying, everything is E1, which is right now $1.37 but it of course varies with the exchange rate. Anyway, since everything is task-based, people can simply saunter into the cafeteria whenever they want during their workday to grab a snack or coffee. People also take their lunches freely as well. Lunch in the cafeteria is E5 for one plate or E8.50 for two, and either way it comes with a piece of bread and a drink. The first day I got simply vegetable paella; the next day, not having eaten in a while, I got both a plate of pasta salad and a Cuban dish: rice covered in tomato sauce, with a hot dog and a fried egg on the side. It was surprisingly tasty.
The rest of the day was routine enough but both this day and the previous one, I stayed until nearly 7PM because I liked doing what I was doing.
Near the embassy is a sculpture garden which I passed through. I'll upload some pictures soon - probably next weekend when I can take a just go walk around the area without having to go in to work.
I got home with no plans, but Dominika, one of my flatmates, said that her Spanish class mates (let me clarify: people who are in her Spanish class. None of them are Spanish) were going to meet up and go to a bar where they did Flamenco dancing. She invited me to go and I did.
We met up in La Plaza de España - The Plaza of Spain - and slowly the rest of the group trickled in. There were about 20 of us, of various nationalities: Brazilian, Italian, German, Swiss, Canadian, Czech, and Polish. There may have been others but I don't recall. We talked for a while, Spanish our only common language but at least half of us know English, and they all seemed like a truly wonderful group of people. The degree of knowledge of Spanish varied a lot amongst the group though I dare say mine was very near the top. We'll see.
So after meeting up we made our way through the streets to the Flamenco Bar. We passed two oddities: the first were the men in the streets selling these really quite strange little toys: bright glowy blue things that the men would slingshot into the air, and they'd somehow fall very slowly back down. All the while the guy selling them had a noismaker-whistle thing in his mouth and make the strangest noise I've ever heard come out of a human. I'll upload a video of it if I get the chance.
The other weird thing was a really funny Spanish cultural practice. As a fun form of hazing, new students at some schools have to go out into the street with no money, no anything, except for their clothes and a musical instrument. Then they have to make a certain amount of money solely by busking (playing music in public for money, for those who don't know this English word). It's a pretty ingenious little cultural irregularity that is just one of the many charms of this city and people.
After mulling around a lot, meeting each other and talking in a lot of broken-yet-improving Spanish, we headed to Cervecería 100 Montaditos. This was a different one (apparently it's a chain) but we piled up to the top floor, stole some tables from other sections, and instantly tripled the population and audio volume of the room we conquered. 100 Montaditos is a marvelous little place where you get a pint of beer and a tiny little sandwich for E1 each. Now think about this: E1 for an entire tankard of beer. That's like $1.40. In a restaurant, that's amazingly cheap. The sandwiches are about 3 inches long and just split baby-baguette, but they are filled with everything you can imagine: you can get them with chorizo, Iberian ham, Spanish tortilla (which is nothing like Mexican tortilla - it's more like an omelet), caesar salad, chocolate, salmon, whatever the heck you want. You write everything you want on a little slip, take it down to the kitchen, and they call your name over intercom when it's ready. We stayed there for about an hour and a half, talking, meeting even more of us, and having a great time.
After we left, we headed for another unique Spanish thing - a botellón. I'll explain this when we get there. But to get there we had to walk through the streets of downtown madrid, in a group of 20+ of us, making all kinda of ruckus and talking and laughing and slightly buzzed from the beer. However, it seems that Spain is extremely lax with its public intoxication laws, so there were no worries.
We passed through a park, then through a marvellous area lined with magnificent buildings. The Spanish Royal Palace is the one which glares most brightly in my mind right now. I'll add pictures of it soon, but suffice it to say that it was fully befitting a country which was once the most powerful in the world, which had owned 80% of the western hemisphere and notable sections of the eastern, and had taken back huge portions of the wealth of the Americas and Philippines and other places to fund its own internal decadence. The avenue near the palace was lined with statues of former kings of Spain, stretching back to the ancient past, before the Muslims conquered the peninsula.
Heading on from those hallowed grounds, we arrived at the botellón. What it this? A massive outdoor party. An entire city park was brimming with partiers and drinkers. A bunch of (oddly) Chinese (I'm pretty sure) immigrants kept passing by and offering beers which we all declined. We found a place beneath a tree and sat in a huge circle, and talked for hours upon hours about everything.
Time wore on, as time is wont to do, and we found ourselves breaking off and heading home into the night. Dominika and I had to catch a bus home as the Metro stops at 1:30AM, but we managed to do that. The buses were surprisingly clean and modern, and it was after noticing that that I noticed that Madrid as a whole is an *incredibly* nice and clean city. Even the less well-off parts are still very kempt.
Anyhow, we arrived back at home and went to bed.
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