Day Two - The Apartment

*I have added two things to Day 1 Part 2 that I find quite critical*

I awoke after an unrestful sleep content with the fact that I had a place to go. However, as Miguel had said, it wouldn't be until Thursday that I could move in. That left me with the rather inconvenient problem of having to find a place for one night. I had devised before even leaving Oklahoma what I would do in such a case, and that is to stay in Cat's Hostel. It has been rated one of the best hostels in Europe: wifi, secure storage, free breakfast - it sounded about as good as a hostel could be.

That in mind, I still needed to eat. It's important to note at this point that I haven't eaten since breakfast the previous day, yet for some reason I wasn't very hungry at all - but maybe that's because nervousness and desperation can make for a reasonably filling meal. I decided to go to Starbucks more out of obligation to give my body something than of physical urge or mental desire to eat. I got a latte (which was excellent) and a strawberry white chocolate muffin (which was not).

I returned to my hotel where I ate my meal while packing off-and-on, until finally I was ready to check out and headed away, again temporarily homeless, and once again I navigated the metro, sticking out (per my baggage) like a skittle in a bag of cotton balls.

I arrived once again at Miguel's flat, he buzzed me in, and I proceeded to try to carry 60 pounds of luggage up 4 flights of stairs. Miguel appeared about halfway and took about 20 pounds of it, for which I was most gracious. I put my stuff in the corner of the living room and sat down with a glass of water. So that I wouldn't die.

Now is an appropriate time to show the apartment. Voila:

The view from the door


The Living Room

The Kitchen. Note the tiny washer.

So we hung around the Apartment for a while, in the living room. I got out my computer and tried to connect to the wifi (pronounced "weefee" in Spanish, apparently, which is always funny to hear) at which point Miguel informed me that it wasn't working. I, never content to let an IT (or any) problem persist, set to work on fixing it. I accessed the router by guessing the credentials (Username? admin. Password? admin. Very secure) and changed the security settings from WEP to WEP2 which didn't seem to piss Windows off so much, and everyone could connect. I instantly became an apartment hero, I think, and later the other people there were asking me if I study IT.

Anyway, at some point around this time, Miguel asked me if I had already paid for my other night at a hotel and when I told him that I hadn't, he inquired as to whether I wanted to stay at the flat that night. I did indeed. He then informed me that he could empty his room tonight...

...because he was leaving the next day for Italy for two months. Well that was an interesting development.

Nevertheless he was there for the rest of the day and decided to show me around to find a dry-cleaner for my suit. So we walked a few hundred feet in one direction, a few hundred feet in another, asking random passersby and getting the runaround from everyone. "por aqui", "por alla" "cerrado" "cinco dias" - "this way", "that way", "closed", "five days". No luck anywhere - until someone suggested we check out El Corte Ingles, which I will explain in a moment.

At this point Miguel had to leave to head to the bank and get a haircut and everything else necessary for a two-month journey to Italy (also, he informed me that he's an only child and his mom is distraught at his departure; sound familiar?) so I was left alone to go to El Corte Ingles while carrying a suit through the streets of Madrid.

I did make it, so let me explain it: El Corte Ingles is a centro comercial - "commercial center", which doesn't really have an exact equivalent in English. Think of a JC Penny, a Sears, a Best buy, etc. all rolled into one - it's the size of a mall, but it's one giant store. So I went in there, went to the far corner of the store and found out that they can't do suits in one day, which sucked. So then and there I decided that I would just do without dry-cleaning and pressing my suit. Anyway, on the way out I noticed a really cool feature of the store: an escalator, but not quite: Instead being like stairs it was like a moving inclined ramp (like the ones at the airport, except on an incline)

Later, after Miguel had finished his errands, he and I went on a trip to the heart of the city: Gran Vía and La Plaza del Sol (Grand Way and Plaza of the Sun, but names of businesses, streets, etc. aren't translated). We went in a French electronics store called Fnac and went back and forth between it and the neighboring Corte Ingles (a different one; they're everywhere) comparing prices for a netbook he had to buy for his mom so that they could skype while he's in Italy. He finally found one and then we headed to Cervecería 100 Montaditos - "100 sandwiches brewery" (get it, cerveza, cervecería? To turn the word for an item into the name of a place that sells that item, add -ría on the end. Taco --> tacquería. Carne --> carnicería. Cerveza --> cervecería)...back to the story: this place is kinda a tapas place, and I will explain tapas later when I go to a full-fledged one, but basically you buy a drink, you get a free food/appetizer thing with it. It's a very cheap way to have a good evening and is probably one the contributing factors to Spain's vibrant nightlife.

So Miguel and I sat outside the place, ate our food, and talked about the relative intricacies of Spanish and English, and he gave me an interesting quip that Spanish in Spain is an almost clinical, dry, basic, logical Spanish whereas Latin America has very readily embraced neologisms and native dialect, making it, in Miguel's opinion, much richer. Then on the Metro ride back to the flat we talked about economics and the world financial crisis.

Finally back at the flat, everyone migrated out to the balcony and we had a fantastic conversation: one of European and American politics, and it took place in 3+ languages. It was absolutely brilliant.

Oh and the the shower. I'll talk about the shower later, it's ridiculous.