Te Presento a Clara
Originally uploaded by tjdee

Today´s intercambio partner. She was lovely. We had a typical 2-hour lunch at a Caribbean/Spanish place, where I had my first cocido completo. It´s a soup full of chicken, sausage, pork etc. They serve you the broth with noodles first and then everything that was in the broth as the second plate. I had pears cooked in wine and a café con leche for dessert. As a certain Food Network personality would say, ay, qué rico!

As my Spanish was much stronger than her English, we spoke a lot of Spanish at first, but I think it all evened out. I helped clarify the age thing for her -- in Spanish you say "tengo 27 años" and someone learning English would translate that word for word, sounding really awkward. She helped me with some Spain-specific slang. She also freaked me out a little by appearing eerily similar to me cousin Suzanne at times.

Bueno, tío, tengo que irme. Hasta la próxima vez.

Vírgin y Cristo
Originally uploaded by tjdee

Damn, the German baby Jesus was kinda ugly. Just sayin´.

Thoughts re: the language school - Super nearby is a Pans & Company, which I don´t enjoy as a lunch option but which has a side area that sells café y panes dulces in the morning. Lovely.

The school, inHispania, is located at the bottom of the street where all the hookers congregate. They´re more toward the top, so I don´t encounter them while going to or leaving the school, but it´s nice to know they´re there. Aw.

Language classes are always dominated by girls. I´m the only guy in mine (there are six of us total) and I was always one of few guys in my college classes.

My classmates are from Turkey-Turkia, France-Francia, Italy-Italia and Germany-Alemania. It´s fascinating to hear their different Spanish accents. They all sound so much like where they´re from when they speak Spanish - except the Turkish chick. I don´t hear enough Turkish in my daily life to pick out that accent.

I seem to have won them over today. The teacher was trying to tell the Turkish girl how to say ¨choke¨ and mentioned the famous W-choking-on-a-pretzel incident. She looked at us oddly as she tried to pronounce George W. Bush with her pretty thick Spanish accent. I told her she didn´t need to bother, she could just call him dickhead (or asshole, whatever - le dije, "le puedes llamar el hijo de puta, el nombre no es necesario). They sure loved that. I´m just doing my part to repair our battered reputation overseas.

Ugh. I don´t do laundromats. So having to use one here is insane and horrifying. It was my choice - I wanted to limit my stuff to carry-on, but ay! At least there´s a computer here.

In other news, today was my first day of lessons at inHispania language school. I forgot how scary it is to be called on to complete a grammar exercise. Madre mía. I´m not sure how much help one week of classes will be but at least it forces me to use my Spanish a little more than I have been (not that I haven´t been hablando español, pero tú sabes).

Near the Gate
Originally uploaded by tjdee

The point of my trip is to kick it in Madrid for two full weeks, to really soak in this one city. That said, I thought it would be stupid to totally ignore the nearby attractions, so I wanted to choose one place to visit for a day. There are several options within a two hour train or bus ride: Segovia, Ávila, El Escorial and Toledo. I kept going back and forth but finally settled on Toledo, in large part because I wanted to experience Europe´s high-speed trains and this is the only really day trip-friendly place you can get to on one of those trains.

After a 25-minute trip (55 miles) in a super comfy tourist-class coach, I arrived at the pretty train station, but faced an annoying 30-minute mostly uphill climb to get to the old city walls and up to the main plaza. I could have taken a bus but I chose to walk it. From Plaza Zocódover, I headed to the gorgeous Cathedral, where I surprisingly was able to take a ton of photos of beautiful art by El Greco. From there I wandered around the painful stone streets until I found one of the city´s synagogues, which is now the National Museum of Sephardic Jews. It was super interesting but by the end of the walkthrough my feet were in soooo much pain. Damn stone streets. They´re beautiful but a serious pain.

I hit some tapas bars and bought some of the city´s famous mazapán before walking back down toward the train station - well, not toward it at first. I got seriously lost, but luckily had given myself plenty of time to get there.

Today´s been cool but I had another random runin, this time with about 50 police officers getting ready to deal with a HUGE group of people marching through the city to protest ETA. More on that here.

Mega Hip Hotel Around the Corner
Originally uploaded by tjdee

Up relatively early to grab a café con leche and pastry and some Internet time before getting ready for the high-speed train to Toledo. As I rounded the corner to the nearest plaza, I saw dozens of girls standing outside the entrance of the far nicer and more expensive hotel across the way. After walking around them for a couple of minutes I realized Mexican supergroup RBD is staying here (a girl was wearing a Mexican flag that said "Estados Unidos de RBD" on it). El último adiós to Fernando Fernán Gómez across the plaza at the Teatro and now RBD. Action-packed plaza!

Last night´s intercambio, over cañas at a bar in the Puerta del Sol, was helpful but weird. They´re weird by nature - two strangers meet and ask those strange first-encounter questions while struggling through each other´s languages. Anyway, the freak in me was pleased that my Spanish was much better than her English, but I know I still have lots of work to do to command the language and, more importantly, feel super comfortable talking to native-speakers. We´re planning to meet again next week after I´ve had a few days of my intensive classes, so hopefully I´ll see a bit of improvement. And hopefully we´ll have something to talk about.

Off to Toledo. Lots of pictures of medieval stuff to come.

Few things went as planned this morning. I headed out of the hostal at a few minutes before 9 and walked toward Kilómetro Cero, where I was supposed to meet my first ever intercambio partner. Halfway there I realized something: When she said to meet at 9, she probably meant 9 at night. I waited in the freezing cold for 20 minutes anyway and sure enough she never show up. 9 tonight it is. (Duh - 9 is pre-dinner here, of course she meant 9 at night).

While chilling in the room I saw on Telemadrid that the famous writer, director and actor Fernando Fernán Gómez (best known internationally for Belle Epoque) had died and the Teatro Real was holding a special memorial for him in just a few minutes. I thought about heading over there but decided against it. Turns out, the Teatro Real is literally around the corner from the hostal and I inadvertently walked right toward the swarm of TV cameras and interviewers.

Since then I´ve been relaxing in the Parque del Buen Retiro dining at the counter of the Corte Inglés (albóndigas, not bad). And now I´m all over Flickr - although it´s taking forever to upload stuff here. Descriptions probably won´t be done until I return, but enjoy the images.

I didn´t go to that intercambio last night but I did want a low key tapeo-ish experience, so I found a place really close to my hostal, La Casa del Abuelo, and had some super good sweet red wine. I was back at the hostal by midnight, when I stuffed my ears full of foam and kicked jetlag´s ass, sleeping until 9:30ish.

This morning I hit some of the major sights: the Palacio Real (didn´t go in - saving that for tomorrow´s rain) and the construction-filled Plaza Mayor. But the best part of the day definitely was dunking those long, thin churros into that rich chocolate drink at Chocolatería San Gines. I´ve tried to make this drink at home with mix, but always wound up having to dump it. The real deal is awesome.

When my hour here is up, I think I´m gonna check out a local chain of sandwich shops Jesús mentioned. Perhaps a bocadillo de chorizo?

So, I´m in Spain for two weeks. The flights from SF to NYC and then from NYC to Madrid were ... long. But I lucked out and had an empty middle seat each way. Empty or not, I´m just not feeling the 12 hours of flying in one day. I limited myself to about a 90-minute nap in my private (tiny, no-frills) room at the (tiny, no-frills but cheap -- for an euro establishment) hostal (not hostel). I´m hurting right now but I hope it pays off when I wake up tomorrow at, ojalà, a decent hour.

It´s rainy today and my socks and bags when soaked when I found the Hostal Prado, but I´m out and about, momentarily hanging out in a 1€/hour Internet cafe (really a locutorio) just off the Puerta del Sol. In a few minutes I´ll head out past the Tío Pepe sign to the famous Corte Inglés department store to browse. Then some food, some Televisión Española, some sock-drying and, probably, the weekly language exchange (intercambio) at the Irish pub that just happens to be one block from the hostal. I don´t know how good my Spanish will be toward the end of this long-ass day, but I think I´m gonna give it a go. Speaking of which, me voy.

New Year's Eve is a strange day. For a lot of people, it's a nuisance. There's so much build-up, so much money spent on outfits and party tickets, so much stress related to planning, getting friends with different opinions to come together. And in the end, usually, it's a disappointing evening that leaves you exhausted and dreading that return to the office on January 2.

I think everyone experiences that one perfect NYE. I had mine in Chico, Calif., of all places. I think/hope I also got my worst NYE out of the way. In a way, I'm thankful to have experienced NYE of 2005 because it takes the pressure off of future December 31sts. Last year, for example, was spent with one new friend and two of her pals, having burgers at a great diner, toasting at a Korean dive bar and relaxing at a pub before taking a bus back to her apartment. It was pretty typical for NYE: maybe one too many drinks, one too many $20 bills spent and, sadly, no kiss. But compared with the previous year's insanity, it was, well, lovely.

All that said, I am very much looking forward to this NYE. After talking about possible trips to Vegas and Cabo, I've settled on NYC. Jesús is coming with me, so I'll have someone to kiss, and I get to introduce him to some of the most important people in my life (something he's as excited as me about). I'm quite certain NYE of 2007 won't be ordinary or lackluster, but even if it is, you better believe I'll take it over the alternative.