Reading this, some of you might not understand what is written here. The correct translation for these sentences is: Hi everybody! How are you? I am fine. Some people might say that this is not really hard to understand and I can only agree. Being in Spain for a few days now is however something completely different. Making yourself clear is much more complicated than only using these basic sentences. Sometimes you are completely misunderstood and that can be hard. But enough of this, I will start the adventure …
Leaving Holland on Monday the 22 of August, 9.15 in the morning, was not that hard for me I have to admit. I was fully prepared to live in a strange country and I was really looking forward to it. Fortunately, I was not flying alone to Madrid. I got company from Kelly, with whom I am sharing a room in Madrid. We were driven to Eindhoven Airport by Kelly’s parents and arriving there, I was quite surprised by the size of the airport. This is because I have only flown from Schiphol Airport in the past and Eindhoven Airport is much smaller and you are checked in way faster. We therefore had some time left before we had to go through the passport check and thus had enough time to say goodbye to our parents. My parents were not at the airport unfortunately because they had to work, but my sister and her boyfriend came in the early morning to say goodbye. This was something I quite liked, because it is a long period of not seeing anybody from your friends or family.
Saying goodbye for Kelly was much more difficult and some tears flew. When we went through the passport control we knew that there was not a way back. We would be living in Madrid for the next 5 months. For me, that will be more difficult than for Kelly, because I am still living with my parents. So this is the first time that I will be living on my ‘own’.
When we arrived in Madrid, the first thing we could not miss was the heat. It was around 12 o’clock and it was 34 degrees Celsius. We were not used to these temperatures and being overdressed for this kind of weather, we quickly changed to a more suitable outfit: flip-flops, short pants and a t-shirt. Ready for going to our new house, we got into the metro, which is quite modern. In about 20 minutes we arrived at Lista, the metro station closest to our house. It was a short walk to our apartment and at first we could not believe that we would live there. It had the appearance of a hotel or something, because the entrance was really chic. We were guided to our apartment by Carlos, the housekeeper. When he opened the door, we were amazed by the size of it. It was enormous and looked quite expensive. The apartment has 3 rooms, so we have 2 other people living with us. At the moment, one room is empty and the other one is occupied by an English teacher who is currently on holiday to Paris, so we have not met him yet.
Overwhelmed we started unpacking our suitcases and hand luggage. Having a big room is handy if you are living with a messy person like Kelly. After we had unpacked our baggage, we first did our necessary groceries like shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant and shaving foam. There are multiple supermarkets nearby, but Dia is the cheapest, so we normally do our daily shopping there. Everything was in Spanish, so we had a hard time finding all the things we needed but in the end and with a little help, we got where we came for.
Now it was time for some relaxation and we went out for some dinner at the city centre of Madrid. Walking to the city centre is about 2 kilometres, so that is not that far. Finding a nice place to have dinner was quite difficult however, because most of the restaurants are to touristic. Most of the time that is a good indicator for the level of the cuisine, so we tried to skip those ones. We ended up in a cosy restaurant near Sol, which is the central square in Madrid. As a real Spaniard, we ate at 9 pm and we ordered the ‘Menú del Dia’, which was about 10 euros. We both chose mixed paella and something fishy because those sounded most appealing. When we finished the paella, we were a lot less enthusiastic about the place and the food. The paella was dry and we were not even finished with it, when the waiter arrived with the next course, the fish. We thought that this was unacceptable and we left the place, only paying for our drinks after a little quarrel with the waiter. When I look back to it, it is actually a nice memory of my first evening in Madrid.
We slowly walked back to our apartment and on the go we got ourselves some culinary KFC food. What a climax of our first day! Overwhelmed by all the impressions we fell asleep satisfied. The cultural differences are for me quite large. I really need to get used to the late dinner times. Spaniards usually have dinner around 10 pm. This is late when you compare it to Dutch dinner times, which are normally around 6 pm. Furthermore, the siesta during the afternoon is something I have to get used to. This means shops are closed from about 2 pm until 5 pm. As a consequence, there is much more life in the evening and night however. I really like that, because the atmosphere in Madrid is much more attractive than the one in Tilburg.
The laid back personality of Spanish people is something I think I will have some difficulties with. They do it ‘mañana, mañana’ style, when I like something to be finished today. With team-assignments that can be difficult, but in the long term I will adapt to that.
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