Segovia Again

Segovia was the first place we visited outside Madrid after we arrived three years ago. We had a pretty crummy time, as described here.  I'd always wanted to go back, and when the offspring arrived a few weeks ago, it seemed like the perfect time to do it. I decided to splash out a bit and book tickets on the AVE (Spain's high-speed train).



In case anyone's interested, it took 27 minutes from Madrid Chamartín, reached a top speed of 247kph and cost €10 outbound and €8 for the return trip. For some bizarre reason, the AVE uses a brand-new station in a field about a thousand kilometres outside Segovia - it took the driver of the overcrowded bus  15 minutes before he decided he couldn't squeeze any more passengers in, and the trip into the town centre took 20 minutes.

Nothing much changes in Segovia: it still has its mind-boggling Roman aqueduct,





its gorgeous Cathedral,



and the amazing Alcazar, which we did a tour of.



After the Alcazar tour, we headed off in search of lunch. It's compulsory to have cochinillo (suckling pig) when in Segovia. I had declared that we would not be eating in the pretty Plaza Mayor, on the basis that restaurants in Plaza Mayores all over Spain exist only to steal money off tourists with overpriced, badly-cooked food. But actually, that's where we ended up, and it was pretty good.

A nice day out, methinks.

¡Campeones Del Mundo!

Well, we did it! Bloody hard work, it was, though. I don't know if it was a deliberate strategy by the Dutch, but they seemed to want to injure any Spanish player they could get a boot to. I don't think I've ever seen such filthy play from a European team in a major game. De Yong should have been sent off in the first half for kicking Alonso in the chest. As the game continued, Spain showed flashes of brilliance, but couldn't manage to get the ball between the posts. It would have really pissed me off if the Netherlands got a shock goal, or the thing had gone to penalties. Fortunately, Iniesta saved the World Cup from the fate of awarding victory to the wrong team.

Is Madrid happy right now? You bet it is. Not much sleep expected tonight.

¡ES - PA - ÑA!

¡ES - PA - ÑA!

¡ES - PA - ÑA!

Excitement Is Building

Still about two hours to go before the World Cup Final kicks off. I've just been down to the shop to get some supplies in, having decided to forsake the atmosphere and dodgy viewing angles of being crushed in a bar somewhere, and watch it at home in the company of MamaDuck and possibly one or two mates.

The main street is full of people wearing red-and-yellow shirts, shorts, flags and caps, and most of the cars going past are adorned with Spanish flags and all seem to have developed the same malfunction of the horn (the one that goes beep beep, beep-beep-beep, beep-beep beep-beep, beep-beep).

Prediction? 3-2 to Spain. And my Dutch sister-in-law agrees. However it turns out, I don't really mind. Even if the Netherlands win, it's been a sensational ride. But let me just say this:



¡ES - PA - ÑA!

Espan - Ya!

Well, who'd a thunk it. Spain 1, Germany 0. Off to the finals we go. I can't begin to describe the atmosphere here in Madrid right now. Let's just say we're happy.

Psychic Octopus Predicts Spain Win

And why the hell not. Story here.

Another Football Story

So last night I donned my Cruzcampo cap, slapped a flag on each cheek and went off to find my buddies to watch the Spain vs Portugal match at a terrace bar near the Bernabeu. I've never been to this place before ('Boulevard'), and it would have seriously helped if they'd had some signs up announcing their name. I must have walked round it two or three times (and I'd forgotten my phone, so I was somewhat stuffed). On the fourth pass somebody guarding the entrance gave me a flag and I asked him if he knew where this Boulevard place was, and he said 'here!'

The match wasn't great, but Spain got the goal that counted and Ronaldo the Smirking Diving Cheating Git didn't get on my tetas too much. So that was grand. And of course, walking back up the Paseo de la Castellana was an absolute treat - thousands of happy fans on foot and in cars, lots of good-natured horn-blowing and flag-waving; hard to beat, really.

And the next game is against Paraguay, which everybody seems to think should be a walkover...

Pretending To Be a Footie Fan

If I'm honest (which I am, sadly, most of the time), I'm not much of a football fan. I enjoy the big games, but I'm a floating voter when it comes to supporting any particular team, although I always enjoy it when Real Madrid don't win. So maybe that makes me an anti-fan of RM. In this World Cup, I'm secretly hoping England do well (despite 44 years of evidence to the contrary), but I'm pretty sure Spain can go all the way, and that'll be just grand.

So, I don't own any footie shirts or scarves, and I don't paint my face in team colours.

Until last night, that is. I met up with some friends to watch Spain beat Chile and a pretty young lady came in and gave everybody a baseball cap. I was grateful for the cap, because we were having prolonged thunderstorms, and I'd mistakenly assumed we were in summer now. The caps have 'Yo soy de la roja - Mundial 2010' (I am of the red, World 2010?) on the front, and the backside tells us that Cruzcampo is the official beer of the Spanish team (poor sods - Cruzcampo is a loooong way from being a beer I like).

When I went to the bar, Enyaki noticed my cheeks were unadorned, and pulled out a little box that he swiped across each one. I expressed astonishment, and he gave me a couple of the wee things. Like a triple-gang lipstick, one swipe gives you a perfect Spanish flag. Unlike how it was done in the olden days:



The swiper (also supplied by Cruzcampo, bless 'em):



Now I'm wondering if we'll get any England freebies tomorrow afternoon - massively unlikely, what with Guinness not actually being English. Hmmm. Can England beat Germany? I recall it happened at least once before - 1966, in fact. I was nine years old. It's nice for me to have the option of supporting a team that can actually play football (sorry, Wayney-boy).

And continuing the theme of footie fandom, it was brilliant to see lotsa Flagsa Sint George in Engerland last week. They were hanging over balconies, tied to the front of houses, and we even saw a pub that had fixed a horizontal red band and a vertical one to their almost-white façade. But mostly, at least half of the cars I saw had one or two little flags attached to the tops of their windows. Coming back to Spain, I noticed the car-flag idea hasn't got here yet. But, just to prove me wrong, on the way to the bar I saw three parked cars in a row, each sporting a Spanish flag. Except, in the centre band where you would normally see a small coat of arms, they had the letters 'DYC'. DYC (pronounced 'Dick', of course), produce whiskey in Spain. And flags, now, apparently.

Chinchón

A friend of ours is the lead singer in a new band (Cat's Mother), and we were invited to attend their debut gig. Only problem was, it was in Chinchón, a small town about 50km southeast of Madrid. We've never been there before, but I had heard of it because they produce an aniseed liquor of the same name there (I could have said eponymous, but that would have been showing off).

A spot of internet research came up with a bus timetable, which turned out to be 100% wrong, and some photos of the place. The photos showed a cute old town, so we decided to get there early and spend the afternoon in Chinchón before the gig.



Chinchón's main attraction is the Plaza Mayor, which is where they stage their annual festival of teasing and killing bulls (note to self: don't go in August). All of the buildings on the periphery are three stories high and have balconies running the full length, and these are rented out at high prices to rich Madrileños for the corrida.


A bunch of hairy bikers take the Burro Taxi around the Plaza Mayor

Chinchón has an enormous church with a tablada by Goya. Surprisingly, for a Sunday, the church was locked up so we couldn't see it. There's also a castle overlooking the town, from where you can see an enormous cement works and Madrid on the horizon.



The gig itself was in the courtyard of a beautiful boutique hotel near Plaza Mayor: La Casa de la Marquesa. Why? Well, the bass player owns it, that's why. The audience of about 50 invited guests watched Cat's Mother play old-style R & B. Every member of the band was superb, the atmosphere was like a family party (the kind where the family members actually like each other, not the other kind), and, to roll out an old cliché, a great time was had by all.


Cat's Mother: bass player's not in this picture - he's hiding in a corner on the right


Dusk in Plaza Mayor

We got the last bus home at 1025 (the band having thoughtfully timed their set to coincide with the real bus timetable), and arrived at Conde de Casal at 1110.

Caught Out Again

When we first arrived in Madrid, a little over two years ago, MamaDuck had risen early one Saturday morning to try to join a public library in La Latina. I was somewhat dischuffed to be woken by a phone call from her. 'Get your camera and your arse down here, right now,' she said.

So I did. The day was La Fiesta de la Virgen de la Paloma (the feast/fair/party of the Virgin of the Pigeons (others mights say they mean doves, in which case they should be talking about Palomas Blancas)). Us Brits know it, and largely ignore it, as the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, where she got a special upgrade on the big fluffy cloud to take her up to Heaven without her having to go through all the tiresome business of actually dying first.

I took lots of photos, but I can't find them right now. What happens is they have a float at the church of La Virgen de la Paloma in La Latina, and people arrive from early in the morning to pin bunches of flowers onto another float, and eventually they do a procession. We were there for most of the morning and there were assorted stalls selling traditional food and drinks, and a lot of people dressed as old-fashioned Madrileños.

The fiesta goes on for about four nights - music and drinking and dancing in the streets, and so on.

All jolly good fun.

We had planned to maybe think about attending some of this, but decided we were just too tired. But we completely failed to realise that today, Saturday, is a major public holiday. I went out shopping this morning and was astounded to find the market shut. Likewise all the supermarkets, little shops and all but one bar. It's a bit of a pain because we'll be eating lentils all weekend, but at the same time it's pretty cool that people who work in shops and bars do actually get the day off.

Splendid New Website

Spent the last week building my new website. Hopefully it'll bring in some business.



Check it out here: MadRed website and graphic design, Madrid, Spain.

Cool eh?

Just A Perfect Day

A couple of our friends in Madrid have a weekend home in a teeny-weeny village 2 hours to the north. They are having it renovated right now, and had to meet the builder today to sort a few things out. They very kindly invited us to go with them.

We love living in Madrid, but sometimes it can feel oppressive, and it is just great to get out of it for a bit. Spain is an enormous country, and outside of the cities it is very sparsely populated. We haven't explored a fraction of it yet, but the feeling you get when you leave the city behind is akin to being in the desert in Dubai. The silence, the enormous sky, the beautiful scenery. Awesome.

We stopped at two cute pueblos on the way. This is Torija...



A beautiful little town with a recently-restored fairy-tale castle in the middle of it.





A few kilometres down the road is Brihuega...



...which has an unusually plain, but handsome church.





In their village, Ocentejo, we enjoyed an outstandingly good lunch, cooked by the chef/owner of the village bar/restaurant. He's a complete nutter, but, boy, can he cook! We also met the mayor of the village, and a few of the residents. When I say 'village', it's more of a hamlet. The permanent population is only 22.



The picture above is of an ancient watchtower on the hill behind our friends' house. Most of the houses in the village are built of stone liberated from this structure.



The moon rose in the afternoon.



This 3m high pole in the village square has a ham-bone hanging from it. During the annual fiesta, the pole is greased, and the local loons try to climb it.

On the way back to Madrid, we stopped to have a look at a spectacular gorge, one or two kilometers out of the village.





The river is a tributary of the Tagus, which eventually finds its way to the sea in Lisbon.



The weather was beautiful, and once the renovation of the house is complete, we are looking forward to more weekends up there. We've promised to dig the garden, build a natural-filtered swimming pool, and any other grovelling that may need to be done.

Bliss.

Tortilla de Patatas

I posted about my early attempts at making this classic Spanish staple here and here.

A year later, I reckon I'm an expert, so here's how you do it.

You will need:
8 or 9 eggs
about half a kilo of spuds, peeled and sliced thinly
a generous pinch of salt
50% olive oil, 50% vegetable oil
possibly some lemon juice
a proper non-stick 20 cm frying pan
a circular dinner plate
45 - 60 minutes

And here's what you do:
Half fill the pan with the oil. Heat it gently. Put the spuds in the oil, and stir to make sure they are all coated. The idea is to soften the spuds without browning them. It will take about half an hour, and you need to give them a stir every now and again. When the potatoes are cooked, remove them from the oil. If you don't expect to eat the tortilla all in one go, you can sprinkle lemon juice on them - this will stop them from going grey over the next few days (there's nothing wrong with the spuds in your tortilla going grey - it just doesn't look very appetising).

Break your eggs into a bowl, throw in the salt, and beat with a whisk or fork until the egg whites and yolks are thoroughly mixed. Add the potatoes and stir.

Drain most of the oil from the pan, leaving a thin coating. Turn up the heat a little (about 60% of full), and pour the egg and potato mixture in. When the mixture has begun to set, pull the edges away from the pan with a spatula - you're trying to get a rounded shape to the edge of the tortilla.

Now we come to the tricky bit - turning it over. Traditionally this is done by holding an oiled dinner plate against the top of the pan, and turning them over. In Spain, you can buy a thing called a vuelca de tortilla, basically a plastic lid with a knob on one side for holding it.

Once you have the tortilla on the plate, slide it back into the pan and continue cooking and shaping the edge. Turn it two more times, so each side gets cooked twice, and when you have a nice golden colour on both sides, you're done.

It's important not to overcook the tortilla. I prefer ones that still have a little bit of runniness in the centre, but more sensitive souls prefer them to be cooked solid. Let it cool for a bit, and then cut yourself a wedge and serve with a hunk of crunchy baguette and a caffe con leche. Perfect!

Spanish Bureaucracy

Okay, I admit it. We are stupid. We've lived in Madrid for about eighteen months now, and only just got registered with the local Health Centre. And that was only because MamaDuck needed to see a doctor. Yes, yes, we always planned to get registered before the need actually arose, but there's always something more interesting to do than dealing with Spanish bureaucracy.

We have a folder that we thought contained every document that could ever be needed for any dealings with the government, and we took it along to the Health Centre.

Here's what you need:

1) Empadronomiento. This is a document from the Census and Statistics Office, and is considered to be proof of where you live. It's important because if we lived in a different barrio they'd have sent us to the Health Centre there. We have the empadronomiento.

2) Original NIE certificate. This is your Foreigner's Identity Number, and it proves you have the right to live in Spain. I had mine. MamaDuck has lost hers. Poo.

3) Social Security Number. Yes, we both have these, but the Health Centre insists that we get a document that says what our numbers are. But here's MamaDuck's number on a payslip, and here's mine on a tax document. No good, go to the SS and request the document. Double poo.

So MamaDuck retires to bed with her cold/flu/chest infection, and I trudge off to the Social Security office in pouring rain, strong winds and freezing cold. It's on a street quite near us, but it turns out to be an insanely long street and the office is at the far end of it. I get two forms, and am called to the desk before I have a chance to fill them in. I explain I need one document for me, and one for absent wife. Oh, no, absent wife must complete the authorisation section on the back. More poo. I trudge home, wake MamaDuck from her slumber, fill in the forms, and get the Metro back to the SS office. They issue the two documents, and then I return to the Health Centre.

They do my registration, give me a temporary document that allows me to see a doctor, and eventually they'll issue a Medical Card. They absolutely refuse to process MamaDuck's application without the NIE certificate. But we know the number of the NIE, it's on her payslips, so why do they insist on this crappy bit of paper? It's the rules, that's why.

But listen, they say. Your wife can see a doctor, but you have to pay 45 Euros. If you return within five working days with the NIE certificate, we'll refund the money. I roll on the floor laughing, and explain that I don't think there's any possibility that we could get a duplicate certificate within five weeks, never mind five days.

Anyhoo, the next day MamaDuck got some photocopies of the certificate from the admin people where she works. The original is still missing. She went back to the Health Centre and they accepted the document. So she's now stoked up with antibiotics, and hopefully will be better soon, although the doc says half of Spain currently has this infection, and it can take a while to go away.

I was talking to an Irish rocket scientist (stop giggling at the back) about this. He's been in Madrid for a few months and has just got his appointment to get his NIE. In June. When I told him about the 45 Euros fee, instead of outrage, he said that in Ireland, you have to pay 50 Euros every time you need to see a doc. And it never gets refunded.

I guess we don't know we're born.

Villancicos

This is our second Christmas in Madrid. Last year's was all so new, with lots of stuff to do and new (to us) traditions to learn about, that we completely missed Spanish Christmas music. We've made up for that abundantly this year. MamaDuck bought a few CDs of Villancicos, we've been to a concert of them, we've heard people in the streets singing them, and sung a few ourselves at our mince pie/mulled wine thing.

MamaDuck has done a post with two or three embedded videos of a range of people singing them here. Enjoy.

Toledo

It's Holy Week (Semana Santa) in Spain, so MamaDuck is off work and after spending three days more or less asleep and recovering from the rigours of the last term, is now bright and breezy (and blogging profusely). So we went for a day-trip yesterday, to Toledo.

What an amazing place! Toledo is about 80 kms south of Madrid. It used to be the capital of Spain, and is known as 'the City of Three Cultures': there is Islamic influence, there are two synagogues, many churches and a Cathedral. The old city sits on a high promontory surrounded on three sides by the Rio Tagu. It is exceptionally well-preserved/well-reconstructed, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

If you ever get to Spain, and can make a day available (actually two or three would be better), get thee down to Toledo. I promise you, you will love it. We went by the Avant train from Madrid. This is a fast train, not as fast as the AVE, but it gets you there in 30 minutes in total comfort. One of the things I love about Spanish railways is that they are incredibly reliable, and when you buy your tickets for inter-city journeys, you get reserved seats. If there are no seats left, the train is full and you can't go on it: no standing in aisles allowed! Simple. The fares are reasonable, and if your train arrives more than five minutes late, you get your money back (this never happens).

So, here's a bunch of pictures of Toledo. I took about 100 pics, but this is all you're getting!



I did a web search for info on Toledo and found a very useful piece of advice. The railway station is outside the old town. You can walk it, but unless you are a glutton for punishment, you would be better off taking the number 22 bus from outside the station. It's 90 centimos well-spent, and delivers you at the top of the mountain in Plaza Zocodover - a good reference point.



Alcazar dominates this end of town. It's actually not that old, but it is important.

Moving into the centre, you'll stumble upon the Cathedral. It isn't the prettiest building ever constructed, but it is huge, and has had lots of additions and extensions over time. I found the neo-classical portico entrance on one façade to be particularly anachronistic on a mostly Gothic building: then again you might find a late 20th-century plain granite-faced addition on another façade to be equally weird.







It's not possible to get the Cathedral into one shot, unless you brought your helicopter.

Toledo is very much a Medieval city: winding, narrow lanes, mostly closed off to traffic. It's also hilly, and we were grateful for our acclimatisation to this in Madrid: if you arrive here as a car-driving couch-potato who doesn't do exercise, you might find Toledo challenging.















Toledo is in Castilla-La Mancha, the setting for Don Quixote. Wherever you go in Toledo, you see images of DQ, and there is a wonderful statue of Cervantes, the author.



Toledo retains a real sense of a walled city. The walls still stand in many places, and they are incredibly tall. The old city could be accessed only by two fortified bridges.



Amazing, amazing, amazing.

Politics

Having lived in an 'enlightened dictatorship' for twelve years (plus an 'endarkened dictatorship' for one year) before moving back to the free world, I'm finding it fascinating to be in the middle of an election campaign. Spain goes to the polls in a couple of weeks' time to choose a new government and Prime Minister (President?). Or hopefully to stick with the old one. It appears that as a foreigner I don't get a vote (how outrageous!) but if I did then I think Zap's the man. The contest is mainly between incumbent PSOE (Socialist) Zapatero and hopeful PP (Tory) Rajoy. My feeble Spanish is nowhere near good enough to understand what's going on here, plus I don't own a TV and I rarely look at Spanish language newspapers. So I am very grateful to my fellow bloggers for explaining their views of events. Notably:

South of Watford

The Bad Rash

Don Colin

Erik Wirdheim

Good work guys, keep it up (I know you don't need my encouragement, but hey, I need your explanations!).

It's all so weird.

A Nice Cup of Tea [Una Taza de Té Agradable]

Tea is not very popular here in Spain. There's a couple of reasons for that. One is that the coffee in even the grottiest cafeteria is fabulous. It's always made from freshly-ground beans, and it puts Starbucks to shame. The other reason is that the Spanish are as lousy at making tea as they are brilliant at making coffee. I never have tea when I'm out, but I do like a mug or two of the stuff at home in the morning.

Making tea at home is where we encounter the third problem. The dominant brand of tea in Madrid is Horniman's, and I'm sorry, Mr Horniman and company, I just do not like the taste of your tea. It doesn't even taste like tea. We tried Horniman's when we first arrived last summer, and gave it a unanimous thumbs-down. Fortunately, you can buy Lipton's at Corte Ingles. Another testament to the unpopularity of tea in Spain is that you can only buy small boxes - 24 tea bags is the only size they stock.

Anyway, I did a little shopping yesterday, but I could not be bothered to go to Corte Ingles for Lipton's, so I bought Horniman's instead. And guess what!







It still tastes horrible.

Christmas in Madrid, part 3 [Navidad en Madrid, sepárese tres]

I've been reading up on the traditions and customs of a Spanish Christmas, and it's a good job I did, because I might have missed some of it. Christmas in Spain is not the wimpy two-day affair that we are accustomed to - it goes on until January 6th!

Here's an outline:
22nd December: the drawing of 'El Gordo' - the Christmas Lottery with about €600 million to be shared out.

24th December: Nochebuena - the 'Good Night', Christmas Eve. Families enjoy a feast in the evening/night/early morning - seafood, suckling pig, lamb or turkey, turrón (nougat) and marzipan, all washed down with buckets of Cava (Spanish sparkling wine). Adults exchange gifts, kids may get a token gift.

25th December: Christmas Day. Everything is shut, and probably everybody is sleeping/recovering from the night before. And then another feast.

28th December: Day of the Innocents. Practical jokes abound, like All Fools' Day.

31st December: New Year's Eve. Traditionally, you have to eat one grape as each of the midnight bells rings. This is easier said than done: Spanish grapes have seeds, and eating twelve of the blighters in twelve seconds without choking is quite an achievement. You get one month of good luck for each grape successfully consumed. And then there's a bit of partying.

5th/6th January: Los Reyes - Three Kings. Spanish kids write letters to the Three Kings asking for Playstations etc. The Kings arrive in your town on the evening of the 5th: they will be parading through Madrid from Retiro Park to Plaza Mayor, probably on camels. The Kings distribute tonnes of sweets as they go. On the 6th, kids finally get their prezzies, and they get to eat part of a special ring-shaped cake called Roscón de los Reyes. If they're lucky they will find a plastic toy that has been baked into the cake, hopefully before they swallow it.

As if this wasn't enough, Madrid is doing some other stuff. There's a show near Opéra Metro on the 15th to mark the 'official' start of Christmas. In Plaza de Colón there's a sound and light show every night from the 22nd. There's a couple of outdoor ice-rinks. There are belénes (nativity scenes) all over town. And of course, the fabulous lights on the main shopping streets. Apparently Madrid spends more on Christmas lights than any other European capital, and Spain spends more than any other European country. And it's worth every centimo.

¿Por Que No Te Callas? [Why Don't You Shut Up?]

Ooh, heck. Spain's King Juan Carlos tells Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez to shut up during a conference between Iberia and Latin America. See it here.

UPDATE: Now it's a smash-hit ringtone! Damn, why didn't I think of that?