Diarios de Madrid

We've been having some terrific weather here in Madrid so I spent most of my afternoons studying in the Retiro Park, which, after all, is only a few streets down from where I live.
It's a great place to go jogging or skating, and during the weekends it's a really busy place with percussionist groups roaming the monument, puppet shows for the kids and plenty of terraces out so you can sip your cortado outside in the sun.
Be sure to check out the Retiro park photoset on Flickr.

With weather like this it's easy to feel spring approaching and the intensity of the light is unlike anything in Belgium this time of year.
I'm pretty much done in Madrid. I have done all the exams I have to do here and I'm leaving on the 15th, so this will probably be one of the last posts for this particular blog.
I'm taking a few days off and then start cleaning up my room and start packing!

This already happened a few months ago, but I was reminded of it today (never mind how).

Outside of the cafetaria of the Filología A building on campus there's always some guy playing some song, mostly spanish tunes I don't really know.
But on this particular day, I'm sitting outside, listening to our anonymous guitar player, with a restaurant-grade cafe cortado warming my hands and a pale winter sun warming all of us outside, when he suddenly launches into a simply perfect rendition of Bob Dylan's "Farewell Angelina"... and I'm just hit by the sheer perfection of the moment.
You know what great songwriting does: it's as every word was written for you and holds some meaning only you can decipher. And I'm reminded of that line in another Dylan song "Up to me": "It frightens me the awful truth of how sweet life can be".

So here's to Bawb, wherever he may be on his neverending tour and to our anonymous player outside the cafetaria.
Sometimes, life is truly sweet, if only for a minute

I had already been told that, besides being a popular professor at the Complutense, Jonathan Holland also played in a band. Not only does he play both the guitar and the bass, writes most of the bands original material, but he also does a decent impression of someone singing.

So last week when his band performed in a bar called Zanzibar a few of us went down there to check it out. I must say, I was expecting the good professor to step on stage like some kind of Stephen Malkmus and launch into some very far-out grungy, Pavement meets Blur-style indie rock.

What we got instead was a more traditional folk-rock band, playing covers ranging from Van Morrisons "Brown-eyed girl" to Billy Braggs "New England" (A song, by the way, that I hadn't heard in ages and immediately threw me back in time to my first year at the University of Brussels), with a singer that reminded me vaguely of Luka Bloom and a backing-vocalist who reminded me in the best possible way of Shawn Colvin. There were some original songs as well that really fitted in with the rest of the material and the Zanzibar is a really nice place to hang out on a Saturday night.

The other guitar player was playing a beautiful PRS-20th anniversary model, the kind of guitar that can not be bought by any legal means; our professor on the other hand was playing a more modest Fender Stratocaster. I had a great evening and, if anything, was reminded of those heady days when I myself used to play in a band and how much fun that can be.
It's still the greatest excuse to act like a total adolescent without anyone paying mind....

And, no, that is not some Photoshop motion blur in the photograph but the face of a man who is indeed... ehrm...rocking out.

I'm sitting in what has become more or less my second livingroom, the Starbucks in the Calle Ortega y Gassett, on what is oficially the last day of the Navidades in Spain: the day of the Three Kings (Los Reyes Magos).
While in other countries it's Santa Claus who brings gifts, here in Spain the biblical kings of old (Balthazar, Melchior & Casper) are the bearers of gifts on the 6th of January, an official holiday here no less. Which also means the University's library is closed once again. sigh.

The past few weeks have been great, with friends (and girlfriend) coming over to visit and party through the New Year here. It's a bit rough at times having to work (morning hours no less, since those are the only hours the libraries are open) when everyone else is just hanging around in the local tapabars, or spending obscene amounts of money on shoes (with Camper a firm favourite) and clothes.

Finding a restaurant that would open on Christmas Eve was near impossible so we had dinner in our hotel room, a selection of canapes from the trattoria Mallorca in the posh barrio Salamanca, washed down with several bottles of excellent cava (boycot, what boycot?).
We once again setlled down in the Hostal Adriano, and this time were awarded the dubious honour of spending over a week in the infamous Maria Callas Room. Same scenario for New Year's Eve, although we did make it down to the Puerta del Sol to eat 12 grapes on the last 12 strokes of the clocktower there (this is called tomar las uvas and is the traditional thing to do here, apparently it brings good luck). Lets hope it works.

We did a few tourist things. like visiting the Prado. We saw Peter Jackson's reinvention of King Kong. And we caught a performance of Cuban cantautor Luis Ferrer in the Cafe Central, a jazz cafe just off the Plaza Santa Anna which I highly recommend: the food and the ambience are great, as is the music there.

I already have the dates set for my exams here, and it's slowly starting to dawn on me that I'm down to my last few weeks here; not (dare I say it) a very pleasant thought. Madrid has really started to grow on me. Even the fact that I'm sharing the appartment now with almost 6 people (Patricio's Bolivian family is spending the holidays here in Madrid and they have a slightly different concept of privacy than I have, to say the least) hasn't really been much of a burden.

So, for now, I'm still kickin' it here in Madrid and you can check out the New Year's Eve photographs over at Flickr.
Happy 2006 to all of you...

There's very little to report these days: my otherwise so stylish barrio of Salamanca has been turned into a christmas shopping mall, Madrid's population seems to have doubled as more and more tourists are piling to celebrate the christmas period here, and over at the University there's a bit of a rush going on as many professors want a paper handed in before the christmas vacation starts.

So I'll just leave you for now with some new photographs of the Mercado de la Paz where I do some of my food shopping. Too bad I don't have any time left to do the ham slicing course, it seems like fun.
Enjoy!