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!

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

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.

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...

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!

I'll keep this very brief: if you're on a windows PC and you're still surfing the web using Internet Explorer you owe it to yourself to check out Mozilla's Firefox.
A better and safer browser, and with a lot more functionality (tabbed browsing, integrated search, live bookmarks etc...) than IE has now. That's without even mentioning the huge array of extensions and plugins available for this browser.
Available for all platforms (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux), Firefox is easily installed, copies all your favourites and bookmarks so you're up and running in no time.
There's an installation manual if you need a hand.

On a related note: for those who want to finally rid themselves of Hotmail, I still have several invites to Gmail, Google's mail service.
Just a with "Gmail please" as the subject and an invite will be heading your way.

End of sermon. Have a nice day. Make it Foxy.

We live in a world in which John Lennon gets shot while Barry Manilow cooooooontinues to put out fuckin' albums.
I mean, if you're going to kill someone have some fuckin' taste, will you?
I'll drive you to Kenny Roger's house...

Bill Hicks

Ingredients

• 3 - 4 chorizo para freir (the kind you can fry)
• 4 carrots
• 2 small soup leeks
• 1 big onion (preferably red)
• 2 small sweet potatoes (or 1 big one)
• 3 - 4 red bell peppers (depending on size)
• tin of chopped tomatoes (I prefer the Elvea brand, for a smoother taste see if the bodega has tomato frito)
• 2 - 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced in half
• about 1 liter of vegetable stock
• optional: red chili pepper(s), stock cube (without glutamates por favor)

This is how we do it

• peel, slice and dice all the vegetables
• slice the chorice in half lengthwise then slice in chunky slices
• get your pot or wok hot over a medium fire
• start frying the chorizo over a medium fire. This will release a lot of delicious, deeply red-coloured fat. fry for about 3-4 minutes, then scoop out the chorizo and keep about 4 tablespoons of that fat in your pan/wok
• turn the heat up and add the onions, carrots, sweet potatoes , garlic and peppers and fry while stirring until the peppers go soft. If the mixture goes a little dry add a bit of extra virgin olive oil.
• add leeks, fry for a further 2 minutes
• add tomatoes, fry for a further 2 minutes
• add stock, a stock cube and simmer for about 10-15 minutes
• add about 1/3 of the chorizo chunks to the soup and puree the soup using a handmixer or blender
• add rest of chorizo chunks and a few grinds of the pepper mill
• eat piping hot with some crusty bread and enjoy!

For our veggie friends: something similar can be done without the chorizo but you'll need a bit of pimenton, which again the Spanish Bodega normally sells. Before you add the tomatoes, add about a small teaspoon of pimenton (you really don't need a lot of this) to the mix and stir for about a minute, then add a glass of red wine and reduce the wine by half.
Now continue as in the rest of the recipe.

The first recipe on this blog, the one for pesto, elicited a record 5 comments, by all means let me know what you think of this one!

The modus operandi is always the same: a big sheet is spread out on the street and on it illegal copies of the most currently popular CD's and DVD's are displayed for your buying pleasure. By the first sign of police the sheet is pulled together and faster than you can say "Catalunya is a nation" the manteros have disappeared.

It's pretty weird the see a copy of the new Luz Casal compilation, which inside Fnac retailed for close to 30€, lying on a sheet and selling for only 2€. Even stranger is seeing movies on a copied DVD which are currently still in theatres and nowhere near to an official DVD release. As of today police are clamping down on this kind of activity and not only the selling of these copies is illegal, buying them is now illegal as well.
Good luck to the Guardia I say, as according to official statistics last Christmas in Madrid alone 40.000 copies of these copies were sold.

And get this, the local Blockbuster will not allow me to rent a DVD because I live in a piso compartido and have no offical address so to speak, but I can buy the DVD from a mantero for less money than it would cost to rent it.

Spanish logic again or just the power of free enterprise?

This lyric by the fabulous Loudon Wainwright III says it all:

Suddenly it's Christmas,
Right after Hallowe'en.
Forget about Thanksgiving;
It's just a buffet in between.
There's lights and tinsel in the windows;
They're stocking up the shelves;
Santa's slaving at the North Pole
In his sweatshop full of elves.

There's got to be a build-up
To the day that Christ was born:
The halls are decked with pumpkins
And the ears of Indian corn.
Dragging through the falling leaves
In a one-horse open sleigh,
Suddenly it's Christmas,
Seven weeks before the day.

Suddenly it's Christmas,
The longest holiday.
When they say "Season's Greetings"
They mean just what they say:
It's a season, it's a marathon,
Retail eternity.
It's not over till it's over
And you throw away the tree.

Outside it's positively balmy,
In the air nary a nip;
Suddenly it's Christmas,
Unbuttoned and unzipped.
Yes, they're working overtime,
Santa's little runts;
Christmas comes but once a year
And goes on for two months.

Christmas carols in December
And November, too;
It's no wonder we're depressed
When the whole thing is through.
Finally it's January;
Let's sing "Auld Lang Syne";
But here comes another heartache,
Shaped like a Valentine.

Suddenly it's Christmas,
The longest holiday.
The season is upon us;
A pox, it won't go away.
It's a season, it's a marathon,
Retail eternity.
It's not over till it's over
And you throw away the tree.

No, it's not over till it's over
And you throw away the tree;
It's still not over till it's over
And you throw away the tree.