Getting settled, pastries, kilograms, long walks

I'm still getting used to everything, but I feel like in the past few weeks I've finally been able to actually experience being here instead of spending all my time dealing with housing and paperwork and stress.

This is my room. Isn't it great? It's so cozy and eclectic. When I toured the place, my crazy landlord Carlos told me that they are all antiques from the early 1900s, handcrafted in Italy and New York. I was like, ok sure. But one of my roommates swears it's true. He sold his family’s estate in France but didn’t want to sell all his stuff, so he uses his rental properties basically.

I really like my cool mirrors, and my triangle nightstand, and best of all I have a gold handelier decorated with brass lions playing flaming tubas. I have my own balcony with a really nice view of the street and some trees.

I live with 3 random European guys. There’s a 30 year old from Barcelona, he smokes a lot of weed and is really into stoic philosophy, a 20 year old college student from London who’s a really good cook, and a goofy 22 year old grad student from Brussels who is out drinking, clubbing, or playing pickleball at all hours of the day. They play a lot of FIFA and listen to a lot of European rap. They're really nice, other than making me listen to European rap. Every Sunday, we cook everyone a meal from our countries for dinner. It's my turn next Sunday, I'm not sure what I'm going to make yet.

The apartment downstairs is another super random group of internationals. They are older, most are in their 40's. There's a rly fun woman from Colombia here for work, a random mystery guy from Colombia who's quiet but really nice, the coolest 60 year old hippie guy from Brazil, and a super sweet 20 year old girl from Sweden who’s here for competitive fencing. She comes over to my apartment to have dinner with me and my roommates sometimes. There is also a Spanish-Scottish guy my age, but I have never seen him. 

My apartment is around the corner from Plaza Olavide in a neighborhood called Chamberí. It's truly an incredible location. There's a million cute little cafes and little stores. It has a very whimsical vibe. Olavide is a circular plaza lined with bistros and bars. It's always packed with young families, first dates, people reading, and friends dishing out gossip on park benches. I like to sit out there for a every day. There are ping pong tables too. I'm going to force my roommates to play ping pong with me whether they want to or not.

I would say I got really lucky with my apartment since it's so cool and finding a place in the city center is really difficult. But there is one major catch, which is my crazy landlord, Carlos. I thought he was normal crazy, but he’s actual crazy. There is sooo much to say about Carlos. But for legal reasons that is all I will say about Carlos. I’m fine tho, dw.

There’s an incredible bakery called Alma Nomad like 2 blocks away from my apartment. Their croissant is the second best croissant I've ever had. They have this rosemary potato danish topped with pecorino romano and olive oil that is actually insane. And they have cardamom buns. It’s so dangerous, you have no idea. I often take an extra long route to and from work just to avoid passing by the shop, or else I'll be tempted to buy a little pastry. I go feral for a little pastry.

One of my favorite things to do is to grab a treat and a coffee and just start walking in a random direction and seeing where it takes me. I like how I see and experience something new every single day. And not just new shops or streets, but just everyday things.

Like even going to the grocery store can be kind of a journey. I tried to buy an onion at Carrefour, and first I couldn't figure out how much it cost bc I don't know what a kilogram is, so I was like whatever and went to the cashier to check it out and they got made at me bc I guess you have to weigh produce and print a label for them at the produce section, so I had to go back to the produce section and figure out how to use the label machine, and print out a label, and then I could buy the stupid onion. And I still don't really know or care what a kilogram is. This aspect of being here is actually really frustrating at times. Like I feel so dumb and confused all the time. Regular tasks and errands are sometimes weirdly mentally draining. I often miss the sense of knowing how things work that you take for granted in your home country. But as I mentioned, it's also really cool too see how things work differently in other places. It's all give and take.

I go on a long walk through Parque Retiro almost every day. And sometimes I'll go on runs around the lake. It's always really lively with tourists and street performers. There’s a section I really like that’s covered in an artificial forest used for wildlife habitat restoration projects. There are wild chestnuts and acorns all over the ground. Sometimes I peel the chestnuts for the squirrels and birds and feed them. There's this one section with a fake well surrounded by stone benches in the center that I like to hang out at. It's really peaceful and green.

The park is populated with rly adorable cats who like to lie around in patches of sun in the afternoons. There's also a lot of magpies. I hadn't ever seen a magpie. They're really pretty and the ones here aren't afraid of people and get really close. I thought that they seemed like something from a fairytale, which is interesting because when I looked them up apparently there are a ton of superstitions and folk tales associated with them around the world. Apparently they like shiny things, so I think I'll try to bring a shiny thing to them to see if I can befriend them.

I’ve been trying to make human friends and mostly succeeding, which is really nice. It felt weird and a little scary to arrive here and realize I know literally no one. It's really cool to meet people from all over the world. I think just being foreign in a foreign place brings people together really quickly.

I’ve also really enjoyed having so much time alone. I have a lot of free time to read and write and think without distraction. Especially now that it's getting chilly and there are some days where I stay inside more than I usually would.

I'm really behind on all my legal paperwork which is a little stressful. Visa and residency paperwork sucks. It's super complicated makes literally no sense in either English or Spanish. I've discovered that Spanish bureaucracy is mostly based on vibes and not actual procedure. I have spent a good deal of my time here sitting in cold government offices at like 8am negotiating with office workers in broken Spanish. This is like the very smallest taste of someone actually immigrating to another country, major respect to anyone who does it for real. My complaining about immigration paperwork has caused my mom to tell me a lot of stories about her early days in the US. That has been nice to hear, I honestly hadn't known that much about that era of her life.

I'm trying to do research on American expat culture for one of my personal projects. This project was inspired by the very specific culture I noticed at expat social watering holes in Mexico City and Paris. Mostly at specific cafes and/or bars that expats and tourists would frequent. I'm trying to find one here so I can conduct informal secret interviews with the people there. But I haven't really found any. There's one bar in Chueca that's really popular with Americans that I might be a contender, but the last night they mostly had dancing, so it wasn't really a stand around and talk kind of night. I'll keep investigating.

I just started reading For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. I wanted to read a Spanish book or a book set in Spain/Madrid. I really like learning about places through local books and movies. I was checking out a little used book shop and this book was sitting right by the entrance. It's a really cool old Penguin copy. "Madeline - London 1971" is written in blue pen on the first page. I forgot that Hemingway wrote about Spain. According to the blurb, Hemingway covered the Spanish Civil War and lived in and travelled through Spain a lot throughout his life. The book is about that civil war, which I really don't know much about at all. I realized I barely know anything about Spanish history. So I think it's a perfect choice. Madeline, or at least I assume it's Madeline, only made a few annotations. The last page of the book has "pag. 45" written on the top. So I went to page 45, and the only the phrases "windy bastard" and "rife bolt snick" are underlined. Very mysterious.