Zoe's blog

1.  Stay in Madrid. Stay in the city most weekends. Really, you won’t regret it. Yes, this is your chance to see Europe, but really, you will regret not truly knowing your city when you leave. And if you have any desire to make Spanish friends, this is the only way to do it. There are so, so many places to discover. Find your favorites.
 
2. Travel in Spain. One of the most incredible things about studying abroad in Madrid is  its location in the dead center of this amazing country. Buses are cheap, 30 euros, and Madrid is 5 hours at most from any magical corner of Spain. Bilbao and San Sebastian in Basque Country, Granada and Valencia (and the Mediterranean coast) in the South, Santiago de Compostela in Galicia (the NW), Santander in the NE, and of course Barcelona in the East. The options are truly supreme. Each region in Spain really thinks of itself in a very autonomous way; when you ask a Spaniard where they are from, they don’t say, “I’m Spanish.” They say, “I’m Andaluz,” or “I’m Gallego.” Each region is fantastically different, in climate, topography and food, and all are beautiful. 
 
3. Enjoy the free (or cheap) life. It just takes some seeking out. My favorites:
 
Tabacalera, an alternative cultural/arts center in an old tobacco factory that hosts a ton of free workshops in anything you can think of; dance, art, music. I’ve written about that place quite a lot in previous posts. Even just go for 1-euro beer or coffee and do your homework (free wifi!) in the wonderfully funky café inside.
 
Hare Krishna temple, on Calle de Espiritu Santo in Malasaña: Free delicious vegetarian dinner at 8:30 on Sunday nights, and cheap lunch at 3pm every day.
 
Caixa Forum and La Casa Encendida: Two Spanish-bank sponsored galleries, both free, and both beautiful. There is an incredible vertical garden in front of Caixa Forum, and a great wifi café on the roof of Encendida. Fantastic spots.
 
Boteón: This is the word for the concept of drinking outside on the street, or often in plazas (the small squares scattered all over Madrid; one at least every three streets). People sell beer on the street for a euro, and there is nothing more fun than hanging out outdoors on a nice night with the entire young population of Madrid.
 
Calamari bocadillos: Calamari sandwiches, 2-something euros. Don’t doubt their goodness. In the same vein: Döner kebap, but only in Lavapiés, the barrio where you’ll find the most authentic kebap shops.
 
4. Get out of the NYU bubble! Go up to people in bars, and introduce yourself. This isn’t weird, just friendly. You’d be surprised how worthwhile swallowing your pride/shame/vergüenza etc. can be.
 
5. Speak Spanish! Always. Sometimes people won’t understand you, but try to explain what you mean using other Spanish words. It is worth the struggle and any embarrassment that might occur. You’ll be happy you did within a month. Really, you’ll be shocked at how much you’ve improved.
 
 
Madrid, it can be said, is a bit backwards; in fashion, in food, in politics, in life style. But you’ll find it endearing soon enough. I loved this city, and you will too. It takes a little while, though. Let it grow on you. Come the end of the semester, you’ll be planning how to get back in the future. 


[The photo is of Plaza Dos de Mayo in Malasaña, one of the best boteón spots, and a generally beautiful place to spend a sunny afternoon.]

Growing up in the United States imbued me with a perspective that was invisible to me, though ever-present, until I began living abroad.  People live without looking to the United States for any sort of guidance, and without adhering at all to the template of ideology that subtly connects everyone in the U.S.. I don’t mean to say we all have the same political, religious or cultural beliefs. Obviously that is far from the truth (farther from the truth, even, that that statement would be if applied to another country. We are regionally and individually distinct beyond the parameters for difference of any other country in the world, I think).  I mean the much more subtle connections, our thought processes, our collective narrative and collective imagination and collective memory, much of which is the result of shared experience, in one way or another, be it historical or contemporary; simply the fact of how and what we learned in public schools, the way our nation experienced the decades, our specific concept of what things like ‘entrepreneurship’ mean, or even our special brand of the college application process. All of these things are part of the weave of our American context, no matter our vast individuality.
 
But I knew this already. What I didn’t know, or anticipate, was what a surprise it would be to find that other people in other countries live outside of that weave, without our particular brand of fabric. They go about their lives in a context outside of that completely, and without making reference to the ‘American way,’ so to speak, at all.
 
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Of course they do! Other people are of their own country! If I sound like an American elitist in any way, please understand that is hardly where I’m coming from. Believe me, I’m incredibly surprised at myself that this is a ‘epiphany’ to me at all; like I said, this expectation that all other cultures would somewhat face towards the U.S. was invisible to me before I came abroad, and until I was faced with the blaring ridiculousness of that supposition.
 
For the enormous exporter of culture that it is, the U.S. does not touch the deeply seated perspective of Spaniards, or the specific context of the Danes. I’m not talking necessarily about what other nations’ people think, but more how they think it, if that makes sense.
 
My recent trip to Copenhagen showed me a city teeming with young people who simply had a different vibe about them than any I had ever met before. My friend Annabelle and I stayed with a Dane, named Rasmus, who she knew from high school. Rasmus lived with three other 22-year-old boys, so we ended up meeting a sizable group of Danish university students in the four days we were there. I wish I could provide concrete examples of what I’ve tried to convey in this post, but they simply don’t exist. I just saw in them a way of thinking that was very, though subtly, different from my own, but one that they, as Danes, all seemed to share.
 
Perhaps it has something to do with the way they see university itself. For them, it is free. In fact, the government pays them a monthly stipend—enough to rent a shared apartment—for as long as they choose to go to school. Nearly all of them plan on getting graduate degrees. This, to them, is just common sense, and therein lays the difference.
 
Perhaps it is the fact that all of them use bicycles for transportation, and even the ones who drive cars because they live very far from school, see their car-dependence as something to work toward losing. Bikes, and the incredible abundance of bike lanes, are within their concept of just plain common sense as well. The fact that the bike lanes mean less parking space for cars doesn’t ruffle feathers. “Well, yeah. Naturally.” Was the response I got when asked if car drivers were in favor of the bike lanes. It is just a different mental tuning, it seems.
 
Neither of these examples fully expresses what I mean by the first half of this post. It is more of a wordless sense that I get more than anything else, with the addition of my own surprise at the fact that this is a ‘epiphany’ for me. But there just aren’t words. I can only hope everyone has a chance to be similarly surprised, and shaken awake from, their own subconscious cultural assumptions.

[The photo is mine, taken of my friend Annabelle, and one of the Danish guys we stayed with while there, in a park in Copenhagen on May Day.]

I met Hugo outside of a bar my third week in Madrid. Dibujo Madrid had convened in this bar one Saturday after a “drawing party” in Tabacalera (I wrote a bit about this magical place previously), and there were at least 25 of us there. I stepped outside and couldn’t find my lighter, so without looking up I asked the nearest person to me. I was reeling from my first full evening of speaking only Spanish at Tabacalera; the thrill of that feeling is indescribable after taking Spanish courses for most of my life and never previously managing to execute so much as small talk comfortably. So I struck up a conversation.
 
Within the span of that first 20-minute conversation I found out Hugo once lived above Fat Cat on Christopher St. in New York City while attempting to learn English, which he said he didn’t succeed at. He was a PhD candidate at a Madrid university, studying urbanism and writing a thesis on the gentrification of Lavapiés, the vibrant immigrant-and-artist neighborhood we were in at that moment. His mother was from Basque country, and had I been around Spaniards a bit longer when we met, that fact might have occurred to me immediately. He just looks Basque somehow, with dark features and a dense build.
 
We got coffee together the following week. I couldn’t believe what was happening to my Spanish during this time. By the third time we hung out, I had gone from nearly incapable of answering questions in Spanish to speaking loosely, comfortably; explaining myself without translating every thought in my head first. Things began to just come out in Spanish, though perhaps with disastrous grammar.
 
Hanging out with Hugo meant being shown the hidden funkiness of Madrid, things I couldn’t hope to find out about on my own. He took me to Casa Blanca, an okupa –squatter—house, where a hoard of people in their mid-20s and early 30s had taken over a half-finished luxury condo complex after it’s contractor went bankrupt. They made the space into a music and art complex, with upstairs rooms for political discussion (anarchist-leaning, one can assume) and patios for outdoor concerts. The governing principle of the place is the freeness of things, so beer and food, all vegan, was being given out for free at the concert he took me to there.            
 
We cooked chxampis together one night, a Basque take on mushrooms, and he explained the way the Spanish government worked, the way people often associate very closely with their regions instead of Spanish nationalism, and things like what Spanish radio stations were worth a listen. I began to see Spain in a fantastically different context, my Spanish improving all the while. The country, little by little, became accessible to me.
 
It is an amazing thing to find a friend in a foreign country. As one begins to grasp their context, the unique way they see the world from the perspective of their geographic and cultural location, the more and more one realizes that there are truly other ways of living, something easily forgotten, albeit subconsciously, when one grows up and lives their life in one country. 

[The photo is mine, of a session of Dibujo Madrid in Tabacalera, like the one I first met Hugo after.]

I hope I never lose this feeling, although I’m fairly sure there are few other places in the world where one can properly feel it. I’m walking down the street, about 11 pm, in the Lavapiés neighborhood of Madrid. People are just finishing dinner at the seemingly hundreds of outdoor tables strewn outside the dozens of Bangladeshi restaurants. Young men and the occasional elderly lady are selling cans of Mahou beer on every corner for one euro.  Everything smells faintly of cigarettes and beer, but somehow not offensively so. Parents push their bikes as young children screech all around them. Groups of friends chatter with supreme animation, spreading out the makings of a full bar on a patch of sidewalk that they will undoubtedly occupy until the not-so-early morning. I might be there too. I’m walking slowly, with no particularly urgent destination, smiling at everything and chattering too, but it seems my lack of Spanish blood prohibits me from mustering the same level of emphatic hand gestures and sheer volume.
 
In the four months I’ve been in Madrid, my perception of what the street means has shifted considerably. Here, it is not just a means of getting where you’re going. The destination is not necessarily indoors. La calle is a destination all its own, as much of a sítio, or place, or spot, as the corner bar or a friend’s apartment.
 
It’s easy enough to say, “sure, the street is a place to hang out.” But it is another thing entirely to see the street in a completely different way and associate it with purposes completely different than how we see it, or how I’ve always seen it, in New York. I’ve always considered taking a walk around New York streets to be just as entertaining an activity as going to a bar or a movie.  But here, one literally treats it as though it were a bar or a movie. “Let’s go to the street,” people say. “To” the street. And here, it really is a fabulous destination.
 
I suppose the lax public drinking laws don’t hurt. But it is more of a culture staple than that.
 
That street scene I described above in Lavapiés is more full of warmth and good cheer than I can convey, really. This is the genius loci of Madrid, and possibly of all of Spain. I found a similar street-warmth in Bilbao, where the cobblestone streets were full of people drinking and singing folk songs and chatting around barrels for tables, something I described in an earlier post. It is a sensation I associate incredibly closely with my mental picture of Spain, as much as, say, the fact that Spanish is spoken here.
 
“Vamos a la calle,” “Let’s go to the street,” will be the phrase I’ll most miss when I leave this place.

Reading Hemingway’s  “The Sun Also Rises” is while in Spain is thoroughly entertaining, if not a slightly sickening in its unapologetic decadence and regularly spaced brushes with blatant racism.  It is a picture of Spain in the 1920s, through the eyes of an American ex-pat with seemingly endless disposable income and an immunity to alcohol poisoning. The characters drink and smoke and hop about the north of the country endlessly, and the effect of Hemingway’s simple prose renders the novel something like a laundry list of meals consumed and hotel bars emptied for long swaths of text.
 
The decadence of the whole thing is truly incredible. Those were the 1920s, I suppose.
 
The novel is definitely excellent fodder for my growing obsession with Basque country. As the main character meanders by horse and buggy and the occasional train through rolling green hills and vineyards and farmland, I become more and more desperate to take the bus up to San Sebastian for the weekend. Hemingway’s descriptions of Basque culture and tiny, whitewashed pensiónes tucked into a hill on a lake are glimpses of the region up north as yet intact; it was still relatively hard for the average tourist to get to Basque country back then.
 
A Basque friend has told me that rural, farming parts of the region still feel something like how Hemingway described them. Draft animals still pull plows, and the fields are still dark green and rain-soaked. And they still, she says, drink wine out of leather pouches. I want to see that part of the country so badly; the taste (albeit very small and “front-room”) I got of it while in Bilbao and San Sebastián was hardly enough.
 
Some things are startlingly relevant to the Spain I’m living in now. “The first meal in Spain is always a shock,” Hemingway writes, going on to describe the impossibly large 4-course lunch that has not faded in the least from the Spanish way of life. It is the ‘menú del día’ that my editors at my internship teased me for not ever being able to finish. Heaps of egg and starch and ham. That, I’m sure, will never change.

I firmly believe that cafés make cities. They are what I have sought out in every city I have been to, and my favorite cafés are what I miss most acutely about New York.
 
Finding a few sublime cafés in Madrid took a bit longer; coffee culture here is not of the lingering-on-couches-with-the-paper type. Coffee as per Madrileño tradition is a 5-minute slurp, taken standing at the bar before work. But cafés that make the morning ritual into the slower, more pleasant experience I love so much are popping up more and more in recent years, I have been told.
 
My favorite is El Rincon, on Calle del Espiritu Santu in the neighborhood of Malasaña. Their outdoor tables are in the corner of a tiny, lively plaza that is out of a postcard on sunny afternoons. They serve food, too, and are one of the few places where a salad is inventive and (gasp!) organic. The staff are sweet but so slow, and they know it. But who sits in the sun with a coffee when they’re in a rush?! Not me, at least not anymore. Warm goat cheese and walnuts with a bowl of café con leche will do that to a person, I suppose.

The lingering-friendly atmosphere prompts more than just coffee-sipping, though. In the evening, the café is packed with fast-talking 20/30-somethings, who seem to be one of the few groups I've found who break the 'it's impolite to talk about politics' notion that is so prevalent in traditional Madrid. Listening in has improved my Spanish for sure. But it has also given me quite the education on the political mindset of young people here. The anarchist sentiment is very much alive. As I mentioned in a previous post, there are many squatter communities in Madrid, most of which offer arts workshops and a good place to hang out on the weekends, but all of which are involved in active political questioning and debate that is distinctly anarchistic. El Rincon is packed with similar-minded people, but also with supporters of the current socialist-party government, making the conversation more than slightly interesting. They discuss President Zapatero's latest attempt at reform, their disdain for the Tea Party movement in the US, and their concerns for the related wave of conservatism that has been sneaking up in Spanish popular politics in the past year. They discuss the merits of extending social welfare programs, and ending the 2-hour siesta. All of them, it seems (even those who condider themselves right-of-center) regularly tell me they can't believe the US doesn't have socialized healthcare. Nights in El Rincon have taught me that "right" and "left" political associations mean something very, very different here. 
 
Another absolute treasure is Mastropiero, a small, warm pizzaria in the same neighborhood. Six high-top tables are always full late at night, and the yellowish lighting and mish-mash of posters give the room an impossibly cozy ambiance. The best part, however, is the 70-something year-old woman who runs the place. The pizzas are dripping with cheese and various toppings, but she will not under any circumstances allow the use of plates or cutlery. “¡Con tus manos!” “With your hands!” she replies to anyone who asks for a fork. After you return to the bar with slab of wood your pizza came on, and she has made sure you’ve finished every bit, she cuts a thick slice of homemade cake (for free) and drops a dollop of dolce de leche over it. This, too, you must finish, because she beams and claps if you manage to.
 
Bottles of wine here are 6 euro, and the combination of pine-nut pizza and vino tinto in the cozy, lively space is fantastic.
 
These are two of the good little places I frequent in Madrid, and which have effectively transformed the city into a place I consider home. It is amazing what being a ‘regular’ at a coffee shop or restaurant grants you with as a relative newcomer to a city. I know I will be back in Madrid to stay, at least for a few years, sometime in the not-so-distant future. I also know, when I am back in New York and missing this city, it is the inside of these places I will have in my head while I do so. 

[The photo is of El Rincon, taken by me]

Spain in Mind is an anthology of excerpts, short stories and poems by an array of authors, some of whom are fixtures of classic literature, and some of whom I have seen in the New Yorker in recent years, all pondering their trips to Spain. I found these snippets of writers’ impressions of this country fascinating, especially those that related to Madrid and the parts of Spain I’ve traveled to. If anything, reading them reinforced my fondness for (which is quickly escalating to obsession with) this country. I clearly have a lot more intra-national travel to do.
 
Henry James’ short reflection on San Sebastián in 1876 was a pleasure to read, since it oscillated between descriptions of a city completely absent from its modern day counterpart, and glimpses of places unchanged, where I stood in or stared at and shared a similar reaction. His impression of the old cathedral, for example, was terrifically satirical but totally as I remember it. He describes that nearly comical over-the-topness of the place, completely dripping with “flamboyant Jesuit façade” and an interior “redolent of Spanish Catholicism.”   
 
His impression of the life-sized effigy of Mary in the cathedral, decked out in lace and jewels, and who seemed to him a “solid Spanish person.” Indeed, the interpretation of Mary seems heavily influenced by its locale. Solidly Spanish, indeed, but almost to the humorous extent of looking like some upper-class Española of yesteryear. “She was the sentiment of Spanish Catholicism; gloomy, yet bedizened, emotional as a woman, and mechanical as a doll,” said Henry James. We were both amused by it, 135 years apart.
 
Barbara Kingsolver wrote on her trip to the Canary Island of La Gomera, the one least easily reached by tourists, and therefore the one least ‘colonized,’ on might say, by the tourism industry. Her descriptions of exotic fruits and blue-eyed locals who speak an ancient whistle-based language have sold me completely. I’ve looked into what it takes to get to that island, and it seems to require quite a lot of money (it can only be reached by boat from one of the popular islands), so I’ll save it for when, you know, I’m independently wealthy or something. But I’m going. For sure.
 
Spain really is amazing for all it’s completely distinct regions. Actually, for a country smaller than most of the bigger US states, the variety is absurd. I can’t wait to explore more of it. I know I’ll be coming back here to live for a time, at some point in the future. I feel really lucky to be in Madrid, equidistant from all of it. 

[The photo was taken by me of La Concha, the beach that wraps around the sea-facing edge of San Sebastián. I'm sure this looked quite different when Henry James saw it, but really, not so different. Coastline is pretty unchanging, after all.]

Madrid is home to some incredible museums. The enormous Prado houses the classics; Bosch, Velazquez, Goya. The glassy, modern Reina Sofia is full of Dalís and Picassos. I love these museums, but what I have found most unique in Madrid is the artistic force among the people in the neighborhood or barrio of Lavapiés.
 
One could arguably relate Lavapiés to what the north side of Brooklyn was 10 or so years ago.  It is the immigrant neighborhood, full of Moroccan and northern African culture (and the accompanying amazing food). It was always the industrial area of the central city, always lower-income, and I have been told by many that it was simply not a place one should walk by themselves at night. It has not changed radically—there are no high-rent complexes or swanky nightclubs in Lavapiés—but it has attracted a sizable population of what one might call the ‘creative class’; young artists looking for like-minded people and space to work.
The Tabacalera is one such place. It is an abandoned brick tobacco factory with an endless number of cavernous stone rooms, hidden lofts, and an enormous patio space out back. Every wall is covered in whimsical graffiti. There is a concert space, a room just to watch projected films while lying in hammocks, a clay studio, a community-run bar with 1-euro beer, and dozens of more rooms I haven’t yet discovered. There is an enormous schedule of ‘talleres,’ workshop offerings, hand-written by the entrance and changing all the time; you can join a painting session or learn African dance or how to play the didgeridoo or just stop in for yoga on Sundays. Everything is free.

The buzz around the place is incredible. There is a mutual understanding here about the need to be creative, and the importance of it being a free experience. Although the city government gave the collective the right to the space two years ago, it is functions without funding, running solely on this concept of doing art together.

This notion is something I’ve never encountered in New York, perhaps because I don’t know where to look. But the thought of an enormous factory space in the middle of New York run solely on the belief in free art feels unlikely. Here, it's fantastic. The sense of community at Tabacalera is everywhere; when I go to a drawing group on Tuesdays, we all come early to set up and stay late, putting away the chairs, lingering for a beer, hanging out. No one is in a rush, and no one thinks of the time spent ‘working’ or helping in Tabacalera as the logging of volunteer hours. It is simply the act that accompanies the governing idea of the space.

I am one of two or three English speakers there, but it doesn’t matter. We’re all there because drawing is fun! Have that unifying concept is incredible, and something that has defined my semester in Madrid.

If you are interested, below is a video about the beginnings of Tabacalera...it's in Spanish, but you can get the idea of what the factory looked like before it was covered in murals and full of people. Here is the website, where they post the talleres. 

The question most on my mind in my new—or not-so-new—city is at what point to I cease being a tourist? Is that even attainable in my 5 months here? What requirements need I fulfill?
 
I speak the language now, more or less. I can hold a fairly fluid conversation, and I’ve reached the point where I am no longer translating what is being said to me, I simply understand it.
 
I have Spanish friends. I have friends who I might have had if I had lived my life in Madrid. In fact, it is very plausible that these are the people who I would have befriended if I were actually Madrileño.
 
I spend much of my time in situations where I am the only foreigner. I know the metro.
 
I’ve found ‘local’ places to eat, to drink. I’ve found the Madrid ‘underground’ scene, so to speak.
 
Is this enough? Am I still a tourist?
 
I find myself thinking about that and immediately reproaching myself for it. It shouldn’t matter! I’m getting the most from my experience, I think. But still, there is that tugging to be officially part of life here, and to have some fulfillable quota, to pass the marker where I know I’ve attained that.
 
The concept of a “back” and “front” to society, and of the constructed tourist “back-end” experience that is discussed in Dean MacCanell’s Staged Authenticity discusses this curious but wholly understandable urge to not only experience the ‘authentic’ but also to know we’ve experienced it somehow.
 
That remains an unanswerable question, but one I’ve asked even in New York, where I have lived year-round for almost 3 years. In a city full of transplants, when do you become a New Yorker? Perhaps, then, the unease marks something between the two; some “room” by MacCanell’s metaphor reserved for those who are beyond touristdom but not yet—and perhaps never will be—sure that they have grasped what it is to be part of their environment. 

[The photo was taken by a friend, of me, in what one might call a 'not touristy' neighborhood]

From morning café solo to evening copa de tinto, daily life in Madrid revolves around food and drink. This concept has largely shaped the way I have come to know the city—as a series of distinct neighborhoods teeming with, quite literally, local flavor. My day-to-day takes me from the hectic pastry shop in the commercial center of Madrid, Sol, to perhaps a pincho de tortilla in the upscale neighborhood of Chamartín, where NYU’s buildings are located, to perhaps North African fare or döner kebab in the immigrant neighborhood of Lavapiés. Malasaña, the hip, alternative neighborhood on my way home (Williamsburg would be an apt comparison) is the best place to linger in a café with a glass of vino, and La Latina, having a sizable Basque population, is the only place one should ever go for grilled pulpo—octopus tapas.
 
I do not go out for food like that on a daily basis, mind you. I cook in my apartment most days, which takes me through neighborhoods in another food-oriented way; in search of the cheapest fruterías and pescarías. Market culture is a tenet of daily Madrileño life. Elderly women point and scrutinize with downright intimidating seriousness, but if they catch you looking skeptically at any market offering, they will bubble over unprovoked with cooking advice and recipes. Barnacles, for example, were one such instance where I was caught staring, very skeptically, at the fish stand.
 
Where I have the most trouble at the market is with measurements. I do not know what fraction of a kilo I might want of cheese, or what fraction I want of broccoli. I have taken to asking for my food in units of people. As in “could I get enough broccoli for three people?” This exercise is very telling of the Madrileño palate. Enough broccoli for ‘three people’ tends to not be enough for myself for one meal. Garnish, maybe. Enough cheese for three people, however, is more than I’d put on the table at a dinner party. Green food is just not big here. Cheese most definitely is.
 
Walking is the other central factor of my day. Not that I didn’t walk constantly in New York, but here each barrio changes so suddenly and distinctly, that walking through them feels like one is covering a lot of ground. Just as the barrios can be broken down by food available, they can be classified by people found in them too; younger, older, alternative, wealthy, a whole array of ethnicities. The metro system is very good, but when one can pass three metro stops in a ten minute walk, it doesn’t feel worth missing seeing the barrios go by on the ground.
 
Every time I come home after a walk like that, I’m reminded how great this city is. New York is still untouchable, in my opinion, but I’m realizing more and more that I could live here in the future, for at least a few years.

I have spent the past month interning at El País, a major Spanish daily newspaper with a campus-like compound on the outskirts of Madrid. The building I arrive at every day is buzzing with a full-time staff of more than 400, half of which are reporters, the other half graphic designers, editors, translators, photographers, who cumulatively churn out a thick 30 page edition every single day.
 
I have tremendous respect for the newspaper; it was the first pro-democracy publication after the death of Franco, and continues to be a voice for progressive issues, calling attention to things like the dangerously high concentration of pollution that hangs over Madrid (they call it the “black beret”), which government officials seem to take great pains to ignore.
 
Every day, I walk to the back of the main editing floor of El País, where eight British ex-pats are assembling the English edition of the paper, which is tucked inside the International Herald Tribune every day. I’m charged with publishing the English edition to the web, writing headlines and captions, editing for length…this is basically a dream internship for me. But that walk in through the newsroom in the morning and looking around from my desk in the back is perhaps the most fascinating part.
 
After a lifetime of reading news and listening to radio, and having some minor experience in New York newsrooms, the way news is assembled in the English-speaking world is something familiar. The cadence of a news story, the quotes chosen, the angles used, these are more or less things we all have grown accustomed to simply by going about our daily lives in the U.S.. But being at El País is a reminder that the news elsewhere is something else entirely. As I walk through the newsroom, the mostly-male paper staff speaks loudly and impossibly rapidly into phones, interviewing sources with a directness unheard of in the U.S.. They shout across the room each other, debating headlines and formats, the latest graphics department blunder, what the president said at the last meeting of congress. The mood is something I’ve never experienced before, and so is the end product. The articles I see in the paper the next day are full of the same directness and high-pitched intensity.
 
Not that the newsrooms of English publications aren’t alive and energetic, or the news direct, but I get the feeling what I’ve been watching among the Spanish journalists is something incredibly indicative of Spanish modes of communication. Sitting at a bar counter here is just a more familial form of the same scene. Hand gestures flying, questions asked with intensity, information relayed rapid-fire.
 
As if the contrast needed more highlighting, the British staff (plus two Texans, plus me), assemble the English edition in a manner considered subdued only due to the almost comical juxtaposition. The men I work with have lived in Spain for a number of years, and the evidence is in their lively conversations with  the Spanish staff, but their English-speaking concept of the news permeates the paper they produce. In translating articles from the Spanish for the English paper, I’ve learned to take the edge off, to meter the tone, to bring statements in line with concepts of political correctness.
 
It’s a funny thing, really. I’m left wondering how the New York Times might look if Spaniards were writing it, or how we might think differently, as readers, if we were digesting Spanish journalism on a daily basis. In any case, I hope a touch of this newsroom intensity stays with me in some future career. The news should always be slightly Spanish.


[The images are my own, of my first clippable clip! Here is the link to the online version.]

 Since my first walk around Madrid, I have been carrying around a little 2” x 4” notebook. The first few pages are filled with carefully hand-copied Google Maps directions, the very first column of which were meant to guide me to “Café Rustica,” a coffee shop Time Out Madrid had assured me was “unpretentiously cool, with excellent cappuccinos.” That sounded good, but I still don’t know how excellent their drinks are, or how they maintain their coolness sans pretention.  
 
A look back into that notebook reminds me that I never made it to Café Rustica. On the opposite page, the detailed rights and lefts devolve into hastily scribbled names and cross streets: “EL RINCÓN- Calle de Santa Ana. LOLINA- Calle del Divino Pastor…”. That first walk into Malasaña, the neighborhood in which I now spend most of my time, turned up a wealth of fantastic spots, from hole-in-the-wall cervecerías to ethnic grocery stores to second-hand music shops. I was thrilled, writing everything down, noting where I wanted to come back for the menú del día, where calendars for live music hung on doors, where crowds of Madrileños were huddled around counters eating good-looking tortilla.
 
Looking back at the first few pages in this notebook is a reminder of how I saw the city those first few days. I was ecstatic to be here, to have found a neighborhood seething with exactly what I was looking for, and to walk barely 15 minutes from my apartment to get there.
 
Nothing about that statement is untrue for me now; I love it here, and I love Malasaña. But the way I approach it is markedly different, something Yzezzy’s ‘Going Places’ post about Berlin reminded me of: "... the city wasn’t just waiting here for me to come to it. It lives. It houses life." 
 
That was a surprisingly foreign concept. It shouldn't be, and I'm loathe to admit to it, but it was. The way I saw the groups of Madrileños eating in restaurants, or smoking on corners or riding by on motorbikes is not the way I see them now. They were, in those first few days, just well-placed parts in the narrative of this thing called my Semester Abroad. They were a moving postcard, a manifestation of Spanish culture, a good indicator of which restaurants to try and of the larger concept I was constantly trying to grasp, of “how they do things here.”
 
This is mode of thinking is something I've just begun to dismantle, largely by way of making Spanish friends. The more I meet people who have spent their lives in this country, or in Madrid itself, and watch the way they approach being in the city, the more it begins to feel like a living, breathing place, not just a checked box on an NYU Study Abroad form.
 
 The language barrier is getting more permeable every day, too. The more I have begun to pick up nuances in the language, to get the connotation and not just the meaning, the more real this place has become. Now, that little book of directions has become a record of my wanderings around the city. I still fill it with café names and favorite streets, but it feels less like a whirlwind and more like a language that has physical space, something I need to learn, to understand, not to ‘discover.’


(The photos are my own; the top one is the little notebook I've been carrying around, and the second one is a doodle I made while sitting in a café on Calle del Espiritu Santo, my favorite street in Malasaña.)
 

In the land of two-hour lunch breaks, being Madrileño means taking your time. That is the first thing I learned in my three weeks here, and I've just begun to settle into that concept--and I'm loving it. It it amazing how seriously Madrileños take their commitment to never be the least bit frazzled. The list of associated societal norms is tremendous, and nothing short of counterintuitive to someone whose sense of time is  thoroughly embedded in that special brand of New York City hyperfrenetic productivity. Eating while in transit, for example, is frowned upon severely. You will be unremittingly stared at. Paper coffee cups simply do not exist, because why would you have to caffeinate in a hurry when work doesn't start before 9 and your next 45-minute break is at 11:30 anyway? In the event the rest of the world took a cue from Madrid, the outcome would almost certainly be a decrease in the global incidence of ulcers.

It's possible this time-sense adjustment is particularly blaring for me due to my concentration--I'm studying new media and environmental politics, things that both require a degree of frazzledom, but especially the former. "Doing" new media-y things--blogging and tweeting (and live-blogging, live-tweeting!)--means that I really do love the overaccelerated rate of internet info-absorption. And I think the whole thing is very exciting for journalism and the future of environmental reporting, too. That said, I wish I could study so many more things, among them green architecture and art history. I'd also like to learn another language besides Spanish (Arabic? Japanese?), but judging by how long (how very very long) it look me to get Spanish under control, that may be more than I can ask from my undergraduate career. 

Other than that, I write for NYULocal.com and wrote for Gothamist.com, and I put hot sauce on everything. I love music (I'm going to Primavera Sound in Barcelona in May, anyone else?!) and art (worked at the Guggenheim for a bit), and most recently, the Spanish approach to late-night döner kebab. I'm looking forward to hearing about everyone's semesters, the awesome nooks you find in your new cities, and whatever cultural quirks you stumble upon along the way.

Besos,
Zoë

(Photo taken by me...I have yet to have a photo of myself here, I suppose I should get on that. Kaitie?)