Madrid -> Valdelavilla -> Madrid: how my brain broke just by speaking my own language...

i was in a rush when i flew into Madrid - so much of a rush that i actually spring for a taxi from the airport into town. i was really not in the mood for fucking around. i was supposed to be at an orientation lunch for my Pueblo Ingles programme at 2PM, and the flight didn't arrive until 40 minutes past that, so i sprinted into the city, dumped my backpack and powered across town. i missed the free lunch, of course, but i got a couple of coffees into me, listened to the live flamenco music and caught the briefing, which was the most important part - i kinda wanted to know what was expected of me over the coming week, and what i could expect in return.

Pueblo Ingles is a company operating primarily in Spain which teaches English. they do the standard courses, but they also have a programme where they take the students out to one of several little villages dotted around the place and immerse them in the language for a week. to keep the costs down, and to give them the most natural experience outside of spending time in an English-speaking country, they get in volunteers to spend the week with them and make us talk to them for hours and hours and hours on end. the biggest rule is that you never speak Spanish to them... although sometimes that gets bent if it means getting a better understanding. it's a lot of work for a volunteer - you have to get yourself to Madrid for the pickup, but they make it worth your while with free accomodation and 3 meals a day with just about as much wine as you'd want to drink. they say 3 meals a day. what they mean is a buffet breakfast, then 3-course banquets lunch and tea with morning tea and stacks of coffee thrown in, then they let you loose out into the town while you get paired up one-on-one with one of the Spaniards and suggested topics of conversation.

sounds like fun, yeah? well, it is. it's also surprisingly tiring. i like to think i can talk the ear off just about anyone, but at the end of the first day i was about ready to fall over from mental exhaustion and barely able to string a sentance together. it turns out i was the hardest person there to understand when i spoke naturally - i was actually told a couple of days in that the Spaniards were afraid to talk to me, i was so hard to follow, so i wound up doing my usual trick of adjusting my accent to make it easier to follow. this helped, i think.

it was an entertaining week, all told. we were in a little town village called Valdelavilla which literally translates as "Village In The Valley", with no mobile reception, a dodgy internet connection and no one else for miles around. the place was deserted back in the 20's when the government planted a pine forest which sucked up too much water for them to continue farming, then was redeveloped back in othe 80's/90's as a Rural Tourism resort. Pueblo Ingles has more or less permanent, exclusive access to the place for their programmes which run back to back, friday to friday, so the place is almost constantly in use so it works out well for everyone. what this all comes down to is that i got to see a part of Spain i'd never have seen if i'd done the tourist thing in a peaceful, quiet part of the middle of fucking nowhere in northern Spain. there were some surreal moments being out in the countryside, like when i took one of my victi... i mean charges for a walk, and on the way back was floored with the view of wind turbines up on the hill over the village, or when i woke up at 3 in the morning to a munching, crunching sound, looked out the window and saw 2 stags feeding on the green grass under my bedroom window.

the Spanish were hillarious fun, too. most of them had been sent by work to improve their English, but there were a few who'd paid out of their own pockets to be there, and at 1800 Euros each it's not a cheap proposition. i love the Spanish though - these are people who dance a the drop of a hat, and they all seem to learn at about the same time as they learn how to walk. seriously, these people can fucking MOVE, and they don't care who they dance with. the IT Manager in his 50's from Catalunya is dancing with the 19yo car salesman, then will pass him off for the pretty young OBGYN who was previously being spun around by the singer/dancer from Minnesota while the Russian/American dance-instructor tries to get the hairier of the two Australians to come salsa, gives up when he resists (by grabbing hold of the bar and refusing to let go) and instead grabs the photographer from Melbourne. ignore what you see on the streets of Madrid - the scam artists, the prostitutes, the thugs. don't let that be your impression of Spain. there were some beautiful, genuine people on the programme. take Olga and Clara, the OBGYN's. Clara had to be the sweetest lady i've ever met - always smiling and enthusiastic. she made me promise to let her know when i was in Rome so she could come and hang out with me, and how could i say no? take Jose Luis who was always stone-faced, then would come out with the driest humour i've heard in forever and having everyone on the floor laughing. then there was King Arthur (Arturo) and Pablo-the-Fifth (Pablo V) who were constantly dragging me aside to learn slang and swear words, and Marta who, at 17, became everyone's little sister. leaving was an emotional time - you spend a week of concentrated time with a bunch of people and when you suddenly have to go back to the real world you don't want to leave.

the Anglos were an interesting bunch, too - there were a couple of backpackers doing it for a bit of a change of pace (and a cheap week - my bar tab at the end came to 7.40 Euros), the regulars who've done programmes before, a number of Americans who'd flown in just to do the programme and were then heading straight home. a few of them had brought their teenage children with them who were involved in one of the teen-programmes.

that all said, i was pretty glad to get back to Madrid and not have to think so hard about what i was saying or how. making yourself easy to understand means speaking slowly and clearly, and keeping a conversation interesting without going into too many esoteric topics that they're not going to understand kept my brain working overtime. i was really looking forward to meeting up with the folks i'd met when i'd first pulled into Madrid, when i walked out of the orientation planning on heading off sight-seeing and was grabbed by Nic, the Mad Scotswoman, who dragged me out for a beer... or three. Nic's a veteran - she's done something like 6 different programmes over the years, so she's been in and out of Madrid enough that she knows her way around. i wound up hanging with her and Pete from Watford until past midnight on that first night and we'd exchanged numbers so we could find each other again afterwards, so at 9 i was waiting at the Bear statue just off Puerto Del Sol. it's a fairly famous little monument - only a metre or so high on a metre-high plinth, a bear reaching up to eat from a strawberry tree. i found out later that it symbolises the religious and secular sides of Madrid living in harmony from when the church held the land and mining rights and an agreement was made to not make life too hard on the town. the Bear statue is the standard meeting place for non-Spaniards in Madrid, so i had a fun time waving in the background of other people's photos while i waited for the rest of the crew to show up.

i liked Madrid a surprising amount. i was told not to expect much, but the dry heat agreed with me - it saps your strength far less than humidity, and there's a background buzz of energy that runs through the place. every city in Europe is built on a major waterway - an ocean, or a river - except for Madrid. it's fed water from an underground spring, but being inland keeps it dry and means you don't get the clinging heat you do elsewhere. you find yourself thinking at 2AM that it's really too early to head to bed because the party's only just beginning. Spain runs at a different pace and timing to anywhere else i've been in the world. forget about the siesta - business people don't have one, of course, you can also forget about finding an open shop between 2 and 4 in the afternoon because the shopkeepers DO. the good restaurants don't open until 9, where in most of Australia they're starting to shut down, and Spanish people think nothing of sitting out to dinner until 2AM, grabbing a couple of cervezas until 4, then meeting up at 9 or 10AM the next day. i have no idea how they do it, but i like it.

i met up with Pete the next morning at 9:30 back at the Bear to go sightseeing and spent half the day wandering around, grabbing coffee in Plaza Mayor and cruising through the Egyptian Temple. back in Egypt i was told that when UNESCO helped save Abu Simbel and the Temple of Isis a number of smaller temples were gifted to the countries involved, and the Temple of Dobod was one of them. it was kinda nice to have my memories of Egypt refreshed, if only for 5 minutes. shortly later we were back at the Bear to meet Nic and Sarah from California, as well as Fernando, one of the Spaniards from Nic's programme and Claire, a mad American who seems to have been everywhere and has more energy than i do at twice my age. by the time i climbed onto the night-train to Barcelona i'd been at the Bear 3 times as we met, split and met again. we'd done a brilliant tapas lunch and checked out some of the less-famous touristy sites, including the Don Quioxte statue i'd walked past earlier but in my rush to get where i was going hadn't noticed.

Madrid's a surprisingly addictive town. first glance says it's nothing much - just another European city, but when you're out on the town the resonance of a few million Spaniards pushes your energy levels right up, and sleep becomes this thing that happens to other people. now it's receeded into the distance and it's dark outside the carriage i'll be trying to sleep in tonight. tomorrow i wake up in Barcelona and i have high hopes for a good time there - it's been massively hyped and i'm hoping that the 2 full days i have scheduled will be enough. meanwhile it's time to curl up and see if Andy Mckee can play me to sleep so i have the energy to get through tomorrow...