Tap water in Madrid filters down from the snow topped mountains that ring the city, my host mom explained to me one day after my first lunch in her home. I had, with eyebrows raised in surprise, exclaimed how good the tap water was, so she told me why it was so.

“Agua de grifo”in Madrid tastes like Fiji water, something I happily, and regularly, pay top bottled-water prices for. It was spilling from the tap. There was glee in my heart.

Theeeeese Spanish, mountains to be exact

I don’t even know how to explain to you about how picky I am about water flavors. I am the least-picky eater I know, but when it comes to H2O I am soooooo discerning. It probably stems from frowing up in a city that had flouride in their tap water, and then going to school in the nearest city where the tap tastes like chlorine (that they do, indeed treat the tap water with).
Moving to the Spanish capital, I had prepared myself for The Worst city tap water. Something not fit for human consumption was more-or-less what I was anticipating. Then my host mom poured me a glass upon my arrival home, and I was whisked away in a swirl of joy. At first I asked where she got her water, and she looked soooooo befuddled, and then just said, very matter-of-factly (like she always was– probz why we got along so well) that it was from the tap. Actually, at first she just pointed to her kitchen sink, and then after processing my question for a few more moments told me it was tap, and the fact about the snow-melt. I had literally been in her home for maybe a few hours. It was a funny introduction.

(You don’t know what good water means to me, you don’t.)

After years of spending silly amounts of money on water, looking for the water that tasted just right, I found it pouring from a tap in a tiny kitchen in a lesser neighbourhood of Madrid. I was thrilled, and it just added to the growing feeling that I had found home, after having searched for that for some time, too.

It turns out, Europeans I met didn’t drink that much water, in general. Back in the States I had been slurping down 100ish ounces of water a day like my track-runner friends did. I can feel when I haven’t drank enough water in a day. It’s a thing, to be sure. Europeans drink far more wine than water (at least in the Southern EU), yet still never seem to be dehydrated, perhaps its their Mediterranean diet? Further research is needed.

So if you find yourself in the dreamscape that is Madrid, not only is the water safe, but it is expensive-bottled-water delicious.

I miss Madrid so much.

All the time in a myriad of ways.

Sometimes (often), I miss being able to get cheap, nutrient-rich, yummy food more or less any hour of the day.

Sometimes it’s the Culture I crave. The Prado calls to me softly, wondering why I haven’t been parked in front of a Goya, wondering about brush strokes.

I miss Real Madrid, the rowdy crowds of fans, the sharp comments of professors who rooted for other teams.

Other times, it’s the accessibility I crave. The metro so I can nap or read while I get where I need to be from home. The cheap flights all over Europe and Northern Africa, so I can get to where I’m interested in visiting.

Oddly, I miss my host mom SO MUCH. I have literally never in my life had such good care taken of me, and it was a treat as much as it was a retreat from my real life. I’m sure that’s a huge chunk of why Madrid felt like home in a way nothing ever has before.

Some days I just miss being where I felt I belonged.
I live in the very top of Texas, the panhandle it’s called, in a little university town that is charming and sweet, but often feels very empty and alienating.
It’s in one of the more conservative counties in possibly the most Republican state in the continental United States. I am… not conservative.
I feel lonely 90.5% of days in Texas, and my lifetime close, close friend (my “person”) whom I lived with in Spain just left for grad school in Germany.

I miss loud discotecas, I miss packed pubs, and cafés where everyone shared one super huge table, and I miss the structure of college courses (*gulp* never thought I’d say that).

 

I have missed Madrid like I have missed no man I have ever felt for, and I have cried for missing it harder than any quasi-breakup I have ever been a half of.

So, that’s my warning for studying abroad: you may well fall in love with a land you can’t stay in, and it may feel like it’s killing you when you get home.
It may feel like it’s carving out your insides for long, long after you get home.
Many of the students I studied abroad with have returned, most of them as English teachers through the notorious auxiliarias program. We do what we must to get back to what we love, no?

I am no suggesting you guard your heart from paradise, by all means love Spain, and Madrid, and travel with a bigness unprecedented in your own heart, but when you are home, and you feel alone, know there are many others that mourn the loss of paradise with you.

I currently bank with Wells Fargo, and with all the Super news about them lately (sarcasm!!!), I’ve been thinking about banking, which (as anything does) lead me to think of being abroad.

• Exchange American dollars for Euros before you go. You get a better fixed rate (that’s what the research I’ve done says, at least, I did not do this and sort of regret it), and have money going in. I wouldn’t withdraw a HUGE amount, but at least a get-started amount. Enough to go three days on, maybe.
• Don’t forget to turn on the travel notification for your debit/credit card. This may mean calling your card provider, or clicking a button on a website, or maybe actually in-real-life talking to a banker. It needs to be done so your account isn’t frozen for suspicious activity.

My study abroad program suggested keeping emergency funds, which would have been really smart for me to do, considering I lost my debit card… like three times.

What is really funny is that before, during, and right after my time in Spain I thought this was a stupid recommendation. Then, thinking about this blog post, I realized how much it would have helped if I had back-up cash tucked away EACH TIME I lost my debit card.

I thankfully had friends who were willing to pay for stuff when we went out, and I could pay them back when my next debit card got in.
Seriously, thank God for that. It would have been TERRIBLE without that.
So if you have the kind of financial availability to make emergency money a reality, do so. Keep it at home so it doesn’t get nicked, and be wise with your spending.

Now, I think I want to bank with an international bank, so I can go into a branch abroad to replace a lost card. As frustrating as it was, having to wait for the card to be shipped across and ocean to me when I lost it (and then wait for the very dubious Spanish mail to get it to me) Bank of America never charged me ATM fees the whole time I was abroad, which was freaking stellar. I pay more for ATM fees in my hometown than I did in a foreign country. Wild.
But very nice.

I plan to get a BBVA account eventually.
They have branches all over the world, and they are abundant in Spain.
I’m sure they, being an international and savvy bank, have easier channels for money-access around the world, along with there being easier access to a banker who could help me with money issues in person while abroad.

Coordinating time zones to talk to a BOA support team member because I was a dunce who had lost their card again was not ideal.
I’d much rather admit my drunken stupidity in person to a grown up with a real, stable job. Who wouldn’t?!?

I packed a straightener I never used for Madrid.
I would have loved to use it, but right before I left my dad and I were talking about my adapter (because plug-ins in Europe are different from those of the US). In the conversation IN THE CAR ON THE WAY TO THE AIRPORT, I guess mentioned straightening my hair??? I don’t recall, but for some reason or another my dad found out I had packed an expensive straightener and told me I couldn’t use it.

“But I have an adapter.”
A weak protest, apparently. The power of the plug-ins in Europe is also stronger, I was told, and if I plugged in small appliances (like my hair tool) it would fry because of the larger-than-normal amount of energy flowing into it.
So I listened like a good girl, and didn’t use it (to my hair’s dismay- the photos of my hair in Spain are WiLd, wow.
But then a classmate, Rachel, passingly mentioned using hers a few weeks after arriving. I told her she had to stop, it would fry it eventually, and she looked at me like I was crazy! She was going to keep using it. I don’t actually know how that worked out, so maybe it’s worth risking it if you feel confident you could replace your tool once you got home, or are ok with popping into a Spanish store to buy a replacement, which leads us to…

Emma my roomie. After being in Spain for a bit, we took a trip to Corte Ingles (the HUGE department store that has everything and anything) and she bought a tiny mirror to do her makeup in, and a straightener.
She was well pleased with it, even though it was just a cheapie off-brand one she’d bought for less than 20€. It did the trick, and she didn’t have to risk frying something nicer from back home.

All this to say, be careful with what you plan to plug in. Phone and laptop chargers are fine. Straighteners and curling irons, think again.

If you’re about to go abroad and need a plug-in adapter Ace hardware has multi-country ones for relatively cheap, which surprised me. I never would have thought to look at a hardware store (which sounds stupid as I write it), but rather I got mine in the luggage isle at a local Target. I think the ones I saw at Ace were cheaper, and just as nice, as the one I got. Shop around, if you can, for an adapter.

I have been reading blog posts about Madrid much longer than I have been writing them, so I thought I’d round up links to some of my favourite posts from some fantastic blogs.

One of the best descriptions of what it feels like to be introduced to Madrid (and fall madly in love before you even realize you’ve felt something) http://dianahenry.co.uk/journal-entries/travel/madrid/

This guy who taught in Madrid makes some good suggestions, including a great Indian place I loved http://youngadventuress.com/2013/01/the-expat-files-dan-in-madrid.html

This is the blog of the guy who was interviewed in the link above http://expatadventuresofdanman.blogspot.com.es/ it is a pretty basic blog, nothing fancy, but he worked as an auxiliar in Madrid and speaks well to basic life as an auxiliar.

This blog’s name is Get Lost. This is a blog post on getting lost. It gels. http://dailytrojan.com/2015/02/19/madrid-getting-used-to-getting-lost/
She had a harder time with the metro system than I did, it seems.

I want to eat EVERYWHERE this guy recommends. Eating is a big deal to me on vacation… http://www.madridchow.com/

As I’ve said before, I went to Madrid for the futbol
You need to experience that goodness, too
http://spainattractions.es/football-guide-madrid/

I’ll probably update this post as I find new great sources, so bookmark it and check in from time to time if you dig it.

 

 

My last weekend in Madrid was a weird one.
I thought I would be staying longer, I had planned to stay in Madrid until 17th of July and fly home with my dad as he made a return leg of a business trip. As I looked over my finances, I realized I’d run out of money before then, so I emailed my dad and told him I’d need to go home before then (I was thinking mid-June). He said cool, when in the next week did I want to go home? I tried to explain that’s not what I meant, and he told me next week or I could find my own way home.
So, without even an nth of the money necessary to buy a ticket home I conceded. I picked the Friday after classes were over.

OOPS! There are no flights that day, only Monday.

So the last week of classes, I went from expecting to leave July 17th to knowing I was leaving less than a week away.
It was frustrating and panic-inducing to say the least.

I finished out my last week of classes, and Thursday evening had a huge going away girls night out. Why? Because everyone was going out of town for the weekend, or was going home.

My last weekend in paradise was alone.
Friday I moved out of my piso that had been home for 5 months– that was traumatic enough all on it’s own. I had never had such good care taken of me.
All the girls had left on trips that morning, so I shuffled over to my life long friend’s place, where I’d be set up for the weekend. She, too, and her two roommates had left for the weekend. There was a key left for me. I sat down my things and turned on Netflix. I watched Netflix all day Friday, even passing up a chance to drink in the park with friends who were leaving Saturday.
I had slid deep into a slump.

The next day my only friend who was still in town texted me. I had half forgotten she’d be in the city, but we had talked about spending the lonely weekend together on Thursday.
She had a friend in town, a Brit on a cane (skiing incident) whom she’d attended grade school with.

He wanted to go to a bull fight, something I had managed to go without the whole of my time in Spain (purposefully, I might add).
We showed up late, he’d bought my ticket (neither Lorena nor I wanted to be there), and because the Spanish are quite serious about their bull fights, we weren’t allowed to sit until the next bull was brought in.

So with just a few minutes in between bulls, we were expected to sit down.

Problem one: the steps up to the seats aren’t even a foot’s length deep, and are quite steep— hard for someone with a cane, so that took a second to herd him up.

Problem two: there were four Spanish students in our seats. Since we hadn’t been there for the first corrida, they probably figured the seats were open, so they sat in them (much closer to the stairs). When I told them those were our seats, they quite literally ignored me (not terribly unexpected from typical Madrileños). I repeated myself, while Lorena’s friend winced behind me because his damaged leg is turned at a weird angle because of the steps, and only one student bothers to even turn and look at me, only to turn back away.

ANGER

Now the security guys are like, “YOU HAVE TO SIT DOWN.” Again, the Spanish don’t full around with their corridas.
THEN a Frenchman behind us starts arguing with me about how we need to sit down. I try to explain to him there are people in our spots, we can’t, but he doesn’t seem to understand.
I tell (read: shout at with the full force of my not inconsiderate anger) the Spanish kids to move again. Nothing. The Frenchman squawks at me, when I was trying to help him by getting us our seats (his were beyond ours, so the students moving would help him, too).
I angrily demand our spots from the quad again (our injured companion grabbed my wrist and soothingly tells me to calm down), as a guard comes up the teeny steps telling us to sit, the fight has just begun.
One of our party explains to him what’s happening while the Frenchman (with a huge backpack on) climbs over us, the people sitting, and the Spanish students to get to his seat. Whatever.

Then a Spanish woman literally kicks the kid who’d turned to look at me and tells the group they had better get up, they were Spanish, they new better than to act so beneath themselves. Why were they not sitting in their assigned seats, that wasn’t proper*, they knew better. So they quickly get up and move several seats and a row over to their spots.

I give thanks to the lovely Castilian woman, and we inch our ways over to our spots, but there is literally no foot space whatsoever. People sit one row right up against the next, no foot space factored in whatsoever. This was interesting with someone who had a torn MCL and ACL. So after arranging with the people in front of us to get the guy’s leg positioned in between them, we find they’re Americans, too. They were sorry they couldn’t help with the seating arrangement, but they don’t speak the language and I seemed to be the kind of person who would have dealt with it one way or the other (yikes?).
As we settle in to watch the fight, we realize there is a lot going on we’re not totally sure about. I’d had the concept and some of the traditions of the corridas explained to me by professors, but it wasn’t everything.

The Castilians sitting behind us clearly knew everything, as their running commentary suggested. It was two couples, one half comprised of the woman who’d helped us. I turned to thank her again, and ask her and her group a question about what the hankies people dangled meant (mercy), why they boo’ed the man in the most beautiful black bull fighting costume I’d ever beheld (he was Mexican), what the wee spikes used on the bulls were called (I forget now), and what the fighter on the horse was called (again, forgotten). The husbands told us all the answers, and filled in some of the cultural Why’s for us, too. They were amazing, and so, so sweet.
They may have only helped us because they didn’t want me to angrily shout through their precious bull fight, but I’m happy it happened.

Throughout the corrida, the charming Brit kept a running commentary that had the whole little group of English speakers laughing out loud, which our Spanish friends wanted translated, and ended up chuckling over, too. He was well pleased we’d given in to his plans, and surely making it a pleasant experience.
Because of the lack of foot space, the other friend of Lorena’s was literally wedged in between my legs, so that was a bit of an interesting ice breaker.

Hi, my names Miranda. Oh blahblahblah it’s nice to meet you. Oh sure, here sit right between my legs, of course (which is why there’s that head of hair in the bottom of my above photo).

The bull fights were shocking for someone that the fall before had dabble in veganism. Lorena straight up yelped and turned away red-faced after one rather sudden defeat. It was bloody, but I could see quite quickly what Ernest Hemingway had spoken of.
The sad, dark beauty of the bull fight, the same of sad, dark beauty in so many of Goya’s later paintings, and in the grey shades of Titian’s most famous works. The man dressed all in black, as mentioned before, moved so beautifully, in such smooth, incremental motions that I could not look away.
He was what a corrida enthusiast professor had described as a master. She had gotten into a pleasant little titter about the sport with us one day after someone had presented on the tradition. She and her husband attended regularly, and she covered some of the rules, some of the big festivals that great corridas corresponded with, and some things a master displayed.

This guy had them. The red cape (actually yellow and hot pink), moved as if a rippling brooke possessed it. His footsteps were mere glides, shadows of the spots they’d just held. He seemed to not move, yet avoided every attempted gore by the bull. He inclined himself this way and that, a mirror pond next to a beast the size of the cars parked on the street. It was a reverential thing, it awed me in the way Easter mass does. How someone could be so still, graceful, and calm bamboozled this someone who is Loud, Enthusiastic, and Frank. Watching him any lingering regret about attending melted away.

He was the last matador.

 

The crowd after, a moving mass of bees on the comb, in the Plaza del Toros, we parted to head to a friend of a friend’s place. The street was rivering in Spanish- both the Castilian language, and the decidedly Spanish look.

Boys who looked like travel posters for Spain in the 20s, their black hair parted at the side and slicked over.
Women with light eyes and hair— some in between of blonde and brown.
These were the people I had imagined when moving to Madrid, but hadn’t actually seen much of. Turns out, they’re the really wealthy who live in the Salamanca district of the capital and attend corridas. It should have been no surprise the young men who looked like the bull fighters on antique airline posters live in the neighborhood where the bull fights happen.

For a night entered with much trepidation, in the shadow of the heart-crushing reality that I had to leave my Home for my home, it was such a good evening.

*events seem to be somewhat different in Spain, people really do sit in the seats their ticket assigns them to. At least, that’s what football matches, a concert, and this showed me.