Monday - university, moving again, and meeting CouchSurfing people

Monday is meant to visit the University. Another overload of memories and emotions :) We had a hearty lunch at the cafeteria with Aneta from the Polish flat, with Sarah, and with a Latvian girl Baiba, who almost fainted from surprise when she heard that she is actually not the only person in that cafe who can speak Latvian...
And not to hurt the pride of the local language, we also had a chat in Spanish, with another Polish student, in the inner yard of the university... And the university tour was completed by checking mail in the computer class, walking through the library, and two unsuccessful attempts to borrow a movie from the language center. The first time I hit the lunch break (or siesta, if you prefer), and the next time was past their working hours in the ‘movie-room’ (the women next door told me the wrong opening hours...). The good thing was that at least I met my favourite Spanish teacher Carola in the next room. Yep, I still love this language :-D

It was time to move again – and it was not the last time to change the sleeping place during this week :) So I had to take my stuff from Aluche, Emilie’s and Roberta’s place. I had slowly gotten tired of the 30-minute trips from Aluche to the center during the previous days, but this time it was even double – traveling from the South-East Madrid to South-West takes about an hour, together with the 10-minute walk to the house from the subway stop. This time, the walk home was actually prolonged another 10-15 minutes, because I simply couldn’t walk through the park without taking photos of the hundreds of old people killing their time in the fresh air, of the interesting construction of a climbing attraction in the children’s playground, and of the guy in his 30s who was flying a remotely controlled toy plane.. Of course, I was caught admiring especially the last attraction ;) You can see some photos of that park walk in the online albums soon (will put a link here), and here’s a video to give you an idea of the concentration of prosthetic teeth in the park in Aluche ;)



It’s lucky that I took some time off to have a chat with Emilie and Roberta before going back to the town. Because being lazy sometimes gets you further than running. To make the matters clearer – I got a call from Ramon, the guy whom I know since the first days of the Erasmus semester – me & Kristine lived at his place for a week before finding our own home. And he said his car GPS can find whichever address I tell him, so that we can have meet and remember old times. Nice :) So I said bye-bye to Emilie & Roberta, and traveled to the center with Ramon. Unfortunately we had not completely understood each other and our plans, so we didn’t do anything else in the center – he had thought of driving together to Rivas (SE Madrid, even further South-East than the University..) to chill there, while I had agreed with a girl from CouchSurfing to have dinner and watch a movie in the center. So we agreed to meet the next day, and I was out in the center, trying to orienteer towards Calle Viriato 12, where Maria lives.

Maria has an incredibly cool small flat! From the first step, you feel the atmosphere of a traveller’s home ;) Lots of half-packed suitcases and souvenirs from different places, of course, help in creating that image. The whole flat is actually a one-room studio, but the many hanging and standing shelves and wardrobes segment the room into a spacious apartment. The best element, undoubtedly, is her shower room, which is in practically in the center of the flat (or room, or studio, don’t even know how to call it now..), and partially see-through :) :) Well, you cannot actually see through the shower room walls, but it is built from glass bricks that let you understand movement and light behind them. And it is round and HUGE (1,3m diameter maybe?), so I preferred to call it her SWIMMING POOL :) And that’s not it – the whole bathroom is kind of 2 in 1: toilet and bathroom. But still in 2 different rooms. But you can use the same door to close both doorways!!! Can you imagine that? Open one doorway, and you close the other, which is at a 90-degree angle from the first, sharing one corner with the other doorway... That’s good space planning, I say!
Maria’s great! We discovered that we have rather many common interests and tendencies, during the long dinner table talk :) Traveling, love for Spanish language, logical thinking and tendency to understand things rationally and mathematically, juggling addiction, etc, etc.. Yes – and we discovered all that in Spanish :) It seemed that in that evening, the language kind of came out easier... Mysterious.

My Spanish was probably even better in the following morning than the night before – because the last thing we did before falling asleep was watching a Spanish comedy :) "Dias de futbol" it was called – or Days of Football, as one might translate it. It was about a bunch of guys who all have their problems with work, life, family, women, etc – and they share a common stress-relieving solution: they start a football team, and participate in the local amateur tournament. Of course, on their way towards their first big victory (which means finishing a match without losing with about 5 goals) they steal their uniforms from a sports store, lose one of the guys’ newborn baby, re-find old lovers, bribe the referees, etc, etc.. Definitely fun! I also received a list of next Spanish comedies I have to see from Maria ;)