This Week's Bane of My Existence

Stamps. I have been on the lookout for them ever since my second week in Spain, thinking that I will go and purchase them if I happen to pass by an estanco, or tabaqueria, which sells them. (I realized too late that I could purchase stamps at the place I registered for my Metro pass. I was right there, in the same shop.) 

Anyway, I have some long-overdue postcards to send, and my project on Tuesday was to find a place where I could buy stamps. That day was also my find-a-book-in-English day, so I was pretty busy. After going to the bookstore, I stopped off at Sol to get some more postcards and look for an estanco, but it was getting late, I was tired, and I let myself off the hook because I felt so accomplished for having bought not one but two books in English earlier that day.

Wednesday was the match, and so I gave myself off that day, too.

Thursday we had a barbecue after work, so I went to that instead.

Friday I found an estanco on GoogleMaps, and I thought I had the right bus station. At about 8:45 p.m., I hopped on a bus, but it was the wrong bus because it didn’t take me where I wanted to go. I got off, looked around for an estanco, didn’t find one, and then spent twenty minutes waiting for the right bus to come and pick me up. (Public transportation failure – four other buses came before mine did.) At this point, it was almost 9:30 p.m., and I still had to buy food from the local grocery store (Lidl), which closes at 10 p.m.

My stamps would have to wait for another day.

And that day was today. I have been to the Estrella supermercado a few times, and across the street is a tabaqueria. To make sure that there really was a tabaqueria there, I looked at the street view on GoogleMaps. (Despite my best efforts, I can’t figure out how to take a screen shot on my computer or find a picture on the internet, but I'm trying to show you what it looks like. To compensate for my lack of computer skillz, just imagine a maroon-and-yellow T hanging above a shop door.) I found the tabaqueria and was on my way. I got lost a little bit, because I pick a direction before thinking about the best way to get somewhere – I want to look like I know where I am going, but such a desire causes me more trouble than it’s worth. However, that is neither here nor there, and I arrived at the tabaqueria with little incident.

I joined the line, which was about four people deep. As other people bought their cigarettes, and I kept thinking that this is place couldn’t possibly have stamps to send my postcards to the U.S. By the time it came to me, I asked the sentence I had prepared in my head: “¿Vendes los sellos para los Estados Unidos?”

To my surprise, and gratification, she said “Si.”

She took her time finding them, and she asked me if I wanted one. Ha ha. No, I wanted eighteen. Granted, I don’t have eighteen postcards to send – right now – but it took me this long to figure out how to get stamps, and I wanted to make sure that I had enough for the next round. She got my eighteen stamps, I paid for them, and then I went on my merry way.

I now have eleven postcards, written, addressed, and stamped. I forgot to put them in the mailbox today. I won’t forget to put them in the mailbox, though, because unlike post offices (which don’t sell stamps anyway, or so I’ve heard) and tabaquerias, post boxes really are everywhere. To prove this, there is one just outside my apartment building. It looks like this:

This isn't my "correo" box. Mine has graffiti on it. It gives it extra personality, I think.

The Metro Train Law of Lizzle

I have discovered a new law today: the Law of Lizzle. Whenever I take the metro, it is a law irrevocably decreed that I just miss the latest train. Had I been a few seconds earlier, I would’ve caught it. As such, I have to wait for at least another seven minutes until the next train comes. If it’s after 7 pm, I have to wait eleven minutes.

Regardless of the hour, the train will always be busier going in my direction. However, I am allowed a seat  once every three journeys.

No matter the circumstances, a train going in the other direction must always come before my train comes, and it must be less full than my train. I can be standing in my train, but the other train must come before the doors of mine come. Whenever possible, the universe will make it so that two trains arrive going the other direction before my train comes.

The result, every single time: exasperation and a very long commute.

Mmm, delicious.

In Which Buses May Explode

Oh my goodness, two posts in two days! Something must be wrong in the world.

Actually, there is something wrong in the world today (my world, anyway [ooh, that sounded really bratty]). I have something to write about other than, "I sat at a desk for eight hours today wracking my brain for things to say about Israel." Today, the Madrid public transportation system was a massive failure.

Every day, I take the metro to go to work. I walk ten minutes to the nearest train station, take a twenty-minute metro ride, and then walk another five minutes to get to my work. It's like opening an umbrella or blinking: simple, right? Everything is fine and dandy until the metro workers decide to strike, and not even offer basic metro services - at least while I'm awake. I admit that I inadvertently slept in this morning, but I thought the metro would be running at 9 am.

Not so.

Instead, I had to figure out how to use the bus system under the pressure of getting to work within a reasonable amount of time. Let me just say that I don't like buses. You can use the metro to get just about anywhere in Madrid. It might take you two line changes, but it's alright. You know exactly where you're going on the metro lines. There are maps everywhere. They stop at designated, well-advertised stations. It might not be very scenic, but at least you're not stuck in traffic all the time. It's difficult to find bus stations, and then know when to get off, and before you do anything you have to worry about the direction you're going, and you don't have little signs leaping out at you saying, "Look at me! I'll show you the right way! No worries! Follow me!"

At about 9:15, I called my house-mate Magi and woke her up. I was pretty frantic, asking how to get the bus to my work and how to pay for things and how to know which bus to take. She couldn't log onto the internet to check times and buses - perhaps because everyone else was logging on to check times and buses, or the computer people at the public transportation department were also on strike - but she couldn't really help me. I got on the bus that I had taken to go to Sol a few weekends ago, and then at the Parque del Retiro, I got off, wandered around for a while and asked a few people where the nearest bus 29 station was, and then eventually - finally - thankfully - made it to work. Two hours later than I normally arrive, but the important thing was that I arrived.

No thanks to the metro.

So many people were on the buses today. For as hot and crowded as the metro can be sometimes, it's even worse on a bus.

Coming home today, I saw one bus break down. I want to think it was because there were so many people on it. Water started spewing from the end of the bus (overheating much?). On a side-note, I thought the air and steam smelled faintly of waffles. Someone must have said that the bus was leaking, because all of a sudden there was a panic and some people left the bus. Watching people exit the bus was vaguely reminiscent of watching blood flow at a cellular level: you see all these little specks rushing by on certain paths, while bigger specks just sit there. The majority of people who left the bus in a panic were young teenage girls.

This is not what the bus looked like.

Well, at least I can say I learned how to use the bus system today.

Sorry for the poor quality of this post (lo siento!), but today was a rather long day, and I didn't feel like writing this up in a word document, maybe editing it, and then posting it here, which is what I usually do.