Costa del not so much sol

This past weekend has been one of the better in Spain. Why, you ask? Because this weekend was a long weekend, a so called 'puente' which means bridge in Spanish in case you didn't know ;) I guess it does make sense in some way.
Anywaysss.. I spent it down at la costa del sol where my grandmother lives with her male companion a couple of months a year to avoid the horrible, freezing cold winter of Northern Europe. Not bad I must say. I would like to join the retirement paradise down there after a 45-something-year faithful service and dedication to work.
The weather wasn't as great as hoped but slowly got better toward the end of the weekend. The view from their apartment, however, is impeccable. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves! Hope you had a great weekend too :)

Snow. Flamenco. Dinner. Movie.

So Madrid. Apparently it is still winter down here which means that a few weeks ago it decided to snow!! Venga ya!
There is picture proof below. I am still in shock, especially since Spain sounds like a country of warmth, sun and blue skies. Be warned - it's all a trick to make you buy the flights. Boo.

Anywho... I can finally tick off the box of having gone to a Flamenco show in the city of Madrid. Two weeks ago in a small bar in C/ Barco 15. It was a very intimate show, nothing big, few people, one guy playing guitar and singing for a while. And I absolutely must have a dress like that someday.
Now for some real news!! This year's Danish Oscar-nominated movie, A Royal Affair, finally came out in Spain a year after the premiere in Denmark = last Friday. Thanks to the work the embassy had done in connection with getting the movie to Spain, we were of course offered free tickets for the premiere! Nice! However, due to some confusion about the time for picking up the tickets we had one and half hour to kill before the movie so we went for delicious sushi on the cinema "pedestrian" street near Plaza España - not bad, not bad at all.. Definitely will be going out (or staying in) for sushi again soon.
This all leads me to my recent revelation about the Spanish culture: the cultural time difference of 3 hours probably makes it quite hard to do the typical dinner & movie combination. Dinner just doesn't happen before 22.00 - but the movies do!
Conclusion: movie & dinner is now on my to do list!

On a final note, a close friend of mine came down on a visit for the weekend which basically means a lot of shopping, a lot of great food, and all in all a great weekend! xoxo.

Office humour

I'm less than a month in of my internship at our lovely embassy in Madrid and already the office atmosphere is surprisingly fun and relaxed.
Yesterday the political intern tried pulling our leg with the help of our Spanish/Danish receptionist. He came into our office (me and the other intern of commerce). He told us that the boss of our lovely colleague in the political department had sent him an email saying that she would not have time for the rest of the internship to sit in the reception. Now the case is this: we are all dead scared to sit there and receive the calls from whoever, especially if a Spanish person calls and we have no clue what they are saying :S
Obviously at first we laughed at him but then he started looking quite serious after that and we began to believe him. We should of course have realised the sneakiness of an intern of politics, but nooo... We fell for it....
Had we done anything to deserve it? Of course not! It definitely DID NOT have anything to do with the fact that me and my co-intern keep voting who has to take care of incoming calls in the reception when the receptionist can't be there, and we certainly don't end up both voting for her, every time. Majority rules, that's democracy, right?
The revenge will be sweet!!!

Any suggestions on how to get back at her will fo'sho' be taken into consideration!

The Indian Experience

If you are a female of Spanish or Latinamerican nationality, you usually know the feeling of being wanted, because the Latin guys are not scared to hunt down their prey. Not always the best strategy to get a girl in my opinion, but anyway... Luckily I am out of that race.. Although..
The other night I went out to have dinner at an Indian restaurant in the Lavapiés area of Madrid - and wauw was that an experience!! Never ever have I ever felt more wanted together with my companions, and that's even more than the gross sound that the argentine men makes when a girl walks by them. These restaurants each had 5 Indian people chasing down their prey, i. e. guests for their restaurant. It was almost so annoying that we lost our appetite, because they were ready to kill just to have us leave our money on their table. They are crazy!
We finally settled on a place and I must say...the first plate was nothing like I'd imagined. Enjoy the colour in the picture below fun fun :D

Luckily the main course was less scary looking, not the best tikka masala I've ever had but not bad, and we had a laugh because of the man hunt in Indian-Spanish and the artificial coloured food.
They get a giant golden star for effort!!

Pan as a tray?

The beauty of being a long way from home is that you always discover new things.. I cannot understand how this idea occurred, but this "tray" is definitely supposed to be a pan and used for cooking, not serving. However, the frozen yoghurt place in Plaza Chueca played cool English music which always is a nice change in Spain. Of course they also had a very confusing English menu with bad translations.
I silently thought to myself "This must be what a wannabe-hipster-café looks like in Spain", hah and I loved it! Enjoy 😊

New job, new home, new life

After a bit of a wait trying to get integrated into the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affair's IT system, I am now more or less set at the internship to do great things! Or at the very least gain some of the 'valuable work experience' that I have been craving for so long (if you can in fact crave that sort of experience the same way I often crave chocolate and liqourice).

Status:

I have underestimated how tiring it can be to sit in front of a computer for the most of the day (plus the exhaustion caused by looking for an apartment, wanting to catch up with friends down here and having to sleep in yet another shared bedroom in a hostel for several nights)

However, the living situation has now been sorted. I moved in with a very sweet Slovak girl my age who is also studying her masters in business so it seems we already have a bit in common.
España, bring it on!

The country of Cristobal Colón

For those of you who may not know this, Cristobal Colón is who we'd normally call Christopher Columbus. I'm not in America anymore and to be honest I seem to remember that this Cristobal is actually not from Spain. Nevertheless, it's relevant, because he was the great captain who sailed out from the Iberian peninsula to discover America. Why am I writing all of this you wonder? - Because I have returned to my Spanish home, the capital of their fabulous country, Madrid.

My internship at the Danish Embassy starts in less than 10 hours. It's very exciting!