Me amo España

Crazy night last night. When I got home I needed to rest. This was the first opportunity I had to just rest in my new apartment. All week I had gotten home late from class, so I just ate and went to sleep. So, I took off my work pants and work shirt and put on a comfortable t-shirt and pajama shorts. I relaxed for a while and at one point took out the trash. I made sure to grab my keys when I did this so I wouldn't get locked out. Eventually I decided it was time to go to the super market to buy some things I needed for the apartment and some food for dinner. I put my work pants back on and headed out. Just as I was closing my door, it began to occur to me that I don't have my keys in these pants anymore. However, by the time the thought finished forming, I had already closed the door and this door locks itself!  Hence began a rather interesting evening.

Directly across from my flat is a bar. A rule of thumb I've learned in Spain is that the younger the person (down to a lower threshold of about 17) the more likely their English is good. I see two girls sitting at a table outside the bar that are clearly in their young twenties, so I begin to approach them. A few side notes: on the way home from work yesterday I bought a Spanish SIM card for my phone, though I had not used it yet, and was not sure it had minutes on it; my iPhone stores my recent emails from gmail, of which one is an email with the number for my landlady's husband because I recently needed to meet him so he could fill out a form for my NIE application; my landlady and her husband, and their children, only speak Spanish. With all these facts, my plan was to find someone who could speak Spanish and English so they could call my landlady's husband (assuming my brand new SIM card worked) and translate my problem to him from English to Spanish. As I approached the girls, I noticed they're speaking German and had suitcases with them. I realized they might be in worse shape than me with the two languages, but I decide to continue with the plan anyways.

As is the theme of this story, I am a lucky person. One of these girls is studying to become an English and Spanish teacher in Germany. She has her oral exam in Spanish in a month, and has decided to visit Spain again (she had taught English and Spanish here last year for an internship) to brush up on her Spanish before the exam. She gladly calls my landlady's husband. Unfortunately, he tells her that he's not sure if they have a key for my flat, and that he'll call her back. The girls are at the bar, with their suitcases, because the friend they're staying with is, at this point, two hours late, so they've been drinking beer near her flat (she's apparently a neighbor of mine) until she gets back. They're in no rush and invite me to have a beer with them while we wait for the call so they can help translate again. We had a good conversation in which I learned about the reason for their travels to Spain and that the other girl is just along for the ride with her aspiring-teacher friend because she had never been to Spain before. She is studying music management in Amsterdam.

When I received the call back, Cathrin (the German, language guru) talks to my landlady who explains to her that they live 60km outside Madrid, and will come let me in, but would prefer I try breaking in first. She suggests using a credit card. This is something I have tried before at the frat with little luck (this is another funny story in which I was locked out of my room after a shower and had to get into my room, and also had no clothes, but this blog is about Spain, so I won't go into more detail about that story here), so I'm not optimistic to day the least. I ask Cathrin how to say "I've lost my keys," so I can ask a neighbor in my building to buzz me in, and they go to their friend's flat who had arrived there while we were waiting for my call. We exchange numbers so I can call them if I have any more problems, and we say good bye after I thank them tremendously.

A neighbor let me into the building and I tried everything I had in my pockets to open the door, but it did not work. It didn't help that the door has one of those barriers to prevent such break-ins, but at least I feel safer about my apartment!  I formulated a new plan to hire a locksmith, and headed to the hardware store a couple buildings up the street to ask the guy in there if he is a locksmith, or knows where one is. He is not, and told me I had to go three streets over to find one (I think; he only speaks Spanish). I begin to walk over there, but on the third street over, which had a different name than what he told me, I saw nothing that looked like a locksmith.

Wandering around trying to find some nice looking people to ask some questions, I found some kids hanging out drinking beers and asked them if they knew where the "man of keys" was. One of them figured out what I meant and showed me a sticker on a nearby electrical box with a phone number to call. Turns out these stickers are everywhere, including about a half dozen on a post outside my door, but I wouldn't have known because I didn't know the word for locksmith, which was what these stickers advertised. I called the number and as I began to butcher Spanish, one of the kids beckoned me to give him my phone, and then proceeded to explain my situation more fluently to the locksmith. The locksmith said he'd call back in a minute so I waited with the guys and they asked me some basic question in Spanish, like "where are you from" and "are you in Spain on vacation".  The locksmith called back and my new friend negotiated with him. The locksmith wanted 80€ for the service, but I only had 70€, and 5€ in change. The locksmith accepted the job for 75€ and promised to arrive in 15 minutes.

The guy who was talking on the phone for me had to go, but the other two guys went to my apartment building with me to wait for the locksmith. When we got there I wrote a text to my landlady (writing and reading Spanish is easier than talking and understanding the quick responses), telling her that I was going to use a locksmith, so she would know everything worked out. She promptly called me back and explained to me that locksmiths are way too expensive and that she would send her son to let me in. I tried to tell her, in broken Spanish, that I felt bad that she lived 60km from me, and that it wasn't a problem for me to pay for the locksmith because it was my mistake. Amazingly, she understood me, and said that the 60km was not a problem and that she'd rather let me in than let me pay for a locksmith. She then began to say other things I did not understand, so I passed the phone to one of my new friends so he could talk with her. After the call, he explained to me that her son would arrive at 9:30pm on a motorcycle and that I should wait for him at the front door.

It was 8:00pm now and I felt bad that these kids had dropped whatever they had planned to come wait for a locksmith with me, and that it turned out I didn't need a locksmith. To show my thanks I offered to buy them each a beer. They agreed but said they had plans soon. We went to the bar across the street, and I ordered three beers. One of the kids also bought himself a sandwich. It was of something I had never seen, and so he let me try it. It was tasty and the bar owner told me it was "black pudding", I think. We all ended up talking for a while. They spoke a little English, so between my Spanish and their collective English we could understand each other. I found out that one is in school to become a cook and the other to become a code monkey. They're both 19, and were surprised to learn I was 25. They thought I was no older than 22. We talked about everything from sports to culture to Sanel. They were nice and ended up hanging out with me through two beers and a traditional Spanish dish made at the bar called Oreja. Cathrin also called while I was at the bar to make sure everything was alright, and I told her it was. We then also made plans to try and find each other at Noche en Blanco, which is a yearly festival in Madrid where all the museums are free to everyone.  It happens tonight and I'm already going with a friend of Sanel's.

At 9:00 the two guys had to leave to meet up with their friends. At that point I went to sit on the sidewalk in front of my building to wait for my landlady's son. About five minutes later an elderly couple that apparently lives in my building arrived home, but started asking me questions. I wasn't entirely sure what they were saying, but I gathered they wanted to know if I lived here and what I was doing sitting on the sidewalk. Just as I started trying to answer, a lady who (in her worlds) "can't speak much English but loves languages and learned a little English from her son" walked by and then helped me explain my story to the elderly couple. They offered to let me into the building, but I explained to them (through the language entusiast) that I needed to wait for my friend (don't know the word for landlord and the nice lady didn't know that word in English) to come bring me the keys to my flat. The elderly couple went inside and I then talked to the language enthusiast for a few minutes, which was nice.

To no longer appear homeless, I decided to wait in the bar for the remaining twenty minutes. There these two older guys talked to me for a while and we actually managed to have a full conversation in Spanish, thanks to their unyielding patience. When my landlady's son showed up I paid and left rather quickly. The son was really nice and in surprisingly good mood given the circumstance of his trip to Madrid. Once inside my apartment I grabbed my keys and thanked the son. I planned to go to bed, but I decided I wanted to keep talking with the guys in the bar and get to say good bye properly rather than so hastily. I returned to the bar holding out my keys and was welcomed with cheers from my friends and the lady who owns the bar. Perhaps most enthusiastically from the bar owner because she had watched my story from the very beginning and seen the whole progression. The older guys bought me a drink and we talked some more. After twenty minutes or so I was exhausted and finally headed home. It had been a long and amazing night, and I went to bed with a smile on my face thinking of how awesome and helpful everyone I met that night had been. This story certainly speaks as a good omen for the coming years in Europe!