A Day to Forget

I woke up Monday morning wanting to have breakfast, relax a bit before teaching my class at noon here at home. What happened instead was my landlady, Luisa, came with her ax to grind and berated Armelle and I before I'd even finished my first piece of toast.

What happened? Sunday morning, after traveling 1,700 km, 32 hours from Strasbourg to Barcelona and then on to Madrid we arrived home. We showered, ate something and got under the covers for a nice siesta in our own bed when just as I'm drifting off to sleep I hear the door open. There's a knock on my ex-roommate Rodri's door and then the shouting began. Luisa had come in, saw Rodri's friend sleeping on the couch and was upset that he had allowed a friend to crash. There was the also the reason Luisa was there, she came to show the room and Rodri refused to allow her to see it. Bea, Rodri's quasi gf, got into the mix in order to defend him when she got into it with our prospective, now actual, roommate, Sandra. I heard all of this, and the full report from Rodri and Juanma's perspective later, but I just stayed in my bed listening while Armelle dozed, I saw no need to step in since it wasn't my problem. Luisa has this impression that I'm the only person that brings guests over and allows them to spend the night, in fact, on various occasions she's made me feel like I'm an awful person for doing so, something that at times makes me second guess myself. I know I'm right in this respect, though, she wants to run a boardinghouse here, not a shared apt, and this is what bothers me most, here I have less freedom to have company over or invite guests to come and spend a few days than I do with my own parents! So Sunday morning, after all the shouts and slammed doors dissipated I fell into a deep sleep...

Around 7 pm that same Sunday I was in my room, I'd already spoken to both my roommate's and the apt was calm, Rodri had gone to Bea's all shaken up, Juanma went out with a friend to have tapas and Armelle and I were on our laptops when we hear the front door open. I knew it couldn't be roommate's and so could just be one person: Luisa. She heads straight for the living room and starts complaining to me how the lamp there is broken, how the chair from the dining room set table is also broken and recounting to me the events from earlier in the day. At various points I tried to interject that none of those points, none of those issues had to do with me. We had just been away nearly 3 weeks, when we left the lamp worked albeit we never used it, it was just there in the corner. If I'd broken it, I'd pay to fix it, I have no problem taking responsibility for what I break. The chair was broken from usage and the chairs were poorly designed to begin with, that's part of offering a furnished apt. And the issue with Rodri and having guests, it does have to do with me but I've already stated a thousand and one reasons why I don't agree with her, the number one because I pay for a shared flat and that should be an issue resolved with the roommates alone. Here's the kicker, though, she came, berated m over things that I hadn't done and she came drunk. Yup, I could smell it on her a mile away, she wreaked and I tolerated her because I knew in this state I couldn't easily get rid of her, so I listened though I also gave her a piece of my mind and finally, when she'd realized she was chastising the wrong person she sat down on the armrest of the couch and began to cry. Talk about emotional blackmail! I gave her a pat on the back and told her to go home, think on it and we could talk about it tomorrow or later on.

She came the next day, asking for the rent, fair enough, and for 10 euros extra for the lamp, then 10 euros extra for a cleaning lady she'd hired, without our consent, to clean the apt. I summarily told her she'd only get the rent from me and not a penny more. In the following she came every single day, most days twice a day for silly reasons, she brought back the lamp repaired, sans lampshade. She kept the chair, or threw it out, not sure, but it never made a reappearance and at some point mid-week there was a glimmer of hope that Luisa had gotten her senses back. This was a mirage, she'd spoken to Juanma saying that she'd been unfair with us and had taken things overboard but she only communicated this to Juanma, she never told us any of this. In any case this all evaporated once Rodri moved out and our new roommate, the aforementioned Sandra, moved in. Just when we thought that we might be able to stay a bit longer, because we liked the apt, he neighborhood, that there's a storage area for bikes downstairs, that there's a Lidl a block away, a Dia across the street, that Chinatown is the next neighborhood over, we loved all these things and didn't want to uproot. No, we got La Pedorra as a new roommate and she lived up to her stinky moniker.

We got our first taste of what La Pedorra is like last Saturday. We invited a couple, Daniel and Laura, to come over and play video games. She wasn't going to be home that night, something Armelle had learned prior to Sandra learning that we were having company. It didn't matter. She saw our company arrive so we invited her to play with us and get to know us to which she rudely declined. She then, after briefly speaking with Juanma, called Luisa. She complained that there was company over every day she'd been there, which was true though not nuanced info. In the week prior we'd had company only once and it was that Saturday night, Rodri had company the day she came to check out the apt and Juanma had company the previous night. These were all weekend nights, so you kinda have to tolerate it. It didn't matter. Luisa called me, yelling at me, asking why I had company. After trying to patiently reason with her I lost my cool, yelled back and then hung up. For me to yell it takes a lot, and I mean a lot, to get that response out of me. She then messaged me on What's App and told me I'm not allowed to have company at all, not to play, not to have dinner, zero company. That was last Saturday and the following Sunday I had an early morning argument with her and Sandra, it left things clear: we have to get the fuck out of this crazy, fucking situation! In a few days we'd sent nearly 50 messages, gotten an appointment to see one and liked it. We move in on the 1st and this dark period with our insane landlady, Luisa, will be just that, a period in the past and days to forget.

Breakfast / Desayuno / Petit Déjeuner

My first year in Spain the concept of breakfast was a culture shock (like many things).

Back home in NYC I'd pass by the breakfast cart in front of the liquor store on Sutphin Blvd and buy a croissant or Boston creme and cup of coffee on the way to the E and finish it on the platform while waiting for the J or on the J. Either that or I'd buy a bacon, egg & cheese at a bodega near the Clinton-Washington stop and finish it at work ( I so miss these). The famous New York minute, a way of life measured in seconds, where folks buy their breakfast to-go and scarf down their grub on the subway, has its place but Europe moves to the beat of a different drummer.

Let's begin with where they have breakfast in Spain. At the bar. Yes, at the bar. Everyone. Not just drunkards or clubgoers stumbling out of the club for café con leche con churros, normal people: the construction workers in paint-spotted jeans and boots, the office workers chatting and smoking a cig with their co-workers just outside their office building and the executives, a suit-n-tie munching down on an Andalusian breakfast. Early on I would wonder why the bars were open before the bakeries, why so many people frequented them and why on earth there weren't any to-go cups for coffee (most bars will give you coffee, hot coffee, to-go in a plastic cup). My first year I had to walk 10 min through Moncloa and grab something quickly from Rodilla or Al Punto before hopping on the 687 to Cercedilla (it was an hour-long ride).

I would also have breakfast at Armelle's home some mornings and this was my introduction to a typical European breakfast, toast with butter and/or jam accompanied by tea or coffee. That's it. No eggs. No bacon or sausage. No home fries or French fries. A typical Spanish breakfast, the aforementioned Andalusian breakfast, is toast with a tomato-based sauce (that I think has a bit of garlic in it) with olive oil and salt, it's my preferred breakfast in Madrid. I also have oatmeal some mornings but that's something I'd have in the States, I picked it up from reading about fighters' diets.

I was reminded about this difference this morning and how I no longer need eggs with my meal, how I don't balk at the thought of just toast. And one should take into account that the merienda, mid-morning snack, still has a strong place in the customs here, in reality you have 5 meals a day and so a lighter breakfast is more bearable knowing you'll eat again in a couple hours. It's also nice to just go to my local bar or the one outside my class and sit down, take 10 min to have breakfast or 5 for a cup of coffee and take a breather before jumping into my workday. And this pace is just great.