Episode 4, 5/14/09 – This city is a lot bigger than I thought.

The morning was rather skip-over-able. Michael and I woke up and waited in our room to be moved to our house.

While waiting, I perused a free magazine I found in the lobby called “MAGASOUND.” It was a magazine devoted to techno music. I almost had an eargasm. Techno music is king in all of Europe, especially in Spain. I pretty much picked the best place in the world for a technohead to study abroad! It was so fascinating to me to see a magazine devoted to what they call “musica moderna”. Techno in Spain similar to circa-2000 American rap music in the sense that it has broken into the mainstream by virtue of many talented artists and now is at a critical shaping point. One of the articles in MAGNASOUND interviewed DJs about the direction of techno music and whether it was becoming “too commercial”. “Too commercial”? The words still ring in my head as an example of what a different music culture the techno-loving Spaniards have from us American fans. In other news, when I DID acquire a cellphone, it happened to have FM radio. I tuned into a couple of “pop(ular)” music stations, namely 92.5 and the famous 96.5 “Máxima” (legendary even outside of Spain for being a premier techno station. Like XMBPM in America, before they turned shitty). I heard Robyn’s “With Every Heartbeat” remixed, couple of Armin Van Buuren tracks, “Don’t Cha” (Ralphi Rosario Mix) by the Pussycat Dolls, “Memory” by Fragma and some new song by Bob Sinclar called “What a Wonderful World.” It was like heaven.

We took a cab to el apartamento, which ended up being a really nice house, structured very similarly to a hostel. Our señora, Charo, is a very nice middle-aged lady, a very modern, even eccentric, photographer who rents her rooms out to students when there is no work. Also staying with us (but not through our program) was Julia, from Cuba and looking for work in Sevilla. Charo is very sweet and her eclectic collection of Catholic, Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu statues, wall scrolls, posters, etc. was unendingly interesting. Sadly, our house does not have internet, so I just might be broken of my annoying facebook addiction. Speaking of pictures, a few have popped up here and there (like swine flu…or en español, la enfermedad de origen porcino). But I’ll concentrate on taking more pictures hopefully sometime soon. Everything is so scenic; it’s hard not to take pictures of everything.

A brief interlude on the concept of the “siesta,” since I promised you folks in Episode 3 a full explanation. The Spanish day is structured as follows: wake up at 8ish, breakfast, which is light, consisting of coffee/tea and toast (maybe), lunch at around 14:00 (oh I didn’t explain this, have I? It’s military time. Wait and see!) which is the big meal of the day, then dinner REALLY late at around 21:00-22:00 which is moderate-sized. After lunch, at around the hours of 15:00-17:00, stuff SHUTS DOWN COMPLETELY. It’s called a siesta. It originated from ye olde days in la España medieval when it was too hot to go outside, but has little practical use today except to frustrate the beejeezus out of study abroad students. In all seriousness, everything closes save El Corte Ingles and a few cafes. The streets are empty. Devoid of cars, bicycles, and people. It’s an urban wasteland. All of this is fascinating for an American writer. And for a B-school kid, especially interesting is the culture of Spanish banking during siesta. In Spain, there’s a bank on every street corner, of 10+ different franchises, but they have hours from 9-13. Saaaayyy whaaa??? How does any reasonable working fellow go to the bank, then? It blows mi mente, especially from a Business perspective. Think on how much revenue is lost every day from not staying open during siesta! As Michael and I both agree, Spanish banks need to update their business model.

Michael and I hung out for the entire day. First, we went to Yoigo (a funny portmanteau of “yo” and “oigo”) for a cellphone. Anyone interested in Business should pay attention to Yoigo’s marketing strategies. Quite frankly, they’re brilliant; and they’ve worked well to capture a major part of the market share in only a couple years. We got the phones (only 29 euros with 5 euros of prepaid minutes) and left for lunch. After lunch (consisting of pasta with red sauce…very… Spanish…?) , we decided to trek to our school to see how long the walk was. 30 minutes. Do-able…but not great. After a lot of walking, we got back to the house. We walked with our señora to an internet café (much better than walking 30 damn minutes for the internet). It’s called SanSora, and is most likely where I will post these little memoirs when I’m not at school. After that, dinner and bed. No real excitement, due likely to the fact that everybody is just now acquiring phones. It’s a shame Spaniards don’t have more free internet, but college kids will find a way, dammit.