Scooter

a man with his scooter

I have noticed that in Madrid a very different kind of group is driving a scooter than in Finland. It seems that most of the scooter drivers are wearing here a suit and they are men. Moreover one of my bosses also comes to work by scooter. So I would say that an average scooter driver in Madrid is a working man between 25-40 years old. As in in Finland I see a scooter as vehicle of under 18 years old boys and girls.

Mac

I have completed almost two months out of three months of my internship in Madrid. Before the internship I had never used Apples computers but now I have worked with iMac almost two months. Mainly I have been using the Microsoft office programs and web browser Safari. I do not see much differences using a Mac compared to a PC. I just have had to learn new shortcuts and get used to that some things work differently. I have not fallen in love with Macs praised functionality because for me Windows seems to work equally well. So when I will buy my next laptop it will be likely a PC.

Holiday month August

As August is a very hot month in Madrid people from Madrid go to beach to spend their holidays there. You can see less traffic, free parking spaces, closed shops and closed bars. Last two weeks were especially hot and I was sweating a lot also during the night. Despite the heat I could still sleep. The whole my stay in Spain I have been sleeping without any blanket or sheet top of me.

Visitors from Finland

Palacio Real in the background

I got this weekend two visitors from Finland. My friends Janne and Jarno are making an interrail trip and they are now in the half way of their one month railing. The visit of the Pope during weekend have caused a lot of rush in the metro. We had to let two metros pass us in the metro station because we could not enter the full metro. After that we just decided to take another line which was not that crowdy. We went to the famous market Rastro in Madrid. I did not spot there any second hand products. There was just normal products what are always sold in any stand. Especially one guy had interesting selling methods. We stopped to his stand where was a big sign showing that he is selling scarfs for two euros. As we stopped and started to look and touch few scarves for a few minutes. The guy started to repeat two euros, two euros. He repeated that more than ten times and did not say anything else. Finally we walked away without buying anything from him.

JMJ 2011

Group of young people of JMJ 

The letters JMJ comes from words Jornada Mundial de Juventud. JMJ 2011 is an event where many catholic young people have gathered to Madrid this year. It has been estimated that about 1,5 million people have come to Madrid to participate this event so you can see the effect of the event very well in the street picture. The people who have came to Madrid can be easily recognized from the similar back bags and from big groups wearing different color of T-shirts with JMJ logo. All the groups have flag of their own country and they sing songs of their country which reminds me of a sports event between different nationalities. These religious young people are not that innocent because they have been spotted buying alcohol and condoms.

Illegal business

Crowdy streets

Yesterday there was a party in la latina neighborhood in Madrid. Lot of people gathered to the streets. Bars had set up a serving points and speakers to play music to the streets. Always when a lot of people gather together immigrants appear to the streets to sell beer, sunglasses and hats which is illegal. Even there are some policemen it does not stop immigrants to make business. When we were sitting in one market square almost every five minutes somebody comes to offer their products. I asked one that how much does he earn in a night by selling beer from his bags and he responded that 100 euros by working five hours. Even there are a lot of immigrants doing this illegal business they make reasonable income. In Finland there are no people doing this illegal business but there the collectors of the bottles which are worth money.

Basque country

The beach in Zarautz

Rastas

During my trip to Basque country which is one region in the north of Spain I spotted the hair style in the picture above many times. The hairstyle is long rastas in the back of the head and short hair in the rest of the head. I have never seen that hairstyle in Finland. In basque it is typical that a group of friends have rented a place to make party. Both young and older people have these party places called lonja. In northern Spain instead of tapas they serve pinchos which were equally the same as tapas in my opinion but pinchos had a little stick. When we ordered hamburger there were a stick also.

One day we went to the beach where the waves are bigger than in the eastern or southern coast of Spain. We took advantage of these waves and decided with one friend to try surfing for the first time. Unfortunately waves were good only two hours so we could not surf more.

Festival in Vitoria-Gasteiz

Plaza

Party people in the costumes

I took three days holidays from work and went to Vitoria-Gasteiz. In Vitoria-Gasteiz we had a meeting with 15 students who did Erasmus in Joensuu last academic year. In this weekend there was also a festival. The festival started in the main square where people sprayed champagne on each other. We got also wet clothes from the champagne shower. Then there was different groups performing  on the stages and groups of people singing, dancing and playing songs on the streets. You could see people from all the age groups partying: mothers with their babies in the stroller and seniors. Streets were full of plastic bottles and other trash because most of the people were drinking. Also you could see in the center of the city many wet spots which were of course urine of the people. Festival guarantees great party atmosphere in the city for five days.

Protected house

I have enjoyed the past days the Spanish friendliness. First I got invited to a party of one friend of a friend in the same day I met her. Then I spent nice day in a house of a friend. I noticed that Spanish private houses are very well protected compared to Finnish ones. In Spain houses have a high fence surrounding the house with a door that you cannot enter without permission. Then all the windows had bars The final thing to secure the security was a alarm system what recognizes movement in the house.