27-1-2005
Today, I had to leave the comfortable suroundings of the luxurious hotel so kindly provided by the EU. Reluctant to leave early, I repeated the every morning getting-out-of-bed in a much slower pace. So, that’s how it was almost noon when I found my self in a place to eat figuring out the spanish dejeuner menu card. I was still a bit sleepy, while I was looking at the pictures on the menu. Using some logical common sense, I decided huevos must be egg, which you either could get fruetos (fried) or revueltos (no picture there, but a revolution sounds pretty scrambled-up). Up till now, I still can’t explain the differerence between a pan, tostada or pan bread thing, but I ordered a hievos fritos y tostadas integral anyway. This turned out to be ok, except for the fact that the softness of the fried egg was not limited to the yellow part; a significant part was left in the state they found it when they broke its scale. That’s not how I like it. Well, excuse me for complaining, but I hadn’t had breakfast yet!I just had had three days of meetings in Madrid. The Secse project I’m working on (maybe one day I’ll put some stuff in my research section) definitely needed some clearing up. We’re basically still sorting out things like who’s going to do what. Our research team composition had changed quite a bit, which makes things some challenge. here’s how Mugur likes me taking photographs while he’s trying to pay attention to all the new info that comes around. He likes to take (lots of) pictures himself though 
Anyway, after the meetings, it was time to discover Madrid. Just the evening before I’d googled around a bit for a hostel, anywhere in this Spanish Capital. And I must say, it’s easy to find. Equiped with adresses of several hostels, I took the Metro into town. Just getting out of subway station Gran Via, I checked out hostel Metropol – Equity Point. Nice and decent, very affordable, great central location (I don’t get any bonus selling you anything 
) and therefore I checked in.
Finally rid of my backpack and stuff, I went out to discover Madrid. So, what’s there to see in this huge city? It seems to have a great nightlife, but as I speak Spanish as well as most Spanish people I’ve met so far speak English, German, or -if it must- French, I imagined it would be a bit lonely. I’m more interested in seeing something of the city anyway, so I decided to start out and walk around, visiting (in no particular order) musea, shops,
churches (1), plazas (2), little Spanish tapas bars or bistros, parks, national monuments (3). I had a look at how different the buildings (4) are built and people behave, and tried to take some pictures.
People are different. More relaxed, but they work until late. Dinner doesn’t start until 10 or 11pm but I’ve seen lots of people ‘cheating’ around 3 or 5pm, having tapas, and cerveca of course. Eating all day I can keep up to 11 before having dinner. Everybody seems to go out for dinner, which b.t.w. is more affordable than in the Netherlands. Maybe their prices didn’t double when the Euro came.
28-01-2005
My second day of walking around. The bad thing of travelling alone is there isn’t a default person to talk to. On the other hand, I always like the flexibility it gives, specifically in meeting people. The day before, I had a long chat with a nice flight attendant from south America. And this evening I had a long conversation with a young, creative and ambitous and called Chad. I keep being suprised by the fact that most people from the states I meet dislike the Bush regime. After all, they got the president they voted for twice. Conclusively, the group of Americans I meet isn’t a representative sample of the American population. I think its’ due to the fact that I mostly meet Americans in a -for them- foreign country. The typical inner-state Bush-voters probably don’t travel abroad a lot. If you believe in things like “Going to war for peace” and “giving tax-cuts to the rich so the average and poor will profit”, I can imagine it’s hard to book a flight out of the states.Chad had a different explanation. According to him, the last elections “did not compute”. Thereby, I learned a new expression for something being incorrect/flawed . He could reproduce lots of stories fokes suffering from paronoia can find on Michael Moore’s website. So we talked about life, the world and everything, and I liked it a lot.
