I thought I had my finances in Madrid all figured out, but Monday was an exception. I was trying to move some money from my online savings account into my checking account so I could use it to pay for things. I had done this once before with no problems, but this time the system locked me out "due to unusual activity." My online account decided to test me with "security questions" drawn from public record -- most notably, by asking me whether somebody named Ileen with my same last name had ever lived or worked in Fall River, Massachusetts. I have no relative named Ileen (that I've ever heard of) and my family has absolutely no connection with Massachusetts in any form. So I picked the logical answer choice -- "I don't know this person" -- and gosh darn it, the suckers locked me out of my account for good. I failed the test. Now I'm wondering who this Ileen is or how I'm supposed to know her...

I called the company that my online account is with later and went through another phone screening -- this time insisting that no, NONE of the time periods and/or underwriting firms that they were listing for my home mortgage or car loan were correct, because I don't HAVE a home mortgage or a car loan. This time I passed the test. Yay, I guess!

Moving away from finances, Madrid is still great and I'm still really enjoying my time here. I feel like I'm starting to learn at least a little bit more about the actual work of my internship firm. I took an opportunity one day and started asking a few questions, and even though I'm still doing much of the same work (technical / design -- which is very fun; don't get me wrong), it feels somewhat more meaningful now. And it is such an enjoyable bunch of people. I went to a fútbol game with three of the folks I work with this past week, and it was enlightening to watch Atlético Madrid with Madrileños. They knew (at least some of) the lyrics to the many Atléti songs that the crowd chants throughout the entire game, and were ebulliently teaching me a Spanish drinking song as we walked back to Javier's car afterward.

We drove home on the M-30, Madrid's beltline highway that's almost entirely underground. Yeah, the whole thing -- not just little tunnel bits -- they blasted at least three or four lanes in each direction through the ground underneath the city, lit it with florescent lights, drilled out exits in a few places, and now the highway's subterranean. You can even get perfect radio reception down there on some stations, which almost certainly means that the highway has its own radio broadcasting system. Of course cell phones work down there, like they do throughout all of Madrid's underground labyrinth.

Madrileños really do live like moles underground, at least as far as transportation infrastructure is concerned. The subway system is notable for being one of the largest in the world (possibly the very largest, I'm not sure) relative to population size. Routes criss-cross back and forth in the spaghetti maze of tunnels. It's as if Madrid's urban planning people said, "OK, crew, if you come up with a plan that's ridiculously impractical to construct but sounds cool, we'll build it anyway." There are 13 subway lines and three light rail lines, and that's not even counting the massive commuter train network known as Cercanías, much of which is also underground in the city center (there's a Cercanías depot deep deep underneath Puerta del Sol, where I live, and I've never even ventured down that far to see the trains -- the Sol station is already served by three different Metro lines, each of course running on a dedicated tunnel / right-of-way, many at different depths to allow them to cross). In the Principe Pio transfer station, a Cercanías line enters the semi-enclosed massive train shed at ground level and plunges on ahead through seemingly thin air over the excavated underground Metro platforms on a tiny bridge right through the middle of the station before vanishing into a small hole in the wall that takes it through/under the massive Principe Pio mall and on to who knows where. In Cuatro Caminos, one of my personal favorites, I get progressively more and more terrified transferring from Metro Line 6 to Metro Line 1 as I climb five massive flights of stairs and realize that I was over 150 feet underground. Where did they put all the dirt?

There are ads on the radio here for English schools. One of them begins with a woman talking happily in Spanish, "I'm so excited! I want to visit the United States, and England, and..." A man's voice cuts her off and says, with a hint of irony, "And you're really thinking of going without learning the language?" Then the school's information and jingle cuts in. I remember this ad in particular because for many Americans, yes, we would and do go to other countries without learning the language, and we don't think twice about it. But the way it's put across in this Madrid ad -- the guy's voice dripping with I-know-something-really-big-that-you-forgot -- is really a different attitude on travel.

Lastly, smoking is much more common in Madrid than in the U.S. I've wondered sometimes about the "No Smoking" signs up in classrooms and the student union at the University of Minnesota -- who would smoke inside the student union? We've built up some ingrained expectations that smoking there isn't acceptable. In Madrid, those expectations don't exist. No Smoking signs are merely an idea; a suggestion if you fancy following rules. When I was at my intercambio at the Universidad de Complutense a couple weeks ago, we met up in the Philosophy building, which has a cafeteria and lots of lounge/study space and is basically like a student union there. We sat in the study space on the second floor. Right above us was a No Smoking sign, and right next to us were a couple of guys smoking marijuana without a care in the world. There were also at least one or two girls smoking cigarettes at different tables, smoke drifting everywhere... Briana, my roommate, said that all of Madrid smells like ham and cigarettes, and I'd say she's right.

They also sell beer in the university cafeteria. You can take your philosophy class, go downstairs to the caf for a sandwich and a beer, and then go back up to study some more. Not my style, but hey, if that's what suits you... that's definitely Spain.

That's enough of an update for now. Til later,

Andy