Me duele el cerebro*

Hello world,

Not many news from the land of España. I have been seeing more parts of the city and I discovered that Retiro park is amazing. I spent half of my day there sitting on a grass with my book (Spanish grammar of course), enjoying the sun. The language front has not changed - I can put sentences together and speak, but to understand other people is more difficult. Funny, when I was learning English it was completely other way around. Maybe it's because so many Spanish people don't open their mouth when they speak? But hey, it could have been worse, it's good I'm not learning polish. I would be completely f*cuked then.

I also had the famous bocadillo de calamares at Plaza Mayor, and I tried croquetas de jamon, amazing! Why they don't do the same food in Poland or anywhere else? Also I met some new people, just friends of friends, very nice. It's really important for me to know more people here, cause I am still a total stranger in this city.

I've seen a house where Cervantes used to live and I imagined for a while him leaving the main door and going through the streets, I wonder where did he get his inspirations from? If I ever find that my creativity and ideas have abandoned me, I will go back to this house and listen carefully. But still a whole bunch of attractions await - Museo del Prado, Reina Sofia and many more I haven't seen since last time in Madrid (1,5 year ago).

I started watching movies with Spanish dubbing, I know it's horrible, but I need to learn things fast and listening to movies is one way to do it. I've seen 300, The Dark Night, still in line to be watched - Che: Part One, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, a bit random collection, I know. I have a classic of polish cinema piece as well - the mysterious movie called Saragossa Manuscript, 3 hour long epic by Wojciech Jerzy Has. The way it's been filmed it's great, amazing compositions etc, but the main problem I have with it is that I fell asleep every time I watch 15 minutes. This way I have been watching it for the last 4 days and I'm nearly in the middle of the film. But it doesn't matter I can't keep my eyes open, it's still a masterpiece. Citizen Kane was. And I only felt asleep on it 3 times.

To conclude I couldn't resist to mention about the thing in every spanish newspaper: la crisis. I can tell you one thing: my flatmate went to see the football last Saturday, the Real Madrid stadium was totally full. 80.000 people apparently had money to buy the tickets, and the cheapest ones went for 25 Euros. So where's the crisis ?

Till next time,



* My brain hurts.

Practice makes perfect...

... people say - and they are right (this time, but usually they are wrong - take most of democratic elections for example). I'm a bit far away from perfect right now, but at least my level of spanish has improved a lot since last month. My new flatmate says that estoy loco because of amount of books with vocabulary and grammar I have on my desk.

But things in Madrid have been looking bright and I mean really bright and full of colors - everything can look so nice in the sun, it is such a difference from rainy Edinburgh and grey Warsaw. I have been exploring my barrio, eating some great food and just wondering about the streets without any specific destination in mind.

I also watched Ratatouille en castellano. I thought that movies for kids might help me with my language - more of them coming soon. At the moment I'm preparing "Words, that I Need to Know: The Ultimate Test 1", which contains over a 1000 spanish words that are essential. I can only make 3 mistakes in the test, so I decided I'll be doing it until I get it perfect. More of that soon - in the meantime, hasta luego.

Arrival

Hello world,

I spent my all day packing, I hate it, you have to deal with small objects that are too big to fit in bigger objects, it does my headache. Anyway, managed to do my suitcase just fine plus I sent 20kg package, which will hopefully arrive in next few days cause I've got no clothes.

Then a quick very late dinner with some friends, very nice (both dinner and friends) and I was back at my place around 2am. I didn't really feel like sleeping, because of my adrenaline level was too high, so I decided to watch "No country for old men". After 10 minutes I was snoring.

Flight went ok, I had some food, then made a second attempt and watched the movie. It was weird, because of a noise in the plane and my poor headphones I didn't really hear the dialogs. The movie was about spanish actor Bardem killing people with his giant silencer, or eventually with an oxygen tank, weird shit.

Landed on Barajas, I had to walk for miles to get to the underground station, but it was cool cause place is packed with escalators and other "moving floors" things, I have no idea how do you call them in english. So I got to my new flat which turned out to be really amazing, with a lovely bathroom and balcony.

Then I rushed off to meet Ralph - he's a composer who did music for my movie, meeting was great, he gave me some more contacts in Madrid, which is important when you're new in town. I came back to the flat and I was exhausted, I realized I haven't slept for hours, cause of early flight.

Tomorrow maybe I will see the city finally, because today I just traveled through underground (which is massive in Madrid) without going to the surface of the world much.

Snowy, busy weekend again.

Hello World,

This weekend is definitely sponsored by the letters: "B" for busy, cause I've got myself a job filming a music video for little, friendly production company in Warsaw, "S" for snow everywhere again, and "F" for f*c*uk, I can't drive my scooter again. But what can I do in these horrific weather conditions... I know I'm gonna move to Spain in 4 days.

So the music video work is quite enjoyable, nice crew and good laugh. The only shame is I've abandoned my Spanish vocabulary books for a while. However I think that every story can't exist without a character's struggle to achieve his goal, so going to Spain and knowing how to communicate would be too easy and boring, so at least I put myself in a very difficult situation from the start.

My filming-in-Spain plan is doing great so far, and I will try to write about it in the next post. Thanks to Paula for sending me some contacts.

I couldn't forget to mention about some celebration day, which some of you enjoy, some of you despise. Now my life is very different than probably most of you and instead of reserving my heart to only one special someone, I decided to love just everybody without an exception (well maybe not everybody in a physical way). So I wish you happy St. Ballantines day.

Introduction

Hello world,

This is the first note on my brand new blog, which I called "Filming in Spain", because that's exactly what I've been planing to do recently. I have no idea yet what to film, I only know it is going to be in Spain cause it's all part of my grand master plan, which I reveal in the next note.

But first - I should introduce myself for those of you who never met me. My name is Tomas Wotan Suski and some years ago I was born in the city of Warsaw and that is why my English might seem funny sometimes. I am a filmmaker and I work as a camera operator, which is a best job ever. I own a big scooter Suzuki Burgman 400, also the best bike ever, and few months ago I made a decision of moving to Spain, which was probably the best decision ever made as well.

The main reason of moving to Spain however, was the fact that I got myself a solar panel mobile phone charger, really brilliant piece of equipment, that can get you one step closer to being energy self-efficient therefore truly free. The only problem was it wouldn't work in Scotland. It took 5 days to charge my phone with that weather, so I had enough and I decided to move on to Spain.

So for the time being I am in Warsaw in Poland, and I have my flight to Madrid in 5 days. Once in Spain I've got everything more less sorted apart from place to live, job, friends and ability to speak Spanish.

I will be writing about pretty much all the interesting things that I might encounter during my travels.