Schlagwort: ‘Madrid’
A great experience in Madrid
- Architecture M.A.
- Spain, Madrid
- b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos
- May – October 2022
Living and working six months in the vibrant city of Madrid was a lot of fun for me. I did my obligatory internship in a rather small architecture studio in the northern central part of the city – close to the Bernabeu stadium. I shared a flat with two people in Hortaleza, which is in the north-east between the inner and outer ring, therefore a little bit far from the lively city centre. But it was within a good distance for the everyday commute and for an affordable price. One very important thing to know about living in Madrid is that the public transport system is working really well and if you live close to a metro or cercania station you can move very quickly within the city. If you are under 26 the monthly ticket is more than affordable.
My colleagues at the architecture studio were nice and welcoming. They offered me to speak in English but I asked them to only talk in Spanish with me as I wished to learn as much Spanish as possible during my stay. Even though I did not understand everything on my first days, it did not take long to get used to listening and speaking Spanish all day long. This way I learned a lot and could integrate well in the team. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend a good level of Spanish if you would like to do your internship in Spain.
I have spent the summer term in Madrid to enjoy the nice and hot climate. If I could choose again, I would probably prefer to do an internship of six month in the winter term for two reasons. First, in July and August, it got very hot. Maybe this year has been extreme, but we had a couple of weeks with temperatures above 35 degrees – up to 41 degrees on peak days. Even though every office is supposed to have air conditioning, mine did not because it was broken. As it took until the end of August until someone could fix it, we had to sweat quite a bit. Second, if your office does not make an obligated summer break you are probably to stay while everyone else is leaving Madrid for three or four weeks of vacation. And as people are taking turns, you can find yourself with only very few other co-workers in the office. When everyone came back from vacation, the social life outside the office started to pic up. Not only among the colleagues but also in the whole city. A lot of events happen in autumn in Madrid. So, when the time came that I had to leave, I really did not want to.
Madrid’s social life is inexhaustible. There are always things to do and always events happening. It is almost impossible to find a moment when the streets are empty. Concerning parties, it is probably impossible not to find a bar or club where you can listen to the music you like. You can find all kinds of parties in town. (Even though there is a lot of reggaeton, which was in my favour.) I enjoyed most going out in Cuenca and Malasaña – day and night. Also, even though the river of the city is rather small, Madrid has a lot of parks. I loved spending time at the Retiro Parque and Casa de Campo. But because I lived rather far away from these central parks I often went for a run to Parque Felipe VI. Probably no location where you would go to if you do not live close by, but I liked running there a lot because I had a view of Madrid’s Skyline as well as the mountains in the north of the city. If you search for a nice sunset location, I would not recommend Templo de Debot because it is always too crowded, but rather go to the Lookout at Tío Pío’s Hill.
Madrid is Europe’s highest capital city with about 600m above sea level. I noticed this the most due to the high temperature ranges between day and night. Therefore, it is always recommended to bring at least a light jacket. If you do not need it in the morning, maybe you will need it inside if the air conditioning is too cold.
The last thing that I would like to mention about Madrid is that I appreciated its geographic location within Spain a lot. It is very comfortable to travel from and to Madrid. The distances to all points of interest in all directions are more or less equal. If you book your AVE (the fastest trains in Spain) in advance, it is affordable and allows you to go – sometimes even non-stop – to either Sevilla or Barcelona within two hours. The bus takes about five to six hours depending on traffic conditions.
To put it in a nutshell, I can highly recommend Madrid (and for architects also my studio b720) as Erasmus+ location. I enjoyed the six month there a lot and I hope that I can go back soon. The people I met were wonderful and the food I ate delicious. I have learned a lot in language, professional and intercultural terms.
Living in Madrid
- Data Science M.Sc.
- Spain, Madrid
- March 2022 – June 2022
My experiences:
Spending some time in Spain as always been on my mind, so I was really happy to finally realize it. I spent about four months in Spain and in the following I will share my experiences about living in Madrid, finding and organizing an internship and my overall personal experience.
I lived in Chueca, which (together with neighboring Malasaña) is a major destination for gastronomy and night life. On the one hand, it is great because it has a lot going on and represents diversity and LGBTIQ-friendliness. It has a central location both for walking to many parts of central Madrid as well as convenient public transport connections. On the other hand, it is expensive and did not really have a neighborhood-like feeling because it is very crowded and to my impression is really anonymous. It offers many fancy restaurants and shopping opportunities, which did not correspond too much to my preferred price segment and atmosphere though.
My favorite neighborhood is Lavapiés which is more multicultural and offers more affordable options for going out. However, accommodation there is also scarce and my recommendation for a flat would be to also consider other areas which are well connected with public transport and which have their own local atmosphere without an abundance of tourists.
As activities, I can recommend hiking and climbing in the nearby mountains. The villages of Cercedilla, El Escorial and Manzanares El Real can be reached with public transport and offer great hiking. For climbing, I was lucky to join a group of climbers of the alpine club of the Autonomous University and could profit from the good atmosphere and the carpooling within that group.
Apart from the outdoor activities and all the museums and interesting places inside Madrid, I also want to recommend doing day trips by train to the cities Toledo, Segovía and Ávila.
Finding and organizing the internship was not so easy because the planning horizons of the companies that I talked to were not clear. For example, I found a company which would have employed me, but in the end there was a shortage of projects in my desired time period. In general, the insecurity due to the pandemic situation made many companies reduce their internship activities. Moreover, I wanted to avoid a pure home office position, which ruled out some start-ups/IT-companies which do not even have office spaces anymore.
Apart from using job platforms, I eventually found my company by browsing through Madrid’s universities, their spin-offs and cooperating research and development institutes. In particular, these are more used to employ interns because in many study programs in Spain there are obligatory internships which seem to have additional funding.
However, in my case, I was the first person to come from abroad and that is why the amount of questions, uncertainties and organizational issues was relatively high. Neither to me nor to my contact person at the institution was clear at the beginning whether I would need to get a NIE (foreigner identification number) or a social security number. As my host institution could pay me a small salary, I eventually tried to obtain a NIE. This turned out very difficult because there were no appointments available at the foreign affairs office and police in Madrid. For several weeks, I checked the corresponding web page daily and could not get an appointment. Even though, I felt to have understood the system (that new appointments are entered into the system on Mondays around 12PM, still the demand by other and technical obstacles where high). In the end, I decided to travel more than 100km to the neighboring province of Ávila (as mentioned above it is a pleasant day out though) and managed to get an appointment and my document there. From then on, the procedures went relatively smoothly (apart from smaller struggles setting up a bank account).
The work itself started smoothly and I felt well-prepared from my studies and previous work experiences. The team met on two days per week in the office, the remaining days I mostly worked from my room.
I worked on data analyses and machine learning model improvements that the team had always had in mind, but could not find the time themselves for. Therefore, my work was on the one hand useful and providing insights to the time, but on the other hand always a bit separated from what the colleagues were doing. Moreover, my actual supervisor was very busy and partly away, so I was somehow not sure who to ask certain things and who decides the next steps, but I recommend to just not hesitate and ask in the group chat etc.
A peculiarity for me was that some colleagues did not have breakfast at home and that the culture of long coffee breaks (including breakfast) is imported. My colleagues worked rather long hours, but still did not let them stress too much and I appreciated to have a good and social atmosphere.
My overall experience was positive, however, it was more difficult than expected to get socially involved. This is the disadvantage of a big city and that people in my case are having their routines and private lives. In my case, sports and university associations were the solutions to get to know people. In total, I leave Madrid with some positive memories and rich in experiences, however looking forward to environments with more close people and friends.