November 10th – Our first street conversation

I mentioned in an earlier post about street life in Madrid. Today we were walking along Calle Alcala headed down to a museum when we encountered David, our neighbor and Julia & Jose’s friend, so we stopped to chat right in front of the ATM.  We’ve had other small conversations with our neighbors in the hall and elevator but this was our first actual street conversation and we were quite excited.   Please remember that my Spanish is a bit rusty and I may have misinterpreted some things but it went something like this,

·         Us ‘ Hola David, como esta usted’ trans for you non-Spanish speakers –Hello David how are you’

·         David ‘Hello, fine how are you ‘

·         Us ‘Fine thanks.  We are went to Barcelona next week’

·         David ‘ Ah, Barcelona blah blah blah  No?  blah blah blah’

·         Us ‘yes yes there are things there, museums, gardens, Gaudi ‘

·         David ‘ Gaudi! Blah blah interesting blah blah blah’  Garden

·         Us ‘we leave Thursday and gone Saturday, Sunday? Saturday? No Monday’

·         David ’blah blah pickpockets (or so we think by his gestures) blah.

·         Us ‘Tell Amelia we love her and want to send her our doorbell’

·          David ‘What? Hahaha  blah blah blah blah garden forgot’

·         Us ‘see you next year at this Christmas’

·         David ‘See you later,  hahaha’

Now we are truly making progress with our language skill, only 2 weeks ago we would have just stood there like two gravestones caught in the headlights.   And to clear it up a bit, we are headed for Barcelona thisThursday and returning Monday.  I’m sure we will have many tales to tell and many other stimulating conversations in Catalan while we’re in Barcelona.