We were, if not entirely bright-eyed in that moment, still looking forward to making Madrid
our home for the next ten months. A. had been accepted to the MBA program at the Carlos III of Madrid University and I’d landed a stipended position from the Spanish government to teach English in an elementary school. The real allure of the situation was in the fact that we would be living in Spain—magical Spain, portal to Europe—and having a year of “adventure.” Little did we know, the first 4 days that we spent searching vainly for a piso would form the most trying and desperate experience we had ever faced.Naïvely, we had figured we would land in Madrid and in no time be approached with various apartment offers. We knew the space would be small, but that was fine, considering how little we had brought over. When I say small, I mean a one-room studio with a cocina americana (integrated kitchen) and a small adjoining bathroom. But we never imagined how difficult it would be to enter the rented housing market in Spain’s capital. For those of you who’ve tried to find a affordable place in New York City, I imagine the following will sound very familiar.
Back to the airport. As soon as we landed and passed breezily through customs, we locked our 4 checked suitcases and one carry-on at a consigna (it turned out to be the most ghetto and only elevator-less of all the airport's). The process took a while, what with getting cash and then change because the token machine only accepted five-euro bills or less…more on the lockers later. But by 1 p.m., we were practically skipping down the moving sidewalks, following the METRO signs to what were sure would be pure piso nirvana.
We decided to ride the metro all the way down to Getafe, a university town south of Madrid, where A. would both be studying and where we had hopes of finding housing. Riding the metro this way—snaking down from the farthest northeast corner to the farthest southwest corner of the system—is neither the fastest nor the cheapest of all public modes of transportation, although we didn’t care at the time. We happily added a one-euro ticket supplement here and another there, and an hour and a half later arrived in Getafe Central station.We could have ridden one stop closer to the university, but got out early to try and scope out the town for alojamiento offerings. By the time we got there, it was smack in the middle of siesta time and there was hardly anyone else out. We ambled down one of the town's main roads, jotting down phone numbers of every handwritten piso announcement we found.
We did the same for ads posted inside university buildings (it's a very pretty campus by the way). We ignored anything listing habitación, since those are mostly intended for individual students looking to live with roommates.A. set about calling the numbers from a pay phone back in Getafe proper...and to our dismay found every place (all dozen, at most) had either already been rented out or was beyond our budget. 600€ was about the max we thought we could afford, given that that's around $900 USD right now. On every call, people asked suspicious questions: "You're students? Do you have income? Do you have kids? Are you planning to have kids?" We decided then and there to expand our search to housing in Madrid's city center and took the RENFE train back to Madrid.
Not knowing where to start looking up classifieds, I bought a copy of El País (my fave Spanish periodical) for 1€ from a kiosk in the metro. Unfortunately, as renowned as El País is for its national news coverage, it's classifieds section is almost nonexistent. We bought some bocadillos de jamón from a small café and asked the worker what would be our best bet for classifieds. "Segundamano," was her reply. She was right: it's chock-full of nothing but listings, including many for-rent ones. Unfortunately, it costs a pretty penny: 2.70€. Over, we started to pore over ads in the Flats of Rent section.
We called all of the reasonably centric locations, hearing a few were already unavailable, but setting up a few appointments for later in the week, and one for 8 p.m. that night. In the meantime, I was feeling tired and started searching for a hostel. I hadn't made a reservation, so we called some of the recommended hostels in my guidebook, only to find that their prices were 100-200% higher than my listed. I kicked my self for not buying the most up-to-date version, having held on to this Lonely Planet book since by 2004 study abroad in Alcalá de Henares.
Feet aching, we pressed on. We decided to make a stop at a cybercafé to check online listings, and dropped in at one at the Noviciado metro stop. Here I jotted down info from www.segundamano.es, www.idealista.com and madrid.loquo.com, as well as other less commendable sites. To use a Spanish term, using the Net's resources is imprescindible while piso-hunting as many good listings can be found there and aren't in the physical papers.
I continued to search while A. went out to make some phone queries. He took the better part of 20 minutes but came back with encouraging news. He had found a hostel, or an hostal, to be more to the point, with affordable 30€-a-night private rooms. It would turn out to be our one small success of the day. We checked in long enough to drop our stuff and then headed off to our first apartment inspection appointment.
We arrived at Cuatro Caminos 20 minutes early, with enough time to find the address, order take-out Döner Kebap and eat much-needed sustenance in the form of falafel and kepab. Back at the address, we found 12 other people staked out by the door. Was this normal? I asked myself. Seems like a lot of people for one measly 600€ 40-m² attic. The landlord took up people one or two at a time, and after another half hour, we wound our way up 5 flights on stairs (no elevator) to the teeny one-room attic studio. We talked to the current tenants, but discovered the place would be not available until Sept. 1 and wouldn't come with any furniture at all.
An unfurnished place just wasn't an option, considering how much we'd have to sink in bigger-ticket items that we'd only be using for a year. Besides, it seemed that there were plenty of furnished or amueblado places listed for rent. Back in the hostal, we made our game plan for the next day and channel-surfed long enough to catch a carbon-copy version of "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?" with the same theme song and all, except in Spanish: "Sabes más que un niño de primaria?" That night's contestant sure didn't seem to be, stumped as he was on the question: Which is longer: a whole note or a whole rest? Banal, but distracting.
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