Posted 11:10 AM by Gobbler
Accommodating

Plan A : Operation Marmalade

Step 1: Go to Seville.

Step 2: Find a room for a couple of months.

Step 1 came off without a hitch and I arrived in the hostal on Monday night. So far so good.

Step 2 proved a little more problematic, and as I wandered around the town on Tuesday it hit home that I didnt really have any concrete idea how the hell I was going to find a cheap place to stay for the next two months. Lots of nice hostals to stay in but it would leave me a poor and broken man. So what exactly was I going to do? The most obvious place to start was the cafe. To have lunch.

It is a fact, incontrovertible and concrete, like marmalade, that 91.7% of Americans are hard of hearing. This means that they have to speak very loudly, often in high pitched squeaks that can be easily registered on their sub standard eardrums. This means that anyone within 15 yards can hear them chatting away. For example, the Americans behind me are talking about taking a train to Corboda. ah, trains. I took a train once, to err, to somewhere quite nice, and enjoyed it immensely. But anyway, you take the point.

As I sat at the cafe, having a coffee, and then a coke, and then a beer, I noticed that on a table a little away from me four such hard of hearing americans were having a natter. They looked like they might be students (lots of american students here for some reason) and I thought they might be able to help. I popped over. Through a series of morse-like squeaks and squackles from the smiling happy and pleasant girl, interrupted every now and again by booms from the double bass that was her friend, I picked out the important message that the best thing to do would be to check the phone boxes and walls around the university for adverts for rooms. This seemed a reasonable suggestion and off I went, thanking the girl and the bass. I went by the tourist office to see if they might be able to help me at all (a cunning plan I had conceived myself some time earlier) but it transpired that unless I wanted one of their lovely hotels for 50 euros a night, or one of their quite nice but not so lovely hostels for around 20 euros a night, I might as well be asking where the nearest marmalade research station was. A conversation akin to the following took place:

"do you have information on renting a room for a bit?"
"NA-DA."
"But-"
"No Hay."
"Can you tell me where to go?"
"Piss off."

So off I went. Round the phone boxes of Seville, collecting phone numbers and information. For several hours.

Now that I had a few numers to call it dawned on me that the last thing I wanted to do was ring up randoms and try and negotiate, in Spanish, for a room. But it was either a) do that, b)get very poor in a hostal, or c) go home. On Tuesday I decided I was not ready for such trials and
opted for a newly devised plan d) go to the pub and worry about it tomorrow. Which I did, meeting a couple of interesting punters along the way.

Wednesday and Thursday it was back to the search. Still of the general view that Id really rather shoot myself than ring these numbers, I began to make my calls. The conversations generally began:

"Hola."
"Hola."
"Errm. Hola."
"Hola."
"Erm."
"Siiiiii."
"Hola. Erm, hables Ingles?"
"No. Que quires?"
"Erm. (Shit) Hola."

Well, I suppose things cant have gone that badly. Of the numbers I rang I couldnt get through on two, two or three told me that the room had already gone, and one had a very excited girl on the other end who, after a brief and panting conversation, began screaming at me "Manana! Ok!Manana manana manana mananaaaa!" Manana of course meaning 'tomorrow'. as opposed to something else. Quite frightening. That was the end of that one.

But one, one number, still had the room available and I arranged to go and see the room on Thursday evening and along a I trotted to this street that wasnt heavily featured on my map (had to ask at a cafe). The apartment was about 20 minutes walk from the centre in the middle of a building site in a ghetto next to a drain. The apartment was quite nice and the two spanish guys alright, but with no english to speak of. The main issue was the room. At approximately 61 times the size of a peanut it wasnt a big I Id hoped, but what choice was there? I resolved to think about it. In the pub.

So I went back to the Irish pub and there met the two guys whomI had met on the tuesday evening. recounting my tales of misery and woe, one of them gave me an email address and a phone number and an address for an agency, roomates-seville, and advised I try there. I wasnt too hopeful but I went along there on Friday. They had one place available and i went and had a look, and in short Im moving in on Tuesday, extremely glad that I no longer have to spent my days phone-box spotting in the streets of Seville.

And that was that.