Rav Casley Gera

First sights:

* Hostel is astonishing glow-white slab of ultramodern, and shares space with the local drama school, which is both nice and bizarre.
* McDonald’s appears to have exactly the same menu as in the UK. Bit disappointing.
* Euros aren’t as cheap as I thought.
* The hostel charges an extra 4 euros a night to the over-26’s. I feel like a paedophile just being here.
* Madrid has a serious grafitti problem (see picture). I saw a maid standing in the doorway of an upmarket-looking apartment block, but she couldn’t budge the mass of spray-paint all over the door.
* Also saw a dreadlocked white guy, early twenties, presumably homeless, shaving hastily in a car wing mirror.
* I walked behind a TV interview, and will therefore be on Spanish TV.
* Sat in a cafe eating fries with garlic mayonnaise, watching Spanish TV (not looking out for my cameo), I was struck by the tacky presentation of Spanish daytime TV, with on-screen captions and idents that could have been from the early 80’s. And the program, which seemed to be enitrely celebrity gossip (Spain invented the modern celeb mag, of course, with Hola! - which begat Hello!), didn’t feature a single American or British celeb. No Winehouse, no Beckhams, no Britney. Perhaps, I thought, all this talk of globalisation is nonsense. Perhaps TV is the great local medium, maintaining individual cultures, local obsessions. Then I noticed the background music to the feature I was watching was “Matinee” by Franz Ferdinand.

PA100166, originally uploaded by Rav Casley Gera.