Accommodation

“Go to a bar the moment you arrive in Madrid, don’t unpack, don’t eat, don’t do something sensible like ‘find somewhere to sleep’, absolutely not! You should exercise some charm and try to pick up a Madrileño/a (that’s a native boy or girl of the city to those not savvy to the lingo), because they’ll know all the best places to go out and party and sure that is, after all, the most important thing…” That nugget of advice came from a guy I met in Sol at 4am one evening/morning (depends which way you look at it) and is, without doubt the silliest suggestion I’ve ever heard, devoid of sense and logical input. Suffice to say, his drunken state meant that his initial success at attaining a phone number of a girl whom he had met previously in the night had mysteriously been lost in the mists of time (i.e., he lost the slip of paper she’d written it on) and as a result he was inebriated, weighed down with luggage and without a bed for the evening….

I would recommend staying in a hostel for the four-week period that you’re doing your TEFL course or during the ‘waiting game’ period when you have recently arrived and actively looking for work, busy scouring the Segundamano for anything that remotely looks like a teaching job offer (more on that at a later date). The reason I recommend staying in hostel as opposed to immediately looking for full-time accommodation like a room in a shared apartment is because you are never going to quite know exactly how things are going to pan out for you here in Madrid. Even if you have a stone-wall job offer, complete with decent remuneration and block teaching hours, you are never going to be quite sure how things will be until you have dipped your toe in the water and sensed the temperature.

You may love it in Madrid after only a month and feel like declaring your love by throwing caution and common sense to the wind and agreeing to move in with the scary, strange man who keeps heads in his fridge in number 78, 2 Iqz on the Calle de Ramon Sanchez (my apologies to anyone who may live at this address, should it actually exist. I in no way imply that you are the person the police have been looking for) but I implore you to take your time before committing to a long-term living arrangement until you are sure that you are going to like where you’re working, what you’re doing and who with.

I have known teachers who decided after a month or so that they had made a terrible mistake and that they wanted to go home and as a result lost out on big deposits because they hadn’t stayed the minimum amount of time required to warrant a return of the initial down payment.

Hostels may be undesirable to those accustomed mommy’s home cooking, cable tv and a nice warm bed but it’s a great way of saving money and keeping the pressure off while you study or job hunt. Once you’re sure that you want to stay and, more importantly, can afford to stay then I suggest you work out your budget and ascertain how much you can afford per month on a room. One good way of doing this is to live in a hostel for the 1st month that you work in your new job and see how much you spend on food, drink and other expenses. Then when your first pay check comes through, subtract that amount from what you Nett and voila…that’s how much you’re going to have to play around with.

You can find a good list of places to stay on a temporary basis and posts by ExpatCafé Users pertaining to this issue on THIS THREAD HERE.  

Make sure that you don’t hand over any money to anyone until you’re allowed to look at the place and see if it’s a nice place to live with a toilet that works, an oven that doesn’t leak gas and shower with hot water. You wouldn’t believe the amount of exploitation that goes on so keep your wallet in your jacket pocket and inspect any place first!

You can find hostels with private rooms and fully equipped kitchens, which is good for the self-reliant among us. I lived with some students from the US who seemed to be doing their own Super Size Me monthly experiment of living off only McDs own brand of calorie-rich produce because they couldn’t cook a thing! That will be you if you hostel doesn’t have cooking utilities. Think about it!

The standard rate for a decent room in a shared apartment Madrid is between €300 - €400, and I would steer clear of the Retiros and Salamancas of this World (affluent zones of Madrid) as rooms here will be more expensive due to location, location, location and not because the rooms are any better than anywhere else. Some people also opt to live close the centre in places like Sol, Callao or Chueca. Again, they can be expensive due to their central position. Should you go down to the woods today (well, not the woods exactly…the suburbs) you may get a nice surprise. Perfectly clean rooms, nice flatmates, metro 5 mins from front door, gym/shops etc close by and all for a reasonable price.

However, if you are planning to do individual or corporate classes then you may have to be in a particular part of town by 8am some mornings so make sure your metro line can have you at a major metro station with good bus/rail/other metro line connections like Sol, Nuevos Ministerios, Moncloa or Plaza Castilla within 20mins – 30 mins. You don’t want to be adding unnecessary time onto your already busy working day!

You need to decide if you want to live with Spanish speakers or English speakers. It depends what your motivation is and what you want to get out of your ‘living and teaching in Spain’ experience. Should you be looking to really improve and expand your knowledge and grasp of the Spanish language then the obvious choice is to put yourself into the position whereby you have to speak it on a daily basis with your flatmates. If, however, you are here to meet fellow teachers and have fun with them and have a view that you’re content to merely pick up a bit of Spanish vocab along the way and nothing more, then maybe living with fellow teachers is you better option.

Living with other teachers has it’s advantages (easier to settle in apartment, initial rapport and communication, great way of stealing TEFL tips and advice) and disadvantages (people talking ‘shop’ all day, integration into county takes longer, petty parochial disputes are more likely to occur), like wise living with Spanish speakers has it’s pros and cons. Your standard of Spanish also influences how you’ll get on, obviously.

Finally, you must also not fall into the trap should you be in your mid-20’s + of confusing the stereotypical image you may have of students and student life in your own country with that of Spain. Students in Spain do not tend to be the same obnoxious, loud, lazy, pot-smoking, unemployable, drink-all-night, promiscuous bunch of no-hoppers that you may have lived with during your time in dorms or campus! They tend to be a bit better behaved and more responsible so don’t utter the mortal words “oh, I’d never live with students again” and therefore skip over a post in a newspaper advertising a room available with students. Give them a call, see the apartment, keep an open-mind. Remember, most students here have to study English as part of University so they are usually delighted to have a native teacher available for free, in-house help with their homework. Can be a great bargaining tool when it comes to deciding whose turn it is to clean the bathroom!