emotionalmarkup

I woke this morning to the sound of a mosquito zigzagging across my face. For a brief moment I experienced that confusion of not knowing where I was. Not just believing that I was somewhere else, but forgetting where I was and how I got there. When realisation overcomes confusion, there’s nothing else to do but get up and have a look around.

My window looks over what I definitely know is not a courtyard - I can’t find any other word to describe it, and I’m sure a word exists - but a perfect, concrete rectangular hole that has been sliced out of the middle of this building, stretching six floors down to the abyss. Narrow windows, carved into the walls like the days left of a sentence, spill light into the usual kitchen and bathroom rumours that provide me with the only clue of what life is doing downstairs on the streets. From the windows, threads of wire shoot out at various angles onto which sheets, towels and clothes cling in a desperate fight to prevent falling down to a dark and stinky doom.

The light is different. The smell is extraordinarily different.

When I open that door and walk out to Plaça del Pedró today ready to start my new job, all the apprehensions, the excitement and uncertainty of the past few weeks will come with me. And while I can’t escape the burden of myself, I guess that with each step out the door, day by day, I’ll lose a little of something and gain a little of something else.

Trabajo.

First day at work. Discover that I have to wage war with Spanish bureaucracy for a social security number and a Numero de Identidad de Extranjeros (NIE). You need a NIE to get a social security number, a bank account and probably donate sperm. It’s a rather important number for us extranjeros. Perhaps I shall write a how to guide just before I die of waiting in line however, I will indulge by saying this: the process is very confusing if you don’t know the system and the bureaucrats have little understanding of the process: either that or their department is giving them false information. And because there is an endless supply of impatient Catalonians and others trying to navigate this system around you, you feel as if you are being drawn down against your will into a slimy vortex of contradiction and spikey things that poke you in the eye.

Tips for foreigners: if you can, get your NIE in the country of origin first. No need to think about it. Just do it, okay? Go to the Spanish consulate with a packed lunch and something to read and just wait there until they tire of your presence and send you away with a number. You many need to sing to them too. The saddest part of it all is that each little victory, such as finding somewhere to make a photocopy or getting some passport photos done, feels like a monumental achievement bringing its own surge of adrenalin and causing you to believe that, if you can conquer this mess you could do anything and that Edmund Hillary was a complete pussy.