Random Observations About Things in Madrid

Now that I have been here for just over a month, I’ve gotten a pretty good sense of the city, the country, etc. So I thought I’d share some interesting things that I’ve learned:

·         Despite the economic crisis, apparently MBAs are very much still in demand from employers. My classmates looking to work in spain or the EU generally, have had no issues getting job interviews or employment offers.

·         Given what I am used to in Canada (and from my summer in London, UK), coming to Madrid, everything seemed incredibly cheap by my standards. So I thought working here would be pretty awesome, thinking the cost of living would be lower. However, I learned that most conglomerates don’t pay very well. So madrileños purchasing power parity (yeah that’s right, I just said “purchasing power parity.” This IS an MBA blog after all!) ends up being about the same as residents of Toronto.

·         Because of the above, most middle-class madrileños live in the suburbs. I learned though that in spanish, the word “suburbio” (the literal translation) has a negative connotation. Think the suburban immigrant slums outside of Paris. To talk about a “normal” suburb, it’s just your “barrio,” meaning neighbourhood.

·         As you may know, contemporary Spaniards are a very secular and liberal bunch. Across Catholic and Jewish (not sure about muslim) people- especially those my age or younger- it is catholic or Jewish in family background only. “Madrid culture” supersedes religion by a landslide. So for example, a Jewish Madrileño and Christian madrileño are probably more similar to each other than a Christian Madrileño and a Christian Canadian.

·         In Madrid, when it rains, it pours, literally. It was sunny with more or less clear skies every single day since I arrived (so about 35 days in a row). Yesterday we got our 1^st rain. 24 hours non-stop POURING. Today it is cloudy and all next week, back to sun. What a city…

This coming week is “career week” for the IE student community. I am excited to see what IE has in store for us! I’ll tell you guys about in in my next post!

Jewish New Year in a 600-year old synagogue

Toledo (the original one; not the one in Ohio) is about 40 mins from Madrid. It was also jewish new year and given Toledo’s jewish history, I figured it was an appropriate day to go visit with a free afternoon I had.

Prior to the Spanish inquisition, jews, muslims and Christians all lived here peacefully which was a pretty big deal in the 1300’s. As a result, the architecture in the city is a mix reflecting each culture’s styles. While the Islamic legacy lives on in the form of architectural style, everything else muslim has been wiped out from the city more or less, except for a few of the mosques which have been preserved and are now museums. However, the jewish quarter has remained intact which was of particular interest for me given I am jewish. Toledo really likes showing off its jewish heritage…The jewish quarter is plastered everywhere with stuff showcasing jewish culture, explaining the history of the jews there, etc. The main synagogue of the city (sinagoga del transito) is now a museum that does a very, very in-depth treatment on the history of the jews not just in Toledo but in Spain in general. If you like reading a lot in museum exhibits, this will be just the thing for you! Also, according to Lonely Planet it cost 2.50EUR to get into the museum. But with my IE student card I got in for free! SCORE!

The cathedral of Toledo is also pretty awesome. Mind you, I’ve seen a lot of churches with pretty fantastic architecture so this one wasn’t any more amazing than those of Italy or whatever, but still cool to see nonetheless.

Something else Toledo is famous for is its marzipan (or “mazapan” in spanish) so I obviously had to try some. SOOOOOOO good!! Super delicious dessert!! I was a fan.

The city walls of Toledo have been kept intact from the old days although the city has obviously expanded outside of the walls. Nonetheless, I can understand why Toledo is considered a UNESCO Heritage site. Inside the city walls it felt like I was in the 1600s. Everything there is so old (and well-preserved), from the tiny, winding streets to the architecture that remains intact. However, to take me out of the sense that I was in the 1600s were the throngs and throngs of tourists. Honestly it felt like no one lived in Toledo; that the town was only “populated” by tourists passing through. But whatever; for a short and cheap bus trip out of Madrid, this was definitely a worthwhile visit!!

Life on exchange at IE Business School

Me in Spain isn’t all just fun times; I AM here for school after all! I am studying at Instituto de Empresa (loosely translated as “Business Institute”). According to the rankings in Financial Times, Business Week, etc. it is one of the best MBA schools in the world so I was pretty excited for the opportunity to be in it.

The student body here is similar to that of our exchange group in that it is a very, very diverse group of people. Like with the exchange group, no one region of the world dominates the student population. In fact, even though this is a school in Madrid, maybe only like 10% of the class is actually spanish!

Something else I found pretty interesting was the IE curriculum. It is almost the exact same as ours at Rotman! In 1^st year they learned basically the same stuff we did, were subjected to the same ridiculous quantity of work, etc. I guess that is a testament to both IE and Rotman’s calibre of MBA schools (although why Rotman is ranked so differently than IE in global MBA rankings is beyond me…).

Also, IE’s careers/networking portal is the exact same tool that we use in Rotman. Good MBA schools clearly think alike…

At Rotman our class schedule ran like clockwork in that the class schedule was the same every week for the length of the quarter (as you may remember from my earlier posts, the Rotman first year was split into quarters, not semesters). At IE, the class schedule is super random. I might have a specific class 3 days in a row and then not again for like a week. Or one day I might have a class for 3 hours and then the next day, only for 1.5. It was a bit weird but once I got my schedule on my iphone, I could follow what was going to be happening when so I am pretty fine with it now. (especially because it also results in me having long weekends several times a month!).

Finally, it’s pretty cool to be learning from the profs I have. The profs at IE are obviously experts in their fields as would be expected in any solid MBA program but my profs this term teach but also work in the fields they teach. In fact, my Emerging Media class is taught by a guy who manages and marketing agency and created one of the most successful iphone apps ever (here: http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/2010/07/02/ikea-takes-its-product-catalog-mobile-with-augmented-reality-app).

So that life here at IE!  

A trip through Basque Country

I had been dying to go to Basque Country for years for a few reasons:

·         The beach in San Sebastian is apparently the best in Spain and the best city beach in Europe

·         Basque food is among the best in the world

·         Basque people are some of the nicest, fun people I have ever met

So when I had a long weekend this past weekend, I decided to capitalize. Me and some of my exchange classmates took a drive up north!

The first thing you notice upon arrival is that Basque country looks quite different from most of the rest of Spain. Most of the Iberian peninsula is dry and pretty flat. Basque Country is quite mountainous and green. Also, every sign is in Basque, not Spanish. The Basque language has no linguistic relatives anywhere in Europe so the words are pretty different. If you are in Spain and see a word with “x”-es or “k”-es in it, it is probably Basque.

First stop for me was Bilbao, the capital of Basque Country on Friday night/Saturday morning,. The city is however, pretty tame, harkening back to its roots as an industrial city. Pretty chilled out crowd. Nothing wrong with that but a far cry from Madrid, for example. What was pretty cool though was visiting the Guggenheim museum. As you may know, it was designed by Frank Ghery- a Canadian!- so I felt like it was my patriotic duty to pay a visit. The architecture of that building is amazing. It is also located right on the Bilbao River. The Guggenheim was part of a city revitalization project and all along the river you can really see that at work. The view is awesome with lots of cool architecture and landscapes and there are some amazing running paths along the river. If I lived in Bilbao I’d definitely be going for runs there constantly!

Something else interesting to note is that Bilbao has a smaller population than Ottawa and is more compact of a city. However Bilbao has: a metro line, tram lines and buses. Ottawa has only buses. Ottawa really needs to get its act together! It's transit system is so behind in the times! Goodness…But anyways, I wanted to maximize my time in San Sebastian so my time in Bilbao was quite short. On to the main event!

In Basque Country their version of tapas are called “pintxos” and are considered the best in the country. So I of course ate a ton of them and they didn’t disappoint. Every meal I ate was basically perfect. What restaurants here typically do is lay out a bunch of different pintxos across the bar. You then pick the ones you want and just eat them (or the chef prepares them for you if they are out of a particular pintxo at the bar at the moment). The bill eventually comes later. Menus do exist from which you can order stuff but I don’t think that’s the “normal” way to eat in these parts. Even if you hate seafood (like I do), the food is so fresh and well-made that it doesn’t matter. I even liked the seafood that I tried here. It was great.

The main beach in San Sebastian, playa de la concha, is pretty awesome. Because San Sebastian isn’t a very big city, it is really easy to get to it from almost anywhere in town. The beach itself is what you’d expect in a solid Mediterranean beach. Although because San Sebastian is in the north, the water was pretty cold. Not a problem when it is 35 degrees and sunny outside but I prefer warm sea water to cold, personally. I’m not really sure why Playa de la Concha is so highly considered- I liked the beach in Valencia just as much, but whatever…

The weekend I arrived also happened to be the weekend of a uniquely basque event, the trainera, which is basically a rowing race. The main trainera of the year happened to be this past weekend in the ocean by playa de la concha. So there were people EVERYWHERE watching the boat racers, people decked out in their favourite rowers’ team colours, etc. It was pretty cool to experience that first-hand!

And after stuffing my face and getting tanned, it was time to get back to reality. Off to Madrid for more studies!

Mike’s Euro Adventure Part II: Madrid

Hello Guys!

After a short visit back to Canada, I am back in Europe, this time, Madrid for a semester on exchange at the Instituto de Empresa (http://www.ie.edu/business-school/degrees/international-mba). Everything so far has been totally amazing. Some observations since I arrived:

·         IE and my flat are located in the wealthiest part of Madrid. It is the Madrid equivalent of 5^th Avenue in NYC or Yorkville in Toronto. The neighbourhood looks pretty much the same as Yorkville except in Spanish instead of english.

·         When I arrived, I needed to buy various things for my flat and school supplies, etc. Spain has a store called El Corte Ingles which is the exact same as the Bay in Canada so you can get pretty much whatever you need. But for cheap stuff, I was curious to know if something like our Dollar Stores exist here. Instead of dollar stores, Madrileños call them Chinese Stores because it is always chinese people that run them. I thought that was hilarious.

·         After getting killed on cost of living challenges in London, it is so refreshing to be in Madrid where:

o   I am on the Euro, not the Pound and therefore have a much better exchange rate

o   Things are priced pretty much the exact same as what they would be in Canada, or cost even less. Huray!

·         The weather is unbelievable. Hot and sunny every single day! I am totally loving it.

·         Because I learned spanish from those who speak castellano (that is spain spanish-speakers), I can actually understand the spanish people are talking here, which is pretty great.

·         The food here is also fantastic.

The last 2 days we had our exchange student orientation, so I got to meet my exchange peers. Because we are all focusing in different specializations, it is unlikely many of us will be in the same classes but it was cool to meet everyone. What was especially nice was to see ACTUAL diversity in the exchange student class. Like, no one country or region dominates the exchange student body.

That's about it for now, I think. More to come!