i´ll be there for you...

So after a couple of months living in Carabanchel at José's(for the visual learners: http://maps.google.es/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=110664284521662654017.00045c7584d62b907667d&ie=UTF8&ll=40.411666,-3.750629&spn=0.233697,0.439453&z=11 ), I decided to start looking at apartments again mainly due to logistics. If I want to do something downtown in the afternoon and something downtown at night it is always uncomfortable to try to make it home and back. At least a half hour each way, more if Atletico Madrid has a home soccer game. Two weeks ago after returning late from a day trip to El Escorial I ended up missing a movie I wanted to see at an LGBT film festival, not a huge loss but I'm supposed to be seizing the day over here so I steeled myself to start apartment hunting... again. By moving to the northwest side of Madrid I can get much closer to the centro without getting much farther from school. I´m looking in the area between the Moncloa bus station and the centro.

If my quest were purely logistic, I would probably be done by now, but like many of my generation I am afflicted with Friends syndrome, the irrational belief that I can live cheaply in a spacious appartment in a trendy neighborhood with a group of friends who are like my family while pursuing my dreams as an actor, a hippy, a fashion designer, a chef, an archeologist or... wait what is it that Chandler does?.

Okay it´s mainly the group of friends that's the hang up. If I'm honest with myself a big part of my motivation is the hope that if I move in with a group of 2 or 3 chill madrileños about my age I will instantly have the social life I feel that I am lacking right now. But of course such close knit groups of friends aren't typically looking for a one-year passer through, and that's especially true in Spain where it seems like people usually have the same group of friends from diapers to diapers. So holding out for the right feel, I've now passed on a couple of acceptable offers, and I'm starting to lose energy.

I'm debating taking a place in Chueca, the gay ghetto of Madrid. My roommates would be a Colombian about my age and a middle aged Brasilian. I hate to say it but I'm kind of hung up on national origin, too. I'd like to live with madrileños failing that Spaniards failing that at least native Spanish speakers. Plus, this place is maybe too in the middle of things. Right above a discoteca. And I should worn any female readers who may have wanted to visit, that one bad hetero roommate and his girlfriend ruined it for you all. The Brazilian has banned any overnight visitors with breasts. While I waffle, someone else has probably jumped on it anyway.

Of course during the course of the apartment search, I have started to develop a social life based around COGAM, the LGBT collective. I started out going to an English language learners discussion group and keep getting sucked deeper and deeper in. I now go to a purely social group conducted in Spanish on Saturday night, and next Saturday I will take my first turn of duty in la patrulla condonera, that's right the condom patrol. So maybe I can let go of the Friends fantasy... but just as I prepare to do that I find this article in the good old New York Times about Daniel Vosovic's apartment. The man who lost Project Runway but won our hearts, seems to be living the dream albeit at 5,000 dollars a month: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/realestate/23habi.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

What do you think, do I stick it out for the perfect apartment of hip twenty-somethings or do I go with the mamaphobic Brazilian?