Idiot's Guide to the BN - Part Two! (with bonus appendices)

Yesterday at the library went MUCH more smoothly.

First things first, in your first days at the BNE, be sure not to miss the noon tour. 

I was there in the morning, and was able to catch the noon tour yesterday. Their "15 minute introduction" to the library was actually a private 45 minute tour! The circulation desk librarian took me all over and explained each room in rapid, detailed, whispered Spanish. Honestly, I only understood maybe 30 to 40% of what he said at any given time, but I always got the gist of whatever he was talking about and congratulated myself for that much. After awhile I was glad I'd missed it yesterday and had to do all that reading figuring things out for myself, because otherwise I would have had NO idea what he was talking about. I felt my heart jump up into my throat with excitement when he took me in the Cervantes room (that's their manuscript room) - I so hope I have a reason to use it!! I feel much more comfortable with the layout and workings of this library now.

After my tour, it was nearly one, and I needed a break from concentrating so hard on the spoken Spanish tour. Got a coffee to perk me up and get me ready for... get this... ACTUAL RESEARCH. It was a delicious cup of coffee. Spain really values taking multiple breaks for food and beverages in the day. At first I thought this was lazy and slow. But I do work better when warm, full, and somewhat caffeinated, so honestly this is probably a really good system for me. 

Then I went upstairs to get started.

So. When you're ready to begin working, you go to circulation, and there you trade your library ID card for a pink desk card. It has a big number on it which is your desk assignment, and basically your new identity. You take it over to the map on the wall outside the Sala de Lectura, and figure out where your desk for the day will be. Today I was in 217. It is important to hang onto that card for dear life, as you need it to request books, get in and out of the Sala, and get your ID back at the end of the day. 

I had a good feeling about today...

I was seated right under Ramon de Penyafort - that felt like good luck for the day! And it was!

You're seated, comfortable, figured out how to turn the desk light on, and ready to work! Next, get on the internet, search the catalogue, and find a book you want to see. If it's in the Recoletos collection, congrats, it's right here in the BN and not at another storage facility. Fill out a pink card, and you'll have the book in under 45 minutes. 

There's one! 

I decided to start with a biography of Marti I had a hard time getting at home last semester.

The desk told me I filled it out perfectly. YES. GIMME THIS BOOK!

HAH. Wait. Just kidding. Be sure you're not trying to request a book during siesta hours, because they close the whole system until 3pm. Research foiled again! You win this round, Spain.

Go have lunch - there's really nothing else to do right now.

Be brave at lunch. See Appendix A for a guide to the Cafeteria.

After 3pm, celebrate, because work begins again! 

I turned in my card to the circulation desk, and returned to my seat to wait for my book. They say half an hour to 45 minutes, but my book was ready in under 20! Omg. I was never so excited to see a blinking red light before.

My first book!!!!!!!!!!!!! AH!!!!!!!! I spent the next few hours, as it slowly got dark in the BN Sala de Lectura as the sun set, trudging through the Spanish and taking careful notes. However, I read Spanish at a very slow rate, and by the end of the day, when it was dark in the library and I felt like this...

...it was time to call it a day. A productive day. Finally! But I hadn't finished reading this book. 

Thankfully, although you can't take books home from the BN, you don't have to request them all over again the next day. You can leave them at the circulation desk on reserve - yay! 

To reserve a book for use in the near future, you fill out a white form.

Your book then goes into one of these red boxes by the circulation desk. You take a copy of the white form home, and when you return, you present it again to retrieve your book.

And thusly, one conducts research at the BN!

Stop to admire the awesome lamps before you leave

Goodnight, Biblioteca Nacional!!!!

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Appendix A

An Idiot's guide to the BN Cafeteria. 

You will need: About ten euros (I think lunch is 8.25), an understanding that Spanish lunch has two courses, and either (1) a working vocabulary of Spanish menu words, or (2) an adventurous attitude towards picking mystery courses. (I chose the later. Today it worked out fine.)

First you pay for lunch, and get a lunch ticket to trade for food. If you want a personal receipt to keep, you need to ask for one specifically. 

 I miss dollar bills - coins are heavy!

Then you go along the lunch buffet, and pick out two courses, bread, fruit, a dessert, and a drink. I recommend skipping dessert - Spanish desserts are just terrible. It's a shame when fruit is sweeter than all the desserts combined.

My two courses!

If you get fish, beware!!!!!!! It may be full of bones. If it is, you're in for an adventure.

I've never been so proud of myself. Look at all those bones I managed not to swallow!

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Appendix B

An Idiot's guide to dressing for the BN.

You're a young researcher, and you're in a fancy library, you want to look good, right? Well there's some practical things to consider. If it's a cold day, no amount of heat is going to be able to fill a giant Sala lit by massive amounts of windows. Wear warm layers, and bring a scarf that will double as a shawl/blanket.

Also, I don't know WHAT their floors are made of, but if your shoes have rubber soles, they will squeak. Now, I can't begin to make you understand HOW LOUD or HOW MUCH they will squeak. It is absurdly comical, and the noise echoes everywhere. So awkward! Hah!

An Idiot's Guide to the Biblioteca Nacional

I'm trying to let go of the fact that today, yet again, so much was confusing and frustrating, and I wasn't able to accomplish very much. So, I'll tell you all how one goes about beginning work at the Biblioteca Nacional, because it has taken me two visits to figure this out.

A grand place to go to work for the day

First things first - obtain a reader or researcher card. This gives you access to the library, the reading room, the collections, etc. It requires that you bring your passport and some letters of introduction. Then you fill out a lot of forms, they take pictures and copies and get you in their system, and then you're good to go for the next five years.

Once you're through the door, and through the security, and the second set of security, they give you a bright lector sticker to wear for the day:

Then you proceed to check all your belongings before you enter the library proper. There's a coat check, or lockers. You can't bring in backpacks or coats or ANYTHING except a few research supplies (in my case a pencil, my laptop and its cord, a mouse, and my wallet) which you can carry in using a "bolso plastico." So you're not sneaking in anything they can't see, I guess. There's less security at the White House, I'm certain. 

The next step, after having your bag inspected, is getting your computer checked in. It needs a badge and ID sticker too, obviously. They stick a permanent barcode onto your laptop, and scan it every time you come in, and then again when you leave. The code is linked to your account, so no one else can walk out the door with your laptop. This allows researchers to leave their laptops at their work stations when they go pick up delivered books or take lunch breaks at the cafeteria. People trust this pretty strongly here. I saw plenty of people just leave all their stuff at their station and go have coffee and come back later with it all safe and sound where they left it. I was wary but did it too at lunch time, and everything was fine! Lunch was terrible, but that's another story...

Then onto the Sala de Lectura! But first, you stop at another station. Outside the sala you present your card to get an assigned work space in the reading room. All the desks are numbered. 

Then, finally, congrats! You're in the reading room, ready to research!!! Sign onto the internet, which isn't too hard, and start browsing the collection! But first, enjoy the views. It's the kind of place that just inspires academic thought. 

But, the books aren't here. You can't browse the stacks. So, you need to learn where the books are, how to search for them in the catalogue program, whether what you've found is available to you, and when you can get your hands on it. There are a number of places they might be. Some areas they can fetch a book from in under 45 minutes. Other places, maybe a day or two. So when you want a book you have to fill out a request. There are a variety of colored request forms corresponding to each of the book storage locations. This took me awhile to figure out. Pink ones are used for books nearby, the blue ones are for books at Sede de Alcalá de Henares, and so forth. So you search, you find a book, you find out where it is, you find out the call number, you fill out the form, and then you wait for them to bring it to you. You can only have a certain number of books out at a time, and you can only consult them in the library. No lending here at the BN. 

Then, you go back to your desk and work for awhile. When they've located your book and it has arrived at the circulation desk, a red light will illuminate on your desk, and that's how you know to go pick it up! If you've already left they'll hold it at circulation for you for a few days. You can also request stuff ahead of time, so it might be waiting for you when you return the next day, but I don't know how that works yet. And then if you need to copy something, oy, that's another thing to learn another day. 

That's the procedure as I've figured it out so far... Now this is all in theory, because after two visits to the BN  I still haven't managed to see a dang book. I have high hopes to request one tomorrow. *sigh. So much prep work. I'm trying to look at today as valuable learning and preparation, rather than a day where I wasn't productive. I know productivity is measured in different ways. This whole first week has been laying a lot of groundwork, and hopefully that will pay off soon. I am so focused on my short term goals for this trip that I forget that I'm gaining an understanding of research abroad that I'm going to need to draw upon again and again the rest of my career.

It was an exhausting day, not helped by the fact that I did not enjoy my lunch at the cafeteria (another confusing room with its own procedures!) and I got lost and missed the GSA meeting with the other SLU grad students on campus later that day. :-(
 All that futile effort is how a day starts bright and sparkly, and ends in a frazzled, exhausted mess:

But I have a cure. Chocolate and Wine, enjoyed while watching some humorous television before bed. Bought myself some comfort food at the cute little grocery store on campus. So I'm going to enjoy my treats, and say a few prayers to St. Isidore of Seville, patron saint of the internet and statue guard of the library, that tomorrow some actual research begins!

St. Isidore, hear my research prayers!

Sunday trip to the Rastro and much caffeinated academic chatter

Yesterday was a great day actually. I got to skype with Casey in the morning over breakfast, since he was up late to talk to me, and then I got out the door early to meet Alyssa for our trip to the Rastro! Well, actually I was a bit late, which was kind of stressful, because I didn't want to miss meeting her. I got out at the Anton Martin station, and she'd given me good directions on where to meet her. I was late, but so was she, so it worked out that we found each other just fine! But she'd stayed up really late the last night putting together teaching so we decided to get breakfast first. She took me to a little restaurant where we got tortillas (the best tortilla I've had so far here - can't go wrong with potatoes and eggs!) We also got coffee. It felt great to have a hearty breakfast in my system - most days I've been having just a huge Spanish orange and a blueberry breakfast bar. Couldn't believe how cheap our tortillas, bread with tomato, and coffees were.

She took me over to the Rastro, where she's been collecting interviews for an article she's working on. I didn't really know what to expect of the place, other than it was a market of sorts, but it was pretty cool! At parts it was VERY crowded, but it was neat to see all the stuff for sale. She cautioned me to hang onto my bag and belongings - it seems like a good place to be pickpocketed. Lots of crowded movement, lots of tourists, etc. There were so many stalls of knick-knacks, purses, clothing, souvenirs, etc. Lots to take in!

We shopped around a little bit, but were mostly talking, talking, talking and exploring. I saw a cool purse I that I inquired about, but it was kind of expensive - there are so many beautiful leather goods in Spain though! I'm hoping to find a cool pair of boots while I'm here but didn't see anything like that today. Alyssa thought about getting this pretty lace top we saw at a lace clothing stall, but after we saw the same one at a few more shops it seemed a little less uniquely beautiful. It was fun to explore the different shops.

I also helped her out by taking a few surreptitious candid shots of people she'd interviewed for her paper. I had forgotten my camera but I'm glad I had my iphone for the day at the market! There were a lot of street performers and they were super entertaining.

After the Rastro Alyssa took me just ALL over Madrid! We passed monuments, parks, some of her favorite restaurants and movie theatres, colorful streets, churches, etc. It was kind of a walking introduction to Madrid. I'm certain I won't remember where anything was, but it was certainly a fun walk.

 It was chilly so we stopped for hot beverages, and it was nice to sit and talk face to face. We got lunch later too at an American Brunch place she'd been hearing about and finally wanted to try, where we got one euro mimosas and lots of food. I feel like we talked just at top speeds ALL DAY - about our research topics and interests, our families, academic life at our respective SLU campuses, PhD programs, teaching, the challenges of working with international students, history, literature, life, living and conducting research abroad, cities, Spanish culture... it was a very informative day and I loved every minute of high-speed American chatter with a fellow graduate student. I do hope we'll hang out again. At the end of the afternoon she invited me up to her place for a cup of tea. I knew there was still a lot of work I wanted to get done in the evening, but the day had been so interesting and enjoyable I wasn't going to turn down such an invitation. She got out a notebook and asked to pick my brain. She wanted to know the order and nature of each of the periods of European history, so I started with the end of the Roman empire, described the barbarian settlement in Europe, the development of kingdoms, the Carolingian Empire and its breakup, the nature of the 'dark ages,' the medieval warm period, high medieval culture, the calamitous 14th century, and the Renaissance. I was trying to make it as succinct but informative as possible, which was a fun challenge for a 45 minute conversation over a cup of loose leaf jasmine tea! Delightful though - so fun to talk about history. She also found it appalling that I never get a chance to read fiction, and lent me Slaughterhouse 5, which I've never read - so I'm looking forward to having something to read over lunches alone.

I was exhausted when I got home around 4:45 though! Omg! We had pretty much just been talking constantly for like 6 hours! But what a stimulating afternoon.

The evening was more chill. I talked with Casey on skype for a long time, and it was so good to hear about how his film shoot was going. Then the family came home from their weekend in Andalusia, and we chatted awhile. I actually did end up making a lot of progress on Marti research online in the evening, and that was encouraging, but wiped me out. Dinner was delicious meatballs and was eaten in front of the TV, where we watched a special about Gypsy weddings in Spain. My host mom told me that gypsies are dangerous people, but then did admit that they were good dancers. They did not seem to care for the gypsy wedding traditions or clothing displayed in the documentary, but did find a few nice things to say here and there. I mostly sat back and watched, curious to get a sense of their impressions of this subculture in Spain.

After they'd gone to bed I laid on the couch and watched New Girl with headphones on - Yesterday Hulu was working, so yay! SO FUNNY and such a nice way to wind down after learning so much all day.