By Khilen Mehta

Do you see yourself as young? Dynamic? Urban? Well, even if you don’t, you can still head on down to Spain’s greatest hip hop festival, Cultura Urbana. The festival has continually established itself as the one of the most modern and innovative events on the European Cultural Scene.

The festival, taking place on the 30th and 31st May in Parque de La Marina de San Sebastian de los Reyes, boasts a line-up which promises to be one of the most exciting in the history of the festival. Along with the participation of some of Spain’s finest such as Violadores de Verso, Nach and Falsalarma, Cultura Urbana hosts some of the most stellar international performances such as Talib Kweli, The Game, Immortal Technique and IAM amongst others.

Within its extensive programme, Cultura Urbana will also play host to other activities such as the Urban Culture Documentary Festival, the IV Red Bull Batalla de los Gallos, the 3rd Eastpak Break-dance Battle, the Urban Culture Art Gallery in FNAC, sports zones and many other activities.

So get yourself down there at the end of this month! There’s 20,000 people expected there each day. Make sure you’re not the only one missing out! Here’s how to get there…

METRONORTE: LÍNEA 10 / STATIONS: REYES CATÓLICOS AND BAUTANAL

BUSES FROM AND TO PLAZA DE CASTILLA: 152 A, B Y C (STOP PLAZA DE TOROS) 154 A, C (STOP AVENIDA BAUNATAL)

by Lev Eldudin

We’ve all been there, and the decision is not an easy one. You’re home in the afternoon on a weekday, you find yourself having a couple more hours free than you expected. Do you take your siesta?

It sounds like a simple yes or no decision, but there are a lot of factors that play into the verdict. How long do I sleep for? Is it a couch or a bed endeavour? Shouldn´t I do that load of laundry that I’ve been putting off for weeks that has forced me to have to steal my roommate’s skid-marked underwear?

Recent research, not to mention Spanish culture, says forget the laundry and snooze it up. According to an article on BIO.com (http://http://web.archive.org/web/20070310193716/www.bio.com/newsfeatures/newsfeatures_research.jhtml?cid=19200022), a short nap is very natural after a long hearty afternoon meal (especially if the meal is cocido, in which case you want to sleep to forget the fact that you just ate that stuff). The article goes on to say that a short nap after eating can help prevent obesity, and can keep your mind functioning better for the rest of the day. Daytime sleep can also prevent narcolepsy, which is a scary, scary thing.

The real question though is how long to nap. If you’re out for too long, you’ll wake up feeling groggy, disoriented and sometimes even grumpy. And nobody likes a grumpy guy with skid marked underwear.

To avoid that, most sleep research suggests taking a power nap, somewhere between 15 and 45 minutes, but not longer. If you sleep longer, you will shift into the next, deeper stage of sleep, and interrupting that is what you feel when you wake up from a nap and have no idea where you are or what day it is. However, one full sleep cycle is about two and a half hours, so if you’re really dead you can get a nice, long, full nap, one that is usually reserved before a long night of partying.

The toughest part of taking a nap though, is the inescapable guilt. With every ´to nap or not to nap` internal debate comes the guilt. While our Spanish counterparts have long been famous for their post-meal pillow parties, the American in me still feels that guilt before every nap that I take. The internal battle is there whether or not we admit it to ourselves, but please, don’t let guilt take away what you hold most dear. You’ve got modern science behind you. Screw the man, set your alarm, hop into your bed or couch or floor or cardboard box, and snore away!

By Maja Gojkovic

Last night was the first round of the Eurovision Song Contest; the first semi final. Representatives from all nineteen countries presented their songs all hoping to make it to the next round and represent their countries. Serbia pulled out all the stops for the show and really impressed the audience by producing an amazing set and even involving Serbian performers and celebrities to kick off the voting.

The theme of the show, presented by Jovana Janković and Željko Joksimović, was “City”, and the theme of the Second Semi-Final will be “Water”.

After all songs had been presented, televoting started in all the participating countries as well as in Spain and Germany, who are already qualified for the Final, but were drawn to vote in the First Semi-Final, while the other directly qualified finalists - France, The United Kingdom and Serbia - get to vote in the Second Semi-Final. Nine of the qualifying countries were decided by televoting.

The countries that qualified were Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, Russia, Israel, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Poland and Norway.

As bookies predicted Russia have a good chance of wining. I personally agree as the song is a beautiful ballad and definitely has a Eurovision song contest feel to it. Russia may have to watch out as Greece in my opinion have a tremendous chance of winning as the song is catchy, dance like and definitely something that could be a winning number. Although performances from Russia, Greece were catchy and definitely deserved to go through to the second round of the competition others were not so lucky. Countries such as Ireland, Belgium and Estonia will have to try harder next year as this year performances were nail bitingly awful. The first semi final seemed to be influenced by a pantomime child like feel as Ireland were represented by Dustin the turkey with a song Iralnde Douze Pointe was hilariously bad which in my opinion was a shame considering Ireland’s amazing success in the competition since it first started. Belgium were represented by Ishtar with a song called O Julissi, also a poor performance in my opinion. Estonia also added to the pantomime feel during the competition as the performance looked like three middle aged umpa lumpa childrens entertainers. They were represented by Kreisiraadio with a song Leto Svet.

All in all I think the first semi final of the competition got off to a good start. If you’re a Eurovision song lover like me then if you watched yesterday’s first round it definitely wet the appetite of us lovers and definitely got the ball rolling for the competition. Out of the qualifiers from the first round my money is definitely on Russia, Greece and Israel.

If you want to watch the second round of the semi finals you can watch the show live on www.eurovision.tv. The second round of the semi finals will be on Thursday 22^nd May. The countries participating will be Iceland, Sweden, Turkey, Lithuania, Albania, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Belarus, Latvia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Denmark, Georgia, Hungry, Malta, Cyprus, FYP Macedonia and Portugal.

Ok kids, this week it’s time to get a bit daft in our quest to save money!

Bus, Bin, Pigeon

Incredibly silly but strangely compelling game patented by myself and my good friend Laura, inspired by the beautiful cityscape of Birmingham but ideal for playing in any city in the world. The rules are simple: when you see a bus, shout “bus!”, when you see a bin, shout “bin!”…and you can probably guess what you have to shout when you see a pigeon. Of course, you can adapt the game to suit your local flora and fauna, for example in Lavapies “tramp, poo, fight”.

The first person to spot the object gets a point, winner is the person with most points (told you it was simple). Bonus points for combining all three things, such as a pigeon driving a bus into a bin. Whilst this scenario is quite unlikely, I did actually see two tramps throwing horse manure at each other a few days ago in my barrio. Score!  

Don’t forget it is now possible to listen to all new European Vibe Magazine articles and download them for FREE to your computer and MP3 player.

The recordings are for everybody, but they are especially useful for learning English.
If you read European Vibe Magazine to improve or maintain your level of English, you can hear native speaker pronunciation and learn how to say all the new words you see.
There are many different accents to listen to. We record all the articles at least once, but we also try to have multiple recordings of the same article with different voices and accents.
To see the written articles the audio relates to, visit the main European Vibe site: http://www.europeanvibe.com or click the magazine links on this page.

¡Mejora tu inglés con los “listening” del podcast y lee los artículos de la revista!
Apropiado desde un nivel intermedio hasta muy avanzado, este material es 100% auténtico y una forma tan buena como amena de avanzar.
Hay una amplia gama de acentos: inglés, americano, irlandés, australiano, escocés, etcetera.
Lo bueno de leer una revista en inglés es aprender vocabulario nuevo, lo malo es no saber pronunciarlo.
Lo bueno de escuchar un programa de radio en inglés es escuchar la pronunciación verdadera de la lengua, lo malo es poder entender muy poco, no poder separar las palabras o no tener ni idea de como se escriben.
Hemos juntado todo lo bueno con una revista que puedes leer y escuchar a la vez, y a tu ritmo. ¡Puedes aprender un montón de vocabulario, saber pronunciarlo y llegar cada vez más cerca de la perfección del idioma!

Click here to get your own player.

By Will Cade

The Madrid International Auto Show won’t just have visitors walking in circles around cars: the vehicles will also be racing in circles around the ogling onlookers. From May 23^rd to June 1st, it will offer the typical fanfare of concept cars and re-designed models like the new Audi A3, along with totally customized, decked-out luxury models from Ferrari, Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Range Rover.

The organizers for La Feria Internacional del Automóvil de Madrid are also taking an impressively interactive approach towards a car show. They will have trial courses showcasing high performance models in action and a go-kart track for those of us who just want to survive a few laps and imagine we could handle the real thing.

For the non gear-heads or adrenalin junkies in the crowd, the Ecologic City area will imitate an environmentally sustainable city, complete with hydrogen and bio-fuel powered vehicles and a bio-fuel service station. The area will also have classes teaching participants driving skills to reduce pollution and demonstrations on how cars can be recycled into reusable materials.

Further driving classes will be offered for the younger generation of up and coming drivers. While the kids are learning to drive safely, mom and dad can learn to be a more ecologically conscious driver - or a pseudo race car driver.

http://www.ifema.es/ferias/automovil/default.html

by Helen Macrae

As city, Madrid has got it all. With theatres and tapas, bars and bullfighting, shopping and sunshine, it’s cosmopolitan, frenetic, bold, brash and…smelly.

When I first touched down in Spain I was overwhelmed by the host of aromas to hit my nose (starting with that all-too familiar smell of smoke mere seconds after I had walked into arrivals), but after a while I became accustomed to it all as I busied myself with daily life, trotting around the city teaching executives useful words like chav, monkfish and Tesco clubcard. It took a visit from my parents and their non-initiated noses to remind me that Madrid has an amazing array of aromas, some of them nice and some of them nasty, but all combining to create that unique “Esencia de Madrid”.

My sensory journey begins each morning at Metro Sol, when I change from Line 3 to Line 1 and my nostrils are hit with the delicious smell of freshly-baked waffles coming from the cafe in the station. Luckily I’m always in too much of a rush to stop and buy any, otherwise I’d currently be the size of a small country. Unfortunately though, even this divine smell is sometimes not enough to mask the stink of drains which seems to permanently hang in the air round Sol. Other unpleasant odours I experience on the Metro to work are B.O., bad breath and, my personal favourite, the smell of someone sweating out alcohol they drank the night before. Yuk.

More agreeable aromas you might encounter as you journey round Madrid include cut grass when the gardeners have been out in force in one of the city’s numerous parks, along with the delightful scent of flowers as you walk by the Botanical Gardens next to the Retiro. The smell of cigarette smoke is pretty much unavoidable anywhere you go, as is that of frying food, both of which may or may not to be your taste. As you wander round Lavapies you’re hit with the pungent smell of curry, laced with a whiff of hash and perhaps a dash of urine. Walk round the more well-heeled barrios of the city such as Salamanca, Retiro and Opera, and you can smell money.

But my favourite smell in Madrid is one that it’s difficult to put my finger on, and which at times can be quite elusive. As my mate H puts it, it’s that smell you sometimes catch a waft of on a summer’s evening, just as dusk is drawing in, a smell full of promise and anticipation of the night’s adventures. The smell of fun!

Madrid Metro - Smells delightful?

by Martin Brown

Tim Booth appeared on stage on crutches for this show. There was a muffled explanation in Spanish from one of his bandmates, but I didn’t catch it. So he sat for most of the show. This must have been very, very difficult for one normally so active! Known for his spasmodic whirling and spinning, he cut a different figure here. He has also shaved his head since I last saw him play.

I really like James, so this is not really a very objective review. I had not seen them play live for more than 10 years. Of course, they were inactive during most of that time, with all kinds of reported bust ups. Let’s just all be grateful that the issues have now been resolved. With a new album out last month, and based on the fanatical crowd at this show, the future looks good again!

I could feel Booth’s pain as he sang Born of Frustration, he wanted to be on his feet, not in a chair! The voice is the same, pure, unique sound as ever and the band seemed very happy to be there. Andy Diagram, resplendent in a spotted dress, blew his trumpet and compensated for Booth’s immobility by running all over the place throughout the show. There is not just one front man in this band, that’s for sure. Maybe that was the problem before?

Running through material from their 20+ year career, each song was greeted with screams for the 1500 or so people in attendance. It’s always amazing to me that, whilst most Spanish people seem reluctant to learn English, they are happy, and very able to sing the words to every song of their favorite performers!

Towards the end of the almost two hour set, Booth said, “We said we were not going to play this song for a year, but we are going to sing it for you tonight, because I am sitting down!” The crowd went nuts and sang along with the band.

The band looked genuinely surprised by the length and passion of the responses to the songs, especially after Sometimes, when the crowd continued, a capella, long after the band had stopped playing.
This was a lot of fun, for the crowd and the band, the perfect scenario for any concert.

by Lev Elgudin

If you look up the word quaint on dictionary.com, here’s what you’ll find:

quaint

–adjective, -er, -est.

After taking a five day rent-a-car road trip through southern France, I found that the word describes the historical charm of the region perfectly. And, as with all quaint places, a cheap, mapless, hippie-style ride through the side roads is a must.
The drive from Madrid to San Sebastián is about 4 hours with no traffic, which means about 5 hours in real life. Not too long if you’re used to driving longer distances, plus with beautiful sights and a bit of mountain weaving on the way.
But me and my two friends wanted as much southern France time as we could get, so we didn’t stop on the way, and arrived in Donostia (Basque for San Sebastián) at approximately 1 am, just in time to meet a couch surfer (check out couchsurfing.com) who’d agreed to show us the bar scene. It seems like a cool city, certainly a separate future trip altogether. One weird thing about it: in Madrid, we’re used to “chinos” selling beer and food on the street at night; in San Sebastián they sell glow sticks and weird glowing spinning tops for a couple of euros. And no beer. Needless to say, I was distracted for hours.

Wednesday night’s sleep was both one of the most uncomfortable and satisfying of my life. After leaving Donostia at about 3:30 am, we drove out past the border into France just a few kilometres away. We found a quaint little field, off a small, woodsy road, and parked. We had a tent, but it was raining, and we were tired. So we did the logical thing: we slept in the car. As I received a last minute upgrade from Atesa for some unknown Spanish reason, our car was a Citroen C5, which is a relatively large sedan. So we piled our bags in the front two seats, moved them up as far as they went, flattened out the back seats and stretched out on top of our home-brought blankets and pillows with our feet in the trunk. With the three of us, it was a tight squeeze, but a few tokes and some wine had us good and passed out.

When we awoke, we found that our quaint little field was actually someone’s house, and the small woodsy road was actually part of a residential neighbourhood where people wake up early and get to work. By our 10 am wake up time, the street was bustling with activity. It was a holiday too in France, so we were greeted with a lot of weird looks and stares. What would you do if you saw three bleary-eyed strangers emerging from a seemingly abandoned car parked on the grass right next to your house? The didn’t seem to care though, so my respect for the French went up a lot.

The rest of the trip was filled with lots of French food and wine, delicious chocolate croissants, foie gras, and crepes. And lots of other things too. Here are some highlights.
Bordeaux: Le Fiacre sound bar (www.le-fiacre.com) is located near Place Rey-Berland in the centre of town. It’s a “post rock” punk bar which was relatively quiet on this Thursday night, but the bartender said it’s usually packed with locals and regulars. They have a live band in the basement every weekend, and how can you miss a bar that features acts like Pussydelic and Funky Freaks. The highlight of the night was when we started talking to a Parisian visiting the city on holiday. Boy, did he make a lot of hand motions. Lots of weaving and twirling, sometimes using both hands, seemingly unattached to what he was actually saying. Neither his English nor Spanish were very good, but that didn’t matter, his orchestra directing hands didn’t stop. Nice guy though.

Every little town: has a tourism office, and amazingly, from Thursday to Sunday, they were all closed. It’s amazing the Spanish have a worldwide reputation for not working a lot, the French work week is capped at 35 hours.
All small French villages are equipped with cool-looking cathedrals. Every single one.
Highways are crazily expensive, at least by US standards. The drive from Bordeaux to Toulouse is about 2 hours, but it cost 16 euros.
The road you want to be on if you’re not in a hurry is N1113, a side road that gets you from Bordeaux to Toulouse in about 4 hours. It’s filled with off-road fruit stands with delicious strawberries, a million chateaux for wine tasting mostly in the Graves area, and small little quaint villages that are seemingly all the same but somehow different.

On a final and abrupt note, I want to mention a February article in Time magazine (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1720316,00.html) that states, among other wondrous statistics, 90% of French women over 50 are sexually active. To me, that’s incredible. But after spending some time in the south of France, I saw why. These small little quaint towns, there’s little to do but drink wine, eat foie, and have wild outdoor sex. It’s a beautiful country, I recommend a visit.

by Will Cade

I’ve seen some strange things in the Madrid metro. I’ve seen punks; I’ve seen beggars. I’ve seen performers, and I’ve seen dealers. I’ve almost seen fighters, and I think I’ve even seen a couple of hookers. But I never thought I would see anything that even remotely looked like love, riding underneath Madrid with the dirty, discarded newspapers swirling in the dark tunnels behind me.

One night last week, I went down into the metro to catch my line home, but I had just missed it. I sat down and did what the Metro forces you to do: wait. A few minutes later, a couple sat down next to me. At first, as usual, I moved my bag into my lap and gave my pockets a quick check, in case someone made a go for my wallet or, more importantly, the writing pad in my back pocket which looks like a wallet.

The couple hadn’t robbed me: they seemed to be far more concerned with one another. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the man rubbing the woman’s stomach while she rested her head on his shoulder. Oh get a room, I thought, once again reminding myself of my distaste for public displays of affection, even if only in the privacy of my own mind.

The metro arrived, and when we got on, they ended up sitting directly across from me. It was then I noticed that the woman did look rather pale. The man commenced rubbing her stomach with one hand, while holding what I then realized to be a purple box of prunes in the other. Dear God, I thought, piecing together the situation, that’s love.

For a moment I wished I was a doctor and could have offered them my card and told them to give me a call, that we could work everything out (for they looked neither European nor wealthy). But, unfortunately, I’m not a doctor, and I needed to get off at the next station.

They continued on, to where, I’ll probably never know, because I doubt I will ever see them again. But I also doubt I will be able to forget them anytime soon, for never before have I seen such a loving and caring display of affection, on the metro or otherwise.