By Richard Morley.
John
Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you are busy making other
plans”. Well, I have made a plan. It faces me from the cork board
on the wall behind my computer. It is a printed spread sheet telling
me where I have to be from now until the end of the year. My life has
suddenly become more than busy.
Too
busy, I am afraid to maintain this blog in the way I would wish. Gone
is the time I could devote to the visits and research I love to do. I
haven't stopped completely as life always brings new questions to be
answered, new places to see and wonder about.
This
year I have visited parts of Spain very new to me. I have experienced
new delights and met new people. I have tried new food and learned
more about local cultures. All of which are recorded for future blog
posts and I will try to find the time to write something about them.
One
chance encounter led to a twenty five percent increase in my teaching
duties – and took me to new areas of Madrid I had not seen before.
I have written about Madrid's public transport system, it's
wonderful Metro, both heavy and light, and its convenient bus
service, before. One thing I have only mentioned in passing is
Madrid's local commuter rail network known as the “Cercanias” -
the system that brings thousands of workers into the city each day
from the neighbouring suburbs and towns. It was this rail network
that was attacked by terrorists on March 11th 2004, that
took the lives of nearly two hundred people. If the metro and buses
are the arteries of the city of Madrid, then the Cercanias are its
lungs and throat, bringing into the city the “alimentación”
that keeps it alive.
I
have only occasionally used the Cercanias up to now. Now I have to
count myself as a regular commuter, well, on Tuesdays and Thursdays
at least.
I
however, go in the other direction to most commuters. Madrid
continues to expand. The cost of establishing a business in the
centre of town is high and companies are setting up on the fringes.
My job takes me from one office to another. I spend quite a lot of my
time on the move. I enjoy this. I wouldn't like to be set in one
place all the time. For me, each day's commute is in a different
direction. But this new job is taking me, twice a week, to the very
limits of the city.
Yet
its cost to me is the time it takes to travel. In monetary terms the
fares here are so ridiculously low I can pay for my journey with the
change I get from buying a pack of cigarettes.
The
first railway line of the system, and indeed the first anywhere in
Spain, was the line that ran from Madrid to Aranjuez, forty eight
kilometres south of the city, which was completed in 1851. From those
early beginnings the Cercania system has now grown to almost three
hundred and fifty kilometres of track reaching out over most of the
greater “Comunidad” of Madrid, and one
line takes you into neighbouring Castille y Leon.
On the way to the mountains north of Madrid.
You
can find a map of the system here.
Once
a diverse amalgamation of different companies the Cercanias were
nationalised, like all the other railway companies, in 1941, and come
under the control of RENFE, (Red
Nacional de los Ferrocarriles Españoles). Some of the local lines
were narrow gauge and continued to be so until 1970.
Unlike
the commuter trains of other cities, the Cercanias do not stop at
terminal stations,leaving the journey to work to be completed by
other modes of transport. The Cercanias come right into the heart of
the city, underground, and completely hidden from the sight of
tourist who might not even suspect the system exists.
Ok,
that last statement is not as true as is used to be. Following four
long years of tunnelling and construction, the Cercanias arrived in
the Puerta del Sol, the most central point in the city. Visitors may
well have noticed the signs directing those using the Metro to
descend even deeper into what has been called “Europe's largest
man-made cavern”, but they will have passed through towards their
subway line and not really given it a thought.
Similarly,
if you have ever changed metro lines at Nuevos Ministerios, and you
will have if you have travelled into the city by metro from the
airport, you might not have noticed that part of that sprawling mess
is a very extensive series of platforms for the Cercanias. From there
you can travel south to Aranjuez or north to Colmenar Viejo. You can
now, if you wanted to avoid the four stops on line 8, take the
Cercania to terminal four at Barajas.
They
have been promising us this direct link from the airport to the city
centre for years. Up to very recently the only way, using public
transport, into the city has been via the metro, with at least one,
sometimes two changes of line depending on the destination, or on the
regular, but subject to traffic, shuttle bus. Now we have a direct
line Cercania – BUT IT GOES TO THE WRONG PLACE!
The
new line, C1, from the airport passes through Nuevos Ministerios, but
from there, instead of going to Sol, where most tourists will want to
go,being a) central, and b) within walking distance of hundreds of
hotels and hostels, and c) connects to three Metro lines, it passes
through Recoletos, which has none of those three advantages
mentioned. In fact Recoletos is pretty useless unless you work
nearby. Sol, on the other hand is the most used station in Madrid. So
why RENFE, why? The main advantage of running a direct link from the
airport to the city centre has been lost. And Recoletos connects with
nothing. If you alight there, you will have to carry your bags three
hundred metres down to Cibeles where you can catch a bus or a single
metro line. On behalf of several friends who visit Madrid often I
feel annoyed at this stupid bit of routing.
Oh,
and you can only take the Cercanias from Terminal 4. So if you arrive
at 1,2 or 3, won't have the option anyway.
But
if you do arrive at terminal 4 and take the Cercanias, you will
either have to change at Chamartin station, (as recommended by RENFE)
Nuevos Ministerios, as you did before, to Cercanias lines C3 or C4,
or travel on to Atocha to change to line 1 of the metro – possible
the worst and most over-crowded line on the network. At great expense,
nothing has been improved.
Be
that as it may, the Cercanias are clean, cheap and are only crowded
during rush hour. They are also quiet. Totally electrified and
running on the smoothest track imaginable, you can read or listen to
music in peace.
The inside of one of the carriages. Obviously this is not rush Hour.
They
also run on time – and in the mornings, very frequently. On the
route I use, at least, a train leaves for my destination every ten
minutes. And I always get a seat!
Changing
the subject:
I
was attending a meeting with other teachers recently. All of them
were reporting, like me, if they wanted it, an increase in workload.
We may well be in a recession, but language teaching seems to be
hardly affected. It's not just English. French and German are also,
it seems, needed by Spanish businessmen and women. Not all companies
have been affected by the crisis. They might not be enjoying the boom
times of recent years, and this is probably, and not too late, making
them reflect on their marketing strategies. The companies I teach at
are telling me something very interesting: it is not a priority for
their employees to pass an exam in English. They want their employees
to close the deal, sell, get the contract signed, advertise and
network – and whether this is done grammatically or not is not
important, so long as communication is established.
Grammar
teachers – don't send me hate mail. I will state here and now that
conjugation and syntax are vitally important when communication needs
to be precise. Dates and terms of agreements have to definitely
understood on both sides. What these employers mean is they want to
concentrate on practical communication. And if that means slipping
out of the grammatical and into the vernacular, then that is what
they want.
Luckily,
that is exactly what I teach. Coming from a technical / scientific
background that morphed into management seems to have worked in my
favour. The business student wants useful language skills and I have
lost count of the number of times one of my students has commented
that vocabulary within that business context that I introduce into my
lessons was never taught to them at any “academic” language
establishment. And they wonder why?
Business
English (BE), English for Special purposes (ESP), and other forms of
useful language skills should be our priority if we have those types
of students. Get away from the academic and into the realms of the
practical. And if you don't know the vocabulary, you can learn it. In
recent months I have taught British and American Legal, Accountancy,
Marketing, Technical and Scientific, (where I had to learn all the
terms needed in meteorology incidentally!) and Financial English. In
business, a basic vocabulary, while useful, is not enough. And
employers here know it.
In
the light of that, one of the teachers I met with thinks that the
market for business English will remain strong for at least the next
decade. That should see me into my dotage nicely!
Another
change of subject:
I
bought Parsnips and
Brussels sprouts a couple of days ago. A sure sign that Christmas is
nearly with us. After the aforementioned teachers' meeting, I
wondered down to the Plaza España and lunched on Chestnuts.
The
Christmas illuminations have been turned on and nativity scenes
(belens) are
starting to appear in shop windows. I love this time of year in
Madrid. Everyone seems to be even more friendly than normal and the
Christmas parties, at least for me, begin next weekend.
I
just hope I can find the time to enjoy them!
