This Friday was the last day of August. I've been running around getting new things for the flat I'm in the process of moving into.
July and August are sale months in Madrid. As far as I know, stores can't have sales any time they feel like it here. They're limited to January and July/August. One Spaniard explained it to me this way: if stores were allowed to cut prices whenever they felt like it, the big ones could undercut the small ones, putting them at a severe and costly disadvantage.
I don't know how much credence to give that explanation – grocery stores seem to have various items on sale all the time, just like in the States. But maybe their situation is different for some reason, I don't know.
Regardless, this weekend is the end of the summer sales. If I'm looking to find items, including furniture, for the new place at a discount, today's the last day for it.
This new flat is a kind of a funky joint, not the elegant type of space I huddled in this last year. And what I'm discovering is that while the piso has real possibilities as far as transforming it into something fun and nice to be in, the furnishings are 2 or 3 notches below the quality of the furnishings in the flat I'm leaving. Both flats are furnished, which made my life very easy last year, newly arrived as I was and wanting a ready-made home to move into. A lot of the look of the place was not what I would have chosen on my own, but some of the furniture was very comfortable, in particular a pair of small armchairs in front of the living room windows, and the bed in the master bedroom. Especially the bed. Mama, that is one comfortable mattress. So comfortable that at times during the year I spent large portions of my waking hours in that bed, reading, studying, daydreaming. Especially in the autumn and winter months, when the afternoon sunlight turned the room into a warm, shimmering, dreamy place to be. The new place has a lot going for it, but the beds and the living room furniture are nowhere near the kind of comfortable I've gotten used to.
Am I spoiled, materialistic, overly concerned with a certain level of comfort? Maybe. Don't care.