Abono joven, where art thou?

Why is everything so complicated in Spain? This is something I seem to be asking myself several times a day (definitely has nothing to do with the fact that my Spanish is teríble…). Buying an “abono joven”, a monthly ticket for all public transport, (you get the “young persons” discount if you're under 23) was on my list of things to do for three weeks before I actually worked out how to do it. This was partly down to my own laziness, but aside from that, every person I spoke to seemed to tell me something different: “go to a tobacco shop”, “go the the ticket office in the station”, “do it on the website”, “call this number”. The list goes on.

My advice to anyone planning on getting an “abono joven” (for a standard abono it's much simpler and you can just get a form from one of the tobacco stands or shops) would be to follow these steps:

• Go directly to one of the various “Consorcios Transportes Madrid” (transport offices). Here's where to find them: Playa Descubridor Diego de Ordás, 3 (this is the main office so isn't in the station, closest metro is Ríos Rosas), Avenida de América, Ciudad Universitaria, Moncloa, Nuevos Ministerios, Plaza de Castilla y Príncipe Pío. Most are open from 7am until 10pm on weekdays and from 10am until 10pm on Saturdays. 
• Take a photocopy of your passport (must be a photocopy) and one passport photo with you. 
• Also make sure you know your address. This may seem stupidly obvious but some people (not me, of course) forget and end up Googling madly on the spot… 
• Officially you are supposed to make an appointment in advance. I went without one with the intention to pick up a form and make an appointment, but was able to do it all on the spot. I could never work out how to actually make the appointment so my advice would be to take the risk and just turn up! 
• If the person behind the desk tells you, “it's all online”, say, “I have everything with me, I just need the form. Please” and hopefully they'll sigh, walk to the cupboard, and pass you a form. 
• Once you've managed to hand in your form it should take about 12 days for your abono to be ready and you'll have to go back to wherever you gave in the form to collect it. 
• Every 30 days you'll need to top it up, which I think can be done in the metro stations. I'm yet to do this, but if I come across any obstacles along the way I'll be back with another thrilling entry. 

So there you go, it's as easy as that… Maybe I just made a bit of a meal of it, but if I'd known all this from the beginning it would have saved me a lot of time and metro tickets!

photo via: http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2012/05/03/madrid/1336042808.html