Well Thursday night rolled around last week and it was shaping up to be a terribly normal, routine weekend. I was looking forward to it. I had a paper to write and a business project to work on and reading to get done for a quiz this week and on and on. I was genuinely looking forward to the…normalcy of a weekend like what I usually do back in Ashland. Homework and exercise and watching sports. Minus the sports obviously because who would want to watch women’s professional handball as a break from writing essays? Eugh. To the point, post haste! Ellie had asked Eddie and I to come up to Madrid with her and Rico two weeks ago and we considered it, but then Eddie’s friends from Morocco (read: the Italian girl who has him by the cojones) invited him to go traipsing around Portugal in a car they rented. So that was a no brainer (literally) for him, and if he was out and I had all this work looming I told them I couldn’t come. But when I finished my workout Thursday night I looked at bus times and prices out of curiosity and lo and behold I could be in Madrid by 6 am! Back on Sunday morning by 4 am! If I arranged it thusly I could get one night free by bumming off Rico and Ellie’s hostel and have all day Sunday to get what had to be done done. The ticket was 40 Euros roundtrip, I bought it at 10:30, and by 11: 15 I was making the hour-long walk across Sevilla to the bus station.
Its mighty curious the things Spaniards do well. It’s not a long list, but the buses and public transportation are all always on time departing and arriving. We were in Madrid at 6:15 on the dot and that’s where the adventure really began because in my hurry to get gone I didn’t grab a map of Madrid or any sort of useful information. All I had was the name of the street where their hostel was, and I’d be damned if I was going to risk taking a taxi to a place which might have been on the other side of the city center. Here’s what I had to go on: I came in to the estacion del Sur, the south station, which logically meant if I headed north I’d find the main part of the city. Along the way I thought I would find posted bus route maps etc. which I could use to look for the street I needed. It half worked out. In the end I had to buy a map of the city from an open newspaper stand, only to find out I was about ten minutes from the place. I love wandering with only half a notion of which direction is correct. Anyhow, the hostel was in the heart of the gay district. This was a real blessing because all of the people we encountered around there were very kind and helpful, even late at night or early in the morning depending on your perspective. I woke Rico up about 9, he let me in and we both went back to sleep for a few hours until Ellie came back from having breakfast with her mom who came to visit for the weekend. Then we went to the second most famous museum in Madrid, the Reina Sofia, for the afternoon. I’ll add photos if/when I can, but my internet has been about as useful as a screen door on a submarine lately.
There are some pictures I don’t have, most notably those of the Picasso and Dali sections where photography was prohibited. I quite literally rounded a corner and there before me hung Guernica, Picasso’s famous piece reflecting the anguish of the people in the small Basque village of northern Spain who resisted Franco’s authority and were thus used as target practice by the Hitler’s Luftwaffe. I had no idea it was even in the museum and it was so much better to come upon it like that. It’s bigger than I thought, a good 25-30 feet across I’d say, and half as high. It’s a very strange piece, like most of Picasso’s work, and as such it never particularly moved me but seeing it there in Spain, in the capital, probably for the only time in my life was moving. Dali is always cool because it’s so surreal, so unlimited and impossible. Those are always fun.
The next real part of the adventure began late that night, Friday night, after Rico and I had once again captured a few precious hours of rest while Ellie was with her mom. Then it was time to go, go, go. Rico was understandably excited because Madrid’s gay scene is something else entirely and as I said we were smack dab in the middle of it. Ellie and I managed to hold our own with him in terms of energy and (sort of) alcohol for about two hours. Then we left the third bar and made our way to a free cover discotec which was bumping at 2 in the morning and just getting warmed up. I was exhausted having managed maybe 6 hours of sleep in the last 48 and Ellie hadn’t had a siesta either (which we are all accustomed to by now) so we begged Rico not to drag us in there with him and he grudgingly let us go with the mutual agreement he would return whenever he felt like it and we would be moving towards the Prado, the most famous museum, by noon the next day since I had to be on a bus at 10 PM. Fast forward to the agreed upon 12 o’clock noon, Saturday.
The situation: the landlady or hostel owner or whatever you call her woke Ellie and I up half an hour ago t inform us we had to get gone. Ellie told her she and Rico wanted another night but she had already booked the room and there was no going back at that point. Originally she told us there was no rush so we sort of rolled back over and wondered how we were supposed to move without Rico, who hadn’t returned or called. Half an hour later the insistent knocking came again and surprise! The next people had arrived and she need us out, out, out. Clothes and various other items start flying into bags; I’m laughing at the absurdity and having the best time I can but Ellie is stressed as all get out because of Rico’s stuff. I ended up packing it all up for him no problem because…
The conversation I had with Rico when he finally called back, five minutes after we were told to get out for real:
S: Hey man how you doing?
R: Heyyyyy, buddy. I’m GOOD. Good. (Starts giggling)
S: Yeah so, where are you?
R: Aha! Hahahahaha.……I don’t know.
If you need any other indication as to whether Rico’s evening was awesome or super awesome I can’t help you. Long story short, I helped him find a landmark and he got back to us right as we were hitting the sidewalk carrying all our stuff and his. Needless to say, we didn’t quite make it to the Prado although we certainly had plenty of time for it. Problem was, Rico was still a wee bit drunk, or at least he was riding in the grey area between drunk and hungover, on top of which it took us a couple of hours to eat, get coffee (caffeine is a great hangover cure, or so I’m told. Somehow the combination of alcohol poisoning and adrenaline doesn’t seem appealing) and then find another hostel. We still could have gone to museum but I would not have been able to take the time to appreciate it and as such was unwilling to spend the 10 Euro entry fee. Ellie and Rico saw it Sunday so nobody came out any worse. My trip back was uneventful except for the part where I almost missed the bus because the departures screen had it labeled as the bus from Madrid to Ayatocha, wherever the hell that is. The bus may be on time, but if it’s going from Madrid to Sevilla, then Huelva, then Ayatocha does it really make sense to list it as only the Madrid-Ayatocha route? Maybe I’m just spoiled and lazy. Maybe putting all the stops up on the screen would cost too much. Whatever.
All in all it was a thoroughly strange experience. Madrid is city. As in, you can feel the energy of so many people moving around; you can see them too. Between 6 and 9 AM when I was moving around the southern portion of the center area there was a pretty standard number of businesspeople and professionals getting to work, not unlike in San Francisco or Chicago. But by 7 PM it was a very different story. The crowds were so dense it was hard to move between stores without losing one another, and by 1 AM there were less people but there was also exponentially more energy and carousing. Once again, the gay district was just plain cool. Nobody stared at us, or threw the occasional glass bottle, or followed us through the park yelling at the girls in our group (all of which happen regularly in Sevilla). All in all, very worthwhile, mostly because I just bought a ticket and packed a bag and went, managed to find the right place walking, saw some truly incredible art, and had a hilarious and entertaining night with Rico and Ellie, albeit a brief one by Spanish standards. I also learned to always ask to be shown a room in any hostel before purchasing. The price was exactly the same, but the first one had two twins, a fridge and small tv, and a normal sized bathroom. The second place had a queen size bed occupying most of the room and a bathroom that was laughably small. I showered before making my way back to the bus station on Saturday night and I literally forced the shower door open turning around twice. I’d like to go back and experience Madrid, or Barcelona for that matter, with a little more time and lot less being all strung out and pulled in different directions. Maybe the word I’m looking for is alone. Or if not alone, at least with more autonomy. I love my friends and all but….if you want a hostel for 3 nights, buy 3 nights yeah? Or the minute you decide to stay the third night book it. Little stuff. It sure was fun though, and realistically the papers and the project will get done one way or the other.
No comments:
Post a Comment