Spent a longish weekend in Madrid.
The day I landed there, disappointment overcame me as it was raining cats and dogs. Dark clouds, wet pavements, and cold windy conditions ensured that I felt I was still in Edinburgh. So armed with my umbrella (yes, I was well prepared!) I set about exploring this city - fortunately, over the next few days it didn't rain any more so I was able to savour a nice couple of sunny (though cold) days in this city despite the scary wet beginning.
The interesting thing I found out whilst preparing for my journey (which consisted of nothing extensive - just flipping through my guide book) was the origin of the word 'Madrid' – the name is derived from the Arabic word 'Mayrit' (from 'Mayra' which means 'trees' or 'giver of life') – this stemmed from the 7th century Arabic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.
Ok, enough of history / fact of the day.
First things first - the concept of eating there is on a different plane altogether. Unlike UK, France, Germany, and Austria where I usually struggle to find a non-Indian restaurant to get some good food to eat - in Madrid one can step into any Tapas bar or Cerveceria in Madrid - and there you have abundant, inexpensive, easy, tasty, and countless varieties of Tapas and Montaditos to choose from - 'Tapas' means to cover and comes from the practice of waiters providing a wee saucer (with snacks) to cover the beer mugs. The best part about eating these snacks is that if you don't like what you ordered, you can always finish it (they are not too large anyways) and you can then order something else which you might like more (the menus sometimes have over 100 items to choose from). By the time you're on your fifth or sixth tapas or Montadito, the first two have already been fully digested – so you're hungry again. This can go on and on - in one place or you can Cerveceria-hop. And ofcourse, beer is an added incentive - the best part being that beer comes in manageable sizes (ranging from the British-binge-drinkers special to the 200 ml glasses). So it was one of those rare trips where I must have gained weight!!!
In one restaurant, I ordered a Cuija which turned out to be Pizza-esque but with that 'Pizza' they gave a very interesting looking 'hammer' for cutting it. On enquiring its name in Italian (not knowing Spanish, I would speak in Italian - that had better chances of being understood than Ingles) - the server disappeared and came back after a while with the name written on a napkin - it was, for the record, called a 'Mazo'.
The metro in Madrid is quite neat and clean and one never has to wait for more than a couple of minutes for the next train – and they're never packed choc-a-bloc. On my first day, while I was standing in the near-empty 'Gran Via' station I heard shouting. Turning, I saw a man with a flowing beard – he was obviously a tramp – the large number of polythene bags he had in his hand gave him away. It took me a second or two to realise that he was shouting at me (duh!). Despite not knowing a word of Spanish, I could make out that the words that were coming out of his mouth were mainly the 4-letter ones. My mind did a quick check of potential reasons why I might have provoked him - maybe it was the colour of my skin, maybe it was my angry-aggressive-Indian-man look. Whatever it was, he kept the flow of expletives going - at one point he made a few gestures (I refrain from giving details for obvious reasons) and then threatened (in his refreshingly visual form of communication) to throw me onto the metro track. I knew he wasn't serious (the fact I'm writing this proves my assumption correct) – I looked towards others in the station for some sort of moral support but there was none forthcoming and then, in a moment of insanity (which obviously was infectious), I started laughing. I don't know why I found it funny but I just started laughing - not the crazy man laughter but an amused giggle (perhaps borne out of nervousness). Either which way, it put the mad man (not me, the bearded guy) off and he turned his back to me. But that wasn't the end of the story – he went to a young boy with a leather jacket (who must have been enjoying my predicament) and started shouting at him. Laughter is the best medicine! The metro came after two extremely long minutes.
The first thing that struck me about Madrid was the grandeur and colour of its buildings - Art Deco buildings with ornate wrought iron balconies with shuttered windows - coloured in (sometimes bizarre) hues – some of them even have paintings – all in all making it a very colourful city. This is, naturally, accentuated by the exuberance which the Mediterranean people are blessed with – every Plaza has a buzz to it that it very infectious – flowing traffic, honking cars, policemen blowing whistles, children laughing and shouting, chattering women - silence is definitely not treasured here. And given that X'mas time is approaching, the city was decked up – fairs on every plaza and carpets of light over almost every street and avenue – the city did look extremely radiant.
Madrid has a profusion of Museums – one of the main reasons for my visit was to see the Prado. And it did not disappoint – the sheer variety of works by Goya, Velazquez, El Greco, and Rubens was awe-inspiring. Another great museum is the Reina Sofia which as a number of Dalis and Picassos - including the Guernica. Like all Cubist and Surrealist art - it is a bit difficult to understand but once someone (in my case the 'audioguide') explains some of the elements behind the painting one can really appreciate the painting (unlike Classical / Renaissance art where the the theme is the motif) - I have never been a fan of Picasso / Dali but after visiting the Reina Sofia I'm beginning to warm to their brand of art. There were a couple of other good musuems - borne out of private collections - the Thyssen-Bornemisza (with a great collection of impressionist and Italian art) and the Lazaro Galdiano - the collections there are proof that some people had way too much money to spend on art :)
A few words about timing - yes, all shops seem to be closed between 2 and 5 - everywhere you can see shops with their shutters down (and the shutters themselves have beautiful graffiti and art on them!) - but then suddenly the entire city seems to wake up around 5 and by 8 or 9 it seems that everyone is back on the streets - dinner time for them is way beyond my bed time. When I would be eating 'dinner', they would be heading for drinks. I wonder when they sleep - if at all. I never found out....
It was also a pleasure to be re-acquainted with the Europeans' (and I don´t include the British in that) tendency to fuss over babies and children. Any one who spots a baby in a pram just has to go over to the baby and make faces at him/her or even try and have a conversation. And this exchange is not one way – a baby will look at you and immediately demand some sort of communication from you. So yes, you'll see crowds in front of a pram. In fact you'll see a crowd everywhere - in the Tapas bar, in front of ATMs - but I got to see the longest queues in front of lottery stores. I think I should have invested in some lotteries myself!!!!!
Even though I'm not too much of an animal lover (i.e. lover of animals!), I do have ambiguous and unresolved views on the bullfight. Whilst I would not want to miss the spectacle that the Corrida de Toros offers, I perhaps would end up not enjoying seeing the bulls die. Fortunately, the bull fight season in Spain is from March – October so I did not have to make the really difficult decision of whether to go for a fight or not. But I did visit the Plaza de Toros - where the bull fights are held - it was an immense olympic sized stadium built in brick. It did not take much to imagine what a spectacle a bull-fight would present - maybe next time. But I did visit the museum in the arena - which had a number of mounted bulls heads and the bloodied clothes of matadors who were killed at the horns of the bulls. I'm currently reading Hemingway's 'Death in the Afternoon' which is supposed to be the definitive introduction / guide to Bullfighting.
well, a long weekend, but a short post.
PS: Noise or Music
- On Sunday evening, within an hour´s time I was treated to two very different forms of musical entertainment - Basilica San Francisco el Grande had a wonderful classical musical concert (I´m now developing a habit of hearing haunting Ave Marias in churches). Outside there was a Christmas fair that had a very peppy Jazz band that got everyone dancing to their tune. They got encouraged by the crowd´s response and decided to use the children´s carousel as a stage. Music coming from round and round- and everyone joining in (irrespective of whether they were below 80 years or over it!) was great fun to listen and jive to...
- The first time I waited to cross a road - I heard what sounded like a a child's toy gun (the ones with lights, if you remember them) - looking around expecting to see a kid with pointing such a gun at me - I could see none. It was the green signal for pedestrians.
(Dec, 2008)
