La Fontana de Oro, is a Cuban bar (hence the use of the word Fontana instead of Fuente) right off of Plaza del Sol (Calle de la Victoria, to be quite precise), but calls itself an Irish pub (this is a common thing for reasons I don’t care to contemplate).

They play music videos of mostly 90s music on TVs all over the main floor, there’s a more secluded, quiet area downstairs where there are booths to sit in. The only time I saw these in use it contained questionable content not suitable for all ages, so really everyone is on the ground floor drinking cheap bear and bumping to early JLo. Everyone is kind of grooving and having a great time.

There’s a disco ball, obviously that’s of the utmost importance.

Trinh and my first experience with this bar was watching a Cavaliers game with my uni friends Marc from everywhere and Alex from Chicago. It was great to have a wee baby slice of American life at such a vibrant place.

This was definitely one of our favorite places to pop into for one drink on the way to other things.
As talked about in the last post, making friends with promoters is sometimes a good idea. We befriended one who liked to drink here, too. He promoted for a few places, and new a lot of bouncers because of that, so when we went to La Fontana on a weekend, we could skip any line to get in if we were with him. Very handy.

Here’s my Yelp! review of the place
https://www.yelp.com/biz/la-fontana-de-oro-madrid-2

Party promoters

They will bother and pester you long after you’ve told them you’re not interested.
They will also probably touch you without your permission, or explicitly against what you’ve said to them (ex: “No, don’t touch me.” *grabs arm and makes smoochy noises*).

This is where the phrase

NO ME TOCAS

comes into play handily.

NO ME TOCAS means Do Not Touch Me. It’s handy to shout when party promoters get too friendly when you try to brush past them.

Once, girlfriends and I were all sat in a cluster next to one of the fountains in Plaza del Sol. Really, we were just people watching on a Monday evening.
As we watched a group of break dancers spin and do what they do, a yippy little young man with a tell-tale lanyard around his neck and promotional cards in his hands walked up. No, no, no, no we’re fine. We’re not going out tonight.
He argued a little (they always do), we insisted. He left.

We kept watching the dancers, we got caught in a Very odd conversation with a traveling Dutchman who was probably mentally unstable (and wanted to talk about the reality of multiverses, hmmm), who then went to “dance” with the group in front of us. We waved at girls we went to school with as they passed in short skirts and their hair all done— headed to the discotecas (P.S. calling night clubs “clubs” in Spain gives a connotation of drugs and prostitution, so yeah: discotecas).

And then the tiny, yappy man came back. With a friend.
(Another party promoter.)
I tell the guy we’re not interested, but he doesn’t care, and starts working on the Italian girls, trying to talk them into coming out (and, based on personalities of the group, he’d made a wise decision. These girls were the most likely to break down and say yes to going with him.)
I strike up a chat with the guy he’d brought with him.
He was from Galicia, a region in the top of Spain. Hi, I’m from Texas. He gave me a cigarette and we stood chatting amicably (if not the slightest bit flirtatiously) until I see the yapper reach out a hand and touch the face of a girlfriend of mine who recoils in disgust.
NOPE
I shout out at him No le tocas!
And he snaps his head around.
I had been standing a few feet apart from the group while smoking, and was charging right at him.
NO we are not interested
NO we are not coming with you
NO you cannot touch us

His response? Telling me I don’t speak for my friends and starting to talk to them over my shoulder. There’s a few of us mad by this point and he’s being surrounded by pissed American girls shielding our beloved Italians (and one seething Norwegian).

He argues, we shout him down, and in a fit of fury at his unwillingness to back down (and outright refusal that touching her face was wrong) I shoot my hand up and run it across his cheek.
His friends eyebrows shoot up.
And the yapper’s mouth goes open in rage.

DON’T TOUCH ME
he pipes back at me.
Well, don’t touch us. The same rules apply.

He marches away in a fit, and his charming friend follows with a shrug, a smile, and a parting nod. We settled down and went back to chatting undisturbed.
This is just an illustration of how gross the party promoters can be.

We were yelled at, insulted, and once felt so threatened by a promoter we ran from him. Be prepared for some grade-A asshole-ery from promoters if you’re going out.

Granted, there can be an upside!
If you befriend a party promoter, or have a favorite discoteca, you can often get a promoter to work out really good deals for your group.

A girlfriend named Marisa was pals with a promoter and could often get us into one place with free drinks, a free shot for each of us, and once we got a bottle of champagne thrown into the deal, too.
Once we went to a PACKED little place that played really great South American dance and the promoter had a messenger bag full of everything a person might need on a night out: bandaids, mints, hair ties, hand sanitizer… condoms. The man was prepared to prepare you. He was also kind. He gave us his card, we gave him our business.

Now, I am not 100% sure how the job of party promoting works, but as far as I know it works like a sales commission, essentially.
The people who come into the discoteca that a promoter bring results in the promoter getting a percentage of the clubber’s entrance fee.
In situations where a group of girls gets into a disco free (to even out guy-to-girl ratio), I’m not sure what that does for the promoter, but I know in one instance the door guard was really glad to see us, so I’m sure there’s some sort of kick back (maybe a bonus if it’s girls? Who knows).

In conclusion: be safe, don’t take no shit, NO ME TOCAS, and have fun. Make friends.

“This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it’s just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be.”

― David Levithan, Every Day

Love flies across half a country, an ocean, and a bit of Europe. Love leads you to a small university in a huge city. Love exposes you to a feeling of home like you’ve never known it previously. Love has you swimming through the rivers of Spanish that are the Madrid streets.

All that but about: Football. It’s not soccer. You play the sport with your feet and a ball, not your hands and an egg. Football.

When it’s just you and the hum of thousands of yelling fans and a few guys on the pitch. The intimacy of love and the loudness of a crowd, the thrilling of a lover’s touch (the same as watching the perfect pass made between players you know by name). The rush of being amongst those that understand.

With a low-alcohol-content drink in your hand.
Sheer nirvana.

These little boys (orange vest, white sweater, blue vest) were SO invested in a match I attended. It was the last regular season match against Grenada- a subpar team- and the boys were living for it. They new all the players on sight (from up in the bleachers), could talk about what kind of season each player had had, what you could expect of them, what they were like as members of the team. The eldest was 7, max.
It made my heart ten million kinds of glad to have these wee commentators sitting behind me. Also, my ovaries were like I WANT.

Football is a Huge deal in Spain. Hell, football is a huge deal in EVERYwhere that isn’t the US of A. If you’re going to be in Spain, the home of beautiful people playing The Beautiful Game, you should know a thing or two.

I chose Madrid as my study abroad home specifically because of Real Madrid, one of two major teams in the city. The other major team is Atletico Madrid.
There is another smaller team called Rayo Vallecano. The city of Getafe is also incredibly close to Madrid, and they too have a professional team.

Sure, fine art is great, but let’s be real: sporting events are where its at.

Love provides. Love soothes. Love had me using bar hopping money on match tickets. Love had me screaming at the top of my lungs when your team is playing a team that they’re already stomping, but every point matters.

This is the Sanitago Bernabeu, the stadium that El Real plays in. This is home to a lot of football fans. A bit of a pilgrimage for fans of the team that live abroad.

This photo is from the day I bought my first tickets to a live match from their ticket windows. I felt high and happy.

Real Madrid have won 11 Champions League trophies, a great feat. Most recently in the spring of 2016. This creates a lot of buzz about the city, and the parades to celebrate huge trophy wins like this are WILD.
If it’s El Real bringing home the hardware, the parade ends at the fountain in Cibeles.

(Traditionally the team wears all white kits (uniforms), thus earning them the nickname Los Blancos.)

Love lifts you up where you belong. Love gives you wings (or something like that). Love leaves you awake in bed thinking about how you could never end up with a Barçelona fan.

Real Madrid’s major rival is Barçelona FC and a couple of times a season the have matches referred to as El Clasico.

The rivalry is bitter and the tempers flare around the game, a scary but alluring example of the flame of love football burns.
A few years ago, there was a dead body found in the river that runs through the city– the Manzanares– after a Real v Atletico match.
Football is not to be fucked with in Spain.
As we all know, love sometimes makes us do stupid things.

Love heals. Love repairs. Love joins in on the fun. Love shares the sorrows. Love recognizes parts of us and says, “me, too.” Love sees unfamiliar things and seeks to understand.

So here’s some of the team those little boys love…

Cristiano Ronaldo– Arguably the best player in the world right now (I sure as hell think so), won the Euro Cup this past summer with his home country Portugal.
A figure that causes a lot of debate, incredibly high-scoring, models underwear.
A forward, which means his position is closest to the opposing team’s goal. The only position closer is a striker (Karim Benzema on RM’s team).

Sergio Ramos– The love of my life and the theme of most of my security passwords.
Used to have long, luxurious hair, now keeps it cropped.
Regularly made fun of for taking bad penalty kicks, team captain, famously dropped a trophy off the roof of a bus.
Defender, the position closest to his team’s own goal. Works in conjunction with the goal keeper to block shots.

James Rodriguez– Cutie pie from Colombia, lead Colombia deep into the World Cup tournament 2014 which is where he stated he’d like to play for Real. They fulfilled his wish.
Young and will hopefully serve the team well for years.
An attacking midfielder, which Ahem is a position in the middle of the field, who tries to score points/push the ball towards the other team’s goal.

Zinadine Zidane- Used to play for the team, now he coaches them. He was a beloved player in his time at the club, and now he has the opportunity to be the kind of coach people light candles TO not FOR in the city’s cathedrals.
(Catholic joke)
Real has had more than their share of coaches that required candle lighting for.

Love may not be a drug, but it can certainly get you high. High off the thrill, the drama, the suspense, the reward.

Fall in love in Madrid.
“Far from the world we know/ where the clear wind blows.” #VamosBlancos

AKA something I know about in my research on how to stay in Spain

 

If you overstay your visa a wee bit you may get slapped with a fine.

This is a more common way to deal with visa violations in Spain and southern EU members, where your money is appreciated.

If you overstay your visa something a country decides is a significant offense to the laws of visas, you can be black listed from ALL OF THE EU FOR TEN YEARS.

This I was told is more likely in serious countries who don’t want you as a potential financial drain on their economy: Germany, France, sometimes the UK (RIP their EU membership).

Dear one, don’t overstay your freaking visa. THAT is what I learned, Do Not Overstay The VISA.

There are loopholes about how long you can stay in one place, some countries don’t play that, so again BE CAREFUL.

Visit the US embassy, get stuff cleared, ask questions, make friends.
DO NOT OVERSTAY THE VISA.

Obviously, this is not an informational blog post. This is not a discourse on the fine points of laws. I didn’t even mention schengen. You need to read up on that. I’m just saying: don’t get freaking blacklisted from the EU because you caught a whim on the wind to stay in Italy a year longer than you were supposed to be there, you know?

Madrid felt like home, which felt like paradise.
When most people talk about paradise, it is somewhere far from home. Somewhere they run away to, where they can close their eyes and smell new scents and hear new noises.

The brightly feather birds singing magical songs, the brush of palm leaves against each other, the hush that falls over snow when the northern lights show up

As someone who grew up with a tenuous concept of what home is, being in Madrid and feeling like I belonged more there than I had anywhere else in my short life was euphoric. Finding somewhere, that in 72 hours, felt like I needed to be there was more paradise than any escape could ever be.

The motherly rattling shake of the metro early in the morning, the warmth of all the people jammed side-by-side, the rumble of the streets at night all alive with talking

That’s what this blog post’s focus is: what finding home is like, even knowing that you must give it up.

The thirst that drives you to go back, to find anything that even touches on the feeling of belonging.

Here are pictures from the last weeks I spent at home.

The fever dream fantasy was real, and I loved every second of it.