I had a plan, a plan much more than a dream, that I would bump into Anthony Bourdain as he was coming into some local eatery somewhere in the world, and I would be able to turn to him and casually ask, “Have you eaten at X in Madrid?” or Berlin, or Stockholm, or wherever.
He’d pop his eyebrows up, we’d shake hands, and he’d write down somewhere the dive I recommended. (I often think it’d be this place in La Latina, but I can’t remember the name, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find the ancient owners had passed). I’d continue on my way out of the place, and he and his crew would push on in.
Then someday after that, I’d write something that was worthy of his attention, and he’d be like, “Hey! That’s that kid with the great tapas/bier haus/meatball recommendation!” And we’d grab lunch in Vietnam somewhere he loved, or had heard about, and we’d talk.
I read on another blog the quote “De Madrid al cielo, y de allí, un agujerito para verlo.” Essentially that translates to, “From Madrid to heaven, and from there, a little hole to see it.” Even in death, Madrileños want to see their bountiful city.
I have no words for Madrid.
I left the city four times in the first 2ish months I was here, and each time I was relieved upon arrival home.
On the flight back from a weekend adventure in Mallorca, I found myself dozing off to the thought of
Back home.
Back home.
Back home.
Back home to Madrid.
I don’t know how this city does it, but it crawls under your skin, fills in gaps where something else probably should have been, but wasn’t.
That is so vague and unattached, but I really can’t think of a more concrete way to phrase what this capital city feels like.
Sollér in all its magestic, ancient, tiny-street glory (with terraced fields full of wild flowers and backyard orchards full of lemons and oranges– something that prompted me to utter the sinful phrase, “Prettier than central Texas in spring,”) I still found myself sighing in joy the next day as I climbed onto the beloved metro in all its easy wonder.
Not even the wonders of a little Mallorquin village could lure my heart away. Goodness knows everything in me screamed, “You want to live in that tiny crumbing house on top of the mountain, looking out over the majesty that is all those yellow flowers,” which is factually the truth– I would want to. “You want to climb down the stone steps and wade into that wee pond,” again, true. But I am more Madrid than I think I could ever be ~random mountain house in the Mallorquin mountains~. You know?
Madrid is a trap I don’t want to be freed from
Maybe its because I am not a quiet person, I could not really thrive in a quiet place.
Madrid is the third largest European city– it couldn’t be quiet if it wanted to. Sound like somebody we know?
(a freaking incredible orchestral quartet set up in some fancy neighborhood, but which I don’t know)
Madrid has much it is willing to be obvious about, things it is willing to throw in your face, but if you actually pay attention, give it time, it has a lot of little things it plays close to the vest (is that how that phrase goes?). Again, does this sound familiar?
(La Coquette, a bar in an old cellar that has live music every night save one)
The grand city, in all its little winding paths it takes to get places, loves a good detail. Loves the passionate shouts of riled men in bars during football (yes, I mean soccer) matches. Loves a sudden burst of great street art after blocks of messy tagging. Loves a piece of history that modernity grew around, like a knot in a tree.
I guess what I’m trying to say (but avoiding it, because its so damn trite) is that Madrid gets me, and I think I get Madrid.
The night before I left for Spain I don’t recall sleeping, I may have, but I remember being worn but so vibrant on the drive to George Bush Intercontinental in Houston.
The flight to Munich I didn’t sleep at all. Hours across an ocean, the sun seeming to stay almost at the same point in the sky for a while, us chasing the time in flight. I believe I was in the air for anywhere from seven to nine hours. The details are fuzzy now, and I can’t be arsed to look up the flight information in my records.
I had a seven hour layover at Munich’s airport. I dozed off and on in the nicest frequent fliers lounge I have ever seen in my lil’ life (granted, the only lounge I’ve seen). There was free liquor, also free food, but MAINLY free liquor. It was a little paradise. You could make an appointment to take a shower, have a massage, and there were lockers– all for free. I felt very luxe.
But I was exhausted. The thrill still hadn’t worn off, it wasn’t real yet, so there I was wired awake, sipping gin and tonics, munching on salmon bagels. Finally, two hours before my flight, I just walked to my gate and crashed out on the seats by my gate. I awoke minutes before my flight to see a crowd of Spaniards eyeing me suspiciously. (This is before I had a grasp on how much a Spaniard Would Not do this sort of thing, generally.)
The flight to Madrid I slept so hard. I was dead to the world. I had to be woken up to eat the in-flight meal, and I don’t recall chewing, so who knows what happened there.
And then I landed. And I was in Madrid. And it was really the famous Barajas airport. And I was really going to live here. And I really packed two 70 lbs suitcases, dear lord WHY!?
My dear friend Trinh, who’d been living there since September met me outside baggage claim and we went on the wild adventure of taking the metro home for my first time.
It was electric and magical and fast and sleek and chrome, and it was real.
That first night in Madrid I was so, so sleepy but it was New Year’s Eve and we had to go out!
After Trinh helped me lug my godforsaken luggage up through the Cuatro Caminos metro station (CC is one of the deepest underground stations, so we literally brought those huge suitcases up through, like, four underground stories of escalators and elevators. I don’t know how she didn’t murder me.), we popped into a bodega and bought grapes, to pop a grape at each toll of the bell, as is typical in Spain. We also stuffed some airline-size liquor into our pockets, American style.
It was so fun, and there were so many people, and I felt so alive, and there were more people than I had ever seen in my life at one place at one time.
Then I went home and slept for fourteen hours.
I woke up at 9pm the next night, or something like that. We ate kebab and went back to bed. I think the second night I only slept like four hours.
Trinh, who had experienced no heavy jet lag herself, intoned (quite stunned), “Jet lag is real.”
It was all real, and so wonderful, and I was tired for almost a whole week, but it was goooooood.
This is a restaurant review for a place I never got to pop into by a friend, Rebecca, who is currently living in Madrid!
Rebecca and her husband John are teaching in Spain, living in Madrid.
John has a YouTube channel he’s posted on about their stay. You can visit it here.
Besitos, Miranda
“Good restaurants in Madrid tend to be super expensive or not varied enough for me to go more than once.
I’m not a huge fan of Spanish food, and it can be difficult to find a good place that hasn’t been heavily influenced by Spanish taste. This restaurant is the exception. The food is homemade, super fresh, authentic Argentinian (without changing the dishes to suit Spanish taste) and very affordable. It’s great for lunch as well as dinner (the kitchen opens for dinner at 8:30pm!!)
We always start with an order of the “Duo de empanadas” that have mozzarella, gorgonzola, pears and dates in them. It may sound weird, but they are absolutely incredible, and have the most wonderful flaky crust ever. We haven’t been able to find any in Madrid that even come close to the ones here.
I almost always order the “milanesa napolitana,” a thin steak with a slightly crunchy breading that has just bit of tomato sauce on the inside and melted cheese on top.
They let me substitute sweet potato fries for the regular ones– and they are absolutely perfect. I could eat only those and be happy. The portion size is big enough for my Texas appetite, which is saying something.
My husband usually orders the fish and chips, which is also a great portion size and comes with a super fresh-tasting creamy tarter sauce. We’ve heard they have the most amazing cheesecake, but they’re always sold out when we go, so we haven’t been able to try it yet! The restaurant itself is adorable. Big windows line one side, adding to the feel of a cozy cottage with decorations, pictures, dishes that probably belonged to the owner’s grandmother,
candles, and ornate light fixtures that make for a relaxing place to have a romantic dinner or have a laugh with a group of friends. I definitely recommend visiting this restaurant, but be sure to call beforehand to make a reservation–it is very unlikely to find a table without one!”
Traveling abroad has been the best thing to happen in my brief life.
The camaraderie of all being in a new place and having no one to fall back on.
The forcing of all of our hands to make new friends.
The excitement of the new mingled with the spark of “you, too?” moments.
CS Lewis wrote, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
That’s all Spain was for five months rolling. A cascading series of getting to know this little pod of people better and realizing all the fantastic ways we shared things.
All the fantastic ways we overlapped beyond a desire to be abroad.
All the fantastic ways you can be from wildly different places, but be such similar people, and one wonders if that isn’t why you all ended up in the same place.
One of the girls I ended up being closest to, a girl from New Jersey named Nikki, planned an event for us in early March. Retiro Park olympics, where we day drank in public, had a hodge-podge picnic where there were OREOS (all that is sacred, I hadn’t seen them in three months), and we played games Nikki had researched, planned, and bought the supplies for.
I am still so blown away Nikki pulled this off, and it was so fun.
We were having so much fun a Madrileña (probably old enough to be the youngest girl’s mom) joined us for one game after her and her husband had watched us and giggled for a little bit. Her name was Valentina, and her joining in so enthusiastically is one of the most shining memories I have of Spain.
The subtitle of the event was, “AKA get drunk with friends and do stupid things in the park,” if you can’t read the fine print on the score board Nix made.
I cannot say it enough. I couldn’t shout it loud enough. Everything in my earnest heart would encourage you to go abroad. Meet fellow people out of their comfort zone. Grow, and watch others bloom. Be you with other people realizing, “You too?”
This was a highlight day for that kind of feeling.
Salamanca, an old university city, was the second study abroad program-led trip I went on.
As if, at that point (early March 2015), I didn’t want to return to the US already, the university town made the longing to stay even worse.
An architecture fan’s wonderland, I was falling fast down the rabbit hole of love.
The city has two super famous cathedrals, several historical noble residences, and more beautiful moldings than a girl could manage to be anything but dazzled by.
There is a library of forbidden entrance on the city’s famous university campus, filled with books so old they cannot be handled in normal air, the handlers wearing respirators, gloves, and lab coats. The library’s door has a room of glass built around it, so only a few people can step in and look at the library at a time, unable to truly enter. It sparked my curiosity something fierce. I daydream about being allowed to look closer at those books. What would I have to do to don a pair of latex gloves and touch one?
That very desire, to stay and look closer, called so loudly ¡MIRANDITA, VENGA! Run away to Salamanca.
I’ve been looking into grad school lately, and as I scroll through the admissions pages of Kansas University and Boston College, I keep thinking about the room on the Universidad de Salamanca campus, draped in red, housing antique chairs with plush cushions and wooden arms, where master’s students presented their thesis. I can’t do anything but want to be a part of something so grand, knowing full well my Spanish isn’t that good, and I could Never afford it.
Then there was the chapel in the uni with the illuminated altar. Imposing and alluring. Catholicism, so fascinating to a mouthy girl who grew up an Evangelical Christian in a small West Texas cow town, beautiful in it’s demand for reverence. Here it was dark and striking on the grounds of a university I was salivating over.
The chapel just deepened the STAY message ticker-taping through my brain. A chapel that students, former and current, get married in. A chapel students have been attending services in for longer than my family has been in the United States. The history and drama as intoxicating as the Caterpillar’s smoke. I truly felt like Alice, so lost in this strange land, but I had no desire to make it home. I wasn’t being taught a lesson about being content. I was being show a bright world where there had been queens, and knights, and grave consequences for dalliances with the local ladies of the night*. I was falling in love with a country that felt like home, where I was engaged and lit up. I wanted to follow the white rabbit of fascination around forever in Spain. I’ve been thinking about that a lot again.
*this ancient edifice, an entry to the university, is a 1500s code of conduct for the university. It forewarns students against using the services of the only women really in the city at that point- prostitutes. I’ll have to do a whole post over this someday, it was wild interesting.
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).
At night
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.
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.
Oda and Sara on the train home, after I left. Photo by Trinh.
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.”
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.
The Santiago Bernabeu, the Real Madrid stadium
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
Toledo by morning
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?
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