…like a little girl.

Goya, the Spanish artist, was prolific in his works in no uncertain means. His styles were varied and each well executed. His emotion pouring out in every subtle- or quite brazen- stroke of colour. In some places his thoughts dripping out of the lines he played with. His Spanish-ness for show, loud and proud and stern and disgruntled, in so many of the themes he chose, telling the story of a nation and a man.

This is The San Isidro Meadow, a meadow I’ve actually seen and sat upon. As many people as painted here in 1788 use the park today during Madrid’s saint day festivities– San Isidro being Madrid’s city saint.

Goya was so prolific, and his paintings so striking to a Spanish audience that had not seen something like this coming from a fellow countryman, that there is literally a word for how he painted colors: goyesco.
It refers to the way he could make pastel colors shine as if the were mother-of-pearl, an interesting trick indeed. A beautiful sunset full of glimmering bits of cotton candy colors is “goyesco.”
A matte silk dress that still glints in the light, might be described as “goyesco” as it moves in a room.

Carlota Joaquina, Infanta of Spain and Queen of Portugal Oil on canvas. 1785
In this painting, a personal favourite, the fabric of her dress truly seems to glint as actual fabric would. The color isn’t flat, the color is luminous and real. The color is goyesco.

Goya’s work is so famous beyond Spanish borders, that you’ve probably seen his work without even realizing it.

Saturno, or Saturn devouring his son (in English) is such a famous work that it has been used extensively across the web. My first encounter with it was as a post on Tumblr, with no credit given. I loved it and later in my education was pleased to find it was Spanish.
Here it is used in a banner for a short story: https://www.sequestrum.org/meat-dreams

If you’re interested in viewing more of his work, here is what the Prado has in their collection: https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-works?searchObras=goya
P.S. The Prado museum website is ••incredible•• and lets you inspect works *very* closely when you click on them. Highly recommended look through 🙂

Traveling in general you meet people who are just like you, but grew up on the other side of the planet.

You meet people you love but are nothing like you.
You meet people that give you a cringe deep in your spine, often because they remind you the things you hate about yourself.

I think everything ever written about going abroad mentions something about all the great people you meet, and I don’t want to add another mindless post saying the same thing as a bajillion other girls who spent six months in Europe.

So I’m literally going to tell you who I met abroad:

Oda (codename: Norge; Norweigan Princess)
Before moving to Spain, I decided I wasn’t going to make friends, I didn’t have time for that! I had museums to visit until the security guards recognized me and direct object pronouns to figure out how to use (FINALLY).
Then the second day of class I get paired up with the freaking cool looking Norwegian girl and there was no looking back. I thought she was probably too good for a silly American. I was wrong.
A lot of pints of sangria, school nights spent dancing until 4 am, and afternoons studying in the basement at the chillest bar in all of Malasaña, I am so glad Adrián (a grammar professor) paired us up! She’s one of the coolest humans I know, and I look forward to years of being jealous that I don’t live in Norway.

Oda to the left, Lorena to the right

Lauren (codename: Lorena)
Lorena is from Boston, now works for a swanky travel company based out of London, and has a black kitty named Saul. She’s cool.
Lorena’s first major role in my life in Madrid involved dragging my useless body into a taxi after sitting on a cobble stone street with me (its an involved story I’ll probably leave off this blog for the time being *blushes*).
Lorena was my partner when a British guy dragged us to a bull fight and witnessed me almost get into a fight with a French guy over a seat (another future story for the blog). Lorena new the shady bars in Lavapies where you could get cheap buckets of Spanish beer, and always had the hookup on a restaurant I’d never been to.
Lorena  was happy, and loud, and an instigator after my own heart.

Nikki (bartender from Jersey who you can’t steal from)
Nikki had a backpack and a purse that were lined with wire, so you couldn’t slash through them and steal their contents. Nikki was not playing around. Having grown up using the best metro system in the US– the New York subway– she was used to being cautious on public transportation. Nikki was as loud, passionate, and encouraging of new things as I. She was perhaps (read: definitely) more eager to do something wild as I was. Nikki was the only person in my study abroad program I got super close to, and the only person in it my age, as well. She was such a comfort to have, and such a vivid, alive person to have the joy of sharing life with for a semester.
She’s also a top notch person to have drunk conversations with, which I’m sure her extensive bar-tending background plays into nicely. One night in something posing as an Irish pub, but really just a trap for Spanish guys to take home unsuspecting American girls (or a great place for cheap cheap cidre for the savvy), she and I had an under the influence conversation about what we liked in our significant others that was remarkably bonding.

Trinh, left / Nikki, right– both q drunk

Trinh (Spanish edition)
The September before I left for Spain I got a text message from a childhood best friend “Hey what are you doing the weekend of the 29th?” I had no plans, and she was going to be in town. Why? Because she was leaving for Spain two days later.
OH, you know, BY THE WAY, I’ll be in Spain in January.
I probably would have died in Spain without her.
That’s only a little bit of a hyperbole.
Also, the kind soul who introduced me to Don Simon 3€ bottled sangria. The kind soul who met me at the airport and helped me lug my HUGE suitcases across a city. The kind soul who let me stay with her the first few days and the last few days in my time in Madrid.
Trinh and I have been friends our whole lives (since we were 7), and seeing her in Spain, all free and fun, was amazing. My glee that we got to experience each other abroad is unspeakable.

Sara (codename: The Italian)
Trinh’s roommate, and “the love of [her] life.”
I was welcomed into Trinh’s flat as much by Sara as I was by Trinh, and in time, my presence there was as expected by Sara as it was by Trinh. She came to me with questions about English slang as eagerly as she did Trinh (only less so, because OBVZ I didn’t live with her). Sara and Trinh had a third roommate, another Italian named Roberta, who was also very sweet, but had a harder time communicating, but because of Sara was such a pleasant part of our friend group. Sara has the smoothest, grooviest dance moves, the cool casualness of a European, and was fun to slowly and surely expose to all kinds of liberal American views 😉

forgive the orientation of this photo, but here is the crew +

Naturbier: German beer brewery in Madrid

This joint operates as a bar, serving its own product.

I’m not a beer drinker by nature and I, without having to think about it, sipped down two beers here.
I had an amber and a ruby ale. They were both much better than I think beer is generally, much less cloying on the tongue, perhaps even “fresh.” The ruby was especially good and the most beautiful colour.

Two friends who were there with me were also not big beer fans, and they, too, enjoyed the beer here just fine.
The German friend who showed us this place, Felix, was very pleased with it over all, and I’m sure a wee slice of home was as comforting to him as the Mexican food places were to the other Texan and I.

We sat it what I’ll describe as the basement (we had to go down stairs, it fits). We were out in a little room off to one side, and that night we were alone, even though upstairs it was wild packed. It was unusual to be alone in a room anywhere, so the group of international study abroad students reveled in it.

My amigos Alex and Marc ordered German appetizers, so really just one huge piece of sausage that was so odd to get served on a plate by itself that I don’t even remember what else it was we got. I can’t even remember what it tasted like I was so taken aback by it as it was served!

They serve tapas here, but why would you come to a German beer bar to have Spanish food, when you could wander a little further up the street and get something from a place meant for Spanish food. Don’t be an idiot.
Or an annoying tourist, that’s worse.

Alpargatas, known more broadly as espadrilles, which is the French word for them. This place ^^ sells the best.

Espadrilles history can be traced back to Catalunya (the traditional spelling of the region). This region is so generally thought of as the region of Spain that holds Barcelona, but historically the cultural area of Catalunya extends into part of France. This is where the shoe has its old, old origins. Eventually the shoe’s easy fabrication and simple style wandered down into the main bodies of both Spain and France, for the French to call espadrilles and the Spanish to call alpargatas.

The oldest maker of alpargatas in Spain is Casa de Hernanz, which has been consistenetly open since some time in the 1800s. This shop has not closed in the face of two new centuries, a dictator, the rise of drug use and crime in the neighbourhood its in. It’s impressive. Now with the revitalization of La Latina, above mentioned neighbourhood, this store is very, very popular again.

Go on a weekday as close to their opening time as possible.
If you wait until a Friday in the afternoon the line will be a block long.

This is after I’d already waited an hour and a half.

SO many styles, in SO many colors.
They have everything in the world of espadrilles from very traditional Spanish regional styles, all the way to something you’d have to pay $50 for at the Gap. Things a Spanish grandpa would wear, and things your hip big sister back home wears.

I have a black pair, that laces around the ankle: one of the eldest and most traditional styles of this shoe.
Here is a blurry photo, with them in it:

One of the biggest cities in Europe, Madrid is not always simple to navigate. There are apps for that (also is it aps or apps? Yo no sè).

So, a list of apps (I’m running with it) to help you get around the city!!

First: Snapchat
because not everything is worth putting up on Instagram, not everything needs to be seen by your nana on Facebook, and you Do Not Need to drunk text from across an ocean and snaps are deletable.
ALSO Snapchat recently introduced a feature like iPhone’s Facetiming, so a wifi calling is free internationally (or across the street) for anyonw with Snap and a stable wifi signal!

Second: Citymapper
Oh you’re hopelessly lost and a tinge of fear is starting to creep in at the corners of your heart? Citymapper has you.
The app is like a step-by-step map that can take you anywhere, much more direct than even the Maps App on iPhone.
It can also take you to local hotspots.
I really loved this app and found it quite easy to navigate. Also it saved me once when I got brave and went on a two hour walk in a neighborhood I thought I knew better than I actually did.

Third: City Guides TripAdvisor
This app has available guides you can download for various cities around the world, Madrid is included. The guide can be accessed even when you’re not connected to wifi. It has metro stations and major attractions. It is helpful to get around a very big city full of a lot of great things. This is especially useful if you’re okay with staying on the beaten path– a tourist’s super guide.

Fourth: WordRef
for all those times you want to be smart, but don’t know enough words to even get to sound half stupid– this app has all the smart words (and the stupid ones, too)

Also, you’ll probably need WhatsApp, as all the Spanish kids you come into contact with will use WhatsApp instead of standard texting, for a milieu of reasons. Get hip with it!

You’ll realize in time spent abroad that alcohol is generally cheaper than water at… anywhere.

Wine 1,50€ and then there’s water: 3€
**blank stare**
a few moments later: **wry smile**

The same is generally true of beer, it’ll be like 1€ a lot of places. Granted, these are not big servings, but it is something to take into account. Especially since the same is true of alcohol and cokes. (I’m from Texas, if its carbonated and sweet, it’s a coke. I’m not sorry.)

So this is a good segue for an important topic when living in Spain: drinks versus drunk.

Drinks: what the Spanish do.
A few drinks spread over some snacking (ahem, tapas) throughout an evening

Drunk: what Americans abroad are known for.
Two things of boxed white wine (14% alcohol by volume, and like 3€–BEWARE) and a few cheap, scraggly bars that have free shots later.

Actually, Americans are pretty reviled in the nicer clubs and bars in Madrid, I found, because of the typical wild-child, travelling-on-Daddy’s-dime, Greek row chump that has drunkenly occupied the space before you.

So, as someone who hopes to live abroad again, hopefully Madrid Round II, let me ask of you: be careful with the cheap and easy access to alcohol and when you do get so drunk you lay down in front of a cheap club and have to be hauled into a taxi by people you’ve only known briefly… try not to repeat that.

There is a little bar in a plaza near La Bicicleta– a cafe I was a regular at– se llama Las Vacaciones.

This place has a glorious Sunday brunch and a variety of mojitos (like a coffee one, that as gross as mint coffee may sound is delish). But the real real: that brunch has bomb options and their tapas are always so, so good.

A great place to drink when it’s not late enough for Madrileños to really be “out” yet for the evening (read: before 11pm).
This bar seems to have more girls drinking here than any other place I kicked it, and I think that the female owners of this place may feed into that– like maybe its a known femme space in the city? I don’t know for sure, but the frequency of it being a girls-only crowd was odd for, what seemed to me, a highly male city.

Vacaciones is the place one of my dearest friends in Spain first told me about the experiments he did in his internship and my love of the word “chiquitin” was solidified**. It’s a great place to get close to people (literally, its tiny) and as bright as it is, and as happy as the decor is the mood just sets you off in a whirl of good energy.

There were always a hodge podge of visitors to the city and locals, so be prepared for the typical Spanish stares, but also maybe drunk Australians.

Here’s the place’s website: http://www.vacacionesbar.com/

**Chiquitin: a typically Castillian (i.e. not Spanish-speaking America) word meaning “very small.” Like “chiquito,” which you’ve probably heard.

Wow.
Pretty men everywhere.
Like, really just everywhere.
A few pretty little anecdotes for you, to contemplate while you wait to see the goodness for yourself.

Once, standing outside of the Chueca club called Garbo (lowkey, often not very full, decent bar) I was smoking and chatting as I often did in front of bars at 4 in the morning. Nothing was out of the usual. Garbage men in their big truck were coming up the street, grabbing garbage cans as they worked their way towards us. Again, nothing unusual.
And then as the garbage truck pulled in front of me and my best friend we both fell completely silent.
Whatever vapid trash you talk in front of a club at 4 am with your lifelong best friend, it cut out. Because descending from the back of the garbage truck was honestly one of the most beautiful men either of us had ever seen.
In the US, think of what your average local garbage man looks like. Yeah? Ok. An average local man, i.e. he’s not warming up anybody’s dreams late at night. This guy, probably about our age, was golden and fit and had wild dark green eyes and was probably very aware of how handsome he was because when he caught us gawking (open-mouthed on my part) at him, he just smirked. Revealing a perfect picket fence of teeth, of course. And he was a garbage man, not a super model. Like this is normal in Madrid.

Another example of a guy in a laborious job being wild handsome: at my local metro stop, there were a few engineers, I guess you’d call them? Like, the guys who kept the literal stories of escalators running (some stations are as deep as 4 stories underground, so a lot of escalators, really).
I appreciated these guys mucho, because days the escalators weren’t running were pretty horrendous because I hate stairs after step, like, 25.
One day I’m just curiously glancing over at what these guys are working on on one of the power panels for the escalators and the engineer who turns around has slicked-to-one-side hair like a raven’s wing, slightly wavy from the sweat of wrenching something loose inside the power panel. Skin a bit shiny from it, the color of a roasted almond, and warm, inviting chocolate eyes. I think I tripped on my own foot just looking at him. He laughed a little bit at that, while making eye contact. I let out a strangled noise I have not made before nor since. I know guys in labour jobs in the US can be handsome, but on the whole– or stereotypically– that is not the general thought. I think of overweight poorly socially adjusted men doing both of these jobs– which is biased and rude of me, but true to my thoughts. Then, here I am in Madrid, and two of the best looking men I saw in five months were a garbage man and an escalator technician. Okay.

Gorgeous men really are just everywhere.
Once I saw two super fit, quite well dressed men, who were both walking arm-in-arm with their girlfriends kiss each other on the mouth as they said goodbye. It was like I had stumbled on to the indecent part of the internet, but NO, I was just trying to get to Kilometro 0 to meet some friends. The cultural differences in physical comfort just make the pretty men prettier.

On any given morning commute on the metro, someone so beautiful it makes your chest ache and your mouth water could step onto the train.
One such morning, a day I had class early so I caught the rush and the trains were packed so full some people couldn’t fit on at the stops, I was standing in front of two older ladies and a boy with green eyes like fresh herbs stepped into the car to stand across from me. There were probably eight bodies wedged between us but I kept sneaking glances at him. His hair was buzzed short on the sides and left long on top, as is the current trend. He was in a stripped shirt and a brown jacket.
After a few stops of trying to decide if it was worth it to say something to him, the train halts at a station, but instead of coming to a smooth stop, it jerked. Then I relaxed… only for it to jerk again and my balance get thrown off. And I was thrown into the lap of the older Madrileña behind me.
Immediately I exploded into a river of apologies, none of which she was having, and to make it worse I was using very formal South American forms of apology– outing myself as a foreigner, just adding insult to her injury. ALSO as I went to stand, I stepped on her foot in the crowded train car. Ugh.
Finally, I stood fully- a little dazed mind you- and there was the green eyed boy looking right at me from across the train car, pressing his lips together trying to keep a laugh in.
I widened my eyes at him and shook my head, made a “yikes” face, and we both let out silent laughs. He got off at the next stop. I never talked to him. I looked for him every morning the rest of my time in Madrid. Nothing.

And that’s not even the half of it.
Madrid is just teaming with super hot young men. It’s great. Beautiful art. The beautiful game. Beautiful men and women. A win win win.