| Madrid: The One In Spain. |
| Written by Brendon Green |
| Thursday, 25 February 2010 22:14 |
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Amazing coffee. I don’t know if it’s a ‘thing’, but Spanish coffee is the delicious. I even went to a gourmet coffee house and has something called a Brasilleño, which involved chocolate somehow, and it was officially the best coffee I have ever had. Proper official too, I drew a certificate on my serviette stating the fact. Madrid is great, it’s a shame it’s my only stop in Spain. It is a huge city, and as such it doesn’t really have a defined character like small towns and super touristy places have. Sure there are monuments and things to take photos of, but you’re not going to get the Über-Spanish spirit feeling if that’s what you’re after. (I just used German to describe the quintessential Spanish persona, creative!). It’s a major metropolitan city, and that’s what it feels like, except that the people are super nice and friendly. This was also my first ever official CouchSurfing destination. The asking random strangers on the internet for a place to stay instead of hostelling-it, turned out to be a great idea. My host, a real, authentic Spanish girl, lived in Carabanchel, just out from the city centre. The first night, freshly arrived and with my suitcase in tow, she took me to a Blues jam session in an authentically smokey Blues Bar. Oh yeah, you can still smoke in bars in Spain, and my eyes have not been accustomed to that for a long time, so I came away with a pronounced squint (which totally fit in at the Blues jam session). Other highlights include the Reina Sofia Centre of Art, which is more contemporary than the more famous Museo del Prado. I saw the progression of Picasso, and discovered Joan Miro, who is amazing and whose name I will drop into conversations from now on to sound more smart. I strolled through the Parque del Buen Retiro, which could easily take up a few days in itself. I saw the outside of the Plaza de Toros bull fighting ring after missing the last guided tour (FYI they run between 10am and 1.30pm), but the outside was still nice. The Museo de Ciencias Naturales (stuffed animal house) was great because I was the only visitor with 15 staff members, all of whom were super nice and didn’t speak English, who made sure I saw absolutely EVERYTHING there. One awesome guy tried to teach my the Spanish words for ‘tail’, ‘wing’, and I think ‘udder’ (he said the word in Spanish, then made a suckling sound while miming milking). The last night in Madrid was spent with my host at Patio Maraville. This is a kind of ‘word of mouth, know someone who knows someone’ place, that is completely off the registered map. It is a group of underground artists and activists that have taken over an abandoned building in the middle of the city. They have meetings, teach classes, create art, and throw parties all in the spirit of togetherness, progressiveness and screw-the-man-ness. I walked through the building (5 or 6 stories full of rooms) and saw how the place worked. There was a room to drop clothes you don’t need anymore and pick up some new ones that someone else dropped off. All the maintenance was done by like-minded tradesmen, if they needed to paint a room - people give paint and equipment if they had it. They bought beer wholesale and sold it at cost to anyone who turned up. No wonder the authorities don’t like them, they are a successful community surviving outside of the law and governing bodies. If this is the urban hippie lifestyle, I may have contracted a small case of the hippie-hippie shakes. And with that last sentence I have proved beyond doubt that I will never be cool enough to be part of an underground art movement. So now I am on a bus, looking over the Spanish countryside, heading towards Portugal. I will definitely head back to Spain and see much, much more of it in the future. If only to find that true Über-Spanish feeling. |
