Madrid

For the casual traveler, adjusting to Spain’s clock may take some getting used to. For one, nothing is really open before 10:00 AM, and you’ll be hard pressed to find any store open during siesta (apart from the big chains; God bless big corporations!). It is fairly important, therefore, to plan your day accordingly so that you capitalize on the small windows of opportunity to visit certain sights or pick up some groceries.

Since most Madridians are recovering from intense hangovers and only a few hours of sleep, the early morning is a great time of day for strolling through the city streets, as it is quite calm and peaceful. You would almost think that Madrid was a deserted city during these hours. If it were not for the occasional hum of a vespa scooting down a nearby street, or the clinking of dishes in a nearby apartment, this might be the case. In short, if you are looking for a place to keep warm, have a bite to eat and maybe a coffee, your only real choice is Starbucks, which I certainly do not condone (unless it’s really, really cold out), which is what prompted us to seek shelter there.

It actually amazes me the number of people I see going into Starbucks stores in Europe, considering that there are an infinite number of cafes lining every insignificant street, corner and alleyway in any major (or minor for that matter) European city. Not only do these cafes invariably offer better quality coffee, but are usually quite cheaper and offer a unique sense of flavour and ambience, all of which Starbucks sadly lacks. It’s interesting that as a concept, Starbucks was to be an importer of European café sensibilities to North America, but has instead become an exporter of North American corporate values and sensibilities to the rest of the world.

I enjoyed Madrid a lot more than I thought I would. I imagined it as being a somewhat generic cosmopolitan European city, however, Madrid oozes a sense of “Spanishness.” While it lacks the kind of close familiarity one might feel with smaller cities such as Granada, there is an almost electric vibe one feels while being in the city. This could be that we were there during the holidays, however, I got the feeling that the kind of organized chaos that we became apart of was a regular occurrence. One aspect of Spanish culture I came to really enjoy was the “tapas” concept. In Granada, tapas came free with every drink you purchased, which meant that you could stagger from one bar to the next getting drunk whilst getting fed for a relatively cheap sum. In most other parts of Spain, tapas aren’t free, but relatively cheap (and really good!). While the concept has been attempted here in North America, for some reason it hasn’t really taken off. The few places that do offer tapas on their menu are really offering overpriced appetizers that cost roughly the same as an entrée. I think part of this has to do with the differences between Spanish and North American social attitudes. Tapas bars in Spain are packed with people of various ages out to socialize (and God forbid, sometimes with a stranger standing next to them at the bar) late into the evening, long past the time when most bars in Vancouver have closed up and people gone to bed (sometime between 8 and 9 PM). The process of actually ordering drinks and tapas can require a little getting used to, especially if you do not speak the language and you are completely unaware of the process involved. I think this was best expressed in the words of a beleaguered middle-aged British woman whom we saw coming out of a tapas bar telling her husband that she “just wanted to go someplace where she could have a nice, comfortable meal.” As with many other parts of Spain, it’s amazing that anything gets accomplished, and for people to give their order, or to receive their drinks and food for that matter, since everything seems to be in some kind of chaotic flux. All I can say is to be persistent and assertive, or go to McDonald’s for a nice, comfortable meal.

Since we weren’t in Madrid on a Sunday, we missed out on seeing a bullfight, something that Laura was particularly broken up about. We did stumble upon a tour at the Plaza de Toros that gave us an opportunity to go behind the scenes and actually walk around the bullring itself (where drops of blood could still be seen in the sand if you looked close enough). The highlight of this tour, of course, was to practice handling an actual cape used in a bullfight, which served to emphasize to both Laura and I that if any one of use were to be alone with an actual bull, we’d both be dead rather quickly.

Next: Barcelona, and the revival of a popular segment of this column: “Why some people should stay at home and never stay at a hostel.”