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Part One: June 26-29 / Part Two: August 3-5
San Francisco International Airport to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to Barajas Airport, Madrid, took approximately 17 hours and 30 minutes. Barajas to the Madrid city center took about 30 minutes by taxi, but only because there was traffic that prevented our driver from going any faster than 112 miles per hour.
We watched the speedometer climb as our diver dodged in and out of larger trucks, smaller cars and assorted other nuisances like they were standing still (actually, they were. There was traffic). Lanes meant nothing to him, which was also fortunate, because otherwise he wouldn't have been able to go so fast.
He held a cigarette out the car window with one hand. Somehow, he managed to beat the steering wheel with his other in time to the techno music he was blasting, which went, approximately, "thump thump thump thump thump." Then a singer would come on and say "Cocaine," and then it would thump some more. When we arrived at the hotel, the driver proceeded to charge us an extra $10 (on top of the $20 for the ride) for "luggage," which was two backpacks that Eric loaded and unloaded himself. On our return trip, we took the subway, which arrives directly at the airport, for $0.90 per person.
Our hotel was on the third floor of one of Madrid's millions of apartment-looking street-side multi-story buildings. It was run by a kind old man who did not speak English, but who seemed happy enough to see us.
We both promptly felt sick. Eric spent the night in the bathroom, where he got nice and familiar with Spanish (and European-style) bathrooms. It was not as well segregated as an American bathroom. For example, it did not have a separate space for a shower, sink, toilet, magazine rack, etc. Instead, the floor was tiled and had a drain on it. The shower was just a couple of raised tiles separating a three-foot by three-foot square in the corner from the rest of the room, with no curtain, so the whole bathroom showered with us. The tiles were sickly brown. There was also a bidet, which, as experienced world travelers, we laughed at, then used for laundry.
Hari, for her part, was so sick she couldn't eat the warm Swiss cheese we purchased the night before and, because the Spanish have not yet invented refrigerators, stored in the closet overnight.
* * *
In some towns, we woke up with church bells ringing. In some towns, we woke up with birds singing. In some towns, we woke up with our neighbors. In Madrid, we woke up around 9 a.m. with the jackhammers. The building across the street wasn't there anymore - Eric swore it was the day before, but Hari said no. The whole city seemed like it was under construction, with scaffolding, clean-up crews and concrete piles everywhere. The wonderful clean-up crews, called "limpieza," wore bright, neon lime-green jumpsuits with reflective stripes around the waist, knees and arms. They were everywhere.
People on the streets seemed to be doing nothing more than moving concrete. There were hundreds of small crews of two or three men doing it. Most of them dressed in construction worker gear - jeans and undershirt, with thick construction-worker boots. Most of them weren't working all that hard.
Although neither of us felt great, we took a walking tour of the city led by our Lonely Planet guidebook. We started in the Puerta del Sol, the center of the city of Madrid (it's hard to have a center for a city with three million people, particularly when the center is that small. This is just what the guidebook claims). It was at the intersection of six different streets, which fanned out from one main street like rays from the sun. There were actually sidewalks here, full of people moving places: tourists with cameras and suitcases, dawdling couples and locals who were the only ones strong enough to be running in the heat. On the side streets, the sidewalks were so narrow that one person walking slowly could hold up traffic. Locals walked in the streets. We remembered our taxi driver and stayed on the sidewalk. Cars mostly went when they could, dodging pedestrians as best possible. There were no bikes, skateboards, rollerblades or horses.
Signs around town showed the time and temperature. Some said it was in the 90s. Some said it was in the 80s and some said it was 110. The signs varied considerably from block to block, although they all seemed to agree on the time.
On one of the side streets, we walked up to El Corte Ingles, which may be the world's largest department store by area. Separate departments were in separate buildings. It had everything, like a WalMart that took up six city blocks.
In the afternoon, we discovered Spanish cuisine. Sort of. There were no vegetarian restaurants, or even vegetarian meals. Just 10,000 places with tapas (ugly-looking appetizers) and bocadillos (baguette sandwiches). After walking for miles, we settled on bocadillos. Each restaurant had the same menu, with about six different bocadillos on it. These are: jamon (ham), jamon y queso (ham and cheese), salchichion (sausage), chorizo (sausage), tortilla de patata (potato omelette) and vegetal (ha, ha). Hari, on our first day, made the terrible mistake of ordering the vegetal - lettuce, tomato, egg and mayonnaise. Eric got the tortilla de patata, which was pretty good. Hari's spoke for itself.
We continued walking after lunch, to the Centre de Arte de Reina Sofia. It's got Picasso's Guernica, some stuff by Dali and other Picassos, and, importantly, really cool glass elevators. In addition to being air conditioned, the buttons are touch activated, so you don't push them, just lightly feel near them. We rode up and down to see the view and enjoy the air-con. The view of Madrid was decent. The city wasn't smoggy, unlike most other large cities. Even when we returned in August, the skies were pretty clear.
Across the street, we could see the Ministerio de Agriculture. It was a pretty standard neoclassical-looking building, with columns and white marble and such, but on top was a marvelous statue. On the sides were two winged horses, and in the middle was an angel triumphantly holding up a stalk of wheat (like the Statue of Liberty, except with agricultural crops), that towered over the building and the city like a spire.
Across the street from that, we could see the Atocha train station. We went in to check about tickets to other places. This was our first experience with a European train station. It looked like a cathedral, with a vaulted glass ceiling, fountain and enormous garden with full-sized trees. Everyone inside smoked, however, leaving a misty, smoky cloud hanging under the ceiling. The glass also acts like a greenhouse, so it was hot, giving the place an oppressive feel despite its magnificence.
The ticket lines at Atocha were long, so we went to the tourist information office, which told us to go to a travel agency, which said to go to the RENFE (Spanish national railways) booking office, which was not the train station, where we took a number and waited. At least it was air-conditioned. At all train booking offices and stations, the way to buy a ticket was to get a number and wait until your turn. Although this was very civilized, it could also get out of hand - like in Barcelona, where we had a 400-person wait.
We got up early on the third day and went to the Prado. They make you check your backpack, so we passed through a metal detector and were about to give the bag up, but the girl in front of us got stopped. She had a bottle of water, which she couldn't take in, but they wouldn't allow her to check. The guard was giving her a very stern lecture, and she was protesting. He said she could put the water in our backpack if she wanted, so we agreed to do that, and we had a friend for the day.
She spoke English fluently, along with Portuguese and Spanish. Her name was Ludmilla, and she was a 21-year-old from Sao Paolo, Brazil. She was on her way to a university in the south, where she'll study Spanish. She wants to be a translator for Citibank. Her favorite restaurant in Spain was McDonald's (she likes Brazilian food, which they don't have in Spain. Of course, they didn't really have anything except ham sandwiches, so that's not all that fair). We asked her if she ever wanted to go to the United States, and she said she would like to go to "Disney."
We started the museum with a self-guided tour from Rick Steves' Mona Winks, which has self-guided tours of almost every museum in Europe. The book is magnificent.
At first, though, we had some problems. The guidebook said to start in room 50, so we looked for that by walking in a circle around the entrance rotunda, then doing another loop and settling on the only direction with paintings. We walked into the main hall, but found that is was room 51, so we walked out. A sign pointed from the main hall back the entrance, and said that room 50 was another way, so we went back out and around the rotunda again, before discovering that room 50 was actually the first room we were in, and it just doesn't have any paintings in it, so then we went back into the museum. This, incidentally, is a proven method for impressing strangers.
After about two hours in the Prado with Bosch, Goya, Velasquez, El Greco and others, we went to get lunch. Ludmilla came with us, which was nice. Eric's food was purple, owing to the beets. The recipe was a shredded mix of ham, cheese, beets, apples, corn and mayonnaise. It looked like purple coleslaw. The restaurant called it the "ensalata paraiso." Hari had gazpacho. Ludmilla had the tortilla de patata. Our lunch was an aesthetically pleasing mixture of red, yellow and purple food.
Part Two: August 3-5 / Part One: June 26-29
We found our overnight couchette inhabited by four French student-tourists. We didn't say too much to each other, although we both spoke enough Spanish to communicate. They asked Eric, after Hari had gone to sleep, if they could smoke in the car. He said no.
We arrived in Madrid around 8:00 a.m. The conductor came by each car to announce the stop. Outside the window, we could see the familiar red apartment buildings passing by. The French kids had not gotten up yet. When the train finally clicked, hissed, and came to a complete stop, they still had not gotten up. Because we were on the top bunks, we couldn't get down without stepping on them. Unfortunately, however, our luggage wouldn't fit, so we weren't able to do that.
One of them woke up. "We're in Madrid?" he asked Eric in Spanish, surprised.
"Yes," Eric said.
He woke up another guy. That guy said "Non," and turned over, pulling the cover over his head.
About five minutes passed. The conductor came by and opened the door, and suggested that, since everyone else in the world had de-trained, we might casually do the same.
When the French finally realized what was happening, they got out of our way, and we got off and walked down the empty platform.
While Hari went to the bathroom in the station, Eric purchased the Madrid sports journal, Marca, and noticed that Real Madrid was playing in a preseason tournament that weekend.
The night before they had beaten Liverpool. That night, there would be one more game, between Bayern Munich and AC Milan. The tournament championship was to follow, pitting the winner of the Bayern-Milan game against Real Madrid. It was on Sunday night. We would be in Madrid Sunday night.
Eric was beside himself with glee, which was very irritating to Hari, since they had to share a seat on the bus.
We arrived at the hotel and stored our luggage there, then went to the Plaza Mayor and sat in the shade, where it was not yet 100 degrees, and had fresh-squeezed orange juice and churros con chocolate. The churros, a supposedly traditional Spanish food, were greasy little pretzel shaped pieces of fried dough, which we then dipped in warm chocolate pudding, for a taste that was so intensely greasy that Eric ate all of them.
After the churros, we went to the soccer stadium and toured the grounds. It was (uh, Eric wrote this) beautiful.
We spent the next day shopping in downtown Madrid in the stores surrounding the Corte Ingles complex. Hari found several pairs of shoes to her liking, and also some shirts.
Eric found a corner in El Corte Ingles, where he curled up in a ball and closed his eyes while rocking slowly back and forth. A store employee walked by and clicked her tongue. Another walked by and asked, sympathetically, "Waiting?" A girl walked by and laughed (the preponderance of women was due to this being the women's clothing floor). A girl and her mother came by looking at the dresses, on the racks to the left and right of Eric's corner. The girl reached over Eric and picked out a blue dress with flowers on it. She seemed to be trying very hard to ignore him.
Finally, several years later, Hari re-emerged from the changing room, and we left.
Sunday morning we went shopping again at El Rastro, which is, according to the guidebook, the largest flea market in Europe. It flopped like an octopus in the middle of town, with tentacles creeping out in every direction along the streets.
Pretty much all of Spain turned out for the flea market, along with half of Portugal. Fortunately, there were many, many vendors, all of whom were selling either jewelry or fine scarves. Hari bought fine scarves at several different locations, and also looked at the jewelry.
When we had successfully purchased a lifetime supply of fine scarves, it was Eric's turn to bore Hari for a while, so we went home and got ready for the soccer game. The sun was shining very brightly, and it was hot out. We had an early dinner in the air-conditioned TGI Fridays next to the stadium, where we saw a luxury bus with the AC Milan players drive by. The players looked bored.
Then, we went into the stadium and found our seats. Although they were (Eric again) glorious, they were also facing directly into the sun, which, as stated previously, was hot. The first game didn't seem to have attracted much attention, since there was no one there except the two teams warming up on the field (Liverpool and AC Milan) and one small rafter section in the upper-right corner of the stadium which was completely full of red-clad Liverpool hooligans, already singing English soccer songs. We watched the warm-ups from the tunnel leading out to the seats, because it was shaded there. Liverpool posted two early goals (one an own-goal) and held on to win 2-1. They exchanged jerseys at the end, which was Hari's favorite part.
There was a brief break, and then Real Madrid came out on the field. Although the stadium was much nicer than anything in the U.S., the sound and technology left a lot to be desired. They had a big-screen video replay, with sound, that played advertisements. Specifically, it played the same three advertisements over and over and over again, the whole game, even during play. The first one was a cell phone advertisment, with some disembodied face going "bup bup bup bup bup," until Hari looked ready to disembody it a little more. Then there was an ad for a bank. The third was an advertisement to buy more Real Madrid stuff, with the Real Madrid theme song.
Real Madrid's theme song starts out along the notes of Pachelbel's Canon, in a grand, glorious, way over-amplified tone. Then it descends into repetition, like video game music.
Although Real has the best players in the world, many of them were slow and out of shape (preseason), and they were not playing particularly effectively. Bayern Munich, whose season started a week earlier than Madrid's, won 2-1.
The next morning, we flew to Amsterdam, ending the rail travel portion of our trip.
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