MADRID - It's good to be back in a big city again. London was huge and occasionally soul-crushing in a similar way to New York, but Madrid was a big city with a small town mentality- don't rush, be friendly, and enjoy yourself. It felt less Spanish and more metropolitan than Granada and Santiago, more grand and self-conscious. Madrid is beautiful and it knows it. A big part of how much I enjoyed my two nights there was staying in a great hostel that had a lot of activities going on and a lot of great people. I arrived Friday evening and was quickly swept up into Madrid's nightlife by joining a pub crawl hosted by a sister hostel- I went with two guys from my room, Augustine from Argentina and Matt from Manchester. We got to the other hostel at 11 and did not start the crawl until 1am, when we went to two bars and then left for a club around 3:30, at which point I decided I needed to go to bed. Spain, I cannot keep up with you.
The next day I went on a free tour of the city, also hosted by my hostel, led by a wonderful woman from Columbia. It lasted almost three hours but was totally worth it, as I saw and learned things I would have never known by myself, and she had everyone in the group introduce ourselves, saying where we're from and our favorite cities we'd visited. I was glad to meet more great people on that tour, one of whom was Jess from LA, whom I'd just met at our hostel in Granada a few days before, and another was Stu from London who had once worked at a summer camp in Maine. Small world! Fun fact- the two sons of Spanish royalty go to summer camp in rural Maine.
Me in front of the Royal Palace:
Inside La Catedral de la Almudena, the beautifully modern cathedral of Madrid:
After the tour Jess, Stu and I went to get lunch at El Mercado de San Miguel, an indoor market inside a large hall with hundreds of vendors selling high-end, quality Spanish food- all the tapas you can imagine, sangria, wine, pastries, fish, paella, cheese, juices, meats, ice cream. The hall was packed with people and everything smelled divine but it was difficult to navigate the crowds so we grabbed tapas and ate them out in the sun. Afterwards we wandered back towards the cafe that our tour guide had pointed out as a historic and traditional place to eat churros con chocolate, which again made me feel a bit sick, but the place was cute and reminded me of the old Italian cafes in Boston's North End.
I spent the rest of the afternoon alone at El Museo de la Reina Sofía, which had a lot of contemporary exhibitions on show, one of which was called Playgrounds, in which I stayed happily for several hours. "Reinventing the Square" was the tagline for the show, and it explored in many different spaces with many artists how the idea of public space has been reinvented in the modern era and how it can continue to be changed in order to keep it in the hands of the people, and be used for social change.
My favorite part of the exhibition, a piece called The Model (for a qualitative society) by Danish artist Palle Nielsen which created a play space inside an institution made, made of rudimentary structures from recycled materials for children to come and play, change the space, build more structures, and use their imagination without adult interference. Of course this was incredibly interesting and exciting for me because of all the work I have been doing trying to bring play into art practice and blurring the line between artwork and imaginative, non-productive, seemingly pointless fun- the kind that children find easy and adults find very difficult and confusing. It was interesting seeing how the piece, executed in the 60s, was receieved by art institutions who may not have seen it as art, and by parents who had issues with safety and the limited supervision and ample freedom given to the children who played in The Model.
Map showing frames for building, a foam block pool, dress-up station, paint and clay tables, climbing towers, and a collective swing.
Sunday, my last day in Spain, I ate lunch at El Mercado de San Miguel again, this time arriving before all other tourists and carefully choosing a variety of delicious tapas. Little pieces of bread with onions and goat cheese, strong brie and fruit, veggies and fish, and a strange topping that looked a lot like white worms but was actually fish intestines, which was really yummy. Sangria at noon? Sure, I'm in Spain.
I wandered down to La Plaza Latina and stumbled across a strange sort of public space that had a bunch of semi-permanent, DIY-looking structures in a large lot, where there was an acapella concert going on and people were listening and lounging in the sun. I was really excited and pleasantly surprised to happen upon such an intriguing use of public space- it had seating with shade for watching concerts and for hanging out, a basketball court, garden plots, a lot of great murals, and even a toilet, and there was a guy selling cheap beer and food while we listened to the music. It made me think a lot about how we use public space back home in New York and the US, as there seem to be more restrictions on it and less of a sense of communal ownership that makes something like this possible. I wish I could have stayed longer and seen what other ways people used the space and how it was run.
I had an amazing time in Madrid and felt like I had fallen in love with the city even after two days, and I didn't want to leave, feeling like I had only scratched the surface. Granada and Madrid are two places I will want to go back to spend more time the first chance I get. I'm unsure of how I would feel living in Spain long-term, but visiting was everything I could have imagined, and I feel like I have opened up to visiting more Spanish-speaking countries- now my eye is on Mexico and Latin and South America.
On an unrelated note, I also learned never to take an overnight bus if I value my mental and physical health- my very silly previous self, while booking plane tickets months ago, decided it would be a good idea to take a cheap Easy Jet plane back from Madrid to London and then take an overnight bus from there to Rotterdam instead of a plane direct from Spain to the Netherlands. This resulted in a sleepless night and 14 hours of continuous travelling until I was in my bed at 9am on Monday morning, and subsequently caught a long and terrible cold for that week. Luckily I was better in time for my next trip- Berlin!
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