With a week of classes completed, all of the uChicago students jumped on the Fundación-sponsored tour bus to Madrid early Friday morning. Our first stop was Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, home to an enormous collection of works by Picasso, Dali, Miró, Gris, et cetera. An art history professor in some way related to the Fundación led us through the museum, providing context for the works we saw (in Spanish, always). Sadly, Guernica was out of the building for an exhibition in the nearby Prado Museum.
After about an hour and a half at the museum, we got back on the bus for a driving tour of Madrid. The same guy came on over the speakers of the bus and pointed to various buildings and parks and streets and monuments, but to be honest, I started tuning him out after about 15 minutes in favor of just taking in my surroundings. Despite their proximity, Toledo and Madrid are completely different. At the root of it, Toledo is ancient and Madrid is pretty modern. While Toledo has narrow streets, limited park area (in favor of a large collection of cobblestone plazas), and little vegetation, Madrid has wide, tree-lined boulevards, gorgeous enormous parks filled with monuments, lakes, playgrounds, and there is no shortage of plants anywhere in the city. Toledo has limited car traffic and lots of people walking, Madrid has tons of car traffic and tons of people walking. I really enjoy both cities.
After about 45 minutes on the bus, we pulled up to El Museo del Jamon. Yes, a ham museum. Hanging from the ceiling were hundreds upon hundreds of pig legs, presumably cured, waiting to be sliced up for eating. We went to the dining room in the basement, and had a lunch of a variety of ham-products, cheese, bread, chicken, and french fries. Very random.
Lunch was the last part of our itinerary. The coordinator, Jose Luis, told us all to be careful, jumped on the bus, and left us. Some people had booked a hostel, while others had not. I didn’t, as I had heard from others that Madrid’s nightlife can sustain you until eleven in the morning if you wanted it to. Accordingly, I planned to stay out until 6 or 6:30, get to the train station, take the 7AM train back to Toledo, and sleep all day in my own bed. About half of the others had the same plan.
That being said, it was now three in the afternoon, and the nightlife starts after midnight. The idea was floated that those without hostels find a hotel room and take a nap, but I was doubtful that we would find a cheap one on such short notice. And sure enough, an hour later, we still hadn’t. I suggested we go to the big park in the center of the city (called Retiro), and just sleep on the grass. After much caucusing (such a frustrating part of any large group), the others finally agreed. With my excellent navigational and observational abilities, I led the group to the nearest Metro stop where we boarded a train that took us directly to the park.
The park was absolutely beautiful, with fall colors just starting to show themselves. And, for the middle of the day, it was full of people everywhere. We wandered around a bit and came upon a man made lake in the middle, where you could rent rowboats. Naturally, we rented a couple for an hour, took turns paddling around, and just relaxed in the warm sun looking at the peaceful, perfect world around us. There was no shortage of the phrase “I love Spain!”
Now about five, we got off the boats and found a shady lawn. I laid my head down on my sweater, and what seemed like moments later, I felt a little damp from the grass and woke up. It was now 6:30. Everyone else came to, and we caucused a bit more. Ugh. The decision was reached that we should find coffee, and we wandered the streets to that end. We eventually found a place overlooking Plaza de Colón (remember that? the meeting point for the beginning of the trip a week earlier) with outdoor seating, and I had a shot of espresso and a near-perfect croissant.
After a relaxed hour sitting here, the others wanted to go to a movie. I didn’t come to Madrid to sit in a movie theater, so I told them I didn’t think I was going to go, but that they definitely should. Plus, I was kind of tired of going everywhere in a mass of seven Americans. Sam(antha) didn’t want to see a movie either, so the two of us parted from the rest, and told the others to call us at the end of the movie so we could go somewhere for dinner.
Sam and I just navigated the café-lined sidewalks and tree-lined paseos of the city, taking it all in as the sun set. At one point, we were on one of the paseos. Picture a 10-lane street, with the six center lanes (three in each direction) flanked by two wide grassy medians with a wide sidewalk and little street-market type shops (the paseo), flanked by the remaining two lanes in each direction. While walking down this and perusing the shops, a cluster of maybe 300 scooters (seriously) pulled up on either side of the paseo, all honking. It was the craziest thing ever. The light ahead of them changed, and they all honked off and entered a massive roundabout. All the cars were just like “wtf?” So was I. I have a picture of it and will upload it soon.
Sam and I stumbled upon a Starbucks later, and stopped in for some more coffee. This was the first Starbucks I’d had since leaving the states, and it was every bit as good as ever. Yum. As we were finishing our drinks, my phone rang. The others hadn’t found a movie they wanted to see, and so wanted to meet back up with us and get some dinner. It turned out (magically) that we were all on the same street, just a couple blocks apart, so we met in the middle. Suehyan came prepared with a guidebook, and we flipped through it looking for restaurants. We found some near Plaza del Sol, a fifteen minute walk from where we were, and headed that way.
We eventually decided on a Japanese restaurant (we reached the consensus that we were all sick of fried Spanish food and ham/pork and could happily go for something cleaner and lighter). It had great miso soup and even better Maki rolls, and we all left quite satisfied with our healthy dinner.
It was now coming up on eleven, and as we left the restaurant, we noticed it was more crowded now than it had been before. We came to the realization that we were at ground zero of Madrid’s nightlife! We walked around for a while, found one last place to get coffee, called the people who had a hostel, and told them they should come meet up with us. We reentered the fray.
At every corner, a cluster of people holding cards would ask “do you speak English?” Yes, we would say. They would give us the cards of their bar, with map and a list of deals, and proceed to try and lure us to the particular club they were representing with promises of cheap drinks or free shots or what have you. And the best part is, they followed through with their promises. We hopped from bar to bar, led in by a new salesperson, who would instruct the bartender to give all of us a free shot. We would happily take them to cheers of “¡Salud!” or “¡a Madrid!”
After maybe two hours and four bars, we decided to try a club. We walked across the city to Sala Heineken, a place we were promised (again by one of the cornersalespeople, who hadn’t led us wrong yet) would be a good time. By this point, the people from the hostel had met up with us, and so there were about 12 of us in total. We walked the half-hour to the club and got in line at Sala Heineken, the guys holding their VIP cards one of the streetsalespersons gave to knock off the cover charge.
We got up to the front of the line, and got bounced. Something about bad shoes. Too many of the guys had tennis shoes (not me), and they told us we couldn’t get in. A little drunk, perhaps, and true to American form, several of the people from the group (me, too, at one point) went up to obnoxiously argue with the bouncers about how we’d walked half an hour and were promised we’d get in and have a great time. The bouncers would argue very quickly in Spanish, and I’d have almost no problem understanding them (awesome). The only problem is, most of us can’t conjugate verbs. I mean, sure, I can. But only when I have the time to think about what I’m saying, write it out, check to make sure I did it right. Not on the fly, though, and I think that made the bouncers even more pissed off. They flamboyantly used their hands to direct our group away, and after about 20 minutes of arguing and the clear conclusion that we had ruined our chances at this club, we regrouped and decided to try our luck at the famed seven-story Kapital. We walked the half-hour to the club and split into two groups, those who had a good chance of passing the dress code and those who didn’t, to avoid ruining everyone’s chances. It turns out this precaution was unnecessary, as everyone ended up getting in.
Kapital was amazing. The club is a converted old theater. If you’ve been to House of Blues in Chicago, it’s similar in layout to this, only bigger. The first floor is like the orchestra seating area of a typical theater, sans seats, converted to a dance floor. On a tiered stage, there were female and male models, largely undressed, dancing away to the extremely loud techno. Above the dance floor, there were 8 super-powerful fans, usually turned off. But every two minutes or so, one would hear this compression sound, and I would smile with delight at what was coming. The fans would blast, at extremely high velocity, 15 seconds of ice-cold fog. It instantly cooled you off, better than any air conditioning in a club that packed and hopping ever could, and it completely obscured your vision of anything at all for the 15 seconds. It was really amazing.
Behind and above this orchestra level, there were four glassed-off tiers of balconies to preserve their own musical selections. These were floors 2-5, each with a lot more dancing and a great birds-eye view of the main dance floor. Music ranged from Latin to American to more techno, and the light shows and various themes were the best I’ve ever seen. The top two floors were more quiet, each with a bunch of comfortable seating and slightly more chill music.
Our group split up and reformed in various sizes and permutations all night, everyone oscillating between dancing on one of the dance floors, buying more drinks from any one of the millions of bars all over the place, and chilling/enjoying a cigarette on the top couple floors. We stayed at Kapital from 3:45 to about 6:15, when they started closing off one floor at a time from top down. We ran across the street to a restaurant, grabbed a bite of breakfast, then those taking the train back left for the station across and just down the street from the club. We got there, only to find that the 7AM train is only on weekdays, so we had no option but to wait in discomfort and exhaustion until the 9:20 train. Ugh.
The train itself was amazing, though. They are called AVEs (Alto VElocidad, ie high speed), and the train ride took only 25 minutes (compared to an hour by bus). We got into Toledo proper at about 10 after catching the bus from the Toledo train station, I checked my email, then slept from 11 until 7. I was awake for about five hours, just chilling at home and reading, and then went to bed again at midnight (so exhausted, and feeling a little sick).
This morning, I still feel a little sick, and really hope it doesn’t last long. I have a bit of homework to do, including a 40-line rough draft of a paper using only the past tenses, translating a short story, and shorter miscellany. The plan is to get that all done as quickly as possible, and hopefully watch Project Runway sometime today. Unfortunately, I can’t find my power adapter. Argh. Might have to go shopping, too.