Madrid, España

¡Hola! It´s been a hectic couple of days, but I find myself now in a 24-hour internet cafe in the 24-hour city of Madrid... struggling over a keyboard with all sorts of non-anglophonic characters on it. My final night in London was a bit anti-climactic again. I´d decided to go and see Lee ´Scratch´ Perry at the Jazz Cafe in Camden, but upon getting there I didn´t like the look of the crowd forming outside the venue and I was still fighting jetlag... so I caught the tube back to Oxford Circus and was asleep by 9pm. I woke up at 5 yesterday morning thinking that I should probably book my train to Edinburgh given that I was planning on leaving as soon as possible. However, I found that tickets were over 100 pounds - prohibitively expensive, like everything else in London. So I figured I should just fly to Madrid instead. One hour later I was on the train to Gatwick Airport, and three hours later I was touching down in Madrid. It took three trains to get from the airport into the centre of town, and the Metro system is extremely crowded, hot, and noisy, with each interchange involving about half a dozen flights of stairs and a long walk. However, the ticket counter at the airport did have a big print of ´The Great Masturbator´ on its back wall, which was pretty cool. Emerging from the underground Sol Station into Puerta Del Sol (reportedly the heart and soul of Madrid) I was blown away by how foreign it all looked, and how true it was to my preconceptions of Spain. The vitality of the place is infectious. I´m staying in a self-contained room a block away from Puerta Del Sol for only 42€ per night, which is roughly what I was paying at the hostel in London. So I dropped by backpack there then spent a couple of hours walking the streets, stumbled upon the amazing Plaza Mayor. I had a siesta in the evening and went out to eat at 10pm, as the Madrileños do. I ordered a bocadillo panceta at Museo Del Jamon (Museum of Ham) and then stood at the bar eating my pancetta sandwich while the night buzzed on around me. This morning I went to a cafe, which in Madrid terms is indistinguishable from a bar or a restaurant. Their desayuno especial (special breakfast) comes with a glass of wine. I just had an omelette and espresso though, and then sat and smoked for a spell... Later this morning I caught the metro out to Atocha, where the art museums and the big gardens are, and local poor people line the sidewalks with blankets of pirated DVDs. I saw a guy chase another guy who had run off with his blanket and was dropping DVDs everywhere. Anyway, the Museo Del Prado was absolutely incredible. The queue for admission was about 200 metres long and seemed to be mostly Spanish people. There was a fine mist of rain and a busker was playing the most beautiful flamenco guitar and people waiting so graciously as the line inched forward. It´s inspiring to see people queue for an art gallery, and then pay for admission before being walked through metal detectors. The Prado only seems to house classical art - up to 1900 or so - but there´s still such an amazing range. The Bosch triptychs were terrifying, and it´s impossible to believe they were painted 500 years ago. I wasn´t expecting to find ´The Garden of Earthly Delights´ there. Similarly, it was great to get up close to some Brueghels in all their comic detail. There seemed to be rooms full of Rubens and Goya. My legs were aching before I´d seen half of the collection. Across the road from the gallery I had another bocadillo for lunch (I may be eating a lot of bocadillos in Spain), and drank Mahou, a Madrid beer, while the bartender talked at me enthusiastically. That´s something I´ve noticed here - they don´t accommodate much for English-speakers and any Spanish that you can manage is taken for granted. This is in comparison to Indonesia, where every effort made at Bahasa Indonesia is applauded like a baby´s first words. I guess I yearn that kind of reinforcement. Maybe I fit in too well here. I like to think that. I love Spain.