Impressions of Madrid

disclaimer: this was written before I had internet here, so it's a few days old.

It’s still a little hard to believe that I’m really in another country—Madrid to some extent feels like just another big city, like Chicago. Wednesday was not really a very interesting day—since we were all jet-lagged, having just gotten off planes, we didn’t really do much. We walked down the street to a little plaza for lunch, and then again for dinner, and neither was really remarkable. We did, however, go on a panoramic bus tour of the city, in which we saw lots of monuments and so on and learned a fair amount of history, none of which was particularly interesting. The architecture, though, was quite interesting, with little balconies on every building and lots of old buildings—it was so nice to be somewhere with actual history, somewhere where “old” means more than 50 or 200 years. The city is full of roundabouts, each of which (it seems) has its own fountain complete with sculpture of some city founder or saint or war hero. In amongst these antique buildings, though, there were quite a few modern ones, even some that were a mix of the two. There was one in particular that bore signs saying “this building was built according to the plans of the architect So-and-So, and remodeled and expanded according to the plans of the architect Such-and-Such.” There was also a building erected from the top down (don’t ask me how) and a memorial for the victims of the terrorist bombings of 2004.

The next day (Thursday) we took an early morning tour of El Museo del Prado, the biggest and best art museum in Spain and one of the best in Europe. Our tour featured three of the most prominent Spanish artists, El Greco, Velazquez, and Goya. It’s amazing how different their styles are and yet how each offers such an important part of Spanish history. We saw originals of some of their most famous works, including Velazquez’ Las Meninas and some of the paintings from the walls of Goya’s house. After this tour some of us went to a huge park in Madrid called El Parque del Buen Retiro, which is probably twice the size of Forest Park in St. Louis, if not bigger. There was a lovely entryway, framed by trees that looked like broccoli, with lobes of foliage branching out from the trunks. We wandered through the tree-lined paths, arriving at the Crystal Palace, a cathedral-like building made entirely of glass. There were some lovely gargoyles and paintings along the top of the walls, and we decided that it would be a wonderful place to get married. Unfortunately it wasn’t open, though by rights and the sign it should have been, or we would have gone inside and posed. We were running a little short on time by the time we were finished there, so we went to a little plaza and found cafes in which to eat and then had to literally run to meet the rest of the group at the Palacio Real, or Royal Palace. This was a ridiculously beautiful place, full of red velvet and gilt and rich furnishings and mirrors and paintings of the royal family and their hobbies. Each ceiling was lavishly painted, and each room had its own flavor and color scheme. There were more than 40 clocks in the palace, one of the kings having been obsessed with them. We got a little history lesson about past kings, how the Austrians were very simple and stiff, dressing in sober black and going around being dignified. The Bourbon monarchs, when they got to Spain, decided that the kingly attitude needed a change, and they pioneered the pleasurable use of free time for dances and parties. As the tour guide noted, the “Spanish spirit” of constant partying really started with the French. Most of the Palacio was decorated in lovely Italian styles, except for one room. This was painted all over with Oriental scenes in bold colors with black backgrounds, and it was used as the king’s opium den. The ceiling was painted in, again, the soft Italian style, contrasting with the walls, because during the Spanish Civil War a bomb fell directly into the room destroying the ceiling but thankfully leaving the rest undamaged.

That night was more interesting for some: several of our group went to a famous drag show called Gula Gula, which started off with a male stripper, unexpected by all. During the show, one of the male dancers, fortunately clothed at the time, rubbed a girl’s face in his crotch, traumatizing her and giving her, no doubt, a lifelong memory. Some others went to an Irish pub and thoroughly enjoyed themselves, but I and a few other girls had a more laidback evening, getting food at a market and eating in a little park down the street. We planned to go to Retiro Park, but it was too far to walk, we didn’t know how to get there on the bus, and the Metro line to the Park was closed for some reason until September 15. Ah well, it was a nice time anyway.