Madrid

My first experience with Madrid was from the window of an airplane at half the age I am now. Eyes fixed on the small, arid, mountains that I wouldn’t reach for another two years, I was struck by the awesome exhilaration of an early-life encounter abroad, one that becomes impossible to replicate as the years wear on. I was in a foreign land.

In a present in which foreign lands have all but ceased to exist and most material reminders of these earlier visits have been thrown away, whether by donation or sale, that awesome exhilaration of the past has been replaced by something more subtle and difficult to describe. Even two years on from this initial encounter I was still in awe of this land that only continues to expand for me, when I spent two days as part of a college tour group, passing by and through landmarks such as the Plaza del Sol, the Museo del Prado, and the Valle de los Caídos.

“La puta capital” or “the fucking capital”, as chanted by a little girl at the final match of the Champion’s League between Madrid and Valencia in 2000 in Paris, didn’t seem so bad to me even though I, too, was a Valencia fan. But it also wasn’t a city to which I had planned to return without good reason- similar to how I had felt about Paris- so it wasn’t until I was invited to a reunion of friends that I decided to go back.

From Huertas to Chueca to La Latina, I was able to walk more freely than I did all those years ago. The first day we enjoyed a bowl of “migas” with Murcian vermouth on tap from stands at the Mercado de San Ildefonso before moving on to the largest plates of “free” food I have ever seen with orders of draft beer at El Tigre. Unable to finish even half of them, we ended up sharing the rest with a group of young men standing next to us. Later that evening, we savored a delicious dinner at the Taberna del Capitan Alatriste before making our way back to Chueca for a night out.

The following day we went to the Parque del Capricho for the reunion of friends. Starting out with a walk through the park, we then planted ourselves at a large table at the restaurant for several long hours of eating and drinking, Spanish style. Restless and generally bored by the conversation, I focused my attention on the three-year-old child of one couple and the six-month old baby of another. If, as Pablo Picasso said, “everything you can imagine is real,” then the worlds of children are much larger than ours, and I was wistfully reminded of a time when mine was larger than most, and I never wanted to grow up. Yet there I was, against my will, grown up.

The last day we went for a walk through the Parque de El Retiro, which is arguably nicer than Central Park in New York City, before stopping for glasses of the best vermouth I have tasted at the Taberna Angel Sierra. Since our train back to Barcelona didn’t depart until 7:30 that evening, we then had a late lunch followed by dessert with coffee before boarding. By the time the train departed, we were exhausted, and grateful for our discounted preferential seats and the peaceful train car that accompanied them. As we sped through the Spanish countryside at 300 km per hour and I caught glimpses of rural villages that most people never visit, I wondered if, going forward, it’s time to slow down and spend more time in such places and less time in the noisy, sprawling, cities from which I want more and more to retreat.