Dan and Doreen on another trip. You are welcome to read, you can even comment if you want. Write Dan here: dpiette@jabon.com. Write Doreen here: dstoller@jabon.com
A Big Door.
The trip to Madrid (our honeymoon!) started off with a slight hiccough that would be representative of the whole week. David Chandler had generously agreed to take us to the airport, and the flight was supposed to leave Houston at about 2:00 PM. Continental had a direct flight (with a stop in Newark) on a 777, our current favorite airplane. I am a bit compulsive when it comes to travel, so I went to check the flight the night before we left. It was not on Continental’s website. Knowing that airlines ALWAYS have their passenger’s best interest at heart, I figured that they would be contacting us soon about this problem. (yeah, right) so Doreen (being the designated Continental Contact in the family) called to confirm our reservations. They had moved us to a much earlier flight without telling us, and expressed no surprise that we did not know. We got new seat assignments, contacted David to make sure that we would be able to make the earlier flight, and went to bed content that God was in his heaven and that all was right with the world.
The next morning we packed (well, Doreen packed, I “helped”) and were ready to go as David drove up to the house. We locked the door, took our leave of our pets, and headeding into that complex society that Walter Kirn calls “Airworld” in his latest novel. The thing to keep in mind while traveling, especially for long distances, is that you have no control. over ANYTHING. Where you go, how you get there, what you carry, who carries it for you, how long you wait in line, and I could go on. The Travel Industrial Complex is one of my bête noires, yet I am strangely drawn into it. We checked in, cleared security, and walked down to the relative comfort of the President’s Club.
Manic in Madrid (you’ll know why later)
The flight to Newark was uneventful, the check in and wait in Newark was uneventful, which is sadly the best thing that you can hope for while flying these days. On the flight to Madrid, we had great seat in the exit row. (On a 777 there is no seat in front of you on the exit row). We were seated next to an especially chatty Colombian who told me ALL about his translation business. In great detail. For over an hour. Doreen was no help, as she turned her deaf ear and started reading. But if you want to know about machine translation vs. The Trados way of translating (http://www.trados.com/) I can tell you more than you want to know. It is amazing.
The flight was uneventful after that (We watched “Planet of the Apes” and a couple of shorts.). I had an odd moment of discomfort as we were landing, a very bad cramping in my guts that made me want to cry out in pain. It lasted about ten minutes, and I attributed it to something I had eaten on the flight, change of cabin pressure, or just the thrill of landing.
The Madrid airport is quite large (Madrid is a city of about 7 million) and we seemed to walk forever before getting to customs. Entry formalities were quick and easy, and we were rapidly spilled out onto the ground floor of the airport, where people were waiting for friends, exchanging money, buying and smoking cigarettes (Barajas being one of the last airports I know of that still allows smoking inside). We had to call the apartment owner (rental Madrid. They rent over the ‘net: http://www.rentalspain.com/ We recommend them. The place was spacious and a real bargain compared to hotels. It was right in the big middle of things, and they were willing to help with everything from dinner recommendations to travel schedules and tours.) to let him know that we were in town. SoO I had to find a phone card – not as easy as it sounds. They have a row of phones along one wall, and a machine where to can buy the phone cards with cash. We had cashed in some US$ for Pts, but did not have the RIGHT change. So I tried to find a place where we could buy a card.
The first place I stopped was the post office, which is a logical place to buy such things. I was abruptly sent away. So then I went to the tourist booth and asked where I could get a card. They told me the post office. Ah. So I asked where else, and was told the tobacco stand.
The Cathedral
Tobacco stands are fixtures across Europe, and much of Latin America. You buy cigarettes, newspapers, sundry dry goods and candies, metro cards, and, of course, phone cards. So I waited in line as young woman who looked 13 years old with some very tight jeans (you could see that she had a 5 pta coin in her pocket, and could even tell if it was on heads or tails) and (I am not making this up) SIX INCH PLATFORM SHOES!!! She was with another young friend, and she was buying a carton of cigarettes. With 5 pesesta coins. Counting them out one – by – one. Now, you may not know the value of the peseta verses the dollar (I didn’t before we traveled to Spain). But it takes a WHOLE LOT of 5pta coins to buy a carton of cigarettes. And it takes a LONG TIME to count them out one at a time. On top of that, the stand had just installed a new Point of Sale (call it a cash register) system and the woman behind the counter did not know how to operate it. Needless to say, this took some time. And it took time for the NEXT guy in line, who was also paying for cigs with coins, to cash in. The next guy was paying with paper, so that was OK, and then it was my turn.
I had been waiting in line for about 20 minutes by this time to buy the phone card. Doreen is standing with the luggage and near the phones, as this Tobacco shop is a long walk from the phones. I am sure that she is wondering where I am.
I get to the front and ask for a phone card, and was told that they do not sell them. She told me that I could buy them from the machine by the phones. I told her I knew that, but needed change. I asked for change, she looked at me, looked at her new POS machine, and looked at me again.
“No” was all she said.
I had to go back to the American Express window and cash in my 5,000 Pta note for coins and paper. We then bought the phone card (A nice one with a little bird on it) and called the apartment owner with no problem.
The taxi queue moved fast, and we were shortly on our way into the city. The cab driver told us that we would have to take an alternate route in because of the bomb. “Bomb?” we asked? It turns out that ETA (the Basque Terrorist Group) had set off a bomb that morning on the road to the airport. We were welcomed to Spain.
The apartment, as I said earlier, was really very nice. It is in the big middle of everything, about one block from the Plaza Mayor, in the old part of Madrid. It is a wonderful warren of small streets that intersect without regard for any rectilinear grid. Some of the streets are barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side, and others are wide enough to turn an eight horse carriage around without backing up. The buildings vary in age from about 1550 to the present. (the bulk of Madrid is not a very old city by European, or even Spanish standards. It was named the capital in 1561 as a political expediency.) We were staying one block away from the Calle Cuchiellos (Knife Sharpener’s Street), which is known for its Tapas restaurants. (More about Tapas later. They are almost the perfect foods. See here: http://www.arrakis.es/~jols/tapas/index2.html )
Doreen walking into our apartment
Our Place. We loved it! (the two windows on the left, and three on the right are ours.
We started walking around town the first day after a brief nap. Now, there is something that you need to understand about Madrid. This is a late city. Not late as in late classical (see above), nor late in the classic Latin American sense of never being on time. This is a late city in that people eat late, drink late, dance late, and just simply stay up late overall. Most of the nice restaurants do not even OPEN until 9:00 PM, and they get full around midnight. So our original time change strategy was to not. Not change at all. You see, we are rather “early” people, often ready to turn in before 10:00 PM, read for a while and shut the lights about 10:30 or 11:00. We seldom stay up past 12:00, and seldom wake past 6:00. So if we would keep our time the same as in Houston, we would have a7 hour barrier against the late problem, and all would be fine. Therefore, we started out first walk in the late afternoon of our first day in town.
Plaza Puerta Cerrada near our apartment
We had a great time walking around. We walked thorough the Plaza Major (Big Square) onto the Calle Major (Big Street) and to the Puerta del Sol (Door of the Sun), one of the very big and important public squares in Madrid. It is not really a square, and it is unclear exactly what it has to do with the sun, but it is a great place for people watching and getting a feel for the city. From there we walked down Carrera de San Jerónimo (St. Jerome’s Road) to The Prado.
Plaza Mayor
You know the drill.
The Prado (The Meadow) refers generically to a part of town, a large tree lined street with plenty of space for walkers on one side (the Paseo del Prado) and the largest and best know fine arts museum in town. It was a beautiful afternoon for a walk, and we strolled on the Prado under the great trees. (We also bought our tickets to the three big museums there so we would not have to stand in line later. They are The Prado, The Thyssen-Bornnemisza, and the Reina Sofia. More on all them later)
Post Office on the Prado.
We wandered down to the Atocha train station, referred (cryptically, we thought) as a “tropical” train station. It turns out that the station (a nice old steel and glass structure) had been turned into a Tropical Botanical Garden/Shopping Mall while still preserving the train station within! It was something to see, though we had a rather hard time trying to figure out where the trains left for The Escchorrial (one of the trips we wanted to take) or Toledo (another). We went into three different information booths before we got the schedules we wanted, and we had to suffer an eye rolling civil servant in order to get that. Oh well. At least I speak a little Spanish…
Paseo del Prado
We got lost walking back to the apartment (we had been lost several times by this point). It is very easy to get turned around in a city where no streets meet at right angles. You just have a hard time getting your sense of direction. We finally made it home in the dark, had a few tapas and a couple of beers from some small places by our apartment, and hit the sack. We were doing pretty well, it was about 12:30AM or so, and we smelled like cigarettes. A smell we would not get out of our clothes the whole trip.
The next day we had a great time at the museums. We took the metro to the Prado (http://museoprado.mcu.es/prado/html/ihome.html) and took our time among the Goyas, Velasquezes, and Bosches. (El Boscoque). It is a HUGE place with more art than you can really see in a day or two, and we were lucky enough to see it with the museum relatively empty. There was a special Goya exhibition (I am especially fond of his crazy, later work – know as his “Black Paintings” and his depictions of a very short Spanish uprising against Napoleon’s troops on the 2 May, 1808 and 3 May, 1808 http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/goya/goya.shootings-3-5-1808.jpg ) called Goya and the Women, which was a nice collection of various paintings from other museums as well.
Self portraits by Velasquez and Goya
We had a nice little lunch in the museum, and then left to again stroll down the Prado before going to the Thyssen. We walked up and down the street, stopped in at the Museo del Jamón (A restaurant, not a museum, despite its name. http://www.museodeljamon.es/) You want ham, they got ham.
St Jeromes near The Prado
A demonstration had been continuing around the area by University students who wanted some or other change in University policy. We saw a ton of kids walking around with balloons and placards, none of which made much sense to me. I am not sure if it was their politics or their Spanish that I didn’t understand…
There are a whole slew of touristy stores on the OTHER side of the Paseo del Prado, and a common sale site are little figurines designed to look like the people in Velasquez’s painting Las Meninas
Las Meninas
You can buy a Lladró piece of each one, and at one store, they even had LIFESIZE pieces looking out over the balcony!
And BOOM!!! That is when I got hit.
A woman whom I took to be a student came up and said (in English) something about today being a holiday in Spain and all the men were getting flowers, as she tried to put a red carnation in my left breast pocket. Her companion was at my side, saying something nice as well. Doreen turned and saw them, started SCREAMING “GET AWAY!! GET AWAY!!!” And slapping at their hands. I had been lulled into a false sense of security by those large Velasquez figures. I said, “What was that all about?” and was told that they were, of course, the famous Gypsy Pickpockets. (pícadors, in Spanish). I felt like a fool. I checked my money clip, it was still there. My change, our map, everything else, all there. Then I remembered. I had put our excess cash into my left breast pocket and buttoned it down, just to keep the money safe. I checked the pocket. ItT was unbuttonend. And empty. I had lost about 10,000 Pts, or about $60. SoO sad to be me. I felt like a fool, and realized that I was just too content. I would be more alert in the future.
Typical Spanish Door
After calming down a little, we continued our walk to the Thyssen, a museum that had recently been a private collection, but had been donated to the city (http://www.museothyssen.org ) It is a nice museum, but quite frankly we were a little frazzeled, and wandered about it aimlessly. There are some great pieces in there (Doreen was especially fond of a Singer-Sear gent portrait.) We left and slowly wandered back to the apartment for a nap.
We had arranged to meet with some friends we have in Madrid to meet for Tapas and wine that night. Both Doreen and I knew Alexjandra Jordan when she was just a newly minted graduate from UH, starting her very fist job at Landmark Graphics. She was someone who would always agree to a new assignment, even if she had no earthly idea what you were talking about when you asked about it. She was always able to get the job done, and make everyone happy with what she did. In short, a joy to work with, as well as a joy to be around. One of the most energetic people you will ever meet, she always had “plans” for holidays, birthdays, and sometimes just random events. My favorite was when she put a live turkey in our boss’es office. No, wait, she never did that. (But I almost talked her into it! She would have been the only one to get away with it in the company without getting fired.) I had never met her husband Alberto (Doreen had) but I wWas assured he was, indeed good enough for her (though many of us wondered, and indeed, had asked to interview him before they married. Alex demurred.) Alberto is as charming and as calm as Alex is frenetic. They make a wonderful couple, and they treated us to a wonderful time while we were in Madrid. It is knowing people like this that makes travel so much fun.
We arrived at the appointed rendezvous spot at 9:00 PM, refreshed from our little nap, and very calm after being hit by the gypsies. We met and there were abrazos and besos all around (hugs and kisses) We walked into the restaurant (I cannot remember the name, but when Alex or Alberto reads this, I am sure that they will let me know), and EVERYONE there knew Alex and Alberto. It was still empty (9:00 PM, after all) and we went upstairs to start the meal. I had a glass of sherry (fino) to start, Doreen and Alex red wine (a rioja) and Alberto a beer. Then the food started coming.
The first thing we got was Serrano Ham with Aged Manchego Cheese and Almonds. The ham is a dried ham, the pigs are fed ONLY HAZELNUTS THEIR WHOLE LIVES!!! ItT is so good you don’t care if you ever eat anything again as long as YOU live. At the same time we had some bread with a tomato-y paste on it. Heavenly. You know that the bread is as fresh as it can be, and the tomatoes just perfectly ripe before being mashed with some extra virgin olive oil and spices. Incredible. Then the tapas started coming fast. We had marinated octopus, which had been beaten by hand and sliced into perfect rounds. It had the great octopus texture when it is not tough and reubbery, but resistant and tastey. Baby fried calamari – tiny squids no bigger than the your fingernails. Some with tentacles (Doreen and I fight over those) some without. They were so good you could hardly resist popping them in your mouth like popcorn. Fried wild mushrooms – they had been lightly breaded and fried, and served in a wine reduction if I don’t miss my guess. Perfect food. And then some grilled whole shrimp. They had been lightly grilled, so they were still all juicy and tender. So much flavor on these things that you wished you were a seal. We would eat and talk, talk and eat, and then repeat. We had a couple bottles of a Ribera del Duro wine that I wish I could remember the name of, because I would like to try to get some here. It was as close to a perfect meal as I had eaten in a long time. By the time we were finished, it was midnight, and we all were ready to get home. The restaurant however, was completely full, with people waiting downstairs for the tables to open. A wonderful time.
(there may be some graphic depictions of pain and suffering below. If you read it, and don’t like it, don’t go whining to your momma!)
We got to sleep by 12:30 at the latest, as we had a very short walk home. It was a very nice night until
WHAMMM!!!
I was wrenched awake at 1:30 AM exactly by a hard, sharp, sever pain in my belly. I had never felt anything exactly like this before, but I am well aware of the risks of eating food out of your home base. I have been stamped into over 30 different countries; have eaten largely without concern for what the consequences would be. I would eat anything that was set in front of me, as long as I saw someone else eat some first. In the four years that I lived outside the US, I was laid low by food maybe twice. This was different. This was bad.
I got out of bed to try and let Doreen sleep. I was hurting so much that I felt it had to be food poisoning. I went to the bathroom, tried to purge myself of the poisons, and nothing happened. I was jut holding onto my belly and doubled over in pain. I drank a little water, painfully, and crawled back into bed.
I could not stay in bed. I got up again and went back to the bathroom. This time I forced myself to vomit. Some of you may know about this, and it is a noisy thing. It woke up Doreen, who asked if she could help. I could only croak “no” and stay where I was.
I did not flow vomit like a drunken frat boy after a beer bust. It was a simple matter, but it did not help one iota. Not by one pain unit (what are pain units, anyway? SIs? (for Spanish Inquisitions?) maybe WTs (water torture?) I wish I knew. It is something that I feel I would have been way off the scale with at that moment) was my discomfort diminished. I walked into the living room, and sat down to try and get more comfortable. It didn’t work.
I alternated between the bathroom (where nothing at all happened) and the living room (where I was literally writhing in pain on the floor) and the bedroom where I would wrap myself in the sheets and hope that the pain would go away. Doreen started asking at about 2:30 about a doctor. I was convinced that the pain would go away, or at least lessen, within another hour. It didn’t.
We were in Spain, in the middle of the old city, and we had NO IDEA how to get to a doctor. I fought the idea hard, I just did not want to go to a clinic where I would not be able to understand what was happening to me.
I rubbed my belly, I rubbed my back. I writhed in pain some more. I walked from the bathroom to the bedroom to the living room where I was doing most of my writhing. After another hour and a half, I decided that I must be dying, and I thought about how to do so quickly.
I sat and stood and writhed for another half hour as Doreen was trying to convince me to go to the doctor. I figured out that by 4:30 I was not getting any better on my own. I asked her to help be get somewhere, and she went off to call Alex and Alberto (We didn’t have a phone in the apartment. Well, this is a story in and of itself. You see, because we are by nature sort of cheap butts, we didn’t want to put money in the cell phone that came with the apartment. So you could use it for INCOMING calls, but not OUTGOING calls. No problem as a rule, except that the outgoing calls had to be made (with my phone card, see above) at the phone booth on the corner. So Doreen (a saint, for this and all the OTHER saintly reasons she has) goes out to the corner at 4:30 AM, called A&A, who called back in about 5 minutes with the name of a clinic nearby. Bless their souls, they answered the phone at that hour, and then took the time to help us. What great people.
I say nearby only theoretically, because by the time we got into a cab my sense of time and space were completely whacked. I asked Doreen later how long it took to get to the clinic, and she said no more than ten minutes. I thought it was at least half an hour. (what was that about the theory of relativity?)
We finally got to the Clinica de Urgencias (Emergency Room) and I crawled into the door. I was on my knees trying to talk through the glass window to the admissions clerk. The Emergency Room Tech (bless them one and all!) was in the glass cage with her. They both looked at me as if I was crazy. Doreen had just finished paying the cab, and got inside at that point.
The first point was how do you pay. (There is free medical for all EU members. The US is not in the EU). They needed 22,000 Pts before they would see me – about $120. (not too bad. Cheap in my eyes, as I thought I was dying, and my pain units by that time had grown from 10 SI to about 75 SI on the cab ride) The Tech grabbed a wheel chair so I would not have to writhe on their floor, and wheeled me into the corner of the waiting room so they would not have to hear me moan in pain as the financial transactions were being completed.
Once the money was set, the tech tried to wheel me into the examining room. I have to say that I am bigger than your typical Spaniard. Not by like double, or anything (like your typical Chinese, say) buy bigger. But my feet would just NOT fit on that darned wheelchair’s foot pedals! Every time that tech (bless ‘em all) tried to turn the corner, the wheels would slam into my feet. That additional pain did not raise my SI any at all, but it was annoying none the less.
I was sitting in the examining room for a very short time (We were the only patients in the clinic. It was, after all, almost 5:00 AM on a Thursday morning at this time) before the Doctora walked in. She was very young, (She looked about 25) and looked rather tired. I proceeded to tell her, in the best of my pain addled Spanish what had happened. The meal, the cramps, the four hours of unspeakable pain, and the rest. She looked at me, and said something like, “Yea. Right.” And asked a few questions. I did not understand even half of what she asked me. I know I said something about diarrhea (none) allergies (none) vomiting (a little) and then a bunch of stuff that I really did not know. The nurse walked in at this point, and she said something to me. The Doctora looked at her and said “El no entiende bien” (He doesn’t understand well). I wanted to yell “I AM DYING HERE! HOW CAN I UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO ASK ME ABOUT MY MEDICAL HISTORY WHEN I DON’T KNOW ANY OF THE MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY???” but I just moaned and writhed some more.
I could really not understand the Doctora’s blithe attitude toward my problem until later in the day, when Doreen pointed out that most women don’t feel too sorry for men when they come in complaining about cramps. I mean really, if you have a childbirth or two behind you, what is a little belly ache? So sad to be me.
In any case, the Doctora told the nurse to give me a couple shots in the butt. One for pain (I don’t know what it was) One for Nausea. I was also given a prescription for Buscapina Grageas (for pain) and Primperan for nausea. I was also told to not eat for 24 hours. But I was to drink a lot of something they called Agua Aria, equivalent to Gatorade.
The Doctora palpitated my belly some, asked if I had any specific pain (no, just general, blinding, cutting pain) and then she stopped. They started heading me to the door, and I asked how long it would take for the medicine to start working. They said maybe half an hour. I asked if they had some place I could rest before going out, and they put me in an empty room. I don’t fit on their beds. They let me lie there for about 20 minutes and came in, asked if I was any better. (I wasn’t) and then they kicked me out.
We took a cab back to the apartment, and by this time I was starting to feel as if I would live. We made it back about 6:00 or so (I think) and I went to bed. Still writhing and moving around, so Doreen went to the second bedroom that we luckily had in the place.
The next day passed in a haze of Aqua Aria, water, buscapina and fitful sleep. Doreen was angelically taking care of me without any complaints, always asking what she could get for me and helping where she could. It was a terrible way to spend time a foreign country. Especially one known for its food. Where I could speak the language. On our honeymoon.
The rest of the trip I was laid pretty low. I had a hard time walking too far, and other than a nice trip to Segovia with Alberto and Alex, we didn’t get much farther than the Reina Sofia museum.
The trip to Segovia was fun, except that I sort of crashed it for the others. They ate at a place I would have LOVED to have eaten (Baked suckling pigs are their specialty.). I had to leave when the food came, I was just in too much pain to eat. Again, Alberto and Alex were great about it, and did everything they could to make me feel better about it.
Candido in Segovia. The Suckling Pig Place.
Segovia has this HUGE aqueduct that was built by the Romans in the year 1 BC. (I think it was labeled thusly when built.) You can see it below:
D&D in Segovia
There was a celebration in 1999 to celebrate the 2000th anniversary of the aqueduct. (http://www.cyberspain.com/ciudades-patrimonio/isegovia.htm) We didn’t spend much time there, but it is a beautiful place, and one to which we will return.
Dan, Alex, Alberto in Segovia.
Puerta del Sol
Los Sordos.
Goya went deaf in his old age. It made him depressed and that is why we painted the “Black Paintings” (for example: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/goya/goya.saturn-son.jpg - it is not for the squeamish. But that is how I felt while I was sick)
Cervantes is well loved in Spain. There are many tributes to him. The following is probably the best know:
Don Quixote Monument
In Madrid, there are celebrations of Columbus (Even though he was Italian. He LEFT and was FINANCED by Spain. Remember?). Here are two in Madrid. Which do you like better?
Columbus monuments. Old (left) and new. Go figure.
The Palace.
The city seal of Madrid has a bear eating off a tree. We were assured by the cab driver that there are no longer any bears in Madrid, and have not been for some time. There is, however, this very sweet sculpture of a bear and the tree:
The Madrid Bear
City Seal
Plaza de la Villa
Finally a small square. It is not the biggest in the city, or the best known, or the most beautiful. But it is peaceful and pleasant, and it makes you want to return to it over and over, as we did. It was a couple blocks from our place, and sort of out of the way, but it had nice wa. I guess it is sort of like Madrid itself. I can’t really put my finger on any one thing that makes it special. Just a lovely place with good food and interesting people. We had a good time and I regret that I didn’t have MORE time to explore and enjoy. We will return, I am sure of that.
(A very good book about Madrid is called Madrid, a Cultural and Literary Companion by Elizabeth Nash. It is not really a tour book, as it does not give you the names of hotels, does not provide maps, nor does it give you a list of places to eat. But it DOES explain the context of the city. Why is it there, why are the buildings where they are. Who built them, what were the problems they encountered. What are the consequences of Franco’s support for the soccer teams. A good read. It is from a series called “Cities of the Imagination.” (http://www.interlinkbooks.com/Cities_of_the_Imagination.html ))
