A Return to Madrid for Our Last Days in Europe

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Altaria in Reverse
We are at Estación Santa Justa with half an hour before our 9:25 Altaria train. Leroy had toast and jam at the hotel café, and I munch on a chapata de tortilla (bocadillo/baguette with tortilla española) at the station. On the train, I make the horrible realization that our seats have us facing backwards for the 3.5-hour journey. No, no, no! This is not good for motion sick people like me, who can’t go backwards in vehicles nor read on them. I convince myself that I’ll fall asleep soon enough, and some small part of me also wants to see if I can handle it. You always have to test yourself a little bit, right?

Once the train gets moving, the invisible vise on my head squeezes and I focus on breathing. I try to fix my eyes to something stationary in the car, and cup my hands against the side of my face to block the view of a swiftly passing countryside in reverse. Leroy doesn’t understand why I don’t just sit in one of the vacant seats facing forward, but I don’t want to sit next to a stranger in my unassigned seat. Didn’t I just get agro on someone at the stadium over seats? (Bett, the use of the word “agro” is explicitly for you, the only person I know who uses this granola language, other than James, of course). I am only able to sleep for an hour with all my napping yesterday. They thankfully start playing a movie. Unfortunately for Leroy, the Spanish dubbing industry is extremely speedy, so American movies are quickly dubbed. Maybe it’s not so bad, he would have hated the movie anyway. They are playing Eragon, that dragon rider movie written by an 18-year-old that seems a bit lacking in originality and is downright corny. But hey, it got me through most of the train trip. Leroy spends the majority of the time in the dining car continuing Barack Obama’s book.

Hola Madrid
Once back in Estación Atocha, we hit the metro and get off at Gran Vía for another stay at a Petit Palace hotel. This chain, which seems to have a branch every two blocks in Madrid, is part of the High Tech Hotels that are making themselves known for free wireless access, their hydromassage shower we talked about already, and what they call “human” hotels. To be honest, there is little high tech about these hotels, unless their definition of high tech is mimicking the small, box-like domiciles of Japan. The rooms are painfully small, and the décor futilely attempts a futuristic look. We have to get a long alphanumeric username and password from reception to access the shoddy wireless, and in fact, we are required to do this daily because… because what? Because someone might get a hold of that unreadable username/password pair and access their wireless? How could they, if it barely reaches my room consistently? Am I venting? Yes, I’m venting. I wouldn’t have minded if they called themselves the Free Wireless Hotels, but High Tech? What IT guru came up with their system, because it really should be better than it is. Ditto for the laptops they have in the lobby. *Exhale*. Okay, I’m done dissing the hotel that I’m sitting in while writing this (I won’t get into all the other little things that don’t make sense in this place, like the lack of a soapdish. I guess in the future, I won’t mind putting my wet bar of soap on the counter). I must be going through La Quinta withdrawal.

We decide to relax today. There is not much else in Madrid that we absolutely need to see. I guess some of you might be aghast that El Prado museum has not made our blog, but I’ve seen it many times, and Leroy doesn’t seem too excited about seeing Velázquez and Goya, or even the eerie portraits at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, the last museum completeing the Triángulo del Arte (Triangle of Art = Reina Sofía, Prado, Thyssen). I guess there’s the Palacio Real and El Retiro, but my love of Madrid stems not from the tourist experience, but the idea of just being here and living in this space. Tomorrow, I will show him my old neighborhood and perhaps we’ll go to a bullfight at Plaza de Toros Las Ventas. After all, it is smack dab in the middle of the month-long Feria de San Isidro, the most important bullfighting festival in Spain (yes, more than the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona). The best matadors will be there. But today, we’re gonna chill. First stop after the hotel is, you guessed it, food! We walk in the direction of Chueca, the gay part of town, because there’s a The Wok branch there and Leroy wants a second dose. The Tuesday menú is noodle-heavy, but the deal is too good to pass up. Late in the evening, we find ourselves at the dive bar next door, which serves caipirinhas (which I request as caipiroskas, of course) and plies us with lots of salty bar snacks. They have the bullfight at Las Ventas on the telly, and Leroy gets his first lesson in bullfighting. Unfortunately, I was the teacher, but I tried to explain the role of the banderillero and picador, because each man in funny hat and tights has a job to do.

Bullfighting 101
But let me be more systematic in describing it (thanks to Wikipedia, although the article is clearly corrupted. I’ve edited, clearly, but if you look up “bullfighting” on their site, someone has clearly decided to sabotage the description):

The modern corrida is highly ritualized, with three distinct parts or tercios. The bull enters the ring to be tested for ferocity by the matador and banderilleros with the magenta and gold capote, or dress cape. In the first stage, the tercio de varas ("lances third"), the matador first confronts the bull and observes his behavior in an initial section called suerte de capote. Next, two picadores enter the arena on horseback, each armed with a lance or varas. The picador stabs a mound of muscle on the bull's neck, which lowers its blood pressure, so that the enraged bull does not have a heart attack. The bull's charging and trying to lift the picador's horse with its neck muscles also weakens its massive neck and muscles. In the next stage, the tercio de banderillas ("banderillas third"), the three banderilleros each attempt to plant two barbed sticks on the bull's flanks. These further weaken the enormous ridges of neck and shoulder muscle through loss of blood, while also frequently spurring the bull into making more ferocious charges. In the final stage, the tercio de muerte ("death third"), the matador re-enters the ring alone with a small red cape (muleta) and a sword. He uses his cape to attract the bull in a series of passes, both demonstrating his control over it and risking his life by getting especially close to it. The faena ("work") is the entire performance with the muleta, which is usually broken down into a series of "tandas" or "series". The faena ends with a final series of passes in which the matador with a muleta attempts to maneuvre the bull into a position to stab it between the shoulder blades and through the aorta or heart. The act of thrusting the sword is called an estocada. The bull's body is dragged out by a set of galloping mules.

To me, it looks like the picador and banderilleros are tormenting the bull, poking him so he bleeds and gets weak, so that later, the matador can beat him down and kill him. I almost wish the bull would get a heart attack instead. I find the whole thing quite brutal, and I don’t even consider myself an animal lover. I do eat beef and foie gras, you know. But the whole spectacle just seems like torture for the bull, and the macho machinations of the matador fall far shy of manliness and virility to me. I mean, he’s in pink tights. But this is a long-standing tradition, one perhaps harking back to Roman days, and one must try to understand different cultures. Most of the Spanish people I know or have met aren’t fans of the “sport,” including our current bartender. There’s a lot of waiting in between movements, and it always ends up the same - the bull always loses, even if he gets away with scraping the matador’s face off (yes, I saw this happen on TV once in 1997). Leroy starts rooting for the bulls (he’s from Chicago afterall), whispering “Toro, toro, toro!” then exclaims, “I’m glad I saw this. We don’t have to go to Las Ventas tomorrow.” I am more than happy to avoid a live version of the brutality. I can see the art and tradition in it, but I just feel too bad for the blood-covered bull.

Please, Give Me a Salad!
When I lived in Madrid, I used to take the metro all the way to the San Bernabéu station near the soccer stadium so I could patronize TGI Friday’s and have a salad that was more than just wilted lettuce, pale tomatoes, slices of onion, olive oil, and vinegar (not Balsamic). Clearly, Madrid has changed - there are more places to get greens than before. We must be dead sick of tapas, because we walk all the way to Tony Roma’s near metro Alonso Martinez, past Chueca and near Colón. Leroy gets the original baby back ribs, which normally come with fries and slaw, but we successfully substitute for baked beans and rice with vegetables. Except that there were no vegetables in the rice. And they didn’t bring any bread or have the selection of sauces for the ribs on the tables. I order an ensalada de la frontera, which is supposed to be a Tex-Mex chicken salad, but with only four cubes of pale tomato standing in for salsa and no salad dressing, I’m regretting not walking all the way to the soccer stadium! We wait more than 20 minutes to get the bill, and by then, I think I’m overtipping by leaving 6 euro cents (okay, that seems drastic, but let’s not forget that tipping is not customary). Save for the picture of Roberto Carlos, the Brazilian national team soccer player who has played on the Real Madrid for many years, there was nothing good to say about that Tony Roma’s. Oh, but Leroy says his ribs were good. It was a bogus bastardization of the American original, to say the least.

Walking Home in Madrid at Night
Our walk back to Gran Vía via Calle Hortaleza is brisk. It’s past midnight, and as we pass the many bars and sitios in Chueca, I reminisce about my days (and nights) as a 20-year-old in this city. Madrid is an amazing place to live in as a young person. The nightlife is the best in the world, in my opinion (better than New York and Ibiza), but that’s a personal opinion. Soul Kitchen, the hip hop spot I used to frequent almost twice a week, is just a memory. It didn’t survive, although mega-clubs Joy Eslava and Kapital (all seven floors of it) are still here. Aquarela, in Chueca, is still here too, Jon-David. Just for you. Somos fantasmas.

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Photos

El Oso y Madroño
In Puerta del Sol, this is the symbol of Madrid and also a popular meeting spot.