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Published: June 23rd 2012
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Madrid Gardens
Well, this seems as good a place as any to dump Madrid pictures. Lordy, how time flies sometimes. Mostly when you’re having fun, occasionally, like now, when you’re just too damn busy to notice. It’s been more than a month since I finally caved in and acknowledged my financial ruin, which would go a long way towards explaining why I’m back in my old hometown near Boston. Still, while I may be trapped in a suit and serving time in Cubicle hell let me cast my thoughts back to a month ago and I’ll tidy things up from my time abroad. There will be one more entry after this, probably in another month or so, or whenever I think I’ve had long enough to think about everything. In the meantime, when last we left our hapless hero:
Welcome back to Madrid! So after our little whirlwind tour my family returned to Madrid, though for somewhat different reasons. My parents were flying back, and I was salvaging a final weekend I had reserved for fiddling around in Europe. This was a leftover from my original hopes of returning to Brussels post vacation, but the prospects of yet another round of intern employment (your paycheck is given in chocolate and espresso) had sort
A little scribble
Ah, so here's this thing then. of dampened that vision. Well, that and having no prospects for a place to stay, and no real cash option short of organ theft. The new plan meant catching a train to Barcelona, but the catch was I had to spend a day cooling my heels in Madrid (life’s hard I know).
What’s a fellow to do with a day in Madrid? Well, I’d seen the museums, and again, poor, so part of this meant just wandering around the city. After a bit of meandering and just possibly an hour spent passed out in a park (I swear I’ve got a home now) I actually got back to the major part of the city and hatched a plan. See, for a very long time I’d thought of getting a tattoo. I had the basic design picked out more than a year ago, and had refined it with a meticulous Google search. If you want to know what the significance of it is, well that story requires alcohol, I’m not posting anything that preachy here. Still, I’d been dithering about this for a long time at this point. Part of it was financial, and part of it practical. Was this
Theater House
Oh to have a place this nice to perform in... going to affect my chance at future work? Did I even have enough money left to do this and make it home? No, and kind of, as the answers turned out, and I decided to follow up on this. Madrid has a reputation as being an artist’s haven, and some of the more needle inclined of painters had set up shop along one of the main touristy thoroughfares. So, how’d it go you ask? Well, a quick rule or two for the future applies:
You want to get what? Here? Seriously? If you’re going to invest in this, you might as well do it right. I did spend some time looking up locations, and even found a few that were quite pretty judging from the artwork on their sites and on themselves. Then after some body shopping I settled on one I could find reviews of, had decent lighting, and didn’t have naked Barbie dolls hanging from the ceiling (seriously). After haggling a bit, getting the design right, and talking about what would work best, I met the man actually doing the tattoo, and we learned something fun.
Acquis? Just remember dear readers, needles
that don’t speak English aren’t your friend. Come to think of it, any needle talking to you really can’t have your best interests at heart. Yes, it turned out he didn’t speak more than ten words of English, roughly matching my Spanish. You would think I’d have the sense to at least do this in Germany or somewhere else where I could struggle through, but no (next time?). Remarkably though, things didn’t go terribly. More than a month later and I’m still surprised to see this glaring back at me from my shoulder. It’s just as surprising to realize how much I still like it. Moreso now that it’s not bleeding, or doing any of the other horrid things your body does to remind you that doodling on yourself is stupid.
And to the rest… I did go out that night, with the usual collection of folks hostels always have. Interesting solo travelers, a few groups who like to meet strangers, and the random Swiss guys who thought I was a native speaker (Swiss German’s strange). A bit of tapas bar hopping (like regular, but much tastier) and a long but fun conversation later and it was easy
Dandy gardens
Oh, so many nice park benches near here...I swear I'm not a homeless person. to forget the pile of band-aids and baby ointment on my right arm. Though that probably was the alcohol’s fault, the tattoo might’ve been done sober, but I reserve the right to do more than one stupid thing each day. All told it was a good bit spent in Madrid, even if it meant cursing every time I heard the word “sangria” for a good six hours the next day. Ugh. I’d been planning on covering Barce in this too. Eh, that’ll keep. Til next time folks, I promise a bit more speed this time.
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Malte Lenhart
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Hey Dan! I finally made it to read the last bits of your blog.. did I read it completely? I can\' remember honestly, this tab has been living in my browser for quite some time.. Well what I wanted to say is that your blog was very interesting and entertaining to read. Sounds good fun what you experienced :-) Funny thing about Swiss German is that we got subtitles when they broadcast something off the Swiss TV here in Germany. And sometimes we are almost forced to speak English with people from Swiss, Austria or Bavaria :D