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Published: October 1st 2006
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Keen Cultural Observation #71: You don’t really appreciate the gap between what you know of a language and what you think you know until, at 5am, woken by angry shouting in the halls of your
pensión, you can’t figure out just what the hell’s going on. Or whether this is really a safe place to be. Or how fast you can run with 40 lbs. of crap strapped to your back.
On the bus to Madrid I meet a boisterous bunch of Americans - exchange students spending the semester in Segovia. They’re heading to the city for a raucous night out; looking to save a few Euros, they’ve decided to pass on their usual hostel and stay out until they can’t stand. Do I feel a pang of longing for the days when I, too, flushed with the high color of youth, might’ve been giddy at the prospect of a morning snooze on a park bench? Not even a smidge. While I suspect I have a couple of achingly long nights ahead of me in Madrid, I’m still grateful to have a couch as a cozy plan to fall back on.
Still, there’s a small tender
spot in my heart for these American kids with their bright, twinkling eyes and casual talk about Chlamydia. I’m sitting across from Audrey, a near-manic Californian who constantly has to shake the strawberry-blond hair from her eyes. She gets carried away about Spain, and her host family, and the improbable joys of meeting strangers on buses, and her voice can’t seem to find the octaves to contain itself. She’s a sweetheart, this Audrey, but it doesn’t take long for the murderous glances to start turning our way. When the girls in the back start up a little sing-along, I turn toward the window and stare thoughtfully into the middle distance, trying to look as aloof and Spanish as possible.
Audrey’s giddy about the possibilities that lie ahead. We talk about college and - at some length - the long road that brought her to a major in marketing. “It’s not just about money,” she says. I concede that every organization, to some degree or other, has to invest some energy in selling itself. “Amnesty International, the Red Cross, the church,” I offer. This last one strikes a chord. I’d raised an eyebrow when she mentioned the friends “working”
in India and sub-Saharan Africa, and a comment about her photographic memory - “I always picture how the Psalms look ex
actly on the page” - set off a few alarms. Things come sharply into focus, though, when a debate flares up over different versions of the Bible. She has a hard time parting with her N.I.V. (“New International Version”) - well-thumbed and small enough to slip into her pocket. Her friend Ana disapproves.
“King James it!” she says with zest.
I shift a little in my seat. When the girls in the back start up again with the STD’s, I feel a bit more at peace.
At Principe Pio, in Madrid, Audrey and Ana walk me to the train station. They give me a few words of caution about pick-pockets. Audrey recalls the advice of a friend from New York, who described a wallet-snatching scheme involving a man with a newspaper.
“If some guy’s walking toward you holding a newspaper up, like this,” she says, her hands in the air, “dude, just punch him in the stomach.”
It sounds like a crappy way to make friends.
I’ve had
a hard time finding a couch in Madrid, and I’m fortunate that Kay and Bianca - two Filipina teachers - decide to take me in. New to
CouchSurfing, Kay’s abundantly cautious during our email exchange. She asks if I wouldn’t mind giving her a copy of my passport; I ask for proof she’s not part of some complex identity-theft ring. We’re at an early stalemate, but she gives in against her better judgment. I show up with a box of sweets from Avila - an icebreaker that’s quickly devoured.
In person she’s relaxed and easy-going and not at all attempting to dig through my bags for a passport. We spend a couple of hours walking through El Retiro, the city’s famous park, listening to the drum circles and watching the sun set over the lake. It takes about 22 seconds for all sorts of shady guys to come out of the woodwork once it gets dark, so before long we make tracks past the Prado toward the thrumming streets around the Puerta del Sol.
Madrileños are notorious creatures of the night, and I’m not let down on this balmy Saturday in September. By 10 o’clock the
bars and plazas are impossibly full; you have to lower your shoulder like a fullback just to make it through the door. Kay and Bianca take me to an elegant
jerez bar in Huertas - one of Madrid’s busiest
barrios. There are massive casks behind the bar and retro posters of
toreros from the ‘70s. The owner wags a disapproving finger as I try to snap a few pics - though for the couple sucking face at an indiscreet corner of the bar, he’s given his tacit approval. We eat little green olives and four different types of ham. There’s an older couple at a table nearby wearing matching pink shirts. The husband has the self-satisfied air common to a certain type of Spanish male. You get the feeling he’d challenge me to a pissing contest at the bar, if there were only a suave way to do it.
We meet Kay’s friend, Beatrix, an Austrian whose Spanish accent is crisp and assured. She’s brought some friends - a pack of French girls Kay dubs “
las francesas” - and we hop from bar to smoky bar while they make disapproving little faces. Something about the Spanish gusto seems to be lost in translation, and for the better part of the night
las francesas huddle in a tight military formation, protecting the flanks with the sharp points of their elbows.
By 2am the sidewalks are mobbed; by four, it’s impossible to find a cab. We duck into a flamenco bar that’s packed with
gitanos - young and bohemian, doing elaborate hand claps and fancy footwork to the ululations coming from the speakers. The place is throbbing at half-past five, and in the basement bar - where there’s nary a window in sight - you get the feeling you’ve buried your face in a pile of cigarette butts. At an unspoken cue someone starts to clap, and it ripples through the crowd like a Mexican wave. This might be one of the last places on the planet where a straight man can make loopy little hand movements on the dance floor and not raise any eyebrows. Beside me a lank, dexterous guy with a full beard is doing all sorts of things with his hips, pivoting and thrusting like some
gitano version of John Holmes in a bullfighting ring.
We’ve met a couple of young professors from a local university, and one’s taken a liking to Kay. He invites her to a poetry reading he’s organized for next week; he wants her to listen to something he’s written. The other - who, let it be said, puts the “flame” in “flamenco” - has shimmied awfully close to my personal space. He’s got a twinkle in his eye I’m trying awfully hard to discourage, and he twists and whirls in a smoky pirouette, lifting his hands to do a gypsy clap while my back’s against the wall.
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