Readiness

This morning my taxi arrived 15 minutes early, but I was so nervous about my upcoming flights that I’d been ready for several minutes.

It was a different experience this time around, in a good way. The hostal offered a service that was only 7 euros more than the taxi I’d used previously, but for that extra 7 euros, the driver came up and got my bags, escorted me across the pedestrian mall, and seated me in a gleaming new Mercedes SUV, then played chill electronica all the way to the airport.

He was obviously a friend of the hostal staff, as the night concierge came with us, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just to see me safely to my destination.

Madrid Airport continued to be maddening. It was relatively simple to check-in, but the boarding pass didn’t state the gate, and the screens only said, eventually, “Sections H, J & K”. When I went to Section H, J and K, the screens there refined it to “Section H”, and when I got to Section H, the screens referred me to “Gate H16”. There are presumably reasons why the very first screen couldn’t just say H16, but those reasons are in Spanish and wouldn’t make sense to mere Anglophones like me.

When I got to Gate H16, the specified departure time had slipped from 11.30am to 11.40am. So my time in Malpensa would slip from 2 hours 35 minutes to 2 hours 25 minutes.

Boarding, once it began, dragged on and on, as is the Iberia Air way. Then we taxied all the way across the airport for nearly 15 minutes, before finally hitting a runway and taking off at exactly 12pm. So the time for Malpensa was now 2 hours 5 minutes.

However it seems that Iberia Air pilots are used to this and, like Madrid taxi drivers, don’t mind putting the pedal to the metal. We regained all of our lost time, landing at 1.40pm local time, which boosted us back up to 2 hours 35 minutes.

It took 20 minutes after landing just to deplane – when I rule the world, there will be no more entitled Baby Boomers with THREE carry-on bags EACH who need to awkwardly juggle them instead of getting their fat arses off the damn plane. However, baggage claim was right nearby, and the bags had already started coming out by the time I got there. Another five minutes and I had my bag.

I hurried upstairs to the check-in desks, got in the wrong queue, realised it was the wrong queue five minutes later, got in the right one, and by 2.30pm had checked my bag and was on my way to my gate. There were almost no queues for Security and passport control, and I got to my gate about twenty minutes before boarding was due to commence. Ironically the most time-consuming part of the process was walking the length of the terminal from passport control to the gate.

I emailed my Malpensa hotel to advise them that I wasn’t coming, and recognising that I was relinquishing my payment. But at least now I was safely on my way home.

Pirate Pete was relieved too. He hears the call of a land girt by sea.

Authentic

I woke in a strange bed this morning. Which was expected, as I had to swap to a new room a few hours earlier. This was due to the woman in the cell next to mine deciding that the early hours of the morning were the perfect time to take a psychotic break. Or maybe it was just a messy drunken break – I’m not a psychiatrist. I could almost handle the sobbing and wailing, but the screaming and kicking the walls were a tad too much.

The strange thing was that this is not the first time a crazy drunk woman has gone apeshit in the hotel room next to mine in the middle of the night necessitating me temporarily moving to a new room. The same thing happened in Sherman Oaks in 2023.

As I very rarely stay in hotels, I’m actually running a great average here.

The scientist in me wants to know what the underlying factor is. I’ve already narrowed it down to three options.

1. Bitches be crazy.

2. Otherwise sane bitches like to manifest their crazy in hotel rooms, where the neighbours don’t know them.

3. Overnight proximity to me makes women drink heavily and go insane.

More study is needed. I should apply for a grant to travel the world, staying in hotel rooms, monitoring the audible manifestations of the mental states of nearby women.

I should ensure that it’s an arts grant. Treading on their territory will really make those ladies mad.

So, mildly sleep-deprived, I returned to my normal cell long enough to shower and dress, then set out in search of coffee. I pretty much just wandered randomly until I noticed Perro de Pavlov, a sweet little hole in the wall place on a side street. It’s the sort of place with handmade coffee cups, homemade jam, and cute mismatched vintage furniture. A band that could be Tame Impala but isn’t plays softly. I had a couple of cortados and some toast with delicious homemade jam and immediately felt much better.

Pirate Pete once again reflected my mood, although maybe he’s just happy because I finally found a drink more to his scale.

After the turmoil of last evening and night, I had a happy moment when I singled out the homemade jam for praise while paying my bill with the barista. It turned out that she’s also the owner, her cafe has only been open three weeks, the jam was the first thing she made for the cafe, she wasn’t sure about it, and I’d just made her day.

It’s nice to make someone happy just by telling the truth. It really was very good jam.

Afterwards I went for a stroll around the neighbourhood snapping pictures of the scenery.

I watched two women pause for a moment of silent reflection next to the Madrid Sex Pest Memorial. Or is it the Madrid Tan Lines Memorial? I lose track. This city has too many statues.

Back to the hostal to do some packing and arrange a taxi for tomorrow morning, then back out again for some lunch. I wanted a real Spanish lunch, given that this is my last day and most of what I’ve eaten in Madrid is bar snacks and variations of eggs on toast.

And hence I had a paella and some sangria. Possibly not the most authentic versions of either, especially as I ordered the Paella Mixta, which has a prawn, chicken, pork, mussels and a couple of things that I suspect aren’t actually calamari, but they hit the spot.

I followed it up with another authentic Spanish experience: the siesta.

Finally, I walked over to the Teatro Real for a performance of flamenco, featuring an elderly man known only as El Pele, who is apparently important enough in the world of flamenco to have the show named after him, and have it held in the royal opera house.

To be fair, he was pretty phenomenal, singing with a fire and power that belied his age. He started alone with a flamenco guitarist, then was joined by three young men in black who clapped and stomped in complicated rhythms as he sang and the guitarist played. Their job also called on them to cry out “Ole!” at anything that impressed them; so it seems that flamenco has hype men. Who knew?

Next, El Pele retired from the stage, and one of the young men took up the singing. It occurred to me that flamenco singing has similarities to the ululation of the Muslim call to prayer, and given Spain’s Moorish heritage, maybe the two things are related?

Then a female dancer came out, and with great elan threw her skirts around and stomped and clapped and clicked and struck dramatic poses, all with incredible energy and perfect choreography. After a short break, she came back with a traditional fringed silk shawl and an even bigger ruffled dress, and threw both garments around with flawless skill, using her arms, legs and hips to flip them out in wide, wild arcs… all while still clapping, stomping, clicking and posing. It was like watching an Olympic level athlete in action. It was enthralling.

Also very impressive was the guitarist, who played without pause for nearly ninety minutes. The man must have finger callouses like seasoned oak.

So I did paella, sangria, siesta and flamenco all in one day. All I needed to do to become a true Spaniard would be to wear a sombrero and commit historic genocide in South America.

Unfortunate

Today I visited the last of the three main art museums in Madrid: the Museo Nacional del Prado.

Although the Prado is the most august and prestigious of the three museums, it was actually the least enjoyable for me. For a start, all photography is forbidden, so I couldn’t rename any paintings. This is of course an outrage: it’s the 21^st century, are we supposed to just look at paintings and then… remember them?

Many paintings were also hung salon style, with some relatively small pictures two or even three metres off the floor, meaning that one couldn’t see any details even if one wanted to. Others were simply so massive that they could only be viewed from a distance, whether they be a swimming pool-sized portrait or… whatever this is.

All of this was made worse by the fact that the physical layout of the museum was confusing, with webs of rooms connecting multiple ways. The rooms were numbered, but not necessarily sequentially, with 35-39 at one end of the building and 40-44 at the other. Additionally, some rooms were just normal digits (ie Room 12) while others had multiples (ie Rooms 13, 13A and 13B), with no indicators as to how many room any given number represented.

Judging by the number of tourists I saw poring over maps, consulting the wall plans, and suddenly changing course in a corridor with a look of irritation and hurrying back they way they’d come, I wasn’t alone in my confusion.

They did have a neat trick of placing different versions of the same artwork next to each other, allowing patrons to compare and contrast. These were either two versions that the artist did because he wasn’t quite happy with the first version, or mini-me versions next to the much larger finished product, completed as dynamic planning exercises, or a preliminary proof of concept painting for a planned mural or tapestry, plus the mural or tapestry. But that wasn’t enough.

So unlike the other two art musuems, I didn’t leave thinking I’d learnt something cool about art, history, or art history. I did learn that Charles II of Spain was a very unattractive man, but that’s about it.

Actually that’s not fair. I learned the following things about the following artists:

Rubens – lots of juicy and dramatic people having the most extra day of their lives.

Brueghel – never saw a fruit or flower, or dead poultry animal, that he didn’t want to paint.

El Greco - 16^th century weirdo who painted like a 20^th century weirdo.

Goya – definitely having some seratonin uptake issues.

Bosch – nutty in a way we still don’t quite have words for.

Once I got back to the hostal, I semi-siesta’d while revising photos and planning activities for my remaining time in Madrid. But while checking through my travel paperwork, I noticed that something about one of my dates seemed off. I checked a few associated dates, and the offness persisted. Then, with mounting horror, I realised that when I’d booked them two months ago, I’d somehow messed up my homeward flights.

What I thought I’d done: booked my Iberia Air flight from Madrid to Malpensa, booked a hotel at the airport for the night, and booked my Qatar flights to Perth for the following day.

What I’d actually done: booked my Iberia Air flight from Madrid to Malpensa, booked a hotel at the airport for the night, and booked my Qatar flights to Perth for the same day.

Oh… dear.

It’s not, yet, a disaster. By sheer luck, the daily Madrid/Milan flight gets in two and a half hours before the daily Milan/Doha flight, so while I thought I’d have 26.5 hours in Malpensa, I still had 2.5 hours between the Madrid flight landing and the Doha flight taking off. As long as the Iberia Air flight lands more or less on time, I then have two and half hours to deplane, get to the baggage claim, retrieve my bag, get to the Qatar check-in counter, check my bag, pass through security and get to my boarding gate. That’s tight, but probably doable. Thank goodness the Iberia flight lands at the same terminal from which the Qatar flight departs. I’ll have to forfeit the $177 I’ve already paid for the Malpensa hotel, but that’s not the end of the world.

As long as the Iberia flight isn’t delayed. And there aren’t massive queues at Malpensa security like there were last time. Or something else goes terribly wrong.

It’s just a layer of stress I don’t need. And I was feeling so good about the final days of this holiday!

With this mortifying Schrodinger’s Disaster fresh in my mind, I headed out to drown my sorrows in booze.

Pirate Pete picked up on my disquiet. Or maybe it’s just dawned on him that his primary role on this holiday has been to pose next to large, overpriced cocktails. Either way, he’s upset.

Marketing

I got up relatively early this morning to go to the famous El Rastro flea market, which runs every Sunday in the Plaza de Cascorro.

At first, it seemed small and disappointing- just a couple of dozen stalls selling old clothes, cheap jewelry and tacky tat still in the plastic it was wrapped in at the factory in China.

But then I realised that the stalls extended all the way down the Calle de la Ribera de Curtidores, so it was actually dozens of dozens of stalls selling old clothes, cheap jewelry and tacky tat still in the plastic it was wrapped in at the factory in China.

Then at the foot of the Calle de la Ribera de Curtidores, I found a plaza with stalls selling bits of old junk: old cameras and watches, CDs and DVDs, old computers, and the other sorts of things that nobody wants that clutter up thrift shops.

And finally, I found the narrow side streets with the real treasures – chandeliers, furniture, religious artifacts, candlesticks, oil paintings, urns and other goodies. The markets may have originated around the Calle de la Ribera de Curtidores, but they’ve metastasised to envelop the entire neighbourhood.

I didn’t buy anything, due to the difficulties of transporting anything into Australia, and the issues of trying to find out how much something might cost with a seller who doesn’t speak English. I did try for one item, a little enamelled metal icon of a saint; I gave the vendor my phone on the Notes app and indicated for him to write down the price. He wrote something about “75, but 16”. I suspect he meant that the icon was part of a set including some nearby earrings, but he made no motion towards them, so that’s pure conjecture on my part. Eventually, I just gave up.

After the previous day’s overindulgence in booze, I took a rare alcohol-free day, and just had a dinner of supermarket salad and juice in my cell.

Taste

This morning I found just the sort of place I needed for breakfast. The cafe had little single occupancy tables in the windows, at which I could set up my laptop and tap away, knowing that I wasn’t taking up a table that could be accommodating a couple or multiples. They even had free wifi! I ended up spending two hours there, leaving only when the afternoon lunch rush seemed to be picking up.

It helped that the food was delicious. The menu was in Spanish but I could understand enough to think this might be good. It was roasted baby leeks and red capsicum tapenade with a fried egg, herbs and basil oil.

I followed up with an intriguing beverage, which was a mad combination of tonic water, rosemary, orange peel and a shot of espresso, served over ice.

It was odd, but it wasn’t bad, and I’d drink it again.

With a bit of a loose end day, I visited the cathedral next to the royal palace and admired its vividly painted ceilings.

Then I walked through just a corner of the massive semi-wild park that dominates the western side of the city, which is so huge that any part of it almost feels like a secret, since there are only ever a few people in sight. The section I walked through was planted with apple trees, just starting to fruit, but I couldn’t tell if they were crabapples or real apples.

I also finally tracked down the site of this beautiful varicoloured dome, which I’d glimpsed from all over the city but had never been able to get a solid photo of it.

As evening closed in I visited another bar on my list, the Ficus Bar in Chueca. The cocktail I had there, the Aztec Smoke, was one of the most amazing drinks I’ve ever had: smoky, sweet, chilli and fruity, all at the same time. When the barman who invented it asked me how it was, and I gushed about how much I loved it, he was so happy he almost couldn’t speak.

It was a lovely bar, and the only downside to my visit was having to listen to the American Millennial at the next table talking endlessly about herself, and how she’s taking time for herself after her breakup, and how she’s grown so much following the breakup, with very occasional encouragement from the Spanish guy she’s with who’s trying to get into her pants.

“We were bonded by trauma,” she stated, in all seriousness. “It wasn’t sexual chemistry, it was addiction.”

It was quite appalling to witness, although, to be fair, you have to admire someone who can communicate entirely in ‘Eat Pray Love’ cliches.

But I couldn’t hang around watching this relational disaster unfold. I had tickets to another jazz performance a few minutes away. At the Recoletos Jazz Bar there was an altogether older vibe, which included the music before the performance, which was old Bee Gees songs reinterpreted as smoky R&B duets. It was a red velvet curtains, little table lamps, ancestral wealth kind of place.

Unfortunately the performances were more cruise ship than Blue Note. Don’t get me wrong; it’s one of the better cruise ships. One of those ones that doesn’t allow children, or the French. But it wasn’t up to the quality of Central Cafe, and frankly not even up to the standards of Perth’s Ellington Jazz Club.

However their Louis Armstrong-inspired, swinging version of ‘La Vie En Rose’ which won over both me and the crowd was, I have to admit, pretty cool.

I ended my evening at Alchemist 1967, with The Avenue, a classic cocktail whose ingredients I don’t remember, thanks to the influence of my previous two cocktails. But it was peachy, and sweet without being cloying. I accompanied it with pinchos of anchovies on a very light brie and toast, which, like all Spanish food, was superb.

Art

Technically most Spanish breakfast places are actually brunch places, and a common process for ordering brunch is to choose multiple items off three stages or courses of the menu. And so it was this morning that I went to a cafe called Mamua just wanting a little something on toast, and came away with coffee, orange juice, yoghurt with fruit and granola, some poppyseed cake, and a little something on toast, specifically avocado, salsa, Iberian ham and a poached egg.

It turned out I would need every one of these delicious, delicious calories to support my visit to the Reina Sofia, the second of Madrid’s main art galleries.

To be fair, Reina Sofia is more of an art museum than an art gallery. An art gallery shows you some beautiful pictures. An art museum gives you lessons with and/or about art, and Reina Sofia does this with a depth and commitment I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

The first exhibition I saw explored the creation of art immediately following the liberation of Spain from the fascists in 1976, which coincided with the global explosion of punk. To quote the wall blurb, “The absence of hegemonies would end up translating into an eclecticism of forms that defied artistic practices in that decade”… which is one of the few examples of high academic language actually being used to express a complex idea rather than to cover the lack of any genuine idea. The exhibition focused on underground video art, poster design and graffiti to show how liberated young artists dealt with the sudden freedom they had to say whatever they wanted.

Next, there was a retrospective of works from the early 20^th century Canary Islands artist Nestor Martin-Fernandez de la Torre, who was, according to all evidence, a bit of an odd fish. As he left his birthplace in Gran Canaria and moved variously between Barcelona, Paris and Berlin, his work slowly evolved from sensible landscapes and elegant portraits into fantastical explorations of sexuality, gender, landscape and identity. Also, fish.

A hundred years on from their creation, his paintings still blaze with light and colour. He was also a muralist, a wallpaper designer, and conceptual architect, and every phase of his personal and artistic development was laid out with clarity and a keen curatorial eye.

Similarly, the retrospective on Lebanese artist Huguette Caland tracked her first works in the late 1960s, which took their inspiration from the psychedelic movement, through her finding her artistic voice in the 1980s and 90s, then to her having to evolve her practice and style to accommodate her advancing age in the 00s and 10s. Interestingly, she had the maturity in her youth to embrace negative space, either in big colour-blocked canvases whose only details were on their peripheries, or in white fields with colourful writhings drifting off their edges.

And yet in her old age she grew into the negative spaces and embraced thickly detailed walls of colour and pattern, as if Van Gogh or Monet had developed an eccentric interest in textiles.

These were just the main exhibitions. In between were displays on urban design across Spain, the history of workers’ rights in Barcelona, and examples from the museum’s huge collection of works by Picasso (including Guernica), Salvador Dali and Joan Miro. I was in there for three and a half hours and emerged absolutely exhausted but pretty sure I’d seen everything. Admitted towards the end, I was drifting past priceless Picassos and only barely taking them in.

In the evening I tried another one of Madrid’s famous rooftop bars, the Azotea de Circulo, but it was a far more tawdry experience than the refined boozing at Oroya. For a start, there’s a $10 cover charge just to access the rooftop, and once you’re up there, it’s so packed that you’re lucky if you find anywhere to sit. I had to perch on a step near the bar, listening to the American trust fund kids with a table behind me talking about what their parents do, since they themselves haven’t done anything yet. Ugh.

The drinks were a little underachieving, but they were also comparatively inexpensive, so all things considered, not too bad.

At least I got some good pictures of the Madrid skyline, including the iconic statue.

But then I noticed something.

Owls, man. I will get to the bottom of Madrid’s strigiformophilia!

Sweet

Today is the Feast of Saint Isidor, a public holiday for the people of Madrid. I had limited options as many of the museums were closed, but I knew I’d be walking a lot. So before I dressed, I consulted the weather forecast.

Madrid Weather: Today will be 16-17 degrees, with rain developing in the afternoon.

Me: Wait, is that the 16-17 that feels chilly and will make you shiver, so wear a warm sweater, or the 16-17 with a scorching sun that will give you sunburn, so wear a T-shirt and a hat?

Madrid Weather: *saunters away, hands in pockets, whistling a jaunty tune*

Me: Hey, you didn’t answer!

Madrid Weather: *whistling intensifies*

So with possible rain in mind, I opted for a warm jumper with a hood. Naturally, by 3pm…

Thus, sweaty and overheated, I walked into the Casa de la Arquitectura, which is the sort of place full of thin, intense, black-clad people who think that sweat demonstrates a failure of character.

In their museum are architectural models made from every conceivable substance, from the normal white card or thin sheets of wood to perspex, drinking straws, or sections of steel tube from an architect who was really phoning it in that day.

Unfortunately Pirate Pete discovered the presence of the mortal enemy of the minifig; the one unholy and unnatural thing that strikes fear into the heart of a Lego pirate.

I dare you to look into those dead, emotionless eyes and not know terror.

But his courage is boundless and he was resolved for battle, so I had to leave the museum before he started attacking the exhibits.

On the way home I bought some churros to steady our nerves, but the only place to put them in my cell was on the outside windowsill, four storeys up. I don’t think he has a problem with heights so much as a problem with four storey plummets.

When we went out again in the evening, it occurred to me that Madrid has a design meme that I haven’t seen anywhere else. I’m calling it the garden brow; basically, a floral or botanic eyebrow for your door. The lower end of the practice uses artificial flowers and foliage, or dried plants.

In the middle are real plants, like a bougainvillea or similar climbing vine augmented with some fake flowers.

And at the high end, fully real arrangements.

They’re very cool and I’m seeing them everywhere. I’d hope it caught on in Perth, but we all know that all it would take was one fierce summer day and the whole installation would be a crisped brown ruin.

Tonight’s bar was Doce Botellas, a cute little neighbourhood bar with colourful vintage furniture and a friendly atmosphere. The cheerful bartender made me the house cocktail named after the bar, an unlikely mixture of mezcal, lime, ginger and agave syrup, which made it sweet but with a smokey bite, like a chainsmoking lollipop hooker.

Pirate Pete had by now regained his equanimity, and showed off his skills in… uh… straw balancing.