Marty Stepp

Here are my general impressions of the city of Madrid, which I visited from 9/16/2009 – 9/19/2009.  This first day I roamed the city and took in lots of sights and tourist attractions. Tomorrow I’ll write about some of the museums and palaces and that sort of thing.

Madrid is a very walkable city, which I like.  I got a map from my hotel’s front desk and took off around the city.  Everything is within 30-40 minutes or so at most, and I like walking and seeing the sights, so that suited me just fine.  The streets are full of people walking and tiny cars zipping around.  When you have a “walk” signal, the cars will pull right up to the crosswalk.  That is, if some guy from the cross traffic wants to turn onto a side street but is blocked by people crossing, he’ll pull his car right up so the nose is in the walkway and practically hit everybody.  I guess that’s how you have to drive to survive there.  Nobody seemed to mind.

One thing that made me chuckle is that you see all these official government buildings around.  Departmento de la Administracion Publica and such.  Tall old buildings, not that large; each with two guards standing out front.  They wear these drab-colored forest green uniforms and ridiculous pirate-esque black hats and stand up straight, like those guys in the stereotypical movies about Britain with the Marge Simpson hats who aren’t allowed to laugh or react to you when you’re acting like a jackass right in front of them.  These Spanish dudes seemed a bit more chill than that, but still very serious for guys who looked like they were late to help Captain Jack look for the Black Pearl.

I would have taken pictures of the guards and their funny hats, but I should mention that I am taking all my photos using a netbook and its webcam as the world’s crappiest makeshift digital camera.  As in, when I want to take a picture of something, I am literally fishing a netbook out of my bag, opening it up, waiting for it to resume off of standby, clicking some buttons to take the blurry crappy picture, and then shutting it back down. Yes. I look like a total freak show doing it, but I don’t care. I had a camera in my cell phone, but it isn’t available at the moment.  I also brought a legit digital camera, but no memory card. So I didn’t have other options.

There are lots of funny little shops around on the streets.  In particular they have a lot of “manor de juegos” (house of games) where you can go play slot machines and presumably other kinds of gambling.  They have sports houses with several HDTVs where you can watch futbol or something.  I didn’t go in.

Lots of people here smoke.  You don’t see it so much as you smell it.  Even in a lot of buildings, smoking is either allowed or else there is a fairly sizeable “fumar” section.  People say that we in the US are way behind Europe in every way, but I always bring this one up as a counterexample.  Europeans are very forward-thinking in most ways, but they still like to suck ash way too much.

Spanish couples like to make out.  In public.  A lot.  If you wait in line at a restaurant or something, there’s about a 40% chance some couple in line will start making out in front of you.  I saw a couple making out on the metro train.  Didn’t bother me; it’s just different.  I saw the occasional gay couple walking around; it’s kind of hard to tell, since it’s hard to tell if they’re just European.  But some of them look a little too European, if you know what I mean.  Or they’re two guys holding hands, which even my spotty ‘dar can pick up.

The police (“la policia”) here are pretty funny.  They are the most laid back policemen I have seen.  They are few and far between, and a lot of them are on horseback.  They have the occasional tiny, non-threatening-looking car as well with “POLICIA” on the side of it (see below).  Somehow just the word seems funny.  Policia.  It doesn’t sound menacing at all.  And they look so lethargic, just sitting around, either on a bench, on their horse, wherever.  They don’t have that tough/serious look you would expect from American cops.  Maybe this is a good thing.

Prostitution must be legal here, or else la policia must not care very much about it.  Because if you walk down certain streets around 10-11pm, there are quite a few ladies of the night about.  And these are well-lit, not especially ghetto, streets full of people.  They will stand there posing, or they’ll walk up to some gentleman and put themselves on his arm and whisper sweet nothings at him.  I didn’t see anybody pick one up, but their presence was very noticeable.  They also seem pretty chill about porno.  You can find lavish adult shops and magazine stands selling essentially 100% porn here.  Do people really still buy porn?  Don’t they have the internet in Spain?

Spanish are pretty serious about their Catholicism.  I went into some giant church cathedrals on my walks, such as Catedral de la Almudena.  The interiors are huge and lavish, full of pretty stained glass, big displays, candles, the works.  In these churches there are usually sections labeled “no turistas” (no tourists) that are for actual legit worshipping.  Whenever I was able to peek into such an area, it was always full of people.  At 2pm on a Thursday.  Out in the main tourist-allowed area, there were a good lot of people sitting in the pews and looking at the various displays.  Often they would cross themselves or mutter some prayer with their head down as they looked at these symbols.  Like I said, they don’t mess around.

I also went in one “cripto” (which means “crypt,” though I got excited for a moment because I thought it meant “crypto” like encryption).  It had all these giant marble grave slabs set into the floor and walls, each with somebody’s name and years of birth/death on it.  Some of them had fresh flowers laying on them.

The food is interesting and generally yummy.  A personal challenge for me is to find food “sin leche” or “no productos lacteos” (without dairy products).  This is a challenge both because of the language barrier and because most of their food revolves around, well, leche.  Ordering things with fish in them seems to be a safe bet, but who wants to eat that?  I have ordered conservatively and have gotten by without any major stomach aches so far.

The main meal of the day for Spanish people is “la comida,” which means literally “the food” but actually means “lunch.”  They take it at around 2pm.  A lot of places put out a sign advertising their “menu del dia” which is a selection of various yummy dishes that you can order as a group. You usually get at least two courses, a “postres” (dessert) and “bebido” (drink).

So they stuff their faces at lunch and then go back to their jobs until 8-9pm or so, presumably.  They eat dinner super late after that, at around 10pm.  But their evening meal is a lighter one made up of smaller dishes (“tapas”).  Then they stay up till 7am partying and drinking and dancing, or something.  So basically the average Spanish person’s meals and nightlife closely resembles that of a drugged out American raver.

A lot of the restaurants are counter-only, so really they’re more like bars (“cervezerias”).  Keep in mind that Spain is a smushed town full of small shops and restaurants packed into every storefront, so a lot of the little restaurants are just a counter with a guy behind it and 5-6 stools at the counter.  So you walk up and sit down and order your food from the guy and he prepares it.  There are usually 2-3 grungy looking Spanish barfly types there to keep you company.

They have some foreign food like “Coreano” (Korean) and “Japonez” (Japanese), but the places looked sketchy and were always dead empty of customers.  I never chanced it.  Somehow I doubt that Madrid has the world’s best bi bim bob or bulgogi.  I did have lunch once at a place called “Maoz” that served veggie falafel pita bread things, so that’s something.

One of the larger chains I ate at is called Museo del Jamon (literally, “Museum of Ham”) which has racks of meat hanging all around and lots of various meaty tapas you can order.  Almost every restaurant in Madrid also serves alcohol, so most of the people in the Museo del Jamon are standing or hunched at a counter with a little plate of some meat tapas and a goblet glass of light blonde-colored beer.  It’s a noisy place; they are boisterous and chatty folks.  It’s kind of hard for a gringo to place his order or understand anything.  But the food is good.

They do have some American health food staples such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC.  It cracks me up because each place lists their various value menu items under “tapas.”  I wasn’t aware that a 6-piece nuggets or a medium fries counted as “tapas,” but now I know. They serve regular Coke and Coca-Cola “Light” (Diet Coke).  I peeked in the McD’s and BK to see who was in there.  I thought maybe it would be full of white people, scared American tourists reaching for something familiar and comfortable.  Nope; full of Spanish.  Not a single American-looking person I could see.  They also have Starbucks (natch), complete with tapas menu.  They even have Dunkin Donuts, but it’s called “Dunkin Coffee.”  I think this is because every coffee shop either has the word “cafe” or “coffee” in its name, to be unambiguous.  Also maybe they realize that naming your restaurant after donuts wouldn’t play as well here as it does in the States.

That’s not the only place you see American culture.  They have lots of ads for various American products.  Their cinemas show translated versions of American films, including “los maltidos bastardos” (Inglorious Basterds, with Brad Pitt) and “reunen en las vegas” (The Hangover).  They also had a live theater where they were playing an all-Spanish version of Monty Python’s Spamalot musical.  I overheard some audio where they were singing “siempre something something positivo, de la vidaaa!” (Always look on the bright side of life) to the same tune from Life of Brian.

You will see the occasional person wearing an English / USA t-shirt.  I saw a guy wearing a black shirt with a red Thundercats (Hooo!) logo on it. Way to represent. The funniest one I saw was a guy wearing the classic green shirt that says (front) “Make 7″ – (back) “Up Yours.”  So money.  There are also a lot of folks to be seen wearing t-shirts with mangled English on them, such as one that said, “(brand name), in memory of, blue jeans.”  Oh really?  I’m so sorry to hear about your loss.  When did your blue jeans pass away?