Madrid

I woke up at 5:30 am on Friday morning to catch a 7 am train to Madrid. I went on the AVE high-speed train. It was a €120 ticket, paid for by my program to send us to Madrid to interview the Turkish Ambassador and write an article about Turkey and the European Union (with two other students). I was wearing a shirt and tie, riding on a high-speed train through Europe, on my way to meet with an Ambassador – I felt kind of important. The train was packed with businessmen and unfortunately it was dark for a good part of the trip so all I saw for a while was a few lights. The train went through some beautiful farmland and rolling hills lit up by the sunrise. Stuff goes by really fast though when you are zipping along at 150 mph. It was really weird to get on a train and then 20 minutes later you are in Cordoba (the only stop along the way). And then about two hours later you are in Madrid. The first thing we noticed was that it was really cold, probably 50 F. I haven’t been in cold weather for about 6 months. We got right onto the metro and went to the neighborhood on the north side of the city where we found the Turkish Embassy and spent half an hour in the café across the street doing some final preparation. One of the students doing the interview, Brian, went to Madrid Thursday night and was throwing up all night, he got sick from the food or water in Morocco. He was pale and tired, but made it through the morning. The Embassy was really nice; we waited for a bit and then spent 45 minutes talking to the Ambassador, Volkan Vural. He was really nice and seemed interested in us and our questions.

As soon as that was done, I had the rest of the weekend free in Madrid. I went straight to the Prado Museum. A group of ten students took the bus to Madrid and I met them at the Prado. Another group of four girls also went on the train before mine and another group of about 10 was in Madrid for the weekend too. We spent almost three hours at the Prado but we still rushed some things and didn’t even get to the top floor. Every painting was very religious, I got sick of seeing the same Christian themes over and over. Seeing some paintings of regular people and landscapes was refreshing. My favorites were Goya’s pinturas negras – the dark and brooding paintings he did of monsters and death when he went insane at the end of his life. He went deaf near the end of his life and became sick and depressed, supposedly caused in part by the lead in his paint. The stuff he painted then is really interesting.

We got lunch and went to our hostel which was in a really good location downtown. We had six rooms for the 11 of us, five doubles and one single. I took a nap, I was really tired. At 8:30 I went out and bought a sweater because I didn’t bring any warm clothes. I wore that sweater all weekend. I grabbed a bocadillo at Pan & Company and took the metro to the San Bernabau soccer stadium where Real Madrid plays. I met up with a friend from Madison who is studying in Madrid this year. We went to the Moby Dick bar to see the band Spoon play. The place was really cool, it was like the inside of an old wooden ship. There were a lot of American students there. There was a paella party at her apartment near the University afterwards. She lives with two Americans and four foreign students in a big apartment. I took the metro back to the hostel at 1:30 am - right before it stops running.

We woke up early to start another busy day on Saturday. We went to Plaza Mayor to get coffee and churros with chocolate. I can’t believe that I had not had churros in Spain until this weekend. We always plan on getting churros in Sevilla but they are hard to find and only sold in the morning. Churros are everywhere in Madrid. Everyone else went to Palacio Real while I met up with the four other girls to go to Parque Retiro. We grabbed fresh pastry on the way. Parque Retiro is a giant park downtown with a man made lake. It was a chilly fall day and the leaves were just starting to change colors. It was nice to have Wisconsin-like weather finally. Everyone was out for a stroll in the park. We took some pictures and then rented two rowboats and went around the lake.

We ate lunch after leaving the park and then went to the Thyssen museum. We ran into the other group there. The Thyssen is a giant private collection of all kinds of art. It was nice to see a huge variety of paintings. Some of the well-known names in the collection are Degas, Pissarro, Miró, Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Leichtenstien, and Dalí. I really liked Piet Mondrian’s modern art. We had lunch, some went to the Reina Sofia museum, and some went shopping. I took a nap and walked around for a bit, the center was really crowded with people shopping.

We split up into two groups when we went out for dinner. Eleven people couldn’t fit into any place we went to. We all met up later at one restaurant and hung out for a while. A big soccer game was on tv, Real Madrid versus cross-town rival Atlético Madrid. Brian and his friend from high school joined us – he was finally getting better. We went to a jazz club nearby and caught the end of the show. We spent a lot of time in the bar next door. When everyone went back to the hostel I had churros nearby with the other group of girls.

On Sunday morning we went to the flea market were there was lots of clothes, jewelry and souvenirs and everything was super cheap. I got a Real Betis scarf and a Don Quijote t-shirt. The Reina Sofia Museum is free on Sundays and is one block from the train station so I went there before my 2 pm train. I only had just over an hour to spend inside. I saw a temporary exhibition of modern art – it was all stuff made with ordinary objects, some of it was cool. I went through one floor quickly, seeing mostly Miró, Dalí and Picasso – it was a quick tour of the great modern Spanish artists. The highlight was Picasso’s Guernica. Guernica was my most favorite of everything that I saw this weekend. It was impressive. And massive. I went by it twice, there was dozens of people crowding around it both times. I really want to go back to the Reina Sofia and spend the good part of a day there. I bought a poster of Guernica and two other posters of paintings that were only €1 before going to the train station.

It was really cool to be in a huge city. Sevilla is pretty big but doesn’t have a big ciy feel. The cool weather was also nice. I will probably spend part of next weekend in Cádiz for the beach and/or Jerez for some wine tasting.