MADrid

A cheesy title I know … . Just on the way back from Madrid on a trip to get my French visa for my next semester in Le Creusot. I am writing this on the flight back to Girona. The real pity is that this is my second trip to Madrid, the first being a more tourist-ish one this February, and I haven’t written anything about that nor London or Valencia, the other places I visited during the break.

Two hours later and I’m in my new flat in Girona, which cost me all of 175 Euros per month, a real song for this room. I share the flat with two French guys, Thierry (Yeah, he referenced the football star too) and Jerome or Jazz as he says ‘English’ people call him. Sure, I’m REAL english! I look down and see a Harry Potter wastebin and there’s a rose in a jar, on the desk, with ‘Sant Jordi’ written all over it. Sant Jordi’s day is an annual celebration in Girona where girls buy guys books and guys give them flowers. The girl who had this room, Anna, is a real nice girl. I hope she’s ready for the mixed aroma of cigarettes and cheap room freshner that’s gonna greet her in 2 months!

Anyway, back to the description of Madrid.

Talent is something that the Spanish really strive for. Somehow the image of mimes, contortionists, imitators and people posing as statues crowding up every single ‘rambla’ and plaza in every single city in Spain gives you an image of a European city maybe 50 or 60 or more years ago. Witches, sandmen, men on bicycles with monocles and tophats, Jacks-in-the-box and more circus freaks than your mind can dream of standing in perfect silence and décor till you drop a coin in their hat or box, and at the sound of this jingle they’ll do their thing, which could be anything from jumping wildly on springs for the jack-in-the-box to a chuckle and a pointy toothed grin that you’ll remember for long from the witch. You also get the customary photo and pose with them (I was initially scared of going too close since I thought they’d smell bad!!!) To see this weird spectacle roam any plaza of Spain on a Saturday afternoon. A sure shot is Plaza Mayor in Spain, named after the Mayor’s office located among the various buildings round the area. Some photos and a video from the February trip: (I cant seem to upload all now, will do later)

Another thing that struck me about Madrid and actually London too, were the number of professional musicians who take their act to the streets, and the subway. Although it is probably strictly regulated in London and the guys may have to worry about the cops on their backs, this is clearly not a problem in Madrid. In ten days of traveling in the London underground, I’d seen exactly one musician (A black guy playing Jimi Hendrix beautifully on his electric guitar), compared to atleast 10 musicians in a span of 5 days in Madrid. And I think I may have traveled underground maybe only three of these days. The acts varied from a violinist blasting off Stravinsky or Mozart…. I would’t know which, to a Spanish elvis singing ‘Hound dog’ in a stereotypically Spanish accent. Although his rendition was kinda funny, I wouldn’t say it was bad, atleast he seemed to be hitting the right keys. I also saw a full band (bass , guitar and drums) playing rolling stones and a large number of guitarists playing with a song or drum sequence in the background.

In any major city in the world, the idea of plants and water among the concrete towers and asphalt roads is coolly refreshing. In this respect, a description of the Madrid underground would be sacrilegious if I didn’t include a description of a particular station. Okay, it’s been three months and I don’t remember the name, but I’m sure anybody who’s been to Madrid will be able to identify it. The word that comes to mind is ‘forest’. The Spanish people have gone the whole yard with this one. I thought I was on an acid trip when I stepped off the platform and entered the station. The jungle was complete with sounds of crickets, what seemed to be birds, and water flowing in some South American waterfall. It had a distinct tropical feel to it, but what was surprising was it’s mere prescence and chosen location more than anything! Please check this station out if you go to Madrid.

Like any major metropolitan, Spain has it’s hidden ugly side as well. Well, the word ‘ugly’ would depend on the perspective. A trip to the ‘Jardin Botanique’ on a warm Spanish afternoon saw me signing petitions for the support of voters in some republic in South America, which some students were handing around. I think it was one of the ‘Salvadors’. I could sense something strange in the vibe that day, but being a tourist I couldn’t say if it was normal or not. There was this group of guys on bicycles amusing themselves with very stupid antics and looking like they were laughing a tad too unnecessarily. A few minutes later, a big guy wearing a rastafari cap came up to me and said something in Spanish. After I indicated that I don’t know Spanish, he seemed to be happier. The next few words that came out of his mouth puzzle me to this day. What he exactly said was ‘Man, You give me a tobacco cigarette and I give you a Marijuana cigarette’. My brain was tied up in thought and disbelief…. Was this guy out of his mind? A joint in exchange for a cigarette ? Who had heard of such a deal? Luckily, my involuntary responses were still working and I refused, since nobody except me would be smoking and although I’m all up for this sort of thing, it was really my first day in a different city and a different country. Later on I realized that this was probably just the introduction, the ‘courtship’ stage so to speak, and that if I had yes, he would have probably dwelved into the complete agreement. Something that Chennai could learn from Madrid and Parque del Retiro would be ‘How to keep a park cool on a swelteringly hot day’. By some amazing sprinkler technology the city had managed to suspend cool water in the air so it felt like a cool sauna of some sort, and make a especially hot day of 25 degrees (I was coming from Scotland and London) seem 15 degrees cooler. When you stepped out of the park you just felt like jumping back in.

One thing that Spain shares in common with India, well some parts of it anyway, is the feeling of informality in the atmosphere, compared to the rigid stiffness usually associated with the streets of London for example. Ofcourse there is a perfectly logical explanation for this, in that the colder a place is in weather the more restricted the body language is, giving an impression of ‘colder’ behavior.

When I was sitting in the airport waiting for my flight, I was getting bored out of my wits. After having a mammoth lunch at the indoor buffet-style restaurant and futile attempts at reading the Spanish equivalent of Stephen King – ‘Murmullos de Satan’ , a cheap paperback that I picked up the previous night on the streets for 2 euros, and with 2 hours left for my flight I was bored. I noticed that there were tons of twenty-somethings sitting on the floor waiting for the flight, something that even India would be not tolerant about! And some of them where not even wearing shirts! It was super chilled out. The police were just walking by, giving them glances and smiling as if thinking ‘been there’, or something!

It’s common to see Madrid-ians greeting each other REALLY loudly on the streets and talking for a long time. Picture a dumb Italian man gesturing (I mean someone who can’t speak), now tone it down a bit, that’s how Spanish people gesture while talking. Every now and then they will put their hands up to shoulder height, stretch their arms out in an inwards curve, in something like a ballet stance. That’s the most common body language I’ve seen Spanish people employ. It’s somewhere in between a hug and a dominating gesture. And their voices will get really loud at this point.

If you’re staying in Madrid and you’re a little short on cash spend your nights at MAD hostel for 15 euros(or less if you book earlier), which is REALLY cheap(Put away the calculator, don’t convert to rupees!). My breakfasts involved stumbling down to the lounge in a post-drunk stupor, taking milk out of the fridge(you can buy stuff and store it) and having a bowl of cornflakes while watching VH1 on a super-big plasma screen. For some strange reason, 90% of the hostel guests were female, which wasn’t a problem ofcourse. People were from everywhere, but predominantly from the UK. It was good to speak english to native-speakers for a bit. There’s actually a free breakfast also, but too light to count, something like a croquette, some tea and juice.

The hostel was in the old city part of Madrid which in 10 years is definitely going to be called Chinatown or it’s Spanish equivalent. The number of Chinese (or other Asians) on the streets was astounding. Every third shop is a really cheap Chinese store and they are mainly second or third generation, which means they all speak Spanish!

I observed another example of how ‘open’ the Spanish are when I went to the French embassy to get my visa. Since we were all Erasmus students we had a prior arrangement to all go on a separate day and get special preference. I had to go to a different room then the others and the guy inside sounded as if he was giving me a permit to the laboratory, rather than an international visa to another country. After a LOT of small talk he asked me when I wanted to go to France. In retrospect, I should have said ‘tomorrow’ or something, cos he would have given me the visa. After waiting outside for a bit he just came in to the waiting room for a bit, talked a bit more in front of the dozen or so really irate people and handed me my passport. I’m sure they were a bit pissed off!

I want to end this blog with a part of present Spanish culture. Like the english speaking world has Borat, Spain has ‘Rudolfo Chiquilicuatro’ a nonsensical name. The character the actor plays is supposed to be an Argentanian farmer who’s got a break in show business in Spain. His hair makes him look like a 70s popstar and has one of those cheap toy guitars strapped around his shoulder. Dressed predominantly in a white suit, still in the 70s theme, he goes around Spain performing his staple hit ‘Chiki Chiki’. The song is actually not bad! Find the link below. If you don’t understand what he’s saying, it’s basically the instructions to dance the ‘Chiki chiki’. Uno, or first is the Break-dance, dos is the cruquito or cross legs, tres is Miquili Jason or Micheal Jackson, referring to the moon-walk(By the way, Spanish people DO NOT say ‘Miquili Jason’) and quatro, the ‘Robocop’. He performed recently at Euro-vision, a show that was really popular a decade back but is now more a part of tradition than anything else, that involves audience voting to decide the best act among all the European countries. This is a new system, and there was a judging system till a few years back. The new system is a little screwed up because everybody just votes for their favorite country(not the best act), and they aren’t allowed to vote for their own country obviously. As a result of which all the former-USSR countries vote for Russia, which had an extremely effimanate Russian ‘teen-idol’ singing some english song in a REALLY STRONG Russian accent. Russia won, but it should definitely have been Spain. Judge for yourself.

Russia’s act which won first place:

(Cant upload from esta computer, search for eurovision spain, its really funny, I assure u worth the trouble...)

Spain (which did not figure in the standings at all), with their ‘Argentinian’ super star Rudolfo Chiquilicuatro: