From Madrid:
I am writing this from the dining car of my overnight train as we (NerdBoy and I) brace ourselves for a 9 hour ride through the Spanish countryside enroute to Barcelona*. We just spent the last few days in Madrid...and learning Spanish. As it turns out, people in Spain speak Spanish, not English. I should have probably known this and prepared appropriately but instead I spent the past three months learning how to describe animals wearing clothing, eating different fruits, in French. Because Duolingo teaches languages in strange inexplicable ways, and clothing, colours, and obscure animals (ant = fourmi) are apparently more important things to know than how to ask for directions or order food. That being said, I can't blame Duolingo for the language paux fas becuase I was the genius who decided to refresh my French instead of learning Spanish despite the fact that most of my travels this year will be to SPANISH speaking countries, not French. Sigh. So having arrived in Spain, and coming to the conclusion that "una cerveza por favor, Miguel!" really has very limited usefulness (i.e. surviving Mexican resorts) when travelling in Spain...
...where a) sometimes finding your hotel trumps getting inebriated, and b) not every bartender you meet is named Miguel, and c) you are hungry/lost/thirsty for water, we learned Spanish. Or at least enough to order a limited number of food and drink items, locate bathrooms (aseos, not banas), ask for directions, barter for goods, and cheer on local sports teams...the latter being a super important skill if you want any of the locals to actually help you with the above. Thanks to Aletico Madrid's timely win over Barcelona in the 2014 league championships, I may be forever able to sing (if not understand) Aletico's official football song and various chants. Atleti! Atleti! Atletico Madrid!
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| Somewhere in here is an Asian girl cheering confusedly in broken Spanish. That girl is me. |
I also have finally stopped responding in some bastardized combination of French/German/English every time someone speaks to me in Spanish. That did not help anyone and serious confused/baffled NerdBoy. We stayed in the gay neighbourhood in Madrid, which we finally realized on our third day in the city which really helped explain the number of a) designer dogs, b) shoe stores, and c) fancy "Mercatos"...oh, and the seminude male manequins wearing feather boas. I'm starting to realize that we are not particularly observant people. Madrid, from what I can see, seems to be fairly open minded regarding sexuality as there were ample displays of PDA in all parts of the city despite the country's deep preoccupation with churches, and I assume, the practices that happen in churches. To get to know the city, we started off with a couple of walking tours, one, a paid and guided tapas tour, and the other a free city walking tour both run by Sandeman. Our guides for both were local Spanish girls who were quite helpful in education us on Spanish culture, history, and local hotspots. In fact, this was how we found our way to Madrid's "only paella worth eating" - at a restaurant called El Cadero which specializes in Murcian food. There I was able to cross off both paella and pulpo a la gallega (grilled octopus) off of my to eat list. Those of you who have traveled with me before know that I have a "to eat" and "to drink" list for every country/region I travel to. Sometimes, this leads to terrible experiences (I'm remembering a particularly not good bowl of leberknoedelsuppe I had in Salzberg), and sometimes it leads to magical culinary adventures. I am happy to report that most of Spain's "to eat" list were delicious (if lacking in vitamins) and that paparojotes are the most delicious things ever. Essentially, they are deep fried battered lemon leaves which are flambéed in high proof rum and served with lemon gelato. As it was only our second day in Madrid when I ordered it, I was grateful our server spoke enough English to say "no eat leaves. very strong". Back to paellas. Words of advice from the locals: 1) paella is an expensive dish, so if you are paying less than 15 euros per person then they are not serving you real paella because real paella uses saffron (which is expensive) and your dish should be saturated with rich saffron petals, 2) properly cooked paella can only be made in special pans which are so massive they can only be ordered in servings of at least two, really it should come in a pan or pot which look like it is used to cook for a small army and scare you just a little, 3) real paella takes time to cook so anything that they can serve you from a cart or in less than 45min was nuked in the microwave and therefore garbage. El Cadero was an excellent recommendation and super delicious but ate up my entire day's food budget so I was pretty happy that we prepaid for the tapas tour and that it covered off half of my list of "to eats". It also introduced us to the wacky world of jamón, aka HAM.
"People do like the way she says "ham"..."
But seriously, the Spanish do not mess around with ham. Ham is such a big part of their culture that there is even a bar/butcher (yes, you read that right) called Museo del Jamón where people mingle with drinks, have tapas, and socialized under a few hundred varieties of cured ham. When we were there on a Wednesday night, the place was so packed packed that you could barely move. Part of Spain's obsession with ham dates back to the time of the Spanish Inquisition, when non-Christians were being driven out and ham was used by people and business alike as a political gesture to prove their non-Jewishness. Of course, this was also used by Jewish people to hide their religious background. Even now, everywhere you look in Madrid, most restaurants and bars will have ham hanging from their windows and ceilings. Anyway, the residual result of all that terribleness is that Spain is the world's leading producer and consumer of ham with some +35million ham shoulders being processed each year. They also make delicious ham, the most expensive of which is made from pigs that have been fed a diet consisting entirely of acorn nuts. When our tapas guide first explained this, I was convinced that I was misunderstanding what she was saying due to her Spanish accent, and that she was saying 'acre ham' because ham made from free-range pigs makes a lot more sense than pigs eating only acorns, but obviously I was wrong. Anyway, I know you're all super fascinated by ham history now so I'll give you some additional reading to do on someone else's blog. Enjoy.
* (Remember this symbol from paragraph two? Probably not. Go back and read that sentence then scroll back here)
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Have you done it? Okay, good. Here we go...
DO NOT TAKE THE OVERNIGHT FROM MADRID TO BARCELONA. "But RamenGirl!", you ask, "aren't you on said overnight train from Madrid to Barcelona?" Yes. Yes I am. And that's why I'm telling you not to do it. When I booked this trip back at the beginning of the year I thought it would be a time efficient (and cost effective) way to move between the two cities. I had taken trains while traveling in other parts of Europe was looking forward to having some quiet time on the overnight to catch up on reading, blogging, emails, etc. All stuff that lose precedence when traveling a foreign country. Although I am trying my best to do some of these things, the additional "train perks" of a) having sleeper train roommates with bad BO, b) jarring motion sickness from old rickity trains, and c) extremely tight bathroom and sleeping quarters has made me rethink my decision. That being said, there are always silver linings, right? I'm just debating whether the silver lining here is listening to the train conductor argue with a fortune teller about her hawking questionable services to minors at the booth to my right, or whether it's remembering to buy a litre of tinto de verano before boarding the train. On that note, ¡Salud! y buenas noches!
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| Let me see your palms, ah pretty lady, your future contains lots of jamón... |
More from Spain in the coming days...
