There’s just something special about meeting one of your closest friends in a European capital. It all feels inherently wackier and like anything can happen. You know it was typical Sandwich from the beginning.
I never asked Sam what time he was arriving in Madrid. I took the three o’clock bus from Sevilla, which would put me in around nine. While I was at the one rest stop the bus makes (a la Fung Wah) Sam called me from a payphone. He had neglected to bring the piece of paper on which he had written the address of the hostel. I actually knew the Metro stop, but nothing more, as I had stowed my Spain travel guide beneath the bus. So Sam had some fun walking in circles using what he remembered from high school to find the hostel (Mad Hostel 17 euro dorms) we had booked for Thursday and Friday night. The hostel has a good location near enough to Plaza Mayor, Sol, and the museums. I found Sam wearing a fun hat in the hostel room where we met a Scot and an Aussie who will both figure in later. We went out to eat some typical (albeit overpriced) Spanish dishes for the newcomer.
After a breakfast of bread, cheese and juice boxes among bums in a small park, we showed our versatility by going to an art museum. We went to the Reina Sofía, Madrid’s modern art museum, basically just to see Picasso’s Guernica. It’s awesome. I think worth the price of admission (6/3 euro for students) by itself. There are many works by Dalí and Miró. I fell asleep watching the Buñuel follow-up to El Perro Andaluz which in addition to intentionally making no sense, was in French, a language which to me makes less sense than slicin’ up eyeballs.
After a kebap lunch, where the Egyptian employee was intent on convincing us that not all his countrymen live in the desert and ride around on camels, we made it to the Prado, the renascence partner of the RS where we saw works of Goya, Velasquez and El Greco. Also really cool, and even cooler because, at least on Fridays, I don’t really know the rules, its free starting at 6pm. You just have to wait in a serious line but it moves. The security guards were the first of many to be confused by Sam’s antique Polaroid camera.
We headed out that night with our Scottish roommate and a Canadian. The biggest discovery for me was that you can basically drink for free until around 2am. There are promoters all over the streets offering you free drinks or at least drink deals, which is great because otherwise Madrid gets pretty expensive. Finished the night with another kebap and a discussion of tomorrow’s football match with an older Spanish gentleman. We were getting psyched.
For Saturday night, Sam had gotten tickets to the Spain-Sweden Euro Cup qualifier match. If either team one they would clinch a spot in the tournament. The game started at 10pm. We cooked lunch in the hostel. We found out that Sam had signed up for and solicited a time change for an airport shuttle for which he had not shown up because we misunderstood the date. We didn’t get our key deposits back because we checked out an hour late. There was not room at the hostel for the night. We decided to stow out bags in the bus station and get it later. Looking at the city map, a local asked us where we wanted to go and told us specifically to take a certain bus because it was faster than the Metro. We decided to ignore him (what does he know) and walk. Distances on maps are deceptive. It was far and one of the wheels on Sam’s suitcase was broken so we had to carry it because it was wearing a hold in the suitcase to drag it. At Mendez Álvaro, the bus station I bought a 1am bus ticket. The luggage storage was not lockers, but a man supervising a room, which closed at 1130 pm. No good. On the map, there is a luggage storage symbol at Nuevos Ministerios, the Mero stop from which you catch the line to the airport. Don’t believe it, it’s a total lie. There is not luggage storage there. There was a couple of years ago, but they redid the station and no longer. We headed out to the airport where Sam put his bag in a locker. At this point it was at least 600 and we were beginning to lose our minds and an appropriate discussion ensued about how great our friends are because we don’t plan anything, then fuck everything up and just laugh, which is exactly what was happening. Becky would have been annoyed. I had accepted that I would be carrying my backpack all night so whatever. We won a brief battle with a vending machine, which lightened our spirits ostensibly. After introducing Sam to the Corte Inglés, we bought ourselves scarves and a Spanish flag to cover my backpack and headed to the stadium, where we assumed we would be loved.
The crowd outside was awesome. They thought it was hilarious that there were Americans at the game. They love Freddy Adu. One guy was particularly fascinated by Sam’s camera. You’d think he was an aborigine. There were riot police on foot and horseback everywhere keeping the Spanish and Swedish separate. There were separate entrances, stairs, seating sections, bathrooms, and refreshment stands so the two sides never had to mix. The Swedes were restricted to an upper deck sections, where they made an admirable amount of noise, and were enclosed by a huge net to prevent their throwing objects on to the heads of unsuspecting Spaniards below. For this same reason, stadium security removed my Nalgene bottle from my person. We later heard a story of an Italian soccer match where someone had managed to sneak a Vespa into the stadium and threw it off the top deck and killed someone. Red Sox Yankees is apparently nothing. No one is dead from that one. Spain had never lost at home and they kept up their streak winning 3-1 even though Torres was sidelined with an injury.
We decided it would be a good idea to party all night. We got a lot of wishy-washy answers when we asked people where to party. We were on the point of giving up, having been turned away from the red carpet clubs much to the mirth of the bouncers, when we stumbled upon a small bar called Babelia which was full to its capacity of about 25. Sam’s hat was a huge hit with the ladies, who all wanted to wear it and dance with him to the 90’s alternative rock hits being pumped out by the dj. By the end the bartenders were giving us free drinks and encouraging us to continue on to the next spot when they closed at 5. Sam got in a cab at this point and I took the train back to the bus station. I don’t think we said goodbye. It would have been awkward anyway.
Next week it’s Brussels
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