After a low-key Friday night, Nico and I resolved to live it up on my last night in Madrid. We started off having dinner and watching the Barcelona-Seville game at a restaurant/bar across the street from his apartment. It was a bit of a dive but had surprisingly good food and there were a wide variety of people just kind of hanging out there, some drinking and watching the game, some just having dinner. Nico said that Spanish people spend a large percentage of their time in places like this, and that his roommate goes to this place every morning for breakfast. So despite the game ending in a draw, a good outcome for all the Madrid fans in the establishment since they won their game, it was a good time and a neat place to hang out.
From there we took a subway to Tribunal for some botellon, the fine Spanish tradition of outdoor, public drinking. I’ve never been a big fan of bars, since I’m mostly going to talk to the people I’m going with and could do that more easily and cheaply with drinks at home, but there is something to be said for the atmosphere and for being among people. Botellon is the perfect combination: you’re outside with plenty of other people milling around, but you’re drinking your own alcohol rather than buying it at inflated prices!
The only catch is that while it’s largely ignored by the police, it’s technically illegal. After sitting cross-legged on the ground of the plaza for half an hour or so, drinking cans of beer we bought from roving Chinese merchants with six-packs, Nico suggested that we ought to move along. The police had shown up and did actually seem to be ticketing people.
We sauntered into a club he knew to have live music from time to time, but we didn’t stay too long because there was no band this night. After trying several times to explain to the bartender what a vodka martini was, I settled for a rum and coke. When that was finished, we went back outside to drink in the narrow street just outside the bar. In less than a minute, a Chinese merchant found us and we had beers in hand.
Roughly two hundred people, almost all younger than I, filled the street, retreating to the sidewalks only when the occasional, stubborn motorist slowly forced his way through the mass. Some of those motorists were police, but none showed any interest in the hundreds of open beer cans or the smell of marijuana that occasionally wafted by. The beer merchants were omnipresent when you wanted them but never pushy when you didn’t- they’d walk by saying, “Cerveza, cerveza!” but always in a way that made clear they were doing a brisk business with or without you.
A sudden shriek and splash of water interrupted our revelry. An old woman in a nightgown was out on her terrace four stories above us, dumping water in the general direction of the open-air fiesta. It wasn’t hard to sympathize with her: it was 3AM, the noise from the crowd was surely intruding into her apartment in a serious way, and it was clear that the street would be a mess in the morning.
Still, her aerial assault proved counterproductive. Everyone thought it was hilarious and began cheering and egging her on, some even offering themselves as targets. Amazingly, the old woman seemed to get into the spirit of things and started waving and blowing kisses jovially in between sorties. I thought I was in a safe spot but she very nearly got me, as it turned out that she also had access to the window adjacent to her terrace.
Even after she stopped throwing water she stayed up there for a remarkably long time. She’d been out there for probably two hours and was still going strong when Nico and I decided to call it a night.
We slept late into the morning, and then I packed and made ready for my departure before we went for lunch. Mediterranean food is wonderfully suited to my palette, but after two weeks of it I was hankering for something different. A quick internet search revealed that Madrid is one of the worst major cities for ethnic food of any kind. Apparently Spanish people traditionally prefer very simple preparations and tend to suspect that spice and sauces conceal subprime meat.
Nevertheless, my research turned up a small neighborhood called Lavapies that was rumored to have some good Indian places. It proved to be a fascinating couple blocks with not just Indian restaurants but Indian grocery stores and even a Bollywood movie rental shop. It didn’t seem to be a particularly Indian neighborhood, though. The vast majority of people strolling the street were white, and occasionally an African would offer to sell us hashish, but the only Indian people I saw were working at the restaurants.
All of the outdoor seating was packed, and the staff generally seemed more concerned about finding room for more new customers than attending to those already sitting. The food, when it finally arrived, was excellent and quite cheap, so it was all good in the end.
So after one last delicious meal it was off to the airport. Nico brought the infamous trance CD for the drive, and we talked about when we might see each other again. He’s planning a trip to to the States next summer, but EPT Madrid comes first, and having a place to stay drastically reduces the cost of playing, so maybe I’ll get to Spain once more. I feel like I’m getting to know Madrid reasonably well, even corrected Nico on something today, though I’ve spent less than two weeks there in total.
Likewise, I feel like I know Nico a lot better than the three weeks or so we’ve spent together in the last few months would suggest. We get along very naturally, and it’s always been easy and fun to spend time together, even in the large quantities of the last two weeks. “See you soon,” he said as I walked into the terminal, adding, “Somewhere.”
Traveling, nothing better.