hey there
i'm a travel writer and i'm just writing up a (very complimentary) article on the wondrous madrid. thing is, i want to know if anyone has any random facts about the city... really bizarre things, like the invention of the clothes peg, or the world's first gorilla zoo?
cheers

I have no idea why you'd want to include bizarre things about madrid like gorilla zoos-- really! Why not include interesting trivia like: the geographical center of Spain (and Madrid) is in the Puerta del sol, with the marker for kilometro 0. Everything is measured from there out. That's pretty interesting-- that the capital city is simply the geographic center of the country, no?

but the kilometre zero for france is paris... i fail to see why this is so interesting, it's just the same old nonsense. i want to add something endearing, novel, about madrid, rather than the same old nonsense.

Right, gorilla zoos are not nonsense. Apparently you didn't uinderstand that Madrid is the geographic center. The king literally marked the center of the map and plunked the capital. That is, Felipe II moved the court (and set the capital) of Spain to Madrid in an aribtrary gesture of locating the center point of the land known as Spain. Of course, this probably IS non-sense to you, interested as you are in clothespins and gorillas, but unless you write for HELLO, perhaps your readers would find it of interest.

[This message has been edited by rgf (edited 09-09-2000).]

Margarita, why do you want to write about bizarre things? I mean, usually bizarre things make people think: "What kind of freaks do that?" And I don't think I like the idea of people thinking that Spaniards are weird. Why don't you just write about beautiful places in Spain? or ancient customs? I think that would be way more interesting that gorila zoos or clothes.
Regards

I think random trivia about a city is what makes it interesting. The Puerta del Sol fact is in every single guidebook. But the invention of the clothespin is something different and interesting. Was it really invented in Madrid? What clever people. The entire world uses clothespins.

no, the clothespin wasn't invented in Madrid; margarita was just fishing for something like that. Does it really say in every guidebook that Felipe II moved the court from Toledo to Madrid, and why Madrid is the capital? I think it just says, here is kilometro 0, Puerta del Sol.

I don't understand why a writer for a travel magazine or whatever, would come to a web page looking for bizarre facts about madrid. I think you should do a little more research on the capital by, I don't know...going there? I could tell you that the most bizarre thing about Madrid is that the clothespin was invented by a goriila right there in Puerta del Sol...would you believe me? Oh, and about the gorilla thing...don't quote me on that.

May I suggest Ripley Belive it or not, or The Guinness Book. I think most of the board members/junior members are interested in more normal fair. Circus facts and laundry trivia are not really our cup of tea. Perhaps taking a more genuine interest into the rich and unique Spanish nation would be a more rewarding experience than clothespeg information. Madridmad provides great links to Amazon.com if you seek the aforementioned texts.

[This message has been edited by Shawn (edited 09-10-2000).]

I think you all treated Margarita a tad harshly. I think she has an interesting point. The facts need not be bizarre, as in freakish, but random facts are sometimes interesting, AS IS the fact that Spain's capital was moved to the geographical center. Lighten up, people!
Was there really once a gorilla zoo in the geographical center of Spain?