josé madrid, a WARM WELCOME to to you to our ALL SPAIN Message Board!
My Madrid Hilights are probably known to most of our long-time members but I'll reiterate them for you and for our new members (AS IF MY hilights will be any more noteworthy than others).
My hilights are simple: WALKING and WATCHING. To a madrileño, my hilights will be funny, silly, and not hilights at all to them.
I LOVE walking very very slowly through Huertas neighborhood, Lavapies neighborhood (during the daytime hours, mind you), & the Cava Baja. Why these places? These neighborhoods, which in large part still look much as they did in the 19th century. Many buildings are in disrepair, some crumbling, some closed or condemned. "WHY WOULD HE LOVE THIS," you might ask. These are/WERE the neighorboods of working-class people - the REAL Madrid where typical, everyday living took place for everyday people. These people, often struggling and desperate, lived in what they considered simple housing. Some of these buildings are just beautiful architecturally. I also love these areas because there are fewer tourists walking about the narrow, winding, and odd-angled streets snapping photos (except ME, that is. hehehe...
). I love the little, neighborhood specialty stores which are typically smaller than a "normal" businessperson's office in the USA. There are stores selling ONLY hankerchiefs
, only paper and pens, only fruit/vegetables, only hats, only umbrellas!! What? HOW can a store survive selling (nearly) ONLY umbrellas??!? To me it's just so unusual where there are almost NO specialty stores left in the USA. I think Columbus, Ohio (population almost 1 million) has about 4 shoe-repair stores and Madrid has at least one in every neighborhood!
In addition to simply walking through older neighborhoods, I LOVE sitting down on benches at the many tiny neighborhood parks, often a small plaza in the center of a 4-building plaza, where children play soccer/fútbol, playing in a small playground, or chasing each other about while parents and cane-using elders sit and chat together. I love these little plazas for children. We don't really have these in the USA with exception of HUGE parks where the few children there are there typically play by themselves or with their parents because there's SO much space.
What else...... Long walks through Retiro Park is ALWAYS nice. I typcially start at the Lake and make my way towards Atocha, always stopping at the beautiful tree-surrounded pond in front of the Palacio de Cristal.
A REAL TREAT for me is visiting these larger markets in the neighborhoods, typically the working-class neighborhoods. These markets often have 10-20 stands/stalls/"compartments" where each renter sells his/her goods. Most often there's one stand for meats, another for fruits/vegetables, another for baked goods/bread, another for fish & SEAFOOD (OH MY GOD... I'm STARVING!), and don't forget the tiny bar in the corner where there's usually only enough space for 3 or 4 standing at the bar. The long lines of (usually) older women with their push/push-carts, the newest customer asking loudly, "¿Quien es la última"? ("Who's last in line?") and that last person responding, without looking/turning, "¡Yo!". The SEAFOOD stands are my favorite with the fresh FRESH fish of ALL VARIETIES neatly layed out on a wide bed of ice, then over there you have some HUGE squid and octopus, another with a batch of what looks like a dozen varieties of shrimp, clams, and the list goes on and on. The (most often) women give their order and the man wielding the LARGE butcher knife grabs one fish to WACK its head off and the woman stops him, saying something like, "Is that one fresh? It looks a little dark to me. How about that other one?" Then, with the utmost precision, the man takes his knife and CHOPS the head off into the awaiting basket, slices down its front... (okay, enough detail here) but does it all in mere seconds with such expertise, wraps it, weighs it, and hands it to the woman with the total cost. Imagine all this going on and then there's me, out of line, people looking at me gawking at the line of older women, odd-looking foods on ice or under glass, and looking like a total foreigner! HERE! In this working-class neighborhood market where I'm CLEARLY the only tourist within a square mile. It's all so unusual, so foreign to ME and that's why I love it.
Does all this sound silly? I'm sure it does to Spaniards in particular and to Europeans in general. Such are the differences between our cultures and our people.
And you're a lawyer specializing in commercial and international law, eh? Hmmmm.. I think I'll put you on retainer. hehehe...
I might just needing your legal services someday.
Saludos, MadridMan (daydreaming again..)
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