I, MadridMan, am an interesting phenomenon. Here's an 42 year old guy from Ohio, USA with absolutely no known latin or Spanish blood and yet he's so passionately in love with a Spanish city of all things. (don't you hate it when people refer to themselves in the third person?) NOW I LIVE IN MADRID, SPAIN!!!!!
My interest in latin cultures began in high school with the typical requirements of foreign language and now, MANY years later, my passion for Spain and Madrid has become almost an obsession. My 9-year, Madrid-loving hobby from Columbus, Ohio became my full-time profession in Madrid with my web-based travel & tourism business. How does one make a profession out of his love for a city? It's not easy. Passion and dedication are two things which can take a person far in any chosen field in this world. And in my case, PATIENCE played a big part too. See further down for "how I prepared myself".
Until December 2005 I lived/worked in another capital city, Columbus, Ohio USA (webcam here) and am a proud 1989 graduate of The Ohio State University with a bachelors degree in Geology - of all things - and worked for an environmental consulting firm in Dayton (Ohio) as a geologist for 3 years after graduating from OSU. Hmmm... That wasn't for me.
The years passed in the 1990s while trying to "find myself", working at jobs that were only jobs and nothing really gratifying nor paid very well nor could be considered a "profession". Also during this time I took great personal interest in computers, dial-in Telnet websites (this was BEFORE the internet), and co-owned and was co-SYSOP of a small BBS (Bulletin Board System for DOS) on a single 386 PC which only had 2 dial-in connection "nodes". The site, called "HOBBS", also had downloadable DOS games and other DOS-based programs - all freeware - in addition to the very active bulletin board, all in ASCII format.
My first visit to Madrid, Spain was in the spring of 1995 and I stayed ONE MONTH. Wow! I was both overjoyed and shocked at the same time during this first experience. Then, being a health-and-exercise-nut, non-fat everything, cleanliness is paramount, a regular obsessive-compulsive Americano. And here I am in Madrid, Spain for 30 days where everyone is smoking, eating fat-laden foods, seemingly frequently drinking alcohol at "odd" times of the day, throwing their trash on the floors in bars, and walking the sidewalks in a definite, non-linear direction, looking at everything around them which was NOT in front of them. The freedom they displayed in their way of life and in their speech was... wow.... wonderful. And *I* think *I* come from the Land of the Free? These people are totally LIBERATED! But at the same time, HOW could they live like this with all the smoke and fat and alcohol and smog - and still be so thin, so healthy, so active, and so visibly comfortable within their own minds and bodies and not mind bumping into people (literally) whom were also not looking where they were going? It was a fascinating paradox for me. I, coming from a place where fat is death and raising your voice to someone who took your parking space at the mall can (WE THINK) get you killed, felt like I was on another planet. Well, I obviously was not on another planet but certainly in another land where people weren't afraid to live... I mean - TO LIVE. In Spain, as was my impression, people take most everything in moderation, enjoy EVERTHING, talk casually to people in line at the bank or grocery, shout at strangers in anger, scold other people's children as if they were their own, love frequent time with their families and friends, WORK HARD, eat well, and love their free time traveling around their country and the world. The little things don't seem to bother them at all. (the little things always make/made me crazy!) They're also very politically aware people, very conscientous and conscious of what's happening in the world - MUCH moreso than I feel we are in the USA. My first experience in Spain was a bittersweet experience. I felt very stimulated, conflicted, and definitely intrigued. I liked it enough to return 10 times over the next 10 years.
Now it's 1996 in Dayton, Ohio and I had no real direction, no real profession, no real LIFE and I'm already 30 years old. Hmmm... I'm frustrated and feeling somewhat lost. Considering myself as having slightly-higher-than-average-intelligence, it seemed a good time to FINALLY use this brain with which I was born. I've got 50-60 years left on this planet! Enough screwing around, already!
Let's see.... I'll make a list of my interests: 1) I love computers. 2) I love traveling. 3) I love Madrid & Spain. And 4) there's this cool, new thing called the internet too. How can I combine these things, give myself SOMETHING to do in my spare time, and all the while learn about the city, country, & culture? A WEBSITE ABOUT MADRID! I was just there recently, I took some photos, I met some people there, and I now I have some first-person experience on the topic. But my goodness! How in the world am I going to make one of THOSE websites? Initially I chose a free Geocities.com account in 1996 for about 9 months because they provided a template for a pre-set format. During this time I also started learning HTML in order to improve the look of the website, "MadridMan's Yankee Home Page", and to better personalize it. At this time of the internet there were probably only 3 or 4 websites IN ENGLISH about Madrid and several more in Spanish - which I didn't understand very well. To better practice, I started posting messages on the USENET group rec.travel.europe to share my experience and knowledge of Spain with others who had questions. In 1997 I registered the domain name MadridMan.com - back when registration was $100 per year and a 2-year registration was required (OUCH! Now they're about $9/year) - and moved to a webhosting company. MadridMan.com went through at least 8 evolutions, changing the layout, look, and menu of the site until 2004 when I found one which seemed to work well for me and for search-engine-friendliness. All the pages still get updated frequently and new pages, sections, and categories are being added every few months, not to mention updating details on the long-standing informational pages. MadridMan's ALL SPAIN Message Board, active since 2000, is now and has nearly always been the largest and most active English language, Spain-focused message board on the internet and boasts more than 6,000 registered users. Moderating it is a daily job but one I enjoy. It was created to allow Spain-lovers share their experiences and also for would-be-Spain-travelers to ask questions and have these questions answered by not only me but also by others knowledgeable of Spain, thereby reducing the vast numbers of emails I received daily.
My social and psychological preparation for the move to Spain begain in 2002 but the subconscious preparation began long before that. How did I prepare myself? I listened to NOTHING BUT Spanish music both via the internet and on CD, watched Spain TV via internet broadcasts and also my 1-year of TVEinternation through my cable company, watched Spanish movies, watched Madrid webcams, read daily Madrid and Spanish newspapers IN SPANISH and English, cultivated my growing group of Madrid contacts & friends IN Madrid, ate foods and drank wine imported from Spain, wrote daily in Spanish and spoke Spanish as often as possible, read books about Spain and/or took place in Spain, and reserved part of my brain for the parralel reality that I really was living in Madrid, paying close attention to the weather, traffic reports, festivals, and, of course, reading all the postings on the message board.
What do I do for a living? I'm self-employed, further developing MadridMan.com & SpainHostels.com into more commercial Spain Travel and Tourism portals. I'm also developing ideas LONG on the drawing board like BarcelonaMan.com, GranadaMan.com, ToledoMan.com, and other city-specific informational websites, all created from a first-person, REAL-PERSON perspective. What I do now is MORE THAN a full-time job, working 7-days a week, answering emails from travelers and prospective advertisers alike, adding new features, and including other destination lodging directories to the Spain Lodging page of MadridMan.com. This "job" provides me the wonderous opportunity to further discover Spain's regions, customs, and FOOD, all the while meeting more of the strong, freedom-loving people - not to mention making some wonderful friends along the way. Can there BE a better profession on this planet? Not according to me. "Turn your hobby into a job you love like I did!" - sounds like a common book title languishing in the bargain-bin at your local bookstore. Is it really so easy? NO WAY! The MOST difficult thing is, in my opinion, finding something you love AND THAT SOMETHING must not be so totally common. "Give the people what they want!" If you like to do something uncommon there's a good chance you're in a "niche" group of others who like to do the same thing and are seeking information about it.
So there you have it! Can you believe it? I'm so in love with the city of Madrid, Spain that I decided to dedicate a website to it, register a domain name, and answer many MANY emails on the topic every week all because of my passion for this wonderful city. You could call me crazy, but you only need to have visited Madrid, Spain to understand how I feel. Usually visitors take a piece of the city with them when leaving. But in my case I think I took MUCH more than "a piece" because I've returned to LIVE in Madrid forever. Am I crazy? Yes. I'M CRAZY FOR MADRID - my new home. Aaahhh.... HOME AT LAST!
Some of the interesting places I've visited include:
Spain: Madrid (10X), Barcelona (2X), Santiago de Compostela (and throughout Galicia), San Sebastián-Donostia (and throughout northern País Vasco/Basque Country, Málaga/Estepona, Toledo (3X), Segovia (4X), Avila, Salamanca (2X), Córdoba, Granada (2X), Sevilla, Alicante, Benidorm, Valencia, Almagro, Chinchon (2X), Siguenza, Aranjuez (2X), La Granja, El Escorial, Navalcarnero, and Tarragona.
Europe: Rome, Florence, Venice, Geneva, Zurich, Lausanne, The Materhorn, Lucerne, Chamonix & Mont Blanc, Brussels, Cardiff & London (2X).
Mexico: Mexico City(2X), Taxco(2X), Acapulco(2X), Cancun(2X), Cozumel, Chichen Itza(2X), Tulum, Isla Mujeres, Xel-Ha, Juarez(4X), Chihuahua(2X) & the towns along the cañon de cobre/Copper Canyon like Creel, El Divisadero, and El Fuerte (WOW!).
South America: Perú: Lima, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Arequipa, Lake Titikaka, Nazca.
