Were I more technologically minded I would be able to use the wonders of the Internet with a capital I to sufficiently set the mood. I would take a picture of myself with them there eye-pads and upload it and you would see me enscounced in a beautiful café which does the best café con leche y pasterlerías this side of Calle Hortaleza. You would see wicker and white painted chairs and the duenas with their painted nails and lips. You would see the window behind me lit up with sun. You would hear some schmeel on the street catch a glimpse of my still deathly pale skin and catcall "Oye, Oye, Blancanieves!" You would then realise I had forgotten what I was meant to be doing and was in fact taking a video instead of capturing the moment. It would cut of just as I made a rude gesture towards said chico and insulted his mother...
Anyway we'll have to make do with the power of words and a bit of gratuitous Youtube-ing if you really want to get in the moment. It begins with the soft, jazzy piano prelude to "New York State of Mind" which tinkles it's way through the café as we travel shot to my location in the corner, passing Spanish businessmen and ladies of leisure. I am contemplatively sipping my café, gazing out of the window andyou, my friends, are priviledged to hear my inner monologue...
Ah Madrid, ciudad de maravillas. I'm making that up, you don't have an amusing pseudonym. You aren't ancient, not venerable, not huge. You don't have the high history of Rome, you don't have the vibrant mix of London. You lack the grace of Paris and the gravity of Berlin. You are missing the landscape of Bern and Lisbon and the mystique of Athens and Moscow.
But I'll tell you what you do have kid, you got moxie...
You've got the cleanest prettiest streets I've ever seen in an inner city. You got a Metro that makes whoever's responsible for the Tube look like an illiterate child scrawling with crayons. You got clubs and pubs that open so late we get upset when we and a bunch of St Louisians get chucked out of an Irish bar at 4.30am. But then you got the churros shops and the pizza a €1 a slice open to assauge our drunken minds with food.
You've got a chaotic attitude to life that may well yet screw me over uni-wise given the academic year I've had, but I can't help but love you anyway. You got the Gallic shrug down better than the French. You know the customer ain't always right. But when you want to help you fellow man you do it better than any country I know.
Most importantly dearest Madrid, you got me for a year. You got my memories wrapped up in that bar on Chueca, that Sanabresa in the dodgy area but which turns out to be the best restaurant ever, in the Irish bars and the Retiro park and the sunlit plazas. You now have a little bit of my heart tucked away in your calles and avenidas and you may need to take care of it for me, because I might be back one day, when college/the job market/life in general has been crueller than usual and I need to find the little bit of me I left in tip-top condition. You know, marinated in sol and Sangria.
I'll miss drinking tinto de verano. I'll miss "Ay, mujer, por dios!!" which you use to show your attention instead of "A-ha, I see." I'll miss our flat. Our chipped red tiles, our dodgy showers, our windowless cueva, the Virgin Mary above our fusebox. I'll miss the teller at Santander who I thought were two people before I realised she just straightened her hair some days.
I'll miss the little things and the big things. Everything I wrote and everything that for some reason or other never made it into the blog. Like being flashed on the Metro that one time and being torn between pointing and laughing or giving him a smack on the rear in front of all the other passengers .Like always talking to the little Chilean lady who sells lighters on Calle Santa Engracia who said adíos to me yesterday and crossed her fingers and wished me luck I'll get married. Good to know someone's rooting for my Cinderella story. Like being on the wrong street corner at the wrong time in the midst of a fight and ending up in A&E at 5am because of a fall against something sharp. I'm grand least you start weeping and sending Ferrero Rocher (which I wouldn't pass up you know) but I may well bring home a three inch scar at the back of my head. And regular readers will not be too surprised to know that in my own curious world this was exciting and unprecedented and as long as it wasn't too serious gave me a bloody thrilling a story to tell. And I'm nothing without my anecdotal urges...
I'll miss being called guapa, and hermosa and blanquita and even oye, bebé. I'll miss the sunlight and the euro and the freedom that I never fully appreciated comes from living in the city. I'll miss living my own life, I'll miss being far from home and always out of my depth but somehow things always turning out alright in the end. I'll miss my flatties, for as they'll tell you yerself, it was a hell of a year together but at the end of the day we shared our lives for a year and it'll take us all a while to get used to not being able to shout across the hall to one another and mentioning injokes to groups of friends who don't know the context. "Bins not out? Well, it's shit flattie of the week award for me!" Doesn't work in halls...
So now I'm afraid you may have to do some lightening fast Youtube-ing for the piano interlude to "New York State of Mind" picks up tempo, more chords join as it morphs seamlessly into the cinematic piano opening of Kanye West's "Homecoming" to which I smile at this last entry, shake head slightly wistfully, close my laptop and head up to my flat for the last time. And now let's end this thing how we started...
There is a purple suitcase in the hallway that weighs 17kg. I know this and know this well because today I leave the Iberian Peninsula, bound for Dublin, then home and an uncertain future. I've been spoiled for adventure and, wouldn't you know, living abroad has only worsened my bad case of itchy feet. So it's goodbye from me, it's adios from Madrid and it's the end of an era. Faithful readers, I know you're out there. It has been a pleasure and an honour to blog for you from afar and can only hope you have had as much pleasure in the reading as I've had in the writing.
This has been Madrid: A Cautionary Tale.
Goodnight.
And goodbye.
xo
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