Art and Food
Tuesday is museum day in Madrid. Except Reina Sofia is closed on Tuesdays. That’s ok, because Laura and I head on over to the Prado. Prado is all very old classical pieces and I’m not really sure what to look for and my feet are quickly becoming tired, but when we hit Goya and some of the other more modern landscapes I finally gel with what I’m seeing. It’s all a bit overwhelming so we head to the Palacio Real which has an entire walking tour of the chambers of royalty and a huge collection of arms and armour. I’m quickly glazing over until I notice the detail going into things, like full ceiling murals and battles depicted on a dudes shield (in detail). By the end of the day I resolve to limit myself to one museum a day because it’s hard to grasp what you’re seeing and properly digest it for later.
In the evening some other Canadians and I are on pubcrawl and get in around 3AM. In five hours half of my room wakes up and clumps around ridiculously loudly, slamming their locker doors (not. kidding.), and generally not being considerate. Finally I just decide to go and get some breakfast in the hopes that they will be gone when I get back. I’m miserably hanging over my cereal when I run into some of the guys from last night. They’re all going to Toledo. It is 9AM. I tell them they’re crazy and go back to bed. I get up a 1PM, beating the Quebecois girl by about thirty minutes. The rest of the day is spent on my laptop while I wait for my laundry to finish.
In the evening I go out with some Americans who I manage to connect with in two ways. Gannon I ran into earlier in the day reading Mona Lisa Overdrive and we talked a bit about Gibson and alternative authors if you liked his style. Grace I don’t even remember how I met, but I’m roaming in search of some of my friends from last night when I run into them and Cara. We end up doing our own pub crawl as I can’t find the other guys and it turns out pretty good. A fellow in the last place we’re at says he recognizes me from a club the previous nice, which either charitably means I am ‘unique’ on the dance floor, or alternatively that I’m so bad that you can never forget it.
The next day I hit Reina Sofia which has a lot of really cool pieces that I gel with better. Eventually I get near the Guernica exhibit where I find old propaganda from the fascist and republican side. This, and the Guernica mural, is pretty cool, but the next floor has this crazy exhibit (almost literally). It’s all centered around this dude named Martin Ramirez who crosses into the States from Mexico for work, which he gets on the railway. Eventually the Depression hits and the next thing you hear is he is being picked up while wandering around kind in kind of a crazy state. Eventually he gets packed off the a mental institution where he is diagnosed by a board of english-only doctors. The art this guy ends up producing is in nearly complete isolation out of paper he glues together himself out of scraps and other supplies basically built up from scratch. His work ends up being abstractly very very repetitive but when you realize that it was method as much as intent you notice small things like multiple seams in a piece as he works in a piece of cardboard with other paper he found. None of it is dated and none of it is aware of existing art movements so it has this timeless and placeless feeling to it all. Probably the most interesting thing I have seen in any museum thus far. My feet are toast, but I want to check out the nearby train station which has a feeling to it that I can only describe as ‘old money.’
My final evening is dinner with the Americans at a Peruvian joint I managed to stumble into as Gannon and I meandered our way back to the hostel the previous night. I am really pumped by this place, I knew it had existed because another peruvian named Guillermo had told me it was around here. Unfortunately he left, but he said he couldn’t find it and that their website was down so he assumed they were closed. This little bit of luck is awesome and everyone walks away satisfied with both the food and drink (INCA KOLA YES). I really want to go out on the town again for my last night but *everyone* bails and in the end just go to bed. That turns out well because I have to catch an early train and that bicycle ride to Chanmartin would have been much more brutal if I was operating on less sleep. As it stands I make it to the train with 15 minutes to spare (and there is only one train I can take with my bike). With that, I’m off to Zaragoza.