Hola! Bienvenidos a mi Blog! Just kidding, my Spanish is still developing in de uterus. And my former literary flourishes are probably rotting six feet under. But onto more pleasant things...namely, Madrid.
Ahh, Madrid. It was love at first site. Gliding down the automated pedestrian belts, I could feel the afternoon sunlight kiss my face, the threat of "cold weather" melting amidst a golden shower of Mediterranean rays. The Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Aeropuerto glistens with majestic--even palatial--modernity: glass walls, wooden paneled roofing, artsy metallic ventilation systems. Being a white American, I got through the security checkpoint so fast I didn't even have time to worry about the contraband I had smuggled in my backpack. Transportation via metro was similarly expeditious, as well as pleasant aside from the "Spanish musk" permeating the cars. Emerging onto the city streets from the underground has always been a disorienting experience for me, especially into an altogether unfamiliar and bustling city. Once I reclaimed my bearings, however, and strode valiantly in an arbitrary direction like Vasco de Gama himself, the way opened for me like the pages of a children's book. The untraveled American from Bumblefuck, Texas might describe the small cars and narrow cobblestone streets as quaint or picturesque, but to me everything was distinctly European, exactly as I'd left it in the vast, uncharted fortress of my mind. After all, it was in neighborhoods like these that I had spent the formative first two years of my life. In the hostel, backpacks finally unslung, myriad passports, cell phones, metro cards, and Euro coins scattered in no particular order across the room, the fervor for exploration gave way to prudence and we fell into a deep slumber, not to awake until well past nightfall...
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