The Nicest People in Europe -- La Familia Martin

It´s been a few days since I´ve posted, and so now I have to catch up. After my day at the Reina Sofia, I went to the Thyssen museum, which is the last of the big three in Madrid. It has one of the best private collections in the world, and I think it was my favorite of the three. The reason is that it houses a collection from Medieval to Modern, so in a way you get a little art history lesson as you go through the galleries. I´m now a huge fan of those audioguía things that I usually make fun of. I rented one for the exhibit, and I learned so much it was crazy.

Some examples. Early Medieval art used gold backgrounds in their portraits in order to suggest the presence of God. One Gothic innovation was to get rid of the (expensive) gold backgrounds.

There were essentially two centers of late Gothic art production, Italy and France, and you can tell which country a non-Italian or non-French studied based on the kind of art they produced.

The history of art until the late-19th century is a struggle between creating idealized images of people vs. realistic images, but the definitions of "idealized" and "realistic" changes, so that sometimes what we might think of as "realistic" is often idealistic during a specific time period.

The Dutch basically invented still-lifes and other "pedestrian" kinds of painting as a way of both appealing to the new Dutch bourgeoisie, but also, interestingly, because during the late-Renaissance they were essentially completely isolated culturally from the rest of Europe because they had embraced Protestantism. So they didn´t know what was happening in other parts of Europe, so they developed their own artistic projects.

The Thyssen museum doesn´t know what to say about 19th-century American art. The collection has two huge rooms of American art including impressive Frederick Church and Winslow Homer paintings, but my audioguía had nothing to say about them. It was funny.

I think I´ve become a convert to the audioguía and the tourist bus. You learn so much stuff!

After the museum, I went up to the wealthy Salamanca district, first to try to get tickets to The House of Bernarda Alba, which I did not get, and I´m completely pissed about, and also to look around. It looked like every other rich area you´ve ever been in. Lots of people with lots of money, dressed beautifully, with children who were better dressed than me.

That night, I saw yet another American movie, Stranger Than Fiction, that I hadn´t had a chance to see in the U.S. (Tonight I might see the last Altman movie. I really need to start seeing Spanish movies).

The next day, my friend Montse´s parents met me in Madrid, and took me on a stroll through Plaza Mayor and the city government district, which I think is called El Barrio de Austria, which seems strange. First of all, the Martins are the nicest people in Europe. They barely know me, but they were so generous, showing me around, pointing out weird things that I would never know, and treating me to the best tortilla I´ve had in Spain. Also, they barely speak English, so all this was done in Castellano,and I clearly know more than I think I do. And by the way, Montse, your mother said that you are a much better cook than she is.

Then we drove to Montse´s brother´s house in a suburb of Madrid. I´m embarassed to admit, but it was so great being in a car again. It´s the first time in two months that I´ve been in a car, and clearly I´ve been completely enculturated into Southern California because I almost wept (not really) when I got in. Montse´s brother lives in a suburb that has been built from scratch about 20 minutes outside of Madrid called Tres Cantos, which means three pebbles. It´s a weird place. According to Juan Ramon, Montse´s brother, the developers originally thought they would use the American model of development and just build an industrial park. Except that no companies would move in if it was like that, so they built apartment buildings, and -- boom -- companies moved in and brought their workers. Juan Ramon and his wife work at the same company, it´s a 10 minute walk to work. Anyway, the whole town is about 15 years old. It´s weird really. And there are a variety of housing possibilities. Mostly apartment buildings, but I think most of them are essentially condos, and then they have attached townhouses, which now cost €1million, which is a lot of money! And then they have detached houses in the outskirts that go for about €4 - 5 million where actors live. And the whole town is surrounded by a national park, so it´s essentially an island, where everything they need in all within walking distance, including a mall (why they need a mall, I do not know). There are about 50,000 people in it, which is the size of my hometown of Wayne, NJ, but you can walk from one end to the other in about 15 minutes.

So we had la comida (lunch) there. Rosario made some yummy paella made with rabbit, the first time I´d ever had that. And really it was a wonderful day. We watched their 18 month old be an 18 month old (babies are fascinating), and I had a great time. It was nice to be hanging out with a family.

After the Martins dropped me off, I had my first encounters with prostitutes on the street of my hotel. I had seen them before, but I was FINALLY propositioned. I was starting to get offended that not one thought I was john-worthy. But happily that error was rectified. And I´m happy to say that I was propositioned by the prettiest ones. But I politely declined.

I had had enough of Madrid. I want to go back, but with someone. It´s a hard city to be alone in. So the next day I took the RENFE train back to Barcelona. I´m now also a convert to trains. I don´t think I´ll fly anywhere in Spain again. It was a wonderfully relaxing experience, and only 4 hours. Presumably other parts of Spain would be longer, but it´s really nice not to have to deal with airports and flying.

And when I got home, I was so happy, that I knew I had made the right choice to come home early. I really love Barcelona. It´s such an easy place to live. So I´m staying here until August, hopefully in the same apartment.

Finally, this morning I got my first Spanish haircut. It was unnerving. Would I be able to explain what I wanted? But Wanda did a magnificent job. I´ll take a picture and post it. Wanda is from Cuba, and so we had an interesting, but broken, conversation about Cuba, and Cuban food in Barcelona. She told me all of the great spots. I can´t wait to start taking Spanish so that I can understand everything she and other Spaniards are saying. On my out, I gave her a tip and said something that I thought was "para tu." And Wanda said, "En Catalan! Bravo!" I had no idea, I thought I was speaking Castellano.

Oh, well.