Madrid

Last weekend, for the first time this summer, I spent a weekend in a place where I had studied the language. I've been dreaming of going to Spain since high school - if not before. There were several moments during the weekend when I found myself smiling just because I had once again remembered that I was verdaderamente (actually) en España.

Because my time was limited, I spent relatively little time doing "touristy" things. I wanted to get a taste of the real Spain, not the one that is wrapped up in a nice, neat package for los extranjeros (foreigners) to see. I stayed with Martin, a friend from my high school Spanish class whose family spends almost every summer in a little town an hour outside of Madrid. While Madrid was nice to visit - I spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday afternoon before my flight left in Madrid with Martin, Laura (another high school classmate) and Martin's friend Juan Miguel walking around the city - it was this little town that impressed me the most. The town's atmosphere reminded me in some ways of Treviso, the overgrown medieval city that I stayed in while visiting my relatives the first week I was in Italy. However, the arid climate, streets opening up to vistas of the surrounding hills, the storks nesting on the cathedral's belfry, the post-holes in the streets for the running of los toros (bulls) and something that I couldn't really put my finger on about the way people interacted with each other made me very aware of the fact that I was somewhere that was culturally different.

It turns out that my Spanish is rusty after three years of limited use. On top of that, the undercurrent of "th" that pervades Spanish as it is spoken in Madrid made it difficult for me to understand native speakers. Despite those difficulties - or perhaps because of them - I left with a renewed desire to practice speaking Spanish and a new book, a Spanish translation (from Portuguese) of Paulo Coelho's El Zahir.