Even the Panda Looks Uncomfortable...

The Windsors must be breathing a sigh of relief this week: they are not the branch of extended relations that make up the European royalty on the hot seat, for a change. Queen Sofia of Spain granted author Pilar Urbano unfettered access for a book, La Reina muy de Cerca (The Queen Up Close). In their interviews, the queen offered her views on homosexuality (opposes marriage, can tolerate unions, but doesn't get the pride parade-thing), euthanasia (opposes it), religious education (she's all for it) and a variety of other topics. None of these opinions are, of course, all that surprising from a 70-year-old Roman Catholic woman of privilege; what makes her lack of discretion scandalous is that a majority of Spaniards strongly disagree with her (gay marriage has been recognized in Spain since 2005, for instance).

By way of apology, a royal spokesman said that Doña Sofia regrets any "discomfort or offense"... but Urbano misquoted her, anyway.

Nice save.

The McCain in Spain

...should stay mainly on the plane. Actually, I don't think he should go at all and he doesn't appear to be all that interested in going, based on this article from The Washington Post. According to the reporter who was interviewing McCain, he was just avoiding answering the question (successfully, it seems) about whether or not as president he would meet with the Spanish prime minister. I post it not because I think it's all that indicative of anything (what is said on the campaign trail and what is actually done once elected are two very different things), but because I liked the My Fair Lady pun.

Bulls 13, Morons 0

The BBC reports that 13 people were injured in Pamplona today during the annual "I'm a Cruel Idiot" fest. The Cruel Idiots pictured here got their just desserts last year—I guess the bull thought it was 2 for 1 day.

Madrid: Day 3

After the disappointing end to Saturday, Sunday was actually another perfect day. The weather was again warm. We had a disgustingly fatty (but very tasty) breakfast at a little café across the street from our hostal—we split their Desayuno Americain, which was of course the largest option on the menu: eggs, bacon (much thicker, bigger and sweeter than what we get in the U.S.), thick-sliced white toast, coffee and fresh orange juice. I’m sure the name was intended as an insult, although the owner was very nice to us.

Our first destination was an enormous street market, El Rastro, about a 20 minute walk from our neighborhood. Actually, just about everything we did was within 20-30 minutes of Huertas, where we stayed. This was partly by design—I did some research before booking the place—and partly just good luck—I picked the cheapest hostal the still seemed decent. And, actually, it was more than decent: the rooms were incredibly clean, the bathroom was small but very nice (it’s probably bigger than the one in our apartment!) and the owner, Javier, and his brother, Antonio, were very helpful and kind. Catherine said she was torn between wanting to explore a new neighborhood the next time we visit and really wanting to go back to Hostal Gonzalo because it was just so perfect for us.

El Rastro is huge! I mean, we have street fairs in New York all the time but this thing is as if every street fair in New York happened simultaneously on a couple of crosstown streets stretching from river to river… and everyone in New York decided to go there at the same time. I’m exaggerating a little, but only a little. And it happens every Sunday morning. The crowds were enormous on both of the streets we explored; it took us about an hour to get down just one of them, and we didn’t stop that often. Most of the stuff for sale is clothing and jewelry—cheap stuff, the kind of things you’d expect at a street fair—but there were a few gems: Catherine found some jewelry made by Madrid artisans that we bought as gifts. At one fairly secluded spot, crowds started gathering off to one side of the street. When we got close, we saw men with sheets on the ground loaded with more expensive items: cameras and other electronics, designer goods, purses and things. Catherine joked that we should look to see if my Palm was on one of them and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been.

While we were at El Rastro, we ran into two of the women from the group of students from Wales again. We chatted with them briefly and they suggested we check out a reggae club that they’d been at the night before. They didn’t know the name but they told us where it was, near our neighborhood. Anyone who wanted to could get up and perform and Elroy was thinking about going back and playing some drums. We told them we’d try, took each other’s pictures, and then headed off again.

The rest of the afternoon was all about walking. Up to the oldest restaurant in the world; back up into Chueca to see Hemingway’s favorite café; over into El Retiro, an enormous public park, and finally back over to our neighborhood for some tapas and beer. The Madrileños were out in force everywhere we went and it took us quite a while to find a restaurant that didn’t have a 30 minute waiting list. After lunch, we explored our neighborhood a little more—nothing in particular, just taking everything in on our last day—then went back to the hostal to drop off stuff and rest a little. For dinner, everyone had disappeared and all the restaurants and cafes were closed up. Fortunately, the café we had chosen to try was one of the few that was open; it had a nice ambience and the food and wine were very good, although I think the waitress (possibly one of the owners) would have preferred not to have to deal with us. She tended to drop things in front of us and then walk away.

We considered not going to the reggae club because it didn’t even start until 10pm and we had to get up early on Monday to get to the airport. But then we both said we thought we should at least drop by for a drink. Unfortunately, if the group went to the club last night, it wasn’t when we were there. We did meet one of the owners, Joe from Illinois, when we asked him for a light (we only had 6 cigarettes over the weekend and it really made me glad we’ve quit, but we did meet some great people asking for a match!). Joe’s been living in Madrid for 15 years, lived in the building with his family, and he and a couple of partners decided to turn the empty storefront into a bar and music club. I have no idea how legal it is although it’s hardly a secret, if we could find out about it. They served small beers and drinks and the music was just as good as the ladies had described. We hung around for about an hour then decided we’d put off the packing and sleeping as long as we dared.

We were back in our room by 11:30, packed and in bed shortly after midnight. I tried to write some last night but I finally quit after a few paragraphs—too many days on too little sleep. Fortunately, I have a 7 hour 45 minute plane ride that needs to be filled…

Madrid: Day 2... What Happened

So on Saturday, we wanted to get an early start on the day because there are just so many things that we want to do and only just under 3 days to do them. We got up early and headed out for breakfast at a little cervezeria around the corner from our hostal on Calle de Jesus (and with a big ol’ Catholic church on the block that had hundreds of people lined up around the block for at least 6 hours that we know of on Friday, the street is well named!). After some churros (fried breadsticks kinda like donuts but not as sweet) and a couple of espressos, we started walking over to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia.

We decided to walk down the Paseo del Prado, which is just the big boulevard that runs beside the Prado museum to Atocha terminal (the site of the March 11, 2004 terrorist attacks) and to the Reina Sofia. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny. We were about halfway there when we saw a bunch of people looking at something in a courtyard in front of an office building, taking pictures. As we got closer, we discovered that it was an installation of sculptures by an artist, Igor Mitoraj. They’re huge bronzes that look like that they’re ruins of sculptures from ancient Greece or Rome: classical nudes, winged figures, remnants of faces and torsos. What was remarkable about these sculptures is that Catherine and I had actually first seen them in 2004 in Paris: they were lining the pathway through the Jardin du Tuilleries toward the Louvre (see the photo above). That had been the day we fell completely in love with Paris, so you can imagine what a shock it was to see them again here in Madrid!

At the Reina Sofia, we found another Paris/Madrid coincidence: that same visit in 2004, we had visited and thoroughly enjoyed the collection at the Musée Picasso, which held an incredible array of Picasso’s work through the different periods (and different women) in his life. It turned out that the special exhibit at the Reina Sofia was the visiting collection from the Picasso in Paris. How many times do you get to see the same works of art in two cities in two different countries? The Reina Sofia’s permanent collection is amazing, as well: it’s entirely modern art—primarily early to mid-20th century but they had a substantial number of more recent works—and the range of work was truly awe-inspiring. Catherine and I always say that we have a 3-hour time limit on any museum visit and, by and large, we follow that. After 2 hours here, we relized that we’d made it through less than half the collection and just didn’t have the stamina to go another 2. So we did the museum equivalent of speed reading: we walked through the rest of the museum, looked at everything, and stopped periodically to really take in a particular work.

Fortunately, Picasso’s Guernica was during the first two hours; we spent several minutes just trying to take in the whole of the work. While I’d certainly known it would be amazing from pictures I’d seen of it, there’s just something about being in this enormous room with a painting of that size, strength and powerful emotion. Catherine said that it made her realize one of the advantages of abstraction: it allows the artist to take emotions and exaggerate them beyond any sense of reality without losing our raw connections to those feelings. I think she’s absolutely right.

Our next stop was the Estación de Atocha, across the street from the museum. We arrived just as the maintenance crews were using misters mounted on 30-foot poles to water the tropical garden that fills about half of the space in the middle of the terminal. It's an incredible site and made the huge building incredibly humid! At one end there was a pond with dozens of turtles climbing up on rocks and tree trunks to, we guess, enjoy the sun and mist. This main terminal is architecturally and aesthetically beautiful. Beyond this building is the more modern construction with ticket booths, shops and platforms for the metro, commuter rails and high-speed trains. This wing was very much like the current Penn Station in New York: it’s efficient, easy to maintain and absolutely devoid of any aesthetic pleasure.

We had some trouble finding the memorial to the March 11 victims: there weren’t any permanent signs at all and we walked past a sandwich board with a laser copied text and an arrow pointing the direction. The memorial itself is very simple: a glass panel with the victims’ names etched into it and a large, low-ceilinged blue room with a glass brick tower raising from the ceiling to about 25’ above street level. Inside the tower, a clear plastic membrane has texts from notes left at the site by people from all over the world. We both really admired the memorial and thought it was a great tribute; I hope the World Trade Center memorial will be as successful.

After lunch, we wandered back to our hotel to nap a little before we went to see the play at the Circulo de Belles Artes. It was by Pablo Picasso (our theme for the day, it seemed), called El Deseo Atrapado de la Cola (Desire Caught by the Tail). Two companies collaborated on the production, El Centro Andaluz Teatro and Teatro del Velador, both from Andalucía. The production was part of an arts festival at Belles Artes of companies from around Spain. Because it was in Spanish, of course, I can’t really comment of the play itself, but Catherine and I are going to get a copy of the script to see how much of the production was in the script and how much of it the company invented. The production reminded me very much of Pig Iron Theater Company in Philadelphia: very strong, very precise, physically-demanding performances (one woman climbed a pair of drapes onstage and did circus acrobatics on them—Peter Petralia had used this in his play Three Ring, so I'd seen it before, but it's still amazing to watch) with a strong concept for the production. Several of the actors played characters who were physically or mentally challenged and it was almost surprising when they finally stepped out of their characters for their bows. I’d love to see their work again and see how this piece compares to another.

For dinner, we wandered through Chueca, just north of where we were staying. This is an area with lots of clubs and bars, apparently a large gay community. It was certainly hopping on a Saturday night: it took us almost an hour to find someplace to eat. We found a nouveau Mexican place, Tepic, that sounded interesting. The food was very good but this is where I opened up my bag to get something and forgot to close it again. I have no idea when someone took the Palm PDA out of the pocket—even though it was about 11pm by the time we left, it felt so early compared to getting home at 2:30 am the night before that we decided to do some nighttime sight seeing. It wasn’t until around 12:00 when we were having a nightcap at an Irish bar near our hostal that I noticed it missing. We went back to the restaurant in the hope that it might have just fallen out there but no such luck. So now the trip is a lot more expensive than we expected, since I have to replace that…. And by the time we finally got home, it was almost 3 am again and I was too tired to blog that night!

Madrid: Day 1

So we arrived this morning in Madrid at 9:13 am. Catherine's seat on the plane did not recline at all—this was not a good way to begin our journey. She didn't sleep much, I didn't sleep much (although even after we realized that we'd had only 3 fitful hours sleep, we had to admit—at least we sort of slept for 3 hours!). From that moment onward though, the day has been pretty much a perfect day.

We had no trouble with the subway—a moment's hesitation when we had to decide which ticket to buy, but  a helpful Madrileño pointed us to the correct single ride. We figured we'd be walking pretty much everywhere until we head back to the airport on Monday and, if today is any indication, we're right about that. The last leg of the 3 part journey to the city center was rough only because the car we rode in was not air conditioned—we were still wearing a good portion of our NYC winter attire and it was probably close to 60° F here by 10am. Found the Hostal Gonzalo, where we're staying, with no problem; unfortunately, our room wasn't going to be ready until about 7pm (unless we wanted to sleep on twin beds—which we don't), so Javier, the owner, took our bags for us and we headed out into Madrid.

The first part of the day was your usual sightseeing: Plaza Mayor, Puerto del Sol, Plaza de Oriente, Palacio Real: the equivalent of checking out Times Square/Fifth Avenue/Rockefeller Center in New York, really. But it was all amazing and beautiful: the architecture, the feel of the city, the way everyone moves in the space. I find every city we visit has its own energy and its own rhythm that you can tap into, if you try. Obviously, we don't speak Spanish well enough to fit in, but maybe it's trying not to look too much like a tourist. I don't know, but it's something that always excites me about travel. 

We had lunch at the Circulo del Bellas Artes, an experimental performance space with a very stylish restaurant in it—I swear there was a guy a table over from us who had to be somebody, he just exuded some kind of confidence that I equate with celebrity... but maybe he's just a schmo who's full of himself. Who knows. There's a lot of cool stuff happening at CBA: we're seriously considering going back tomorrow night for a production of play Picasso wrote. I'm sure it's all in Spanish and we won't understand a word of it, but it just seems like the thing we should see.

After that we went to El Museo del Prado, which is all classical art and has an amazing collection of Spanish artists like Velazquez and Goya. We decided, after so little sleep that we were going to do the Greatest Hits: the famous paintings that you'd feel a fool for not having seen when you had the chance. And while we pretty much did that, some of the most memorable works were ones that probably don't fit that category. There was a series of Goya paintings from 1820-23, just a few years before he died, that were amazing and not at all what Catherine and I expected. The brush work was reminiscent of what the Impressionists would do over half a century later and the content made me think of the Surrealists 100 years in the future. I'm sure the website can't do it justice, but I'd say seeing them online is better than nothing.

By this time, our room was ready so we came back and tried to nap a little but really only dozed off for half an hour or so. Finally we got up and took the showers that we'd been wanting for 8 hours and felt a little revived. Our concierge had recommended a paella restaurant not far from here, Arroceria Gala, that he said the locals went when they want good food at good prices. I have very little paella experience but price-wise he was dead on and we both loved the food and the sangria (of course, if the sangria is good enough, who notices the food?). We'd also discovered that a place that the NYTimes recommended for good flamenco, Casa Patas, was only a few blocks away from there. So we wandered over around 11pm and got reservations for the midnight show.

Now we had an hour to kill. Background: we both quit smoking on May 3, 2005. We've split a few cigarettes since then, but nothing more. Our one concession when we quit was that we could still smoke when we visited Europe, if we wanted to. So, with everyone smoking all around us all day, of course we wanted to. We got a pack of cigarettes (Marlboro Lights, not our brand, but good enough) but didn't have a light. Since we still had some time to kill and there was no smoking at Casa Patas, we walked down the block a bit to where a group of young people were smoking in front of a club. As we approached, we realized the two women and one man were all speaking English. We got a light from them and, naturally, struck up a conversation.

And then, it got really interesting....

The man was from New Zealand, but finishing his last two years of high school (or the equivalent) at an international school in Wales. The two women—one from Nigeria by way of Washington, DC, the other from the Caribbean—were also at the school. They're in Madrid for a school trip—museums and culture during the day, whatever they want at night. The man, Elroy Finn, was telling us about his brother, Liam, who is a musician. As he's saying this, I'm remembering hearing something about the son of Neil Finn being a musician and starting a solo career. I thought I'd play it cool and not bring this up, but as we keep talking about his music and influences, it turns out that this indeed is the same person. So we had nice long chat with Neil Finn's son about Crowded House and music and history and US politics and then we exchanged e-mails. Elroy said he's not sure where he's going after graduation—a gap year in New Zealand and then he may study history in university or maybe go into the family business. But we had a great NO WAY! moment in Madrid.

Finally, we went back to Casa Patas for the flamenco performance. My first acting/touring job after I arrived in NYC was actually on a tour with The Boston Flamenco Ballet. It was a hell tour that I may discuss later, but basically, I was familiar with flamenco and some of the traditions, as was Catherine, but she'd never seen it performed live. Normally, if the Times is writing about a trend, it's actually already on the way out. But I have to say they nailed it this time: the crowd was as authentic as I'd imagined, the dance and singers and guitarists were superb. We were both completely blown away by how much we enjoyed the entire performance. The hostess had seated us near the back and while I regretted that Catherine wouldn't really be able to see the dancers' feet, we both agreed that this was a good place in case we got too tired and had to cut out early (it's already midnight, mind you, and we've been going pretty much non-stop since 8am on Thursday). You couldn't have forced us out of the place until the last encore was performed (and boy, did they do encores!). 

The dancers were Carmen "La Talegona" and David Paniagua. Carmen was a few years older and more traditional in her dance but had such amazing skill, control, passion and stamina—she was breath-taking to watch. Paniagua seems to be early in his career but he was no less impressive. Catherine compared him to Johnny Depp in his looks and sex appeal, and he made me think of Savion Glover in his unconventional approach to the traditions. From his clothing—untucked dress shirt and black velvet sports coat and slacks, as opposed the very tight-fitting bolero jacket and pants that male dancers usually wear—to his energy and enthusiasm, he seems to really be pushing the boundaries of expectations, at least what I expected. But what I found most interesting was that he was completely at ease with the older, more traditional musicians—the youngest of the three singers was clearly in his forties and the other two were probably well past 50—and they also seemed to embrace his challenges to the traditions. I wish we were going to be here another few days; I'd love to see what other performances at Casa Patas are like.

We'll it's 9:07 pm EST, which means it's well past 3am here. Time for me to get a little sleep so that I can get up and see what happens next. I'll have to put all the links and photos into this post at a later date... to many to do a google search/upload tonight!

¡Tenga Cuidado, Los Madrileños! Venimos...

Over the past few years, Catherine and I have been talking about the idea of spending some time abroad. We still love New York, but we have several friends who've begun performing in Europe and they're very enthusiastic about the response to their work there. A lot of them have been working in Germany because Berlin is still in an economic transitional period, apparently, so apartments and potential gallery/performance spaces are relatively inexpensive. Because we'd both already studied a little Spanish a little in high school/college, Catherine and I decided that would give us a head start in teaching these old dogs a new language. So we've been taking classes in Cooper Union's continuing ed program off and on for the past 3 years (we're off now because our schedule is just to busy this spring). 

Recently, Catherine found some dirt cheap tickets on continental.com to Madrid. We've been trying to arrange a trip to Spain for a couple of years now, but have kept needing to postpone it for a variety of reasons. Now we're finally going this Thursday. It's a whirlwind visit—we arrive Friday morning and return Monday morning—but we're going to cram as much into our three days as we possibly can. I'm taking the computer and will be providing you with reports and photos while we're there.

Because we're both theater/performing artists, we're particularly interested in any alternative/experimental performance groups or venues that we can visit over the weekend. I'm researching groups online, of course, but a personal recommendation is always preferable to a stab in the dark. So if anyone has friends or friends of friends in Madrid in the performance world—we're interested in dance and music, as well theater—e-mail me the info. Because our Spanish is still pretty weak, we're especially interested in English-language performance, but we're not opposed to seeing something in Spanish. And, of course, we hope we'll be able to meet the artists and start a dialogue for possible collaborations down the road.

(Title translation: Look Out, Madrileños! We're coming...)