This is a yet another rant. If you don’t like rants, don’t read. ;)

Fresh Madrid experiences:

• I’m incompatible with Spanish work hours. For some reason, my credit card doesn’t work on ALSA website, so I went to the bus station to buy a ticket to Barcelona. Guess what: ticket offices observe siesta too! Working hours for this specific ticket office were 8-13 + 15-20. Ooh, you’re in a hurry? Too bad.
• More incompatibility: because of the closed ticket office I had plenty of free time, so I decided to visit Matadero. Guess what? Opening hours: 16-22. I used to think Poland was a crazy place, but it seems every country has its own peculiarities.
• Madrid is so big I use Google Maps as a GPS all the time. One time I decided to just consult the map once and then just walk and admire the architecture*. Even though it was just one long straight street, I took the wrong turn** and ended up in a wrong place.
• Even though it’s Spain, it can rain cats and dogs here. And it does.
• I found a perfect place: English cafe & bookstore. Too bad I’m leaving tomorrow, so I could only drink one coffee there.
• A few days ago a young black guy selling glasses on the beach recommended McDonalds and KFC to me. I didn’t understand it back then; I do now: they’re the cheapest ways to eat, especially for a foreigner.

Enough rants. Going to Barcelona tomorrow; I’m so awaiting that eight hour bus trip. If only I was a drinking person I could get myself totally hammered like any self-respecting Polish tourist; alas, this is not an option.

*A joke. Madrid is about as beautiful as Warsaw: a few monumental historic buildings here or there and the usual shit everywhere else.
**I kid you not. Wrong turn. On a straight street. On an intersection bigger than a football stadium.

As advised by the book’s author, I bought an onion to have a reason to cry in case I’m an emotionless bastard. So, from now on I’m walking around the city with an onion in my bag.

As usual, I suspected this would happen – and yet it still surprised me. I tend to see the world around me as potential photographs; and today I realized that I also have a little voice in my head which tells the stories I repeat here. I don’t just sit down and invent something – these posts keep growing in my head and at some point I have to write them down.

For those not playing video games: Fallout series is located in a post-apocalyptic world, many years after the nuclear war. The last two releases were located in the bombed-down versions of Washington and Las Vegas. This is how the world looks in-game:

I played Fallout 4: Madrid today. In real life.

It started innocently enough. After visiting the Railway Museum I took the metro towards the local university campus: both because I like visiting universities – they are guaranteed tourist-free – and because it was a potential source of cheap food. Except that when I arrived there, something seemed… odd.

The Ciudad Universitaria metro station was empty. Not empty in the “no passengers” sense – it was ghosttownesque. Stores closed, rubbish bins not emptied for days, gates half open and swinging in the wind. Not discouraged, I made my way toward the nearest institute.

Closed.

Next one: the same. And so on. At some point I realized there must have been some student vacation – and Spanish do treat vacations seriously. To the point that I walked across the campus for miles and didn’t encounter a single human being.

I bet you never saw a university campus that empty. I was mesmerized.

In one of the previous posts I mentioned that Spanish navigate by observing other people. Since there was no one there – and hardly any directions – I was free to wander in whatever direction I wanted. My instinct never fails when I set it loose; I crossed a little forest area and soon found myself atop one of the highest hills in town. I wish I could tell you the view was beautiful, but it was what it was – a view of a huge city, stretching to the horizon in almost all directions.

At the foot of that hill I encountered an old man feeding pigeons. He wanted me to photograph him, but I didn’t manage to get his address so that I could send the prints.

It was reminiscent of Fallout on so many levels. Without the students, the campus looked haunted – the institutes which used to host so much knowledge were now just old, boarded-up buildings full of desks, blackboards and strange devices. Roads and signs made no sense any more – they used to lead to arbitrary locations, and now all I was interested in was getting from A to B without getting killed by the raiders and drug fiends. Of course, there were no real bandits in my adventure – but at some point I inadvertently crossed the homeless territory. They eyed and ignored me, thankfully, but in my mind I was preparing an escape plan.

No self-respecting Wastelander would start his adventure without a Pip-Boy. Mine featured a color screen and was made by HTC – and it kept losing coverage just like the original. It also shared the same questionable map quality.

Upon returning to the more civilized areas I came upon two buildings which could have as well been standing in the Wasteland as-is: Museo de América and Faro de Moncloa. I just wish I could have continued this exploration experiment further, but at that point the second part of my quest – finding food – took over, so I shelled out some bottle caps euros and ate a hearty meal at McDonalds.

It sucks to be brought back to reality from such a fantastic daydream. I liked the post-apocapolyptic version of Madrid much more.

• There are two kinds of coffee, each of them worse than the other.
• WiFi signal is weaker than an anemic kid.
• Entertainment is provided by two of my roommates: Spanish chicks who party until morning then scatter their clothes around the room and throw up in the bathroom.
• What looked like a cold is in fact a full-fledged flu. This won’t stop me from attending the museums, but man, I feel so weak right now.

As soon as I wrote the previous post, I went to the reception and changed my reservation from five to three nights. Turns out I was just in time – the deadline for cancellation was at 22:00, and my change went through at 21:56. This means I won’t be spending the Easter morning in Madrid. :)

Now I just need to find a decent hostel in Barcelona. “Decent” means “close to the sea and away from the crowd”.

PS. The first shock upon arriving in Madrid: they speak a different language here! I forgot I’m not in Catalonia anymore. ;)

Eight hours in Madrid and I’m already fed up. I have no idea what led me to booking five nights in the (party) capital of Spain, but I’m going to try to change it to three and escape to Barcelona.

Madrid pros:

• People actually speak English here. Kinda. Yay!
• Lots of interesting places. Visited the Prado museum today (for free, thanks to my student’s card which miraculously is still valid). Going to visit more museums tomorrow.

Madrid cons:

• It’s like Warsaw, except twice as big. I hate Warsaw.
• So crowded it’s ridiculous. I’m an introvert.
• Prices. I’m going to try to find a supermarket and some university canteen – otherwise I’ll have to rob a bank soon.

The good news is that the hostel has great WiFi and unlimited free coffee.

My inbox continues to grow every day. I received 55 new emails since I left Poland – and read maybe 10. The rest is just junk – things like LinkedIn, tons of newsletters, account registrations, subscriptions of stuff I no longer care about.

And to think I used to read all this shit just because it was arriving in my inbox. Getting perspective really puts things in the right places.

# 2013-03-27 11:24
# Highway service point, somewhere between Valencia and Madrid

Another one of those little differences: apparently it’s OK to bring your own food in places like a highway stop or a university canteen. Not only OK – it’s encouraged; there are microwave ovens available for this very purpose. Another example of attitude towards people, not against them.

We’re back on the road after a twenty minute stop. A movie is playing on the bus TV. It’s Spanish with Spanish subtitles, probably in case someone is even more deaf than me – or wants to learn Spanish the hard way.

The weather changed. It’s raining, which means less wandering around the city and more sitting in cafes. Can’t complain. As long as they have power, WiFi and coffee, I’m good.

By the time I finished writing this, the rain stopped. It’s now sunny. I’m not even pretending I understand this climate.