Madrid!

Thursday
Very fortunately, the first person I saw after about twenty hours of pure train travel was AVA GUNTER! She was kindly waiting for me at the train station with a bar of chocolate ready to take me home. (It was a Kinder bar, which is a European candy bar that is crunchy chocolate covering a creamy, Nutella flavored center. It's absolutely wonderful!) We took the metro for about twenty minutes while chatting about our experiences and such.

We got to her apartment, dropped my stuff off and went straight to go get a drink. Madrid is obviously known for its spectacular night life; I mean, it's Spain so it never sleeps. There really are great places to eat and drink; I'm pretty sure we started at a quaint, little place that had stone walls and art hanging everywhere. We went to another place that was super colorful and full of life. Each restaurant has its own unique flavor and style which is really nice to see. That night, we even went to a hookah bar and felt really exotic!

One of the first things one notices in Spain is that it is not quite part of Europe, culture wise. It is definitely one of kind, a kind of mixture of African, Arab, and European cultures. So people can dress like they are from Paris in couture or dress like they are African queens and fit in no matter what. It is definitely one of those places where you wouldn't really be surprised to see about anything. It is very refreshing to go somewhere where you wouldn't really care if you looked like a bum, but that is also why Ava made me take off my bling... (That's right, she made me part with my heart necklace and pearls. I'm still way too American for my own good).

Friday
My wonderful weekend in what I like to call the People's State of Spain (we can only guess when Germany will finally shrug), started with viewing some very old, very emotional art work at the world-renowned Museo del Prado. It is the most famous of the three art galleries in Madrid, and in Spain for that matter, and it holds Spanish art mostly from the Spanish Palace from the 12th to the 19th centuries. I went mostly while Ava was in class so I got to take my time and really dig deep into the history of some of the works. Most of the museum is made up of really old portraits of either Spanish monarchs or of religious symbols. This is especially the case with the medieval art which is basically just a thousand different takes of the virgin and child or the crucifixion. It is actually very emotional to walk through, see all the sculptures, and to see all of the dark, haunting art.

Since I am a student trying to learn more about this crazy world, I am obligated to look into the most famous masterpieces and artists are each museum. It is worth mentioning that I have indeed seen Las Meninas, which is a piece by Diego Velazquez of the Spanish princess Margarita in the 1600s. It is very different because of the unique perspective of the viewer, the relationships of the portraits, and the question it places on reality and illusion. To see it in person is very striking. It catches your eye and you can't seem to stop looking at it even though it doesn't seem particularly interesting at first. Take a look.

Someone you need to know before going to Madrid is Goya. (His first name is Francisco so I'm obligated to at least like him a little). He was a Spanish romantic painter and, for a time, was even the distinguished painter to the Spanish Crown. He is regarded as a last of the old painters yet the first of the modernists. His works are so completely different at times that you would wonder if the same painter could ever even live in the same city or the same era. Some of his things are absolutely gorgeous, yet he had a very, VERY dark period of his life in which he produced the "Black Paintings." Now, the Prado has an entire room dedicated to his Black Paintings, and it is interesting that to this day, historians, psychologists, and academics of all kinds have no clue what his message is meant to be or how in the world he had such emotions to produce such dark, disturbing, twisted paintings. They are truly haunting and disturbing. Picture the following blown up full scale and in a dark museum.

Those certainly aren't the worst, they are so bizarre.

Oh, this is the Prado!

After a wonderful ham sandwich and a coke, I went to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza where Ava and I saw an exhibit on the history of women as depicted in art. It was very interesting and enjoyable. This museum is supposed to come right after the Prado in chronology, so it was nice to go there next. I kind of regret not making it to the Reina Sofia, Madrid's third museum in the Golden Triangle of Art, since it has some really famous Picassos, but two museums of art in one day is way plenty.

Hey, guess what?, then we met ASHER!! We met him all tired and sweaty from traveling at a Starbucks near a metro stop where he gave me my birthday present! I got a huge picture frame of a collage of Paris pictures, it even says Paris 2011, a Teddy Bear that is actually very famous, more pictures of Paris, and Railroad Tycoon 3! He is wonderful.

We walked around, hung out, ate dinner at a very Spanish restaurant where I ate paella (pie-ay-ya). It's a huge dish meant to be shared by your entire party of rice, shrimp, sausage, chicken, peppers, curry, and whatever else. (I'm not the biggest fan in the world). We also went to an overlook of the city that night and to see some relocated pyramids from Egypt. Check it out!

Plus bientôt, Bisous!