Madrid2 – Monday – Campeones del Munda

As I mentioned, we got off to a much later start than planned.  I woke at 7 and unfortunately had not planned ahead.  No running shoes, no computer, no spanish phrase book.  All these were locked in our 2nd room, and I had grabbed the wrong 2nd key. No Euro.  And no option of leaving the room with the boys sleeping.  So I figured I could watch the TV for an hour and let someone wake up.  After watching replays of the soccer match and coverage of the excitement in the streets of Madrid and elsewhere in Spanish, I flicked through the 3 english stations.  All new stations on a half hour loop.  One of them was called Russia Today, with a definite non-western agenda.  One of the news stories was about the atrocities of a Union Carbide plant in India in the mid-80’s, and people their still looking for restitution from Union Carbide (now bought up by some other american conglomerate) and the double standard of Obama asking for restitution for the BP spill.  Anyway… LOTS of interesting undercurrents with that story.  Regardless, after the 2nd loop through the new stations, I was beginning to wonder if anyone would ever wake up.  The first to awake was Zeke at about 11.  The others awoke at noon.  YIKES.  Oh well, must go with the flow.  Definitely didn’t want to wake them as they would’ve been bears the rest of the day.  As it was Theo was a handful just getting started for the day.  He definitely just wanted to crawl back into bed.  The agenda for the day was an open-air double-decker bus tour of the city.  Certainly not at the top of the kids list.  But with all the riding, completely tolerable and maybe even fun.  The heat of the mid-day was mitigated by the breeze we picked up in the open-air bus.

The tour had 2 routes that met in the middle of the city.  During our first route, I remember being concerned about whether we got scammed.  A couple of long breaks by the driver/guide, apparently smoking breaks, and a mostly mundane modern building tour with a few center piazzas with older sculpture.  We did go by the bournebeau (sp?) stadium where Real Madrid plays and their major business districts.  I found it interesting that they had no major “downtown” like a Chicago with major skyscrapers all piled together.  Only a few scattered 30 story buildings here and there.  The 2nd tour, thank goodness, was much more interesting.  Into the heart of the old-city.  Beautiful ornate buildings that made you wonder how old they really could be. 

After having been here a few days, I feel I’ve got a handle on the heat.  Going into the trip, one of my biggest worries.  Even on the plane we heard that the high for the day was going to be 104 fahrenheit.  SERIOUSLY.  Certainly a major reason for the city shutting down at mid-day, aka ciesta.  But as it turns out, it is mostly manageable.  VERY VERY VERY dry heat.  So dry that I wonder how they get anything green to grow around here.  They have large apparently gum trees planted along all the pedestrian areas that are certainly prized by the citizens and city as they offer great mid-day shade.  And even waiting for traffic lights, I found myself quickly learning to wait in the shade, even if it meant you were 20 paces from the intersection.  Our hotel is right next to the major park in Madrid, .  The entire circumference being a good challenge for my less than conditioned body.  Perhaps 2.5 miles?  On my first day’s run I was pleasantly surprised to see deep woods.  OK, deep by Madrid standards.  By that I mean deep enough that you could feel the temperature change and the humidity change upon entering.  Sort of like biking along the Madison beltline in the heat of summer and then getting to the stretch next to the Arboretum.  I thought, can the trees really make that much difference in this arid Arizona-like climate?  I got my answer the 2nd day when the sprinklers went off nearly soaking me.  Ahaaa… If you want it green in Madrid.  must irrigate like a golf course.  Interestingly enough, and I heard this on the open air bus tour, the city crest is a bear and berries.  The tour guide (OK, taped audio) said it harkened back to the day when the entire area was mostly woods and bears and berries.  hard to imagine.

 

We planned to cut our bus tour a little short, we’d heard that the team would be flying back from South Africa to Madrid and they’d drive through town in an open air bus.  The very same open air bus we were taking the city “hop-on/hop-off” tour with that day.  We’d heard 6 pm.  And as we rode the bus around it’s loop, we could see the crowd already forming.  Which reassured me that we’d have a chance of finding the route.  Hard to express the excitement in the city.  RED and YELLOW everywhere.  Each famous fountain in each piazza was draped with a Spanish flag.  Flags hanging out of apartment windows.  All the newspapers said it.  Campeones del Munda.  Champions of the world!!!  As it turns out, we setup shop a LITTLE early.  The crowd continued to grow.  What had become our personal space in the median of the street under a waste-high bush that offered a little shade, had become a crowd on either side.  The majority of them Spanish but a few foreigners like us including some German college kids next to us (no, I didn’t attempt any of my rusty German on them).  Zeke got a kick out of the “crazy” Spanish girls by us who were singing many Spanish songs, many of them he could understand the words to.  But then they pulled out some Queen.  Well, at least one phrase from Queen.  ‘We are the Champions” and a lot of da da da to fill space where they didn’t know the words.  It’s still remarkable how much English they had.

We played an hour or so of ‘I spy’.  The only rule being that the person you were describing could not be wearing red.  In the crowd, that limited the crows to maybe 5% of the people.  After that game got old, we decided to stretch our legs a bit and give up our sitting space.  Besides, with the crowd, noone would be sitting by the time the team came through.  We got about half a block up the route when, sure enough, we heard the familiar refrain “I’ve got to potty” from our youngest, quickly echoed by “me too” from our 2nd youngest.  Knowing there would be no access to public facilities, and knowing they were young enough to get away with it, we headed for a side street.  I began wondering where the crowd was finding relief.  After all, we had the advantage of being nearly dehydrated as we still had no euros and were out of water much earlier in the day, set aside a bottle that Kate had attempted to buy in US$, but had been refused, when a man behind her offered to buy her one.  And another bottle that we bought with a Euro Kate had found.  We found out in the side-street, where an impromptu line had formed on either side of the entry of an undergound parking ramp.  The kids and I crossed the street and found trees further down, semi-protected by parked cars.  When nature calls, what can you do?

As we headed back to the street we could hear the excitement building, and sure enough within a matter of minutes a couple surges of cop cars came through attempting to set a line in the crowd where the bus would pass.  Kate had Maeve and I had Theo on my shoulders.  Zeke had found a good spot up front but Jane was struggling for a view, when an older lady noticed and pulled her into the front-row.  Later she pulled her back and acted as a parent when the policia passed by attempting to set the line.  The big moment… the team passing by.  You can see the goalee Casillas at the back of the bus with coach directly in front of him.  And, if you watched the game, Casillas had to come up with some tough saves just to have a chance of winning. 

Much of the crowd followed the bus after it passed.  We’d seen what we’d come to see so we headed off upstream hoping to find our open air bus route again and catch it home after catching some quick food.  We found a place that accepted Visa and had our first order of “tapas” in Spain.  Not sure how authentic these tapas were as they reminded me more of bar-food.  We had Chorizo covered w/ Cheese, Potato salad, potato omelette, and a few others that were perhaps more authentic.  More importantly we all put some liquids in us.  Zeke went up to the Spanish speaking bartender and ordered more agua.  After a little coaxing and coaching, Theo did the same, “en Espanol”, of course.  Returning proudly with his reward…

My liquids were some nice cold Cervesas.  Nothing better when you’re hot and parched.  After some ice cream deserts and the seemingly obligatory Chupa-Chups (Spanish branded suckers) we headed for the bus stop.

Only to learn that we’d likely missed the last bus, which likely stopped at 11 pm.  One thing I’ll mention here… When you’re dealing with a foreign language, everything has a probability of being correct.  Even if you think you (and by ‘you’ I mean Kate as I speak no Spanish) got the message across, you may be surprised by the outcome.  Numerous times she thought she ordered one thing only to get a slight variant on what she ordered or in other cases a complete surprise.  Similarly with bus routes,  you sort of get where they run and the fine-print saying routes end at midnight, but the reality is the route ending earlier than midnight perhaps to get back to home-base by midnight.

The good news, the parade had run downtown.  And we’d actually gotten quite familiar with downtown during the bus rides and our previous night’s adventure, so it was a relatively easy walk home (with a few piggy back rides thrown in for the youngest of legs).