Having spent a few days feeling somewhat guilty about my lack of adventures, a quiet Sunday turned into a lovely confirmation of why I love this neighborhood.
I had nothing particular planned for this Sunday, which enabled me to have a long lazy breakfast, do some minor cleaning up, and then hang around and not do terribly much for most of the afternoon. I had noted that the weather was an unseasonably warm 16 degrees (about 62) according to my phone, but couldn't quite believe it.
However, I had planned a minor quest today, to make sure that I got out of the house and stretched my legs. As most things are mostly closed on Sundays (more on that later), I decided to head out to the Hipercor, where the Corte Inglés is open seven days a week, and where I had noted a while ago that they sold (a)Kikoman's soy sauce (I distrust the Heinz and other suspicious brands at the supermarket here which have added sugar) and (b)couscous. Along with coconut water, I have been missing couscous. (Also, it is the ultimate fast prepared food, and now that my yoga has shifted more toward the evenings I get home relatively late, and want dinner quickly. Plus, I think couscous goes well with fish.) However, couscous (along with chopped meat and coconut water) is one of the things which is mysteriously rare here. I remembered seeing it at the Corte Inglés and found it, after a little searching, just separated from the main rice, pasta, and lentils aisle (legumbres) by a horizontal through aisle. Also found the right kind of soy sauce opposite the couscous in the "salsa" section as opposed to the super-fancy and expensive soy sauce in the "comida internacional" section. (There is an art to supermarket shopping.)
It was such lovely and unbelievably warm weather that even though the sun was already setting when I left the Corte Inglés I decided to take the long way home, and loop around past the pretty fountain and the little park and playground on the far side of the Hipercor, and then head along the Calle Laguna to the Via Carpetana, rather than just the boring Calle de la Oca. For some reason most of the clothing stores (as well as the fruterias and restaurants) and also the video game trade-in place on the Calle Laguna were open, even though it was 7:00 PM on a Sunday. I have no idea if this is a special Sunday, or if people were inspired by the spring-like temperatures, or if it's just that the Calle Laguna is awesome. However, open it was, and there were people spilling along the sidewalks (and a fair number of children on scooters, even on the streets without open shops, because it was a nice evening, and children need to run around for exercise), and it was very low key and pleasant.
I was thinking again how even Madrid's not particularly fancy neighborhoods are incapable of what Ethan Frome refers to as "all the plaintive ugliness" of downscale neighborhoods in other parts of the world. The buildings here are modern, and not particularly expensive or gracious, but they almost all have a checkerboard pattern of enclosed and unenclosed balconies (the enclosed ones being the "trastero" which is a vital part of any apartment here), and the balconies almost all have laundry or bikes, or plants and flowers on them, so they are lively and used looking. In this desert land where water is precious, the wider streets outside the city center are tree-lined (as they are in New York, and are not necessarily in other places), as a matter of course, and wherever there is space for a little plaza there is likely to be an "espacio infantil" with a jungle gym and swings and sand for children to play, which will be landscaped with plants, and is likely to have a fountain which is lighted at night. As with the small stores (which are more likely to sell fresh fruits and vegetables than junk food), this place is simply designed for humans.
Also for felines. I was turning off the Via Carpetana by the big high school when I saw a bunch of small furry shapes slinking along inside the fence of the school. It was nearly full dark by this time (very dark twilight), and they were slinking with considerable purpose toward a woman behind me carrying a couple of shopping bags, who had stopped and was putting her hand through the fence toward the cats. I turned and watched, and she said "hola" in a somewhat embarrassed way, and I said "hola" and that it was nice that she was feeding the cats, and she explained that she came nearly every day, or else someone else did, because some of these had clearly been indoor cats who were "perdidos" and you could tell because they were neutered and friendly. She added that it was tragic for cats to get lost because indoor domestic cats didn't know how to care for themselves and got very hungry and very cold because "los gatos son muy frioleros." Given that my phone said it was 17 degrees (62) at 7:00 PM in January, and that all cats have permanent fur coats, I wasn't sure about how cold they were, and it struck me that they might just be moocher cats, but they were pretty. (There is an old joke about madrileños being nicknamed "gatos" because they stay up all night, which is pretty reasonable. However, it occurs to me that the nickname might also refer to the fact that they are highly opposed to cold or wet weather, even though they spend a lot of the summer complaining about the heat. That seems pretty cat like. Also they tend to be fairly nice looking.) Lola (that was the name of the cat lady) and I ended up walking back toward home together and chatting. She has four cats, one of them who was born blind but who knows her apartment by heart, unless you move a chair or something, and then he paws the air where the chair should be and meows until you put it back. (She found him in the street when he was just a kitten, but the vet said he was born blind.)
After a few minutes Lola said to me "pero, ¿tu no eres española?" and then guessed immediately that I was "argentina." (Tango seems to have left permanent traces on my accent, though I haven't a clue how.) I explained I was from New York and she was deeply impressed and said how much she would like to visit the city, and added that she has a cousin living in Washington and has always wanted to visit the US, although she thought if she visited she wouldn't ever want to come home. Having just been thinking of all the nice things about Madrid (and how it really is possible to get even couscous and things open on Sundays here) I said that I thought she would because Madrid is a lovely, lovely city and "funciona bien." She agreed and admitted that she thought it was "lo mejor de España" although this neighborhood (e.g. the one we both live in) was just "normal" but that "Madrid, Madrid" on the other side of the river was beautiful. San Isidro is like Brooklyn. People here don't think of themselves as "the city" but they get very annoyed if they're mistaken for a suburb. And oddly, like Brooklyn, both attitudes are correct.
On a day when all the newspapers are reporting massive demonstrations across the country, and the federal government is about to enter its first business day shut down with 800,000 federal workers on furlough, I managed to not fall over when my friendly new acquaintance explained that she had always wanted to visit the US because "me gusta el sistema americano. Porque aquí en España, hay cosas que se hacen mal." I'm always hesitant to ask what on earth someone from a country like Spain could like about "el sistema americano" in these instances, because I don't want to be seen as fishing for compliments, and generally don't want to get into a political debate, but I am genuinely curious, not to say gob-smacked. There are things I think the US does relatively well (with room for improvement), but on the whole I don't think they're things which are much known or valued in Spain, and there are a ton of things where Spain leaves the US in the dust, which ironically I think they're barely aware of doing well. In any case, I was invited to come around twilight to feed the cats by the high school whenever I wanted, because she's usually there at this time, so perhaps we will meet again and have further chats after giving water and cat food to the slinking shadows which keep an eye on the school when the children have gone home.
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