Apologies for letting the blog slide for a few weeks...
In any case, I'm afraid that between working at finishing that story, plus following up on my visit to the embassy and doing some of the lectures to college students that they asked me to do, plus the odd glance at reading for my thesis, plus staying on top of emails home and welcoming a few visitors, there simply hasn't been much time to blog. I promise many blog posts to catch up on what I'm doing in terms of interesting trips and lectures and so on, but this is just an assortment of random details that I thought were charming and/or curious. Consider this entry an apology to my faithful readers.
First off, I should say that it's been raining here. A lot. After the three months when it rained for three hours one day in the autumn, and the entire city (indeed, the entire peninsula, including Portugal) was holding its collective breath in fear of drought, we have had weeks and weeks of weather forecasts reading: "rain." "Scattered showers." "Partly cloudy." "Rain." "Partly sunny with some showers." "Partly cloudy." "Rain." The worst was a solid week a few weeks ago when the sun did not come out even once. It wasn't particularly cold, but I went around the city singing the "Rainy Day Blues" (a song by Tony Soll, which appeared on the beloved LP of my childhood Dinosaurs, Dolphins, and Dreams):
Well it's a nice to swim if you're a frog,
you can lie outside all day if you're a log,
this just isn't any better, it's been getting even wetter,
it's been raining for a week, the street is like a creek,
so if you're not a froggy....
you'll get soggy.
The reservoirs here were down to 25% capacity in the fall, and the city was bracing for water restrictions (which legally kick into effect at around 20% I think), and there was some thought that the only reason they had not been activated sooner was because of fear that there would be "water hoarding" if people got nervous and started trying to fill bathtubs and similar, and caused further shortages. So on the one hand, everyone was very happy that it was raining, and has been going around saying sagely that at least this gives the reservoirs a chance to "reponerse." On the other hand, as the song says "the world may need the rain,/but it's been giving me a pain/'cause I'm inside with the rainy day blues." Or as an older lady at my bachata class (which is worth an entry of its own) put it when I offered the standard consolation that at least this relieved the fear of "restricciones de agua" as we listened to the rain patter on the roof of the polideportivo in the midst of the Gray Week, "bueno, vale, we need the rain, but I don't see why it can't rain nice and hard and steadily every night for a month from midnight to seven a.m. Or, vale, there's been a drought and the reservoirs are low, yo me esfuerzo, it could rain from ten p.m. to seven a.m. every night." (She said all of this in Spanish, but I don't remember all the exact words in Spanish except for the phrases I used, which are untranslatable.)
I have reached the conclusion that madrileños are called "gatos" not only because of their nocturnal schedule and natural elegance and athleticism, but also because they have a truly feline attitude toward prolonged rain which can be summed up as "ewwww...it's wet." Not only the Biblioteca Nacional (which has a vested interest in protecting books from damp) but most public buildings offer disposable plastic sleeves for umbrellas here at the entrance when it is raining, so that the umbrellas do not drip on floors or coats. (It's actually a nice thing. Un detalle, as they say here.) Umbrellas which are not tightly furled in the metro get you the Look of Death which is reserved for large luggage at rush hour on the New York subway.
Actually, the extremely beautifully designed traffic flow in the metro here gets interestingly perilous during the rain, because aside from a general tendency to keep to the right (as on sidewalks and so on in most of Europe), Madrid metro stations generally have (rather heavy) glass doors at the foot of the steps from the street, protecting the station from the weather, and respectively marked "Entrada" and "Salida" (in green and red depending on the flow of respective traffic entering and leaving the station). Furthermore, unlike the New York metro, the turnstiles do not go in both directions, but rather there are a specific bank of entry turnstiles and a specific bank of exit gates, so one is never stuck waiting and desperately trying to get into a station when hordes of people are emerging from a crowded train, as sometimes happens in New York City. This very nice and intelligent set up was not thought out for rain however, as Madrid metro stations also tend to have very smooth marble floors, which get very slippery when wet. The "entry" side of the metro stations generally become a lane of slick skating rink, punctuated by puddles, which requires careful navigation to avoid slipping, while the "exit" side of the metro stations are generally quite dry, with the exception on the wettest days of having discernible wet footprints of boots and so on. Everyone walks into the metro wet, and then (due to the Look of Death for unfurled umbrellas) does their best to keep their surroundings dry on the (quite adequately heated) trains, and then walks out of the metro dry, which leads to two visible lanes, a wet one entering and a dry one leaving. Moral of the story: do not run to catch a train on a rainy day in Madrid. If you are running late, make up the extra four minutes after you reach your destination, running to leave the station. It is much safer.
I've been telling myself (to soothe my conscience) that it didn't matter so much that I wasn't blogging as I wasn't doing anything interesting, except writing, and going to yoga (and the lectures, which I'll write about), and generally living my daily life, and as I've already blogged about all that stuff, it would be boring. But it occurs to me that perhaps I've been getting blasé about the little details that make Madrid interesting (like the wet and dry lanes entering and exiting the metro, and the space on city buses which is neatly designed for "shopping carts and wheeled suitcases" ("carros de compras y maletas con ruedas") which has a little sill around the floor of a squared off area, and a belt which can be snapped around said wheeled luggage to keep it from falling over. (This is why at least in theory you can take suitcases on Madrid buses and not get the Look of Death. Just not wet umbrellas.) So I will try to once more look with new eyes at this still very lovely city that I've been perhaps getting too accustomed to. Again, sorry for the long silence, and even more for the lack of pictures to illustrate this entry.
More soon, I promise.
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