Madrid-The first couple of days

     The cool thing about Barajas airport in Madrid is that the metro, the underground subway that has lines running through every major barrio in the city, connects to it and allows you to get anywhere you need to go in less than 30 minutes. I had just spent a long, cramped airplane ride trying not to think too much about the fact that I was leaving everything behind for a year. So I sat on my thick duffel bag, zipping through the dark passages underneath city. I wrote down which lines to take in a little blue book that I kept in my back pocket and lugged my bag up and down stairs and through ticket booths until I arrived at the Bilbao metro station. Because the metro is underground and the airport a few miles away from the city, I had technically been in Madrid for an hour but hadn't seen any of it. This was my first sight as I walked up the steps and stood blinking in the fresh air.
     The Bilbao stop has 5 streets running through it in a tangled web. Overlooking the monument in the center are tall, pink and tan apartment buildings with wrought iron balconies and ceramic flower boxes. Mopeds zip by as white vans park crookedly on the clean sidewalks and unload massive cuts of Jamon Iberico, Madrid's specialty cured ham that's served sliced on baguettes with olive oil or tomato.
      Waiters in black and white moved around tables clustered under an awning, serving café con leche and churros. Always in the background was the rush and swirl of air as cars zoomed by and people ran down the steps into the metro to catch their early commutes to work.
      I let my bag slip down my shoulder.
      The sun was just coming over the top of the plaza, and I was finally here.
      That was nearly a week ago. Like I've told some of the other BEDA teachers, Madrid has completely blown away my expectations. When I was doing a bit of research on the city before moving I got the feeling that Madrid was much like any other big city. Noisy, dirty, with a few museums, some nice parks, etc. Nothing about that is correct.
      Madrid is clean. Cleaner than the majority of cities I've been to in the states even. Although the city does have its barrios that are more crowded and busy than others, it only takes a five minute walk to find a thin winding street with a café or a quiet square lined with trees.
     My first few days I stayed in Malasana (the n has a tilde above it but I still haven't figured out how to do that on an American laptop). The hostel was small and cramped. I had to lug my bag up four flights of narrow stairs to get to the room I shared with twelve other guys on aluminum bunk beds. After nearly 48 hours of no sleep I was jet lagged, my arms were killing me, and I started to have a sinking feeling that maybe I had made a mistake. I dropped off my things and rented a locker so that I could stow my laptop and passport while I walked around the city a bit.
     When I went downstairs there were four other BEDA teachers waiting to be checked in. These guys have since become some of my best-friends in the city but more on that later.
     That night I was alone on the bottom bunk of my room wondering what I was doing. I had little money, no plan on how to find an apartment, and didn't know anyone within a couple thousand miles. I was overwhelmed that I would go at least nine months without seeing my family or the other people I love. Sometime during this pensive, obnoxious self-pitying I must have dozed off.
    The next thing I knew someone was nudging my foot. The room was dark and I could hear snoring coming from the other side of the hall. I immediately made sure my pants and belt were securely fastened. Then I turned on the light.
     It turned out to be the guy from the bunk next to me, asking me if I wanted to go out and have a drink with him and some of the other people in the hostel. What I really wanted was sleep. I wanted to not think or talk to anyone or have to worry about the logistics of changing clothes in a room full of people. But I nodded and struggled into a wrinkled shirt and followed him downstairs. The next thing I know I'm in a square a few blocks from the hostel, sharing a beer with two British girls, a hilarious Londoner named Nathan (who turned out to be in BEDA as well), a few university students from Holland and Germany, and the guy who had woken me up to begin with from Mexico City, who was finishing up the last leg in his month long travel binge around Europe.
     We stayed up until 3 in the lobby of the hostel, talking until we had to drag ourselves up the stairs to bed.
     This post was supposed to be smaller and kind of recap everything over the past week; how I found a place, made friends, and explored that city. Its rambling and its hard to describe everything about the past week. All I can do is flip through the snapshots in my head and try to make sense it all. I guess the one thing that stands out the most is that first day and that rush of excitement and fear.

     Travel isn't safe. Not real travel anyway. We can try to explore another culture and its people but it's hard when we return to the nice hotels and comfort of the familiar that we use to protect ourselves. I know, because that is all I wanted that first night, but what I got in return was much more valuable, and I can't wait to see where the rest of this journey takes me.

Sunset over Retiro Park from the roof of my apartment