If you heard about the GLENNON DOYLE fiasco/drama, I wrote about it HERE. It has become my most viewed essay ever. (Click above link)
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Living in another country—Spain—has been fascinating. May 3rd was one month we’ve been here. What a journey. I’ve been speaking more Spanish here in Madrid than ever before. The memories of walking 450 miles across northern Spain on El Camino de Santiago, in 2016, have been flashing through my mind.
We’ve gotten to know the local neighborhood we’re in: Universidad. On one side, Gran Via and Plaza Espana/Oriente (Spain’s Times Square, basically), and on the other side a much more “authentic” Madrid experience, with fewer people (Gran Via has literal “seas” of people, rivers of humans), narrow cobblestone streets, and old catholic cathedrals and gothic buildings everywhere. (However, it is a very large and modern city with over three million residents and fast, efficient subway system.)
We go to a local butcher for chicken and meat, and a “fruteria” for “anrandanos” (blueberries), as well as apples, bananas and other things like that.
I have gone to several English-language AA meetings around Madrid and they’re fantastic. In AA they say, Where the drinking is hard, the AA is good. And actually it doesn’t seem to be the case that the drinking is so much “hard” here as constant and omnipresent. Britney says the “vino tinto” (red wine) here is very light. It’s also cheap and most people consume at multiple meals each day. It’s simply part of the culture.
It’s true about the Spanish “siesta.” We get up late, around 8, 8:30am, do our routines—she does yoga, cleans, listens to podcasts; I read, sip way too much black tea, and write—and then head out in the afternoon, after lunch at home. But between around 2-7pm there are many fewer restaurants open. Most people don’t go out to dinner until around 8:30, 9pm or later. The night life here is always abuzz with energy and vitality. In this way it reminds me of Mexico City. People out and about at 10, 11pm, as if it were 6pm on a summer day, talking, shopping, eating at cafes, etc. I love it.
We did our Padron thing today (registering with the city so that we’re authentic and paying taxes). It was a 40 minute walk. We left at 9am and were both underdressed. It was cold out and a little windy. Mostly we walked along empty cobblestone streets in deep, heavy shade. Sometimes we pushed past big blasts of bright sunshine and it felt good and warm against our shivering skin. Graffiti is everywhere along the walls and street signs in some parts of town, which is a little odd.
The Padron bureaucracy was not bad at all. We were there for less than an hour. Like the DMV but fast. Easy. On the 40 minute walk back to our apartment on Calle de Los Amigos I saw an outdoor series of open bookstalls. We had to go. I forced Britney over there. Each in turn I asked the proprietors: “Tu tienes libros en Engles?” Only one guy had about 20 books in English. I rushed through them and found an essay collection by Tom Wolfe called The Mid-Atlantic Man. I happily bought the book for $8 euros.
On the way home we discussed our financial situation in Spain, and renewing at the end of one year, which seems to be more complicated—maybe?—than we originally thought. Governmental change has occurred around visas and immigration the past year so it’s hard to say. We’ll hopefully know more soon. I would be devastated if we had to come back after only one year. I sincerely hope that isn’t the case. (I don’t think it will be.)
Yesterday I saw a psychiatrist for the first time in Spain. I needed to re-up my Prozac (for O.C.D.). It was nice, actually. The woman I spoke with—in flawless English—felt more like a talk-therapist in a way, asking me a jezillion questions about my life, my past, my family, my wife, etc. She was shocked when I discussed my drinking years between 2000-2010. Her eyes widened and she said, You are very lucky to be alive, to have survived that time. Yes, I assured her. I know.
Strangely—to an ignorant American—our private insurance here does NOT cover mental health. And most mental health institutions do not take insurance. So we paid out of pocket. It wasn’t a lot of money…but it wasn’t free either. Yet on the flip side: She wrote me a prescription right then and, after I left, I walked into the first farmacia I saw (you don’t have to pick a specific place like in the States) and they scanned my pdf code from an email from the shrink, and I paid my $5 euros for the meds. Easy, fast, cheap and efficient.
We’ve been trying to balance our going out vs staying in. We want to save money. Madrid is expensive for Spain but generally cheaper than Portland, where we came from, or certainly less expensive than the Bay Area, Santa Barbara or New York City, where I came from before that. (Or even Lompoc.)
I like not living in the United States. Not because I “hate” the USA—I love America!—or even because of Trump (c’mon), but because I’ve simply always wanted to have the classic American ex-pat experience. (Thank Henry Miller, Nabokov, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce for that.) And we ARE very much having that experience. I have completely, as in 100%, lost interest in U.S. (or any) politics. Just bores me now. I haven’t listened to a single political podcast (or in fact any podcast) since we arrived in Spain April 3. I unsubscribed to most of my political podcasts, even my favorite one. I feel extremely present, here, right now, in Madrid, in Spain.
Anyway. We’re enjoying the experience. So far just about close to everyone—with one or two minor exceptions—has been incredibly friendly, nice and kind here, locals and tourists alike. They even appreciate when we try to speak the language. (In Mexico City they laughed at me.) People are warm here, decent. Funny. We didn’t know anything about Madrid before moving here and, in fact, neither of us had ever even been to this city. We’d both traveled in Spain broadly (I walked El Camino de Santiago in 2016) but had never been to Madrid. Because the point of going wasn’t specifically because of or for Madrid; it was to be in Europe, on the continent, and to experience a new culture and to have a European base from which to travel.
It just turned out—seemingly randomly—that this city is perfect for us. (Still, we might move to the south of Spain along the Mediterranean next year, assuming we get to stay, just for the rural ocean experience; also it’s cheaper there.) We love the people, the culture, the food (delicious), the activity. There are bookstores on every corner, it seems. (Not as many as I’d like in English, but enough.) People read here. It’s an intellectual city. There are museums, churches, everything you could ask for and more. You walk down the street on Gran Via and hear half a dozen different languages buzzing like flies. It’s an “international city,” like Manhattan, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin.
If I had my way perhaps we’d never return. Perhaps we’d stay here forever. (Although when we’re 50, in eight and ten years, maybe Thailand.)
All the usual afflictions, of course: Self-doubt, my wild alcoholic brain, the desire to throw caution to the wind and travel every second, fear of many different things, including the impending realism of death somewhere in the mysterious, hopefully distant shadowy future.
But underneath all that: Genuine gratitude, joy and contentment.