surface tension

An excerpt taken from the journal I was forced happily to write for my study abroad program in Valencia, Spain:

I’ll skip the tedious airline monotony: checking bags, passing through stepped up security (our flight being on Delta, a strange and unkind coincidence to the recent attack on that exact same airline), trying to find the group, finding the group, getting a little tipped at a Chillis airport Bar and Grill, then finally boarding.  What I will say is that I did not get to celebrate the New Year in the air.  I was zonked.  Greg did though, and I wonder if he felt the decade pass by us all, sitting a meager two-thousand miles above the Atlantic Ocean.  Probably not, it takes a group party mentality to usher in a year – but at least he was conscious for it.

Our plane landed, as was planned, in Madrid.  A memory I have that will probably never leave anytime soon was what happened as we got off the metro, lugging the heavy baggage the group was carrying up the umpteenth staircase into the semi-cold Madrid air.  The air itself was something between crispy and light, an Oneonta fall breeze promising a harsh winter.  Mostly all of the bags had roller wheels, and so here go thirteen of us strolling down the street, the stress of the tiny baggage wheels going click-clack, click-clack as we walked in a single-file line down the sidewalk.  The streets were empty, deserted, as if we really were in Oneonta at a much too early time in the morning.  We were trying to find the hotel, and as we moved from sidewalk to street, street to next sidewalk, you could spot the remnants of a serious celebration: small firecrackers were strewn across the ground, random garbage that suggested a fiesta which had probably just culminated in a bang by the time our large bags made it to the street level, going click-clack, click-clack to a backdrop of an eerie silence.  Then, I don’t know at what point, but some bandito thinks he hasn’t done his fair share of celebratory mayhem, and fires off a wicked bolt of a firework down some side street.  It sounds like he unloaded a clip though, with the possibility of a first degree, and everyone’s a little wary.  “Was that a gunshot?” Someone whispers.  It’s my first memory of stepping foot on a street in Spain and oh is it a good one.

Another great memory to cherish so tightly to the breast is after unpacking our bags into the various rooms of the hotel we would be staying at for the night – Greg, Dylan and I decided to head out for a bit of a bite to eat on the town.  We had recognized a place to go on the way in actually – Café Colores (it seemed to me at the time a novice place to eat – I had at least the common knowledge to know it was called the ‘Color Café’ in my departed language).  So here we come, three American guys, expecting a sweet little café where we can order tea and scones and other ironically English, post-noon time delicacies.  We walk in, and that picture is instantly shattered before our very eyes.  Instead of being greeted by the pleasant sight of a flock of kind-hearted nuns or sweet elderly Spanish women, we’re greeted by the seedy gaze of rough-cut men at a bar.  I don’t think they had any food, they did have beers though, cigarettes, and the gaze in which they rebounded to us was obviously a look of, “And what in the hell are these ‘puntas’ doing here.”  It’s around two or three mind you – but it seems we had forgotten that the following night the entire city had been out, and these old rugged Spanish dudes might not have even of slept, forgoing any siesta to instead drink away any signs of hangover.  We instantly retraced our steps in humiliating silence, and since we had to walk back to the hotel –passing the café for a second time – I kept my head down, not trying to find a piercing gaze.  Somebody did look up from our group though, and apparently everyone in the café (bar?) was laughing their heads off.  For the life of me I can’t imagine why.