#2: Madrid - Orientation and Football

19th December, 2009. 

Our time spent in Madrid could be divided into 3 general phases – orientation and football, museums and boredom, trains and Toledo.

Having collected our bags at the airport, we made our way to the airport shuttle counter for the ride into Madrid. The alternative was an hour’s journey on three different metro lines, but as we discovered later that night, it was probably a good idea we got the shuttle.

The shuttle bus took us to a street near Plaza Santa Ana where we were to check in before walking a short way to our hostal. Now for those unfamiliar with the term, a hostal is like a small hotel. We used a card key to get in, the room was made up each day, but  there were only 6-7 rooms.

This point marked the beginning of the orientation phase. Dumping our bags we dived headlong into exploring Madrid with the first of many walks. It’s important to remember that with dad navigating, these were (and I’m sure will also later be) a major source of tension within the family. It’s in these instances I’m glad most people over here can’t understand that much English. With the hostal located in the old area of Madrid, we begun to learn our way around the many seemingly random cobbled streets.

Above: Plaza Mayor de Madrid

Eventually stumbling upon Plaza Mayor and its Saturday Christmas market, hunger overtook cultural curiosity with our exploration sidelined by a search for somewhere to eat. Mum suggested one of many places she’d read about on her “travel forums” – an eatery by the name of Museo de Jamon (yup, that’s literally the museum of ham). This place was a combination cafe and meat & cheese shop. As it turned out, Museo de Jamon is a chain of shops and would be responsible for a number of meals over the next few days.

Above: Our local Museo de Jamon. The meat/cheese shop is on the left,

while you can order and eat at the counters on the right.

Getting back from the walk, we had a few hours to kill (siesta anyone?) before heading out to see Real Madrid vs Real Zaragoza at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu. The game started at 10pm, but we decided to leave the hostal at 730 since we had no idea where to go at the stadium, or even where to collect the tickets. A short metro trip, just 7 stops on two lines, was all that was needed to bring us right outside the stadium. It’s weird to think a stadium can be located in the suburbs, given that the Sydney Football Stadium is in the middle of nowhere. Tickets were eventually collected after finding the open ticket office (out of at least 10 around the stadium), and at 9pm we went inside.

Walking into our seating bay located right behind the goals, my first thought was a combination of “holy shit” and “epic”. Pictures don’t do the stadium justice, but the high walls give a perspective I’ve never seen in Australia. I’d have assumed that being so “far back” would result in a rather crappy view, but I was dead wrong. Being this high up, yet so close to the field, gave a bird’s eye view that is often seen on TV.

With time drawing closer to 10, the stadium slowly began to fill up as the temperature began to drop. No sooner than I had adjusted my scarf I noticed a slight warm sensation on my face. Wtf? Looking up I discovered several banks of heaters aimed at the stands. Heating? Brilliant!

Top: The view from our seats in the stadium.

Below: The heaters!

The game itself was again something I’d never witnessed in football. Madrid is of course one of the better Spanish (and European) teams, while Zaragoza is one of the bottom teams. I had been expecting a goalfest, and the game delivered – Madrid humiliated Zaragoza in a 6-0 thrashing. With the first goal scored after just 3 minutes, the next 87 were an exercise in fluid plays, dominating teamwork and some tricky shit I’d never see back home. Unfortunately, any A-League games I go to in the future will just be a let down.

With the game over, the task of getting back to the Hostal began.  Walking to the metro station is easy enough, until one runs into a few thousand other people trying to get home. It took roughly 20 minutes to shuffle 50m down into the station before reaching the ticket barriers. As these regulated the flow of people, it was relatively easy to walk the rest of the way down to the platform.

So now on the metro, we return to our “orientation” to Madrid. The station was packed as we transferred to the second metro line. Jamming onto the train, any concept of personal space went out the window. This is where things can go wrong. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but from where I was standing I heard dad say mum’s water bottle had fallen out of the pouch on the side of her bag.

The distraction.

Then this weedy looking guy seemed to fall onto dad as the train accelerated out of a station. Nothing that unusual, people lose their balance, stuff like that happens. But there was something odd about this guy - he had a large coat covering his arm. Like all of it, so you couldn’t see his hands.

If you hadn’t guessed it by now, this lowlife fuck was trying to pickpocket us.

While mum’s paranoia about almost everything occasionally borders insanity, in this instance it most likely saved our holiday from a truly crappy beginning. She has some travel handbag thing with a million different locks and zippers which the pickpocket foolishly attempted to get at first. Feeling the tug of the first lock, mum moved her hand to the bag and asked him something like “what the hell are you doing?!” I think it was now that he fell onto dad, actually getting his jacket’s top pocket open. But already alert to the situation, dad just grabbed at him – first by the shirt and then the neck (to which he later remarked “then what?”). Lucky for this guy, Graeme and I were a few meters away in another part of the carriage – we would have both gladly floored him. While double checking that nothing was taken, he managed to run off when the metro next stopped. A local guy on the carriage with us just shook his head – “yeah, that would be right”.

What a night, and an introduction to Spain.


- Andrew