More Inflammatory Remarks about the Public Transportation System in Madrid (Among Other Things)

If there is one thing I’ve learned about myself over the past few days, it is that I am bad at navigating public transportation. There is hardly ever a direct line to where I want to go, and I have not yet figured out the right combination of buses and trains which will get me where I want to go quickly – or as quickly as public transportation can get me somewhere. Every time I get on a bus or a metro train, I think that I have somehow beaten the system, and that I will arrive at the appointed location quickly. Not so. I seem to choose the route with the most stops, or the most changes of stops. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they often come hand-in-hand.

For example, this afternoon I decided that I was sick of being in Madrid without having seen major Madrid attractions. Today’s project was to see the Reina Sofia Museum. The Metro stop is at Atocha on Light Blue Line (Line 1), but my work is at Pio XII on the Purple one (Line 9). The red and purple lines don’t even cross, which means that I had to change trains two times to get to Atocha. My German co-worker was going on the bus, and I thought I would be amicable, wait with her, and then ride the bus to Calle Jorge Juan. At the Jorge Juan bus stop, I would take the Red Line to Sol, then the Light Blue Line to Atocha. It was perfect and foolproof!

Guess what I see twice a day, five days a week...

Except I had trouble finding the Goya metro stop (I might have initially been searching for the Retiro stop, but that’s not important – I found a metro line anyway! This mentality might be the reason I have such a hard time navigating the public transportation system in the first place. There's always a metro stop, and there's always a bus stop where you can find a map. The trouble is finding the right bus to take you were you want to go). And it took nearly an hour to get form work to the Reina Sofia. Wow, most of that paragraph was parenthetical. My apologies, for that, and my apologies for not wanting to go back and edit it out.

I also took the wrong direction out of the Metro towards Retiro Park, instead of toward the Reina Sofia, which took away another 15 minutes from my museum-time. (That's another thing about metros - I'm always disoriented when I come out of them.) I did spend a few minutes looking at an installation of activist art which was raising awareness of violence against women, and I liked that. I do not consider that time wasted. Nevertheless, I did get to the museum eventually, and my wanderings were kept to a minimum.

I wandered around the Reina Sofia by myself, and it was nice to have some alone-time. The Reina Sofia is for smaller works by big artists (with a few exceptions), and it has a lot of the Spanish art. Spanish surrealism is not my favorite, but that’s okay. I had fun imagining things and seeing faces in the paintings. There was a painting called "Head of a Smoker" which I thought was funny because it reminded me of one of the other workers. The next picture I saw was blue and had a white line-like string. It looked like me. I saw a few Salvador Dalis and lots of Picassos. I even saw this:

Guernica, Pablo Picasso

It was… rather depressing. My favorite part of the painting is the horse’s mouth because you can see inside and outside of it, and the roundness of it (not captured well in the photograph). To be honest, I liked some of the sketches and studies Picasso did for “Guernica” even better than “Guernica” itself. There was a study of a crying man, and I liked it because it was so contorted and so cramped – the person could barely fit inside the frame of the painting.

I only got an hour at the Reina Sofia, which was fine by me. I went during their no-charge hours, and I plan on going back again sometime soon.

Donde son las tortugas?

As I was figuring out where I was and the best way to get back to mi casa – and taking a few pictures to document my ventures into the heart of Madrid – I was caught off guard by someone saying, “Perdón, dondé es…” I turned around, and there was an Asian kid with a yellow t-shirt on. From his accent to his yellow shirt, I felt that he was American. I told him that he could speak English if he wanted (I wouldn’t have understood his Spanish anyway, but he didn’t need to know that), and immediately he started speaking in lovely, familiar, American English. He wanted to know where a cheap tapas bar would be where he and his two friends could eat. I wouldn’t know, because I actually have not been to a tapas bar yet. (Yes, yes, castigate me, but I’ve been being frugal and “cooking” for myself [even if that means microwave dinners sometimes – don’t worry, they’re Spanish microwave dinners which makes everything okay! I’m not wasting my time here in Spain!].)

Anyway, I knew that they wouldn’t find a cheap tapas bar anywhere on the Calle de Atocha or at the Plaza del Emperador Carlos V. There may be some cheap bars on some of the side streets, but I didn’t know where to look for them. I am the chica who can't even get to the Reina Sofia from my work in a timely manner (and then follow the signs pointing to the Reina Sofia.)

Nevertheless, it was good to speak with other Americans. I miss people from my country, and I like taking the time to chat with them before we move on our separate ways. One of them was from San Francisco and was studying in San Diego, so we bonded momentarily over the fact we had lived in California. Anyway, they were soon off on the Metro, and I was soon on the Metro too, although we ended up going separate ways. Goodbye, American acquaintances.

I went on my merry way, taking another 45 minutes to get home. There's a metro strike in Madrid, and only half the number of trains are running. Which means yet again, longer on the trains.

Whoo.

No tapas for you.