parada

The elementary school where I work four days a week is in Perales del Rio, a tiny bedroom community outside of a suburb of Madrid. If I were to hop in a car, it would take me about fifteen minutes to get from my downtown apartment to my school. Since I don't have a car, I spend a little under an hour in commute each way in a foot-subway-bus combo. At first it seemed awful, but I got used to it and eventually came to actually enjoy it. It's a good opportunity to get some reading in,and occasionally I cross paths with some interesting people.

As I approached the bus stop in Perales the other day, a woman of seventy or so, looking rather agitated, began throwing questions at me before I had even stopped walking. She´d been waiting for this damned bus for nearly half an hour, she said, and was losing patience.  She supported herself unsteadily on a garled wooden cane and was missing several teeth. Her clothes were neat but simple. I told her the bus would arrive in about ten minutes.

´I remember when this area was nothing but open field,´ she says, gesturing to the little village, whose architecture and young trees indicate no more than twenty years. ´The city was smaller then.´ She says the same thing has happened to downtown Madrid, where she has spent her entire life. ´There was a public hospital on Atocha Street, right by my house.´ She´s wistful. ´Now they´ve moved it to the middle of nowhere.´ Everything in Madrid´s city center has been slowly migrating into the peripheral areas, she laments. ´I´d never leave downtown if it were up to me. But a good friend lives way out here and doesn´t like to come into the city. I didn´t have kids because I didn´t want to complicate my life, and now my friends complicate it for me. But it´s nice to see old friends.´

It´s not all reminiscing, though. Although she remembers the city as smaller, maybe more quaint, she spent her youth under an oppressive dictatorship. ´I saw people starving. Dying of hunger in the streets. Sick and dying.´ Spain´s fascist regime, which lasted forty years and fell only upon the death of leader Francisco Franco in 1975, was initially intensely isolationist, cutting off international trade and further stifiling an economy already ravaged by civil war. In the latter half of Franco´s reign, the economy grew, but this growth was enjoyed largely by the upper classes. ´You weren´t yet in the world, honey, but believe me, it was hard.´

A couple of years ago Levi and I had lunch with an retired neighbor in Zafra, a stately, sweatervest sort of fellow with a modest but very comfortable downtown flat. He showed us the Franco-era pistol he keeps in a velvet lined box and his collection of Franco coins, lamenting that those were better times, before the euro, before these liberal Popes and progressive governments, when people had money and stability and Spanish culture was at its most glorious heights. Those were the days.

mercado

Enjoying a chocolate stout with my friend Erin

Spain isn't known for its beer, and for good reason. Most bars offer only one beer on tap, and it's almost always one of a handful of domestics that resemble the poorer of the mass-produced American lagers. It's refreshing in the summer heat, but frankly, it's pretty awful. Of course, the wine here is fantastic, but after two years in Spain and a year in Thailand (where the beer tastes like its Spanish counterpart but is, judging by the vicious hangovers it causes, clearly laced with poison), I sometimes find myself desperately craving a good beer.

Juanma at work

When we arrived in Madrid, some new friends introduced us to the wonder that is the San Fernando Market. Only two blocks from our door, it houses La Buena Pinta, a tiny beer shop with bottled imports from all over Europe and select beers from America. The name of this little place is a play on the Spanish expression tiene buena pinta, which means "it looks delicious," and the literal meaning of the phrase buena pinta, which is "the good pint." The owner is incredibly knowledgeable in all things beery and makes great recommendations. He's got a nice bar setup so we sit right there and enjoy our liquid treats.

The market itself is an old warehouse-style building with two dozen or so mini-shops like La Buena Pinta. There are wine and vermouth shops, a couple of Spanish-style bars with tapas and light beer, a Greek snack bar, a sushi restaurant, various bread and cheese stores, a cobbler (who rescued my boots for seven euros) and a book shop that sells second-hand books by the kilo (Girl With the Dragon Tattoo weighs .65 kilos, so it's  €6.50). A few tables are set up in the open space and each food and drink shop has its own little bar, so you can pick up some olives, some goat cheese, and a baguette and have a picnic with your pint or glass of wine.

Sunday morning party time

On Sundays the markets hosts dance events. One weekend a big group of amateur dancers came in and showed off various types of Latin dance while we drank chocolate stout and ate empanadas. It's a great place, far and away my favorite spot in our neighborhood.

*All photos are, of course, courtesy of the incredibly talented Levi Shand. Check out his website!

casa

After over three years without setting foot on American soil, I finally had to opportunity to go home over this Christmas break. I spent two fantastic weeks hanging out with my parents and my now-all-grown-up baby sister, siteseeing in St. Louis and lazing around the fantastic downtown apartment where my newly hip(ster) mom and dad are enjoying their first child-free years in nearly three decades. My mom organized what turned out to be an incredible reunion of all my favorite Springfield people, the family friends and high school buddies I´ve missed so much, at an Irish bar we frequented for years. I at last had a chance to enjoy the American culinary variety that has been sadly missing from my life; I ate a reuben, a pan of mac´and cheese, a tex-mex feast, Rice Krispie treats, Christmas cookies, gourmet hamburgers, pad thai, Toaster Strudels, cheesecake, Starbursts (don´t judge, you miss weird stuff when you´re away so long). I think I drank somewhere in the neighborhood of ten pints of Guinness and enjoyed my dad´s two-week tour of the bars and pubs of downtown St. Louis.

Incredible food and drink aside (it really is better in America than anywhere I´ve ever been ) the highlight was seeing my family. The hardest thing about living abroad is the distance between me and my loved ones. My parents and my sister visited me in Zafra in 2011, but I hadn´t seen anyone else since I departed in August of 2010. So this was the first time I´d been with them in a good long while. The cousins who were little kids when I left are now talking about college. The ones who were toddlers and kindergarteners are now kids old enough to politely fib that they remember me. I hope to never again go so long without a visit.

The only disappointment of the trip was not getting a chance to see my great grandfather who, due to the truly wretched weather in the Midwest, was unable to make the trip to the McDermott family party. A Skype date is definitely in order. Love you Great Grandpa!

All in all, a fantastic trip. I can´t say I was sad to leave the 14 below weather in Chicago, but I already miss my wonderful family. It´s 50 and sunny here, guys. Come see me!