it had me at hola (almost)

I'm about to give up my working bachelorhood.

What the heck does that mean? Well, after working no more than three days a week for the past four years, typically during afternoons, evenings, and weekends, I'm about to start a salaried position - Monday to Friday, nine to five.

Scary. So, to prepare myself, I thought I would take a short trip - to Spain.

I managed to maintain a blog during my two-month trip to France last year. I was a Francophile, still is to some degree. But for this Spanish sojourn, there will no traveling laptop, just old-fashioned scroll and quill accompanying me from Madrid to Barcelona to Valencia. Please note the "th" sound of the letter c. So in fact, I'm writing this blog entry after my return to San Francisco as I channel myself back to September 9, 2009 (that's 9-9-9, ultra-lucky in the Chinese culture) when I arrived in Spain for the first time.

My initial impressions of Madrid were generally positive. For me, public transportation is essential in any large city (Paris, New York, and Taipei are the best so far in my travels). Just a couple of euros got me a metro ride from the aeropuerto to the center of town - excellent start.

When I exited the estacion de metro, my first thought of Madrid was that it was the Spanish version of New York - lots and lots of people. However, there were a few important differences after I took in my first few Spanish breaths.

First of all, Madrid is nowhere nearly as multicultural as New York; it predominantly is a city of Spanish people with some tourists. As my friend Andrés would later tell me, Spain is relatively new to immigration, so the homogeneity in the faces I encountered was to be expected. Stay tuned - I'll return to this subject later.

The second difference is what I call the U-EQ - the urban emotional quotient. In New York, while most places you go seem to be exciting, full of the glitters of Broadway or fashion models, there are definitely areas which engender a feeling of loneliness, almost a suffocating solitude that haunts your soul. I didn't get that same feeling in Madrid, even though I don't speak Spanish and was traveling alone.

Thirdly, the architecture. There is a dark elegance to Madrid which I found quite seductive. I am not well versed in architecture (thanks to the arguably incorrect decision to study medicine in college), so I can't guarantee that I am using these terms correctly. But there is a pleasant Gothic quality to the city, sort of like Batman and Robin in Paris.

Here are a few pictures from Madrid. The first thing I saw on the streets of Madrid was McDonald's. What a disappointment.