I've now been without at-home 'net access for five days. Five long days. Not from choice, mind you. It's the result of the latest in a nearly two-month-long series of screw-ups by the Spanish telephone company, Telefónica -- an ongoing display of incompetence that has, at times, been breathtaking in its relentlessness.
The good parts of suddenly finding myself with far too much time on my hands: it's gotten me writing more than I had been. It's gotten me out walking more than I had been. It's had me more focused on connecting with friends. It's had me on the couch, reading, relaxing.
Yesterday evening found me out in chilly December air, making a long, leisurely pass through the city center, one soul amid oceans of people out shopping, sitting at cafes, walking (groups of friends talking and laughing, families with kids in tow, couples of all ages holding hands). My feet took me to la Plaza Mayor, where the annual Christmas market is in full swing and crowds swirled through the large, cobblestoned space, business at the many stalls brisk.
It's a strange event to those accustomed to holiday-season fairs in the States and the U.K. -- there are only three or four kinds of stalls, each type selling essentially the same merchandise, and those three or fours stalls are repeated over and over as one walks through the market, the only real difference being the stall size and the faces behind the counter. What makes it fun is those who come to buy and hang out. Spirits are high, people are clearly enjoying themselves.
With December 28 (el Día de los Santos Inocentes) being the Spanish version of April Fool's Day, stalls selling gag items, masks and wacky wigs are flooded with shoppers -- one visible result being people all over that part of the city wearing funny hair. I saw a family of four all sporting the same style wig, an orange/red vertical number that had them looking like bumpkins whose heads were on fire. At that moment, I hadn't yet gotten out cameras -- by the time I'd dragged one from its bag and armed myself, the flaming-heads clan had marched off.
More popular headgear: cloth antlers featuring small red lights, peddled by individuals spread around the plaza (the vast majority of them asian), also hawking light sticks, light swords and other lit thingies. Vendors stood at folding tables piled high with potato chips, buyers coming away with chip-filled cones of paper. A musical group made its way around the plaza, attracting a crowd wherever it planted itself to strike up a tune. And off around the plaza's edges, the lit windows of stores, bars, cafeterias revealed businesses heaving with customers.
A nice place to be for a while -- overflowing with life, movement, energy -- before heading back out into crowded streets, holiday lights overhead, cars reduced to slow, cautious speeds so as not to flatten pedestrians spilling over from the sidewalks. And then home, still empty of 'net access and the ability to extend out into the world via computer, but home nevertheless. For now.
Tomorrow I catch a flight back to the States, where tomorrow night I will find myself once again in Vermont (winter weather permitting) after seven weeks away. Back to a very different world -- farms, small towns, rolling countryside, green mountains, all likely frosted with snow. Back online sometime after that.
Be well.
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Yesterday, dusk -- the Christmas market at la Plaza Mayor, Madrid
(a row of stalls below, the western length of the plaza building above)
España, te quiero.
rws 6:51 AM [+]
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