Being good and cultural in Madrid

Woke up at 9am, still drunk, btw, on Saturday morning for a lovely hotel breakfast which turned out to not live up to the Bécquer´s. Oh well. They had some good lil pastries, and coconut yogurt (finally!) which I ate with my cereal. I don´t trust the milk out here, honestly, and it´s way too thick for my liking, so yogurt is the new milk for me. When I get back to the states I am eating my cereal with yogurt always. Me gusta mucho. I forgot to say that I as we left to go out the previous night we ran into Eva and Pepe returning from dinner, and of course we were all shwasted. Great times. Well, going down to breakfast Stacey and I were definitely still under the influence, and on the way Stacey said, "I hope we don´t run into Eva." Well, we did. And we were required to sit with her because of being part of the group or something. Oh, it was a silly breakfast. Anyways, we went back to sleep for a couple hours, woke up, and left with Jessica, Courtney, Katie, and Melissa for a bit of shopping and Reina Sofía (the contemporary art museum which has Picasso´s infamous "Guernica"). Oh, so Stacey, Jessica, Courtney, Katie, and Melissa are the girls with whom I usually am out, so they have officially reached the status of "the girls." So when I refer to "the girls," you know who it is that I speak of. We walked down the main street close to our hotel and passed one of the main theatres here (think the Cadillac or Chicago theatres), Teatro Lope de Vega, where a huge disco ball was spinning to advertise Mamma Mia. On a whim, we got in line to buy tickets. We all bought the cheapest seats (25€), had a bit of language issues with the lady selling tickets, but it was alllll good. Our tickets were for the 6:00 show, wooooot! We were quite pumped. We then began searching for some cheap, good food, and on the way stopped in an awesome shoe store. Nobody bought anything because everyone has large feet (except me, of course) and Spain typically doesn´t carry large sizes. I guess I fit in well here with my little Spanish feet, eh? We finally found a little eatery called Pans, which is like a Panera minus the soup. It´s cool, they have many different sandwiches on many different kinds of bread. I got a 5 cereal bread (5 grain) with pavo (turkey), lechuga (lettuce), and yogur (yogurt). It was good, and healthy! I´m going to start using plain yogurt instead of mayo from now on...yeah, I´m definitely on a yogurt kick. After fooding it for a bit (oooh rhyme) we hopped on a very crowded Metro to hit up the Reina Sofía (and I was soooo excited).
The Reina Sofía is a very confusing building. We definitely had orientation problems. The first exhibit we saw was some very guerilla-esque contemporary art made in the past two years by Spanish artists. Quite weird, post-modern, and difficult to decipher. I was not a huge fan. We wanted to find the Picasso, Dalí, and Miró, but could not figure it out. Then these sketchy Argentinian guys of around 23ish approached us and told us where to go. They tried striking up convo, but I was immediately struck with a really ugly vibe from them, they definitely did not seem like good news. I seriously think that my Chicago instincts kick in a lot with people around here, because everyone else was being cordial and responding to them. I stood away from the group and refused to make eye contact with them, I didn´t trust them too much in terms of their intentions. Thankfully, however, they guided us to the Picasso exhibited and they went their own separate way. Good, I didn´t feel right about them at all. Then we ended up splitting up, me with Melissa and Courtney, and then Jessica, Katie, and Stacey together. The three of us spent a lot of time on the Picasso, which is a stunning collection. The museum has a lot of his earlier and later work which is very different than the Picasso that typically comes to mind. They also had a lot of sketches, particularly test sketches of parts of "Guernica." Then, we walked into the area where "Guernica" hung. This painting is absolutely stunning. It´s humongous, captivating, and disturbing. We read that the painting was commissioned for the World´s Fair the year that it was produced, can you imagine how disturbing that must have been? The painting is black and white, contrary to Picasso´s masterpieces, and extremely large which also contrasts previous Picasso works. It´s also a very difficult depiction of the Spanish Civil War. It is very disturbing when you look at it in person, there´s death and destruction everywhere, absolutely no triumph or pride. I recommend you look up an image of it if you´ve never seen it before, it´s an amazing work of art that all should see. It was so awesome to see this work in person that has hung on small posters in every single one of my Spanish classes for the past 9 years. It is a very important work in the modern art realm, as well as Spain, and Europe as a whole. Seriously, check it out. After spending a very long time gazing at the magnificent piece, we headed over to the huge Miró collection. I LOVE MIRÓ! His work is fascinating and exciting to look at. His use of color and line exemplifies what I love about modernism...it´s experimental, psychological, simple and yet extremely effective. It´s true genius. It´s really awesome to see his work in person, which I have never seen before. Same with Dalí: his work is crazy and quite haunting. Really taps into the unconscious, which was his goal. I swear, that man was on drugs for sure. It´s trippy stuff. Dalí is so awesome, I love him! Oh man, what a crazy tío (dude). It was really awesome to look at these paintings with Melissa and Courtney because we actually discussed the paintings that we looked at, which I really appreciate. Modern art´s purpose is to delve into the interaction between viewer and painting, and that goal was accomplished. We were not passive viewers like we were at the Prado, we were active viewers which is what is necessary for the appreciation of modernist works. LOVE IT! After that we went into the Surrealist photography room. We saw Man Ray photos, who is one of my favorite photographers of all time. However, their collection was pretty sparse (boo) but still a pleasure to observe. Then we went into a little room that was showing a silent film by a famous Surrealist film maker...I can´t remember his name, but Melissa is a huge fan. The film was so cool, definitely revolutionary in terms of cinematography, acting, and comedic timing. It was great. After that we rushed to the gift shop, which unfortunately kind of sucked (and we were short on time as it was), and headed out to catch a metro back to the theatre.
We walked pretty quickly to the metro, worried that we would be late, and once we got off at our stop we kind of ran. We still got there at about a quarter to six. We took our seats which were allllll the way in the back row of the balcony, haha! It was cool, you could still see the stage very well. Then, a couple more groups of Americans took seats in the rest of the back row...we think that maybe they reserve the nosebleed section for Americans. Hehe. "Mamma Mia" was AWESOME! Everything was in Spanish, the script, the music, everything. Let me tell ya, Abba in Spanish is worth hearing. Such as "Chico ven aquí" ("Take a Chance on Me") or "Para mí, para ti" ("Knowing Me, Knowing You"), etc. etc. It was so fun, we definitely danced it up at the end! Oh, Donna sounded like a man, she had a very deep voice, but I think that that type of voice is considered really beautiful here. I´m just so used to the squeaky voices of the U.K.´s version. Also, the guy who played Sam was like and opera singer. He was great! The show was so fun, and it definitely invigorrated all of us after a tiring day. Half of us there had not even seen it in English, and they loved it! Yayyyy musical theatre!
After the theatre we took Evan´s dinner suggestion and hit up Zahara. This restaurant was quite large and smokey, but their menu was large and had American food which appeased many of the girls. I wanted to stick with the Spanish-esque food, so I got a tortilla de mariscos while everybody else got bacon cheeseburgers and salads. Now, a Spanish tortilla is not what you´d think--it´s an omelette, typically prepared with potatoes and onions. I got one with mariscos (shellfish) which was basically an omelette with shrimp. It was not great, not much flavor. Whatever, though, I´m just experimental like that. Oh man, I missed Maruja´s cooking! After dinner we rushed back to get to the hotel to get ready. We stopped at a convenience store to pick up munchies for later that night since we had learned that places closed early around these parts.
All in all, we packed a lot into a day. We were all so proud of ourselves for really taking advantage of Madrid and being super cultural. We´re totally getting the full experience, it´s so exciting! It was an excellent, excellent, day!!