Wait, nope. It's Madrid Day first, which is hard to fathom because I have woken up very hungover and confused as to where or what I am. Dan reminds me that we came to Spain, and tries to joke with me about the hilarity that was getting me off the airplane and into the airport shuttle, but my blank stare confirms for him the incredible breadth of my previous night's drunkenness. I laugh it off and maintain I was not drunk at all and am just normally stupid, but he is not fooled by my lies, because when he suggests we go on a walk to get coffee and see the sights, I say, "Sure!" and forget that I hate walking or doing anything at all before 10am that isn't staring at the wall and wondering if the purpose of life is to love one another or destroy each other totally.
Or drawing dick pics.
We go on a walk to enjoy the sights of Madrid for the few hours we have before our train (or 'tren' in Spanish because I am very worldly now) but we have given zero thought to what to do in Madrid, so we just decide to walk to the train station so we know where it is later on. This makes perfect sense to me because my hangover is robust enough that it is entirely possible to me that the train station could move in between us finding it this morning and needing it later, so it's best that we triangulate its position and keep a beady eye on it.
Luckily for us, on the short walk to the station, the sights of Madrid find us, rather than the other way around.
Glorious.
Dry, cozy idiots.
We are pioneers and travelers, and the lack of umbrellas does not stop us from enjoying our morning, nor does it make us stick out like sore thumbs dipped in water when everyone else is enjoying not being drenched in the cold.
This seems normal.
My intense hangover prevents me from being upset at all the walking, which is good because at some point we get incredibly turned around and end up walking back by our hotel to find the train station, which apparently was right across the street. Dan apologizes for going the wrong way, and I make burbling noises and try not to throw up on his shoes, so we call it a draw for who wronged who and enter the train station to make sure we know which train to take later on.
Take the first palm to Main Street
and then transfer to coconut.
I sometimes consider what I might find in other countries, but rarely do I think I might find a jungle inside of a train station. Madrid decides that instead of letting me enjoy sweating profusely and wondering why I am alive (to drink more, I think) that it will blow my mind with an ENTIRE JUNGLE INSIDE OF A TRAIN STATION.
It is humid. It is warm. It is a jungle inside of a train station. Honestly, I can't describe it any other way.
We return to our hotel so we can pack and ready ourselves for our trip, and all at once it dawns on us that we are intensely hungry. Though our hotel includes breakfast, the man who is serving it seems very upset that we might want food, so we venture out across the street (not to the train station) to eat a place called Casa Luciano, which one review described at 'regrettable' and another said 'horrible, not advisable at all.'
This seemed perfect for our station in life. I describe Casa Luciano as 'honestly not that bad when the lights are off and you can't remember what happened anyway' because despite the fact that the place is questionable at best, they gave us a plate of ham and eggs on top of french fries.
The equivalent of giant boobs and inability to see her face.
I order some sort of sandwich because my ability to order things in other languages extends to skillfully ordering sandwiches, unless I'm trying to actually order sandwiches, in which case I end up with omelettes. After eating, we pack up and bid goodbye to Sleep'N Atocha.
It is train time, and because Dan is operating on the level of Not Able To Speak Much Spanish and I am operating on the level of Probably Dying But Hard To Say, the train station feels like more of a to-do than is generally the case at a train station. We stare at our tickets for a very long time, but for some reason all the words are in a different language and we are not quite certain what they all mean. Dan tells me it is up to me to ensure we get on the right car for first class, which I say is just fine, because I long ago learned not getting first class on a train was like asking if you can sit on the floor at a movie theater, like they'll let you do it, but why? There's a chair right there and it's really nice and no one else can have it if you want.
So when we get to the first car and I ask the train conductor for Preferente and he says 'Si' and points to the car we're at, it all feels a little suspiciously too easy, but I go with it because I have no ability to not go with it. We stuff most of our luggage under the little luggage cage, except for my giant piece of Very Heavy Clearly American luggage in which I have put six pairs of shoes, because what if I want a lot of shoes? I guarantee that I will wear none of these shoes, but when you pack two hours before you have to leave, the thought that crosses your mind is, "What if people in other countries wear more shoes than we do? Should I bring more shoes? Am I a person who needs this many shoes? I think I am a person who needs a lot of shoes."
A deep, soul-searching piece of knowledge from this trip is that I am a person who does not need many shoes, but I am a person who needs Dan to move a lot of shoes. He uses his Dan Strength to pick up my absurd piece of luggage full of a closet of a shoes and puts it overhead with many Spanish businessmen looking on, wondering what the actual fuck could fill up a piece of luggage that large, and I resist the urge to shout 'ZAPATOS, CABALLEROS' and instead pick a seat at random and sit in it.
Dan asks me if we have assigned seats, and in my shoe/hangover stupor I tell him they do not assign seats on trains. He tilts his head at me with the face that I now know in our affianced state means "You are very cute but wrong about many things but I can see part of your boobs so I'll go with it" and I pull out Sandwich #4 which causes another head tilt because at this point the sandwiches have been in my backpack for a day and half with mayonnaise and no refrigeration. This does not matter to me because I have heard Europeans don't refrigerate things so I am only disgusting for eating day-old sandwiches in America but very cosmopolitan in Spain.
The train ride passes without incident.
And with many beautiful sights.
Until people start getting on and off the train, and I realize that people do, in fact, have assigned seats. I panic and grab Dan's phone to check what our seats are. It says 3B and 3C, which I'm sure I've seen nowhere on this train.
Except here, right next to us.
I tell Dan that we somehow miraculously sat exactly in the right train car, in our right seats, with really no indicators to any of that. He nods sagely and says, "Well, you're a Zollenberg now, so get used to things like that," and I punch him and say it's probably more likely that he's going to trip on sandwiches that are far past their date of needing to be eaten, but facts are facts and we just luckily happen to be sitting in our seats.
I decide that nothing more exciting will happen to me on this train, so I fall asleep for the rest of the ride.
SERIOUSLY NOT WHAT I MEANT
WHEN I SAID TAKE MORE PICTURES OF ME
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