MADRID

...I did in the end spend a nice and exciting day in Madrid.

• when we talked about Madrid during Geographz lessons, we would have called it a core region withing the periphery. I think I can only confirm this description. All we could see from the plane was red and sun-burnt, uncovered earth. The few corn-fields already harvested. Some olive-trees as I remembered them from Andalusia.
• I did not expect Madrid to shock me in such a way: Avda. de America is the name of the terminal where the airport-shuttle took me: No less than 5llevels: one on the surface (and I would have loved to avoid the rest of them!). 2 underground for various busses and another two for the metros. Can you imagine the air down there? A horrible mixture of Manhatten subway and what must feel like the emissions of a volcanoe! I hated it!
• I don't think I want to go back to Madrid too quickly: Of course I'll have to visit the Prader one day and the streets and buildings are impressive. However, I did not enjoy riding the crowded metro and I hated the smell -even overground the air was incredibly sticky.
• The large pockets of my trousers are worth gold (you were right again, mom)
• I was angry with myself for not even having opened my Spanish-book on the plane as I had planned to. I missed a great opportunity to practice some first basics (like asking for the way for example ;p)
• I managed anyway. 1bus and 2metros took me to the placa del sol from which I was carried t0 the Grand Via where the right person was quickly found: "I am a tourist, and I have 2 hours to see Madrid". I was sent down the Crand Via. From the Plaza de Cibeles I went down to the Plaza de Cánovas des Castillo with the nice fountain from where I wnt back to Plaza del Sol making my way for the Pçaza Major and the Plaza de la Armeria after (passing, of course, the Catedral de la Almuidena).
• By the end of the day I had got to know my "flip-flop" shoes better: They seem to have iron nails sticking out just at the spot where you tend to place all the weight of your body...