Saturday, November 13, 2010

What I'll Miss About Madrid

As per tradition, I'm doing my nails on a Saturday morning early afternoon after waking up and munching on chocolate-topped butter cookies, while David Tao is making love to my ears.  I can listen to Just Friends (普通朋友) on repeat for hours on end while I do other things - paint my nails, knit, fold laundry, read... Youtube it if you've never heard it before.  You don't even need to understand the lyrics (it's about a guy's sadness that the girl he loves only wants to be "just friends" with him) - the melody is so beautiful.

As I step into the second half of my second last month here, I'm starting to feel a little sentimental.  It was the same situation last time, when I went to live in Nice - I have a love-hate relationship with living in Europe.  On the one hand...

...the architecture is SO beautiful, it's SO much cheaper to travel, the culture is SO fascinating, the boys are generally SO much better (more chivalrous, more cosmopolitan, more multilingual, more well-travelled, more stylish, more handsome), the city layout is SO convenient (so I don't have to drive), and there are SO many more interesting places to go here and SO many more interesting things to see...

On the other hand, I hate that the Internet is so unreliable, I hate being smothered in cigarette smoke all the time and smelling disgusting after a night out, I hate constantly worrying about not having hot water in the winter, I really dislike not having air-conditioning when the heat is stifling (especially when there is humidity), I don't like being bothered on the streets by creepers, I hate feeling alienated because of my race, I hate feeling taken advantage of by awful landlords, I dislike not having better ethnic cuisine readily available...

But as I was walking home in the wee hours this morning after having a fun night out, I grew sentimental.  I looked around at my surroundings and realized that I'll miss a lot of the things here.  I'll miss the napolitanas de chocolate from La Mallorquina, I'll miss being able to totally entertain myself by walking around and admiring the architecture, I'll miss exploring the seemingly endless different districts here, I'll miss hearing such beautiful languages around me all the time.  Most of all, I'll miss being able to say that I live in a really cool place - I know I'm shallow. :P

The city is starting to get decorated for Christmas, and my heart sings just imagining how beautiful it will look in December.  The smoking ban in Spain will finally be enforced beginning on January 1st, so that means I'll get to enjoy three whole days of it before I go home.  The next time I come to Spain, it probably won't be to Madrid - I'll probably be going to Andalucia and making a pit stop in Valencia.  I need to really soak up this last month and a half...

1 comment:

ARRIELL said...

hola! I know I've commented on your youtube vid but I'm not sure if I have on here anywho just saying again I'm super jealous of u lol .
I'm so eager to go back and will feel even better with the no smoking. it was everywhere ugh. I thought you got a promotion so you were gonna stay longer?