11:26 a.m.—We have a few travel mishaps when we first arrive in Spain. After our plane touches down in Adolfo-Suarez Madrid-Barajas airport we are lost for several hours. Namely, because our cellular service provider has screwed up our account somehow and our GPSs now have the same level of cell service as residential refrigerators.
12:38 p.m—Relying solely on our skills to communicate via fluent hand gestures, we have taken three wrong buses to our destination. The people here seem aloof, until you actually talk to them. Then you realize they each one is more friendly than any American I’ve ever met, except Mister Rogers, who I met when I was 6, along with Mister McFeely the postman.
The good news is, the Spanish I learned on construction job sites as a young man is coming in handy. The people of Madrid are very genial. Although, evidently, nobody in this country seems to think Mexican swear words are funny.
2:01 p.m—My Spanish sucks. But I am actually able to have long conversations with locals provided they talk in a slow, deliberate manner as though they have just suffered a severe stroke. When locals hear that we are religious pilgrims, walking the Camino, everyone’s faces light up, they become reverent, and they treat us as though we are special.
Amazingly, spirituality is not a “weird” and awkward subject for the people of Madrid, it’s normalized. Here, people seem to treat the topic of religion as cordially as you’d discuss college football. No weirdness. Whereas when you mention religion in America people edge away from you as though you are a Jehovah’s Witness selling Amway.
 |
3:12 p.m.—I found the rooftop at our hostel, which overlooks the city. Houston, we have beer.
4:09 p.m.—Apparently the only Europeans who book stays at hostels are young persons. Everyone here looks 12. We are definitely being treated like elderly people by our youthful staff. One extremely young employee asks whether either of us needs a shower with rails.
6:11 p.m.—We eat supper downtown, approximately eight hours before actual Europeans eat their dinner. We walk a few miles to find a local hot spot recommended by a hostel employee who is not old enough to shave.
The restaurante wait staff thinks it is cute that Americans are looking for supper at 6 p.m. “Sometimes we eat supper at midnight in Spain,” the waiter explains.
They serve us delicious gazpacho, which is Spanish for “acid reflux.” The food is incredible. They are treating us like we are family. I never want to go home.
1:35 a.m.—Our hostel. There are many of us crammed into one bunkroom. I am on the topmost bunk so that whenever I have to use the restroom in the middle of the night, all the young people in bunks below me get to enjoy the experience of hearing a grown man descend a wooden ladder that creaks louder than a dump truck in a nitroglycerin plant. I get up to pee six times in the night.
3:43 a.m.—I am up before all of Spain, I think. At the least, I am certainly awake hours before my hostel pals, who all just got in few minutes ago after partying all night like Who groupies. They all just collapsed in their bunks and went straight to sleep, and will probably sleep until the installation of the next pope. I wish I could do that.
4:10 a.m.—Currently, I am on the rooftop, fiddling the tunes “Apple Blossom” and “Redwing” and “Old Fort Smith,” with my hotel mute clamped to my violin bridge to kill the sound. Soft melodies of America fill the chilled Spanish air. A few young night-lifers on a nearby rooftop are listening to me. They are smoking strange smelling cigarettes. They lightly applaud after each tune.
The vista is arresting. It’s dark. Madrid’s rooftop view is nothing but a jigsaw puzzle of terracotta roof tiles and old-school TV antennas for miles.
Now and then, I jot a note in my journal about this trip. Because I’ve been writing every morning for almost 12 years now. And I don’t know how to stop.
In two days we begin walking the Camino
Questions: SeanDietrich@gmail.co
Visit the Sean of the South Website
Find out where you can see Sean live.
Originally published on Sean’s website. Republished here with permission.
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA