Wrote this for my global communications class, but enjoy
I arrived in Madrid’s Retiro Park after 4:00 p.m. on a Sunday, having spent most of the day asleep, and a further two hours of the afternoon eating chocolate and magdalenas at my host family's behest.
It was late now – to say nothing of the cold and glowering weather – and I was frustrated with myself for having wasted so much time. Had I woken earlier, I would have maybe stopped at the Palacio de Cristal, as I’d done some days before, or walked as far as the sweet potato seller who roasts potatoes and corn cobs and other starchy things on the sidewalk outside of the Reina Sofia.
But 4:00 was too late for any of that, so I wandered aimlessly around the west side of the park, idly looking for something to do.
Retiro Park is, in general, a very good place for idle people. In fact, it was originally created just for that purpose: the park was once the stomping grounds and gardens of Spain’s court and royal family, who idled there from the 1500s until the mid-eighteenth century.
Now, even in the cold or during the bustle of the week, madrileños flock here by the hundreds, just to sit on the grass, or to drink a café, or to skate through the lines of little orange cones that dot the streets and sidewalks exactly for that purpose.
But since I had spent half the afternoon in bed, I soon became determined to rent some skates and see Retiro like a jóven madrileña.
Little did I know, it’s impossible to rent skates in Retiro – or in Madrid at all, for that matter. I started by scoping out one of the rounded, vaguely silo-like kiosks on the park’s west side, expecting to see a sign or a poster of some sort. (There are none).
I then began to lurk around groups of skaters, waiting for an “in,” watching as they spun around their cones or passed a hockey ball around the circle, exclaiming loudly when anybody missed it. I got a few curious glances but no offers of low-cost rentals. In either case I was still wasting time, and by now it was getting dark.
Desperate, at this point, and feeling very severely that I had lost a day of my life, I stomped up to a bow-tied waiter outside of a café and demanded to know, in my accented Spanish, where I could rent some rollerskates. That is unfortunately a quite literal translation. Since I did not know the word for rollerskates, I had to finish with a lame:
“Sabes dónde puedo alquiler unos … rollerskates?”
Older Spanish men often take pity on my terrible accent and gaping vocabulary. In fact, I have found that it is best to ask them for help in nearly any situation.
“Alquiler?” He said, helpfully.
“Sí.”
“Bicis?”
This, I feared, would be the sticking point. He thought I wanted to rent a bike.
“No, no,” I said, emphatically, “para los pies.”
I pointed to my feet and did a strange little roller-dance to illustrate the matter. Nodding and smiling widely, the waiter informed me that the word I was looking for was patinas, and that I could not rent them anywhere in the entire city of Madrid – much less in Retiro Park.
Still smiling, he returned to refilling the napkins at all the outdoor café tables. It was almost dark, at this point, and the tables were full of people doing absolutely nothing: old men squabbling amongst each other, young couples talking quietly, an elderly grandmother pulling a leashed infant away from the nearby curb.
In fact, it suddenly struck me that this solitary waiter was the only one busying himself with productive work, and everyone else in the park was doing whatever the hell they wanted.
“Tienes café aquí?” I asked him.
“Claro,” he said.
And so this wasted Sunday, on which I did pretty much nothing, ended up being the most “Spanish” day of my trip thus far.
It’s strange, and strangely liberating, to pass time without any sort of goal or purpose. But al fin de todo, I think that’s largely what the Spanish are all about.
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