Spanish Memories

 In August 2023, my wife, our two sons and I braved a two-week trip to Spain - Madrid to Seville to Granada to Barcelona to Madrid again - under the average temperature of 100-degree heatwave, which we survived. The excitement of being in Spain so rich in history worked as the invisible umbrella over our heads. For me personally, it's hard to pick a favorite, but if I were given a chance to go and live there, I'd choose Madrid and it's hard to explain why I say that. Whenever I travel, I'm always more drawn to speaking with people I meet whether they are travelers like me or native. A few interactions stood out. On our second day in Madrid, we ended up in a Pakistani restaurant near Gran Via. The food was good, but the most surprising part was to find the cook speaking to us in fluent Punjabi, but when I enquired what part of the Punjab he hailed from, his reply left me speechless: Nepal, I'm from Nepal. He blamed it on the people he'd been working with for several years. 

Another hilarious moment presented itself when we went to a Pakistani restaurant in Barcelona where the waiter/owner tried to dissuade us from drinking tap water instead of the bottled one they sold. He said he would, and did bring us, tap water but added that he wouldn't drink it himself because Barcelona water was bad and would give your tummy a run for its money, adding that the reason being that the tap water came from the beach where all kinds of people swam. I freely drank tap water in Spain though being addicted to San Francisco water (courtesy of Hetch Hetchy reservoir) doesn't help and I was fine. 

One fine interaction occurred when my younger son and I went into a cafe where I engaged a young barista in a light conversation. I forget her name as I write this but she was a native of Madrid and though she had traveled to the South, she had never been to places such as Seville, Cordoba or Granada, so she was obviously very envious. She shared with us that most young Spaniards live with parents for extended period of time because the wages in several sectors are low. Once she heard we were visiting from San Francisco, she couldn't control her excitement and probably that's why she made an excellent single espresso, something which, sadly, most cafes in San Francisco can't crank out anymore. (Just today I ordered a single espresso at Earth's Cafe on Geary St. and got a loaded triple, but café owner insisted it was a single. Sigh! I drank one-third and left.)

In Barcelona, we met a group of very charming young Italian women (either late teens or early 20s), at the tail end of our visit to Sagrada Familia. Due to heat and a lot of walking, everybody was tired. The young women were sitting next to me and trying to take a selfie when I injected my presence into their life and offered to take their picture. In turn they took ours. And I began talking to one of them, the leader type. They were from Rome and all into foreign languages, and since then we have exchange a few emails. I asked the leader - Serena is her name - to share with me their favorite Italian writers and here's what she wrote back: 

After talking with the girls, we've agreed on some Italian authors who stole our hearts and whose works you might appreciate.

   We especially recommend Umberto Eco (his mystery book "The Name of the Rose" was a quite complex read but definitely worthy of mention), Italo Calvino (you might know who recommended this one), Luigi Pirandello (I personally find his philosophical reflections on the concept of identity quite brilliant, especially in "One, No One and One Hundred Thousand").

   Cesare Pavese, Michela Murgia and Marco Balzano are very interesting as well.

   We tried to be a bit general but if you're looking for something more specific, you might ask with no worries!

   Here's the picture you kindly took of us at the Sagrada Familia, we'd be happy to be in your blog!(As for our names, from left to right: Elisa, Chiara, Elisa, Sonia, Serena and Federica).

Needless to say, I plan on reading most of their recommendations. I have already placed a hold on One, No One and One Hundred Thousand, a novel by Luigi Pirandello. The women were amused when I told them that my eldest had studied Italian for three years at his high school.

As we completed our circle around the Iberian Peninsula and found ourselves staying at a hotel situated at the southern edge of Retiro Park, just a couple of blocks away from the great Atocha station, I walked into a small, independent bookstore, displaying both new and old books. By then, I had learned to begin every conversation with hola, habla español? and Oskar, who manned the cash register in Re-Read Libreria Lowcost, and I had a one of the loveliest conversations I have had in a very long time about books and Madrid and the US. I then told him that I would like to give my novella, A Footbridge to Hell Called Love to him/his store as a gift. Touched, he said he was deeply honored by my gesture. I said that was the least I could do to repay the kindness Madrid had showed me and my family, even when people saw me and my younger one playing baseball in the early hours at Retiro Park (by the way, we might have set a record by playing baseball in Madrid, Seville and Barcelona) and brought back our wayward throws or told their dogs to get out of the harm's way. I insisted on purchasing a book from his lovely store as a parting gesture and paid a small amount for Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men for my eldest son to read. Oskar explained the story behind Me Vuelves Lorca which was printed on the bookmark. Before saying my final goodbye, I asked Oskar to share a few of his favorite Spanish authors and he so very kindly wrote them down on a piece of paper. He highly stressed Patria by Aramburu, which I look forward laying my hands on. Gracias, Señor Oskar!