kellycrull.com - expat life in Spain

My family had road trip foods.

These were the foods that sugared my brain between Saturday morning cartoons–a rainbow-colored parrot fluttering the screen, screeching, “Follow your nose, it always knows,” boys surfing delicious waves of sticky red juice, and giggling adolescents tumbling through forests of candy trees and eatable giraffes.

These were the foods I cried for in the grocery store. They were foods for only one occasion: a family road trip.

With my sister and I seat-belted in the back seat, ready for our trip to Grandpa and Grandma’s farm in South Dakota, Mom would stockpile the space around her feet in the front seat with grocery bags of road trip food.

Mom always got it right, a perfect combination of sweet and salty foods–Twizzlers Pull & Peel Licorice, A&W Root Beer Barrels, Little Debbie Zebra Cakes, Twinkies, Black Forest Gummy Worms, Rold Gold Pretzel Rods, Cheetos, Pringles Sour Cream & Onion Potato Chips, Wheat Thins for Mom, and our treasure chest, the red Igloo cooler, heavy with cans of soda: Squirt, RC Cola, Dr. Pepper, and Mountain Dew with a caffeine kick for Dad if we were driving through the night.

If we planned our snacks well, alternating between sweet and salty, we could munch all the way to Grandpa and Grandma’s.

Fifteen years later, not much has changed. Sure, conditions aren’t right for a road trip to Grandpa and Grandma’s farm. I don’t own a car. My parents live an ocean away. And my Grandpa and Grandma don’t live on a farm anymore. But a week ago when April and I bought train tickets to Castellón, a 5-hour trip from Madrid, we talked about road trip foods.

On the train to Castellón, we told ourselves we would wait until we were hungry (at least an hour or two) before snacking. We didn’t last long. Maybe 20 minutes into the trip, our backpack was empty on the floor like a discarded banana peel with the contents of the backpack cramming our pull-down trays like items on the checkout counter in a grocery store.

We toasted over a can of Mellow Yellow and a fruit juice box and began feasting. My first course, a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. April’s, a baggy of pretzel sticks.

It wasn’t until about our third or fourth course that I noticed a few things about the other people on the train with us. Number one, there were a lot of them. The train had made a stop or two, and it was bursting with people. Number two, a surprisingly large number of these people had forgotten their road trip foods. No empty backpacks on the floor. In fact, we were the only ones eating anything.

That’s when I made my third observation, or rather I remembered a conversation I had had two weeks before with a Spanish friend. The conversation had been about road trip foods, although I hadn’t thought about the conversation that way until this moment.

My friend told me she had visited London, loved it, but thought the city was dirty. She said she refused to take the subway, the Tube, because she couldn’t stand the thought of all those people eating on the train, crumbling over the seats, smearing their greasy fingers everywhere, littering the floor with wrappers. She told me the trains in Spain are clean. People don’t eat on the trains.

These words stuck in my throat half way through a chocolate chip cookie. I was suddenly very aware that I was eating food on a Spanish train, a clean train.

It’s moments like these that I’m reminded that living in another country means I’m constantly making decisions about whether or not I want to fit or not fit in the culture I’m living in.

I’m American. I’m Spanish. I’m a cafe con leche, two ingredients–coffee and milk in one cup. I add a little milk, a little coffee, each decision changes the mix.

I was on the train, and I had a choice to make. To fit or not to fit.

I chose to finish my chocolate chip cookie.

I was embarrassed, for sure–I was being dirty–but I was choosing something. I was holding on to a family tradition I wasn’t willing to let go of.

And I’ll drink to that.

One thing you probably didn’t find room for in your suitcase when you moved to Madrid was your favorite board game. And unless you have plans of hosting a weekly game night in your piso, a better solution might be to spend a few hours at El Cafe de Manuela at c/San Vincente Ferrer, 29.

You’ll want to stake your spot early in the evening around 20.00, maybe pull a few tables together depending on how many of you there are, and choose a board game from the shelf on the wall toppling with what must be at least 50 colored board game boxes. If you’re in English-speaking company, or you’re not in the mood for another Spanish lesson, you may have to hunt around a bit to find what you’re looking for, but the sign outside the bar says they have board games in English.

Here’s a list of some of the board games you’ll find:

Trivial Pursuit
Conecta 4 (Connect 4)
Phase 10
Go
Trivia para Dummies (Trivia for Dummies)
Pictionary
Expresión (Catch Phrase)
Othello
Tabú (Taboo)
Scattergories

Once you’ve found a board game, it’s time for a drink or something to nibble on. If you’re like everyone else, you’ll order a milk shake (batido). Otherwise, there is a wide variety to choose from including ice creams, Mojitos, Caipirinhas, Tinto de Verano, or if you’re really adventurous, a shot of Absinthe.

If you’ve had a few good games by the end of the night, don’t forgot to stop by the game shelf one last time on your way out and argue with your friends about which game you’ll play next time you’re at El Cafe de Manuela.

El Cafe de Manuela
c/San Vicente Ferrer, 29
Metro: Tribunal
Tf: 91.531.70.37
Hours: 16.00-2.30

I come from the land of cars, the Midwestern United States, where you’ll find a junkyard full of car culture oddities. On my grandfather’s farm, for example, I grew up believing it was not possible to check the mail at the end of his driveway without driving to get it in the car. Here’s another one: my brother-in-law, Tim, used to drive across town in his car on a beautiful day, the distance equalling about a 20 minute run, to go to the gym and jog on a treadmill for half an hour. And then there’s my hometown, Sioux Center, Iowa, which holds Summer Celebration every June. It’s the one day in the year when people are allowed to take turns lining up their hotrods at the stoplight in the middle of town, and in front of rows of onlookers, burn the rubber from their tires, filling the air with a lung-scratching mixture of exhaust fumes and smoking rubber, the engine racket shaking Grandma’s windows.

From where I come from, either your car is your second home, or your car is an Alcatraz, a prison you can’t escape from.

That is, unless you’re willing to leave the Midwest all together.

I enjoy living in my neighborhood here in Madrid. Yes, there are cars in the streets. But this barrio has a reputation, it’s a Bermuda Triangle. Either you spend the next 45 minutes making laps around the area with about as much chance of getting where you have to be as a dog does of catching its own tail, or you somehow make it into the neighborhood only to find yourself in a giant version of one of those mazes kids like to fill out with a pencil in the back seat of the car, only now you’re being pushed around by beeping horns from one-way street to one-way street until you’re cornered, angry drivers looking at you from both directions, with no chance at erasing this mistake.

Even if you find the street you’re looking for, good luck trying to find a parking spot.

It’s not that I hate cars. When April and I are home for a visit, I do the driving. I can drive for hours. I just wonder if people realize that when they buy cars, when everyone you know drives a car, it changes things. There’s the ozone layer, of course. But I’m talking about a way of life, a sense of community.

There are differences between my hometown in the Midwest, and my neighborhood in Madrid. For starters, people who don’t have cars walk places. My life in Madrid is within walking distance.

Because I walk, and I’m not separated from the rest of the world by metal, glass, and speed, I get to know people. I bump into a friend while I’m waiting to cross the street, and we talk about summer holidays. I pet the neighbor’s dog sitting in the shade outside the bar down the street. On my way to the mercado, I say hello to any member of the family who owns the Alimentación and is standing at the front door of the shop getting some fresh air.

I get to know the neighborhood too. I know where to go to get the best loaf of bread. I know where to go to get keys made or to buy flowers or to get copies of free newspapers. I know where to go to get things laminated or to buy spices. I know where I can get a cup of coffee, a croissant, and an orange juice for only a euro fifty. I know where the kids loiter after school. I know where the street cleaners keep their carts, and the bar they go to next door on break. I know the street where you can stop on the sidewalk and listen to the musicians at the conservatory practicing in their rooms with the windows open because it’s a warm day.

This is life at a walking pace.

My life is my neighborhood. I know people here, I go places here, I buy things here, and because that’s true, I’ve invested a lot. And when there’s a whole lot of people who have a whole lot invested, I think it makes for a better place.

If you want a good seat for the newest film, or your Spanish doesn’t go much beyond hola and the thought of facing the person behind the ticket window at the movie theater without any words to defend yourself sends you running for your dictionary, here’s an easy solution. All you need is a credit card and access to the Internet. Visit www.cinentradas.com and buy your movie tickets online.

1. Visit www.cinentradas.com

2. Select Province
Find your province (Madrid) and click on it.

3. Select City and Movie Theater
Scroll down and find your city. From the list of theaters under the name of your city, choose the theater where you want to go. For movies in English in Madrid, I recommend Yelmo Cineplex Ideal, which is near Sol.

4. Select Movie
Scroll down to find the title of the movie you want to see and click on “Elige tu día” (”Choose your day”) in the blue box to the right of the movie title.

5. Select Day
After the next page loads, you have a chance to change the movie title or the movie theater you’ve selected. If you don’t want to make any changes, click on “Elige tu día” and select a date (day/month/year) and day of the week. Here’s a quick Spanish lesson for those you who are new to the language.

Monday - lunes
Tuesday - martes
Wednesday - miércoles
Thursday - jueves
Friday - viernes
Saturday - sábado
Sunday - domingo

6. Select Showing Time
Click on “Elige tu sesión” (Choose your showing time) and make a selection

Example:

7. Select Seats (if necessary)
Click on the image at the bottom of the page that reads, “Seleccionar butacas” to select seats if you are going to a show with numbered seats.

To select seat numbers, you will see a map of the theater. The movie screen is at the bottom of the page, the aisle numbers are along the left side. The empty seats are green. Click on the seats you want. When you are finished, click the “Solicitar” button in the column on the left side of the page.

If you are not going to a show with seats numbers, you still need to select the number of tickets you want. To continue, click “Continuar.”

8. Purchase Tickets with Credit Card
Now enter your credit card information (Visa and Mastercard are accepted). Only use a credit card that you can have with you physically at the movie theater because you will need the credit card at the theater to get your tickets.

Enter your card number in the four boxes under “Número de Tarjeta” and the expiration date (month/year) in the two boxes to the right. You have the option of entering a telephone number in the box under “Teléfono de Contacto.” Click “Continuar.”

At the next page, click the “Continuar” button to allow the computer to check your credit card information. When the check is completed, the tickets are purchased!

9. Pick up your tickets
Next step, go to the movie theater to see the show. In my experience, you should find a machine in the lobby that takes your credit card (to verify which tickets you need) and prints the tickets for you.

10. Enjoy the show!

The story and the recipe.

THE STORY:
Yesterday was my birthday. I made myself a German Sweet Chocolate Cake. It’s been a cake in the making for over a year now. Last Christmas when I was in my home town, Sioux Center, Iowa U.S.A., I made a special trip to Hy-Vee Grocery Store to pick up one 4 ounce bar of Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate. I picked up my preparations again earlier this week. I stopped by Carrefour on Tuesday when I was in the suburbs for a meeting because I knew I would be able to find shredded coconut, evaporated milk, and walnuts.

The whole process climaxed yesterday afternoon with 4 hours of uninterrupted kitchen madness, cracking eggs, sifting flour, stirring chocolate, measuring out teaspoons of vanilla, the sound of bubbling pots, whirling beaters, and the knife to the cutting board, crushing walnuts, until in the end, after sliding glass pans pregnant with cake batter into a hot oven with mitted hands, I resigned myself to wait on the couch in the living room, licking off the beaters like an ice cream cone.

German Sweet Chocolate cake is a birthday tradition in my family. My Mom stopped asking my brother, my sister, and I what kind of cake we wanted for our birthdays years ago. We always ask for the same–one tall, round, delicious German Sweet Chocolate cake warm from the oven, about to collapse under a mound of golden coconut pecan frosting.

I’m sure anyone can think of better ways to spend a birthday afternoon than baking your own birthday cake, but for me, a birthday without German Sweet Chocolate Cake ceases to be a birthday. I had no choice but to bake the cake.

See, traditions are funny things. Most of the time we don’t really know why our traditions are important to us, or for that matter, what purpose they serve. I’d hate to have to give a good reason why my whole family herds into my parent’s basement every Christmas to watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, one of our favorite scenes being the moment when Uncle Eddie’s dog discovers a squirrel hiding in the Christmas tree and begins chasing the squirrel around the house. Christmas dinner crashes to the floor, the china cabinet falls face down in the living room, ceramic collectibles shattering everywhere, Grandma sees the squirrel, surprised, and collapses next to the Christmas tree, unconscious, and the surly neighbor who comes traipsing across the lawn to the front door in a rage ends up getting mauled by the squirrel, and then the dog. The sad part is when it’s all over, my family applauds, and we all laugh until we can feel the Christmas turkey hurting in our guts.

The only thing we really know about traditions once they’re started is that if they would ever stop, we would be missing something that makes us who we are.

April and I learned something about this when we first moved abroad. We had only been in Amsterdam for a few weeks at that point, fresh off the boat, and someone we had just met, an American couple who worked with youth in the city, invited us to share Thanksgiving with them.

We showed up on Thanksgiving at the address the couple had given us, and we found ourselves standing in front of a little cafe with a makeshift sign propped up just outside the door that read “The Pump”. Teens were pushing past us to get inside and the surging Punk music grew louder as we stepped inside.

Already, one thing was for sure, this was not our typical Thanksgiving. What would have been my mother’s kitchen stacked with hot plates covered in tin foil, running with female relatives working elbow to elbow was, in this case, a bar in the back of the room converted into a kitchen for the evening. Young people were pouring themselves drinks and cluttering themselves around what looked like two cafeteria tables with plastic table clothes and candles, a far cry from my Mom’s dining room table done up the 3-times-a-year china, the embroidered table cloth, and the silver cutlery. Instead of nieces and nephews playing at the Lego table in the basement and my dad and brother gabbing in the living room about the latest insurance plan over a magazine, hungry adolescents leaned over the tables and giggled, some shooting pool in the back room, others hunched over an X-Box.

We got in line at the bar to get our helping of Thanksgiving dinner, glass pans heaped with stuffing and turkey and mashed potatoes lined up along counter, and that was the first time we actually saw our friends Jeremy and Candice, the ones who had invited us in the first place. They were in this tiny room just off the bar. They were pulling handfuls of plastic silverware out of a backpack and handing them to some helpers, giving them directions to bring the silverware to the tables. Candice looked up from what she was doing for a second and saw us in line.

“Hi, you guys,” she yelled from the other room, smiling. She dropped the backpack on a table and came over to talk to us.

“Isn’t this great?” she said, taking a deep breathe and wiping the sweat from her forehead with her arm. “All these Dutch kids want to celebrate American Thanksgiving with us.” She waved at a group of teenagers who just stepped inside the door at the other end of the room.

“Yeah. It’s great,” I said. It wasn’t what I had been thinking. My thoughts had been more along the lines of “What’s the point in celebrating American Thanksgiving if all you’ve got is 50 Dutch teenagers, a pile of Punk cds, and a room you’d rather sing karaoke in than eat dinner?” But something told me Candice was right.

“You know,” Candice said, looking at us again, “one thing you learn when you live in another country is that no one else is going to celebrate your traditions for you. You have to do them yourself. But if you throw a party, you’ll always find friends to help you celebrate.” She smiled at us once more, and then she was off again. A few minutes later we were at our table eating Thanksgiving dinner.

I’ve been living in Madrid for nearly two years now, and I still carry the wisdom I gleaned from our conversation with Candice that Thanksgiving.

This week I celebrated my birthday, and I did everything. I baked the cake. I invited everyone I knew to come over and have a piece. I was completely exhausted in the end. But the important thing is this: it felt like my birthday.

THE RECIPE:
There’s not much of a “secret recipe” to the German Sweet Chocolate Cake my mom makes. She got the recipe from the back of the Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate wrapper.

I’ll include the recipe first in Metric Measurements, then in American Measurements.

I’ll also add a few comments (*) about substitutions at the end of the recipe.

Ingredients (Metric Measurements):
1 pkg (112g Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate) *
120 ml boiling water
230 g butter or margarine
360 g sugar
4 egg yolks
5 ml vanilla
360 g sifted Swans Down Cake Flour *
5 g baking soda *
3 g salt
235 ml buttermilk *
4 egg whites, stiffly beaten

235 ml evaporated milk
200 g sugar
3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
115 g butter or margarine
5 ml vanilla
100 g flaked Coconut
120 g chopped pecans *

Melt chocolate in boiling water. Cool. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add yolks, 1 at a time, beating well after each. Blend in vanilla and chocolate. Shift flour with soda and salt; add alternately with buttermilk to chocolate mixture, beating after each addition until smooth. Fold in beaten whites. Pour into three 20 cm layer pans, lined on bottoms with paper.* Bake at 180°C for 30 to 40 minutes. Cool. Frost tops with frosting recipe

Coconut Pecan Frosting:
Combine evaporated milk, sugar, slightly beaten egg yolks, butter or margarine, and vanilla. Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened - about 12 minutes. Add flaked coconut and chopped pecans. Cool until thick enough to spread; beat occasionally. Makes 360 g.

Ingredients (American Measurements):
1 pkg (4 oz Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate) *
1/2 cup boiling water
1 cup butter or margarine
2 cups sugar
4 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups sifted Swans Down Cake Flour *
1 teaspoon baking soda *
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk *
4 egg whites, stiffly beaten

1 cup evaporated milk
1 cup sugar
3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/3 cups flaked coconut
1 cup chopped pecans *

Melt chocolate in boiling water. Cool. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add yolks, 1 at a time, beating well after each. Blend in vanilla and chocolate. Shift flour with soda and salt; add alternately with buttermilk to chocolate mixture, beating after each addition until smooth. Fold in beaten whites. Pour into three 8 or 9 inch layer pans, lined on bottoms with paper *. Bake at 350°F for 30 to 40 minutes. Cool. Frost tops with frosting recipe below.

Coconut Pecan Frosting:
Combine 1 cup evaporated milk, 1 cup sugar, 3 slightly beaten egg yolks, 1/2 cup butter or margarine, 1 teaspoon vanilla. Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened - about 12 minutes. Add 1 1/3 cups flaked coconut and 1 cup chopped pecans. Cool until thick enough to spread; beat occationally. Makes 2 1/2 cups.

Substitutions:
* Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate Substitution
I haven’t found Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate in Europe. As a substitute, use 112g of a chocolate bar without sugar, which you can find at most grocery stores.

* Sifted Swans Down Cake Flour Substitution
Cake flour is not a necessity. You can use regular flour, but take out a couple of level tablespoons from the 2 1/2 cups. That should make it equal to cake flour.

* Baking Soda Substitution
If you can’t find baking soda, look for bicarbonate soda. They’re the same thing. If you can’t find either at the grocery store, try the pharmacy.

* Buttermilk Substitution
As a substitute, mix together 2/3 cup natural yoghurt and 1/3 cup milk.

* Pecan Substitution
I haven’t found pecans in Madrid. Walnuts work as a substitute.

* Paper Pan Lining Substitution
The paper in the bottom of the cake pans can be wax paper. Set your pans on wax paper and mark around the bottom. Cut out the paper; put a “dab” of shortening in the bottom of the pan to hold the paper and place wax paper in the pan.

Thanks to AllRecipes.com for inspiration.

To any Americans living in Madrid like myself who have no idea what to do in order to request an absentee ballot for the upcoming elections, here’s an easy solution.

www.overseasvote2004.com

All you have to do is fill in a few forms on the site, and in about 5 minutes you’ll have a copy of the Absentee Ballot Request Form, which you print out, fill in, and send to the address which the site provides for you (the address depends on where you are registered to vote).

I picked up a flyer about this web site in a local pub, and whoever wrote the flyer suggests that you send in your request by this week to ensure that you’ll have the opportunity to vote. In other words, consider yourself officially kicked in the pants. Get voting!

For those of us who would love to take a day over the weekend to go for a hike in the mountains, but would rather not have to bother with looking up train departure times or staring cross-eyed at page 483-IV of the Handbook issued by the National Institute of Geography in Spain, or even worse, forget the whole mess and end up wandering aimlessly through an unfamiliar mountain forest hoping we’ll run across a major highway at any moment, let me put your mind at ease with a simple 5-step plan to hiking for a day in the Sierra de Guadarrama just outside Madrid.

1. Take two trains from Madrid to el Puerto de Cotos

All I ask is that you find your way to the Nuevos Ministerios Train Station in Madrid (Metro Lines 6,8, and 10). From the train station, I’ll cover everything else you need to know.

Once you’re at Nuevos Ministerios Train Station, you will need to find the Cercanías Ticket Office and buy a round-trip ticket to Cotos.

“Quiero un billette ida y vuelta a Cotos.”
“I want a ticket round-trip to Cotos.”

If you have a monthly transportation pass (abono), it may help reduce the price of your ticket. Otherwise, the ticket is 5,60€.

Once you’ve purchased your ticket, find Platform 1 and take the Cercanías train C-8b headed to Segovia, and get off the train at Cercedilla. At the Cercedilla train station, follow the signs to the platform for the C-9 train to Cotos. It will only be 7 to 9 minutes, depending on the time of day, before the train leaves for Cotos. Take the train from Cercedilla to Cotos, which is the last stop on the line. Stop to finish, the trip from Madrid to Cotos is roughly two hours and fifteen minutes.

Here are the timetables for the C-8b and C-9 trains both to and from Madrid.Timetable:

Madrid to Cotos View

Timetable: Cotos to Madrid View

For the most up-to-date information, visit ctm-madrid.es. On the home page, select “Cercanías Renfe”. When the next page loads, select “C-9 Cercedilla/Cotos” and then “Horarios Ida” and/or “Horarios Vuelta”.

2. Walk to the Tourist Information Center in Cotos and get a map

Once you’ve stepped off the train at Cotos, you will see a small train station in front of you. Inside you will find a small restaurant where you can pick up a snack or a coffee. There are also bathrooms in the train station, although if you prefer using a toilet with a lid, I would suggest waiting 5 minutes until you reach the Tourist Information Center up the road on the left. Neither bathroom has toilet paper.

Starting again from the door of the train, turn to your left and follow the rest of the hikers up the road away from the train station. Within only a minute or two you’ll see a restaurant on the left-hand side of the road, and a few other buildings also on the left-hand side of the road, but set back a bit. Find the building marked as the Casa del Parque Los Cotos. This building is the Tourist Information Center.

Inside the Casa del Parque Los Cotos you will find all the information you need for your hike. There is a person working at the desk who can provide you with anything you need, including a free map of the 7 marked routes in the area. You can also download a copy of the free map by clicking here (size 650k).

The Casa del Parque Los Cotos is also an exhibition hall with a number of informative displays about the area and how it developed. There’s also a touch-screen computer with more maps, a history of the area, and local information about restoration projects and the environment.

3. Choose a route

Now it’s time to choose a route, and between the 7 well-marked routes, there’s something to please almost anyone, whether you’re looking for a short, pleasant walk to a place where you can have a picnic and read a book to a 2,5 hour hike to the top of a mountain peak. The person behind the desk at the Casa del Parque Los Cotos can help you choose a route if you have any questions.

4. Have a picnic

Reward yourself after you’ve hiked your way up into the mountains with a relaxing afternoon with a few snacks from your backpack, a good book, and a nap. Cotos is a hot spot for the city crowd, so don’t be afraid to hunt around a bit to find your spot away from everyone else. After all, a few hours of solitude is a lot more realistic here than it is at la Puerta del Sol.

5. Take the train back to Madrid

When you’re finished, make your way back down the mountain and take the train to Madrid in the same way you came. The wait time between trains at Cercedilla is again only 7 to 9 minutes, so you should be back in Madrid in just over two hours.There you have it. A day in the mountains, start to finish.

A Suggested Itinerary

10:08 Take train from Nuevos Ministerios to Cercedilla

11:35 Take train to el Puerto de Cotos.

12:16 Hike Route 3 (1 hr, 15 min.) to the Laguna Grande de Peñalara.

13:00 Enjoy the afternoon in the mountains and have a picnic

16:15 Hike back to the Cotos train station

17:43 Take train from Cotos to Cercedilla

18:35 Take train from Cercedilla to Nuevos Ministerios19:42 Arrive at Nuevos Ministerios

Alex Selim is our guest essayist. He’s a close friend of mine, and a friend of the Internaitonal community here in Madrid, having written a few articles for In Madrid newspaper. He also has the perspective of someone who was in New York City when the Twin Towers were attacked and in Madrid when the bombs exploded at Atocha train station. He writes to us today on the third anniversary of September 11th.

As the third anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the six-month anniversary of the Madrid bombings nears, it is easy for many of us to think of their political and historical consequences —the war on terrorism, the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the surprise victory of a socialist prime minister over the more pro-American government in Spain—rather than on their effect on the lives of the people who experienced them.

But because of my personal experience with both of these events, their human element far outweighs their political and historical elements. Though I grew up in the Bay Area near San Francisco, I finished my last two years of college in New York, where I lived and worked for three more years before moving to Madrid.

So, as the last of three bombs exploded on March 11, I was walking into an office building on the other side of Madrid, where I had been living and teaching English to business professionals for the last nine months.

As some of my students, who arrived at class late because of the resulting traffic and so had heard the first reports on the radio, explained to me what had happened, my stomach tightened in a way that it had for the first time in New York on September 11 and only after whenever I recalled the fear and confusion surrounding that day exactly two and a half years earlier.

I had been walking into my office on 23rd St. in Manhattan when I heard a man say on his cell phone that he could see the flames coming from the World Trade Center. If I had not already been ten minutes late, I would have walked half a block over to Sixth Avenue and caught one last glimpse of the Twin Towers before they unexpectedly collapsed.

After I was told to evacuate my office an hour later, I wandered the streets of Manhattan because the subways had been closed down and I couldn’t get back to my home in Brooklyn. Among a crowd of people walking up Park Avenue in complete silence, I saw a single man, whose suit was completely covered in dust. Apparently still in shock, he appeared to be walking without a specific destination, as if he was just trying to get away from an unimaginable horror.

Six hours later, when the subways began running again, I packed into a train headed to Brooklyn. On the way, it passed through the now ghostly vacant station below where the World Trade Center had been. When the train ascended above ground I could see a pillar of smoke and dust that replaced what had been the skyline’s most dominating feature. The man standing beside me pressed his palm against the window and sobbed.

In Madrid, the nature of my job as an English teacher required me to travel to office building throughout the city and engage in conversation with my students. And so I was able to get a good understanding of how the attacks affected many of the cities residents.

My second class that day was with the Human Resources Director of an IT company. Understandably preoccupied with both his mobile phone and his office phone ringing one after the other, he asked me to help him write a memo in English to his boss reporting that one of his employees had been mildly injured on the train and another was unaccounted for. The next day his assistant canceled his class so that he could attend the second employee’s funeral.

The next week when I resumed my classes I made it a priority to listen to my students’ stories in order to help them recover from the shock they had experienced the week before.

Two of my other students still seemed to be in shock. One of them lived alone across the street from the train station and was walking into the station as the first bomb went off. She ran back home to her apartment but could feel the other bombs shaking her windows. She couldn’t leave her house for the rest of the day and nearly cried as she recounted her story.

The other one student was taking the train into Atocha and was planning to meet her younger sister there at the time the bombs exploded. Luckily both she and her sister had been late. However, the first half hour of separation, not knowing if her sister was safe, deeply affected her. She cried the rest of the weekend. She said she couldn’t imagine how someone would feel who actually lost a family member.

I can still remember the despair in the voice of another student, a middle-aged accountant who had been on the train one station away from Atocha when the bombs exploded, as he told me that he didn’t understand this world anymore. How could anything justify such a crime?

Although I was deeply disappointed by the election that followed three days after the attacks—I felt that the Socialist Party exploited the tragedy by scapegoating the sitting conservative government for supporting the war in Iraq—I could not separate myself from my students on the basis of national or political boundaries, as one of my family members suggested, because “they” chose not to support “us” anymore.

But at that moment, we were all human beings above all and in such situations politics and nationality should not triumph over humanity. Besides, even if I disagreed with choice that many of my students made at the ballot box, I could see the factors that caused them—I had seen the emotional appeal that the left-wing supporters made against the conservative party—better than anyone in the States. Anyway, it’s much easier to criticize if you’ve never lived through a terrorist attack.

But what impressed me about both New York and Madrid in the aftermath of these crimes was their tremendous resilience. Though New Yorkers have a reputation for being cold, the lines of blood donors and the relief volunteers that spontaneously appeared on September 12 told me otherwise. From that day on, I looked beyond New York’s stereotype and into its reality. In a similar way, I discovered the soul of Madrid on March 12, as blood donors waited over three hours to give blood and nearly 3M of city’s 5M residents gathered in the rain to protest the crime committed against them, showing both their defiance and their pain by chanting “Murderers: Motherfuckers!” and a rhyming couplet that said, “It’s not raining/Madrid is crying!”

And so this September 11, as the media coverage recounts the number who perished in each of these attacks, I will also be remembering the courage of my students and the rest of those survivors who suffered through these crimes and so bravely rebuilt their cities.

Through the doorway at the back of the bar at Café Libertad 8 is a small room with a few tables. In one corner is a small stage with an old piano, the likes of which I’ve only seen in the home of my grandmother. An African drum is lying on its side, and a classical guitar is balanced on the chair behind a microphone and stand.

The sign out front said the concert starts at 10 PM, and it’s past 10:30 when Martín Buscaglia enters from a door in the back of the room, giving two kisses to friends at various tables before settling down in the chair behind the microphone. He leans his guitar against the piano and reaches for a small rhythm instrument, a wooden egg-shaped object, cupping it between his hands and smiling at those of us around the tables before singing his first song, a simple melody, just his voice and this rhythm instrument, which sounds like a soft hand clap.

The night was like this–something so simple about it all. Just a guy and his music, nothing more. Through the course of the night, Martín jumped from one instrument to the next, strumming his guitar, of course, but also fiddling with a hand harp, singing a duet with a recorded conversation from a friend of his, even making sounds I’ve only heard in old horror films from an instrument called the theremin, which looks like a radio antenna and is the only instrument I know of that you play without touching. Still, there was a simplicity about the way he brought each song to life.

Between songs as Martín strummed chords, he laughed with us, making jokes, spontaneously bursting into songs about the concert itself, ending the evening with a song about how disappointed he was that Metro Line 3, the closest metro to where he was staying in Madrid, was closed over the summer for restoration, something anyone living in the city could relate to.

Martín’s songs weren’t garbled with abstract lyrics I only could have made sense of if I were discussing them in a university classroom. They were more like conversations I’d have with a close friend over a cup of coffee. Martín’s songs ranged from a playful rendition of the theme song from the A-Team, a TV show on after school when I was a kid, to a song called “Mil Cosas” about the thousands of things we learn over the course of a lifetime.

After the concert, two of my friends and I were walking home, surging with the energy that comes after a great concert and talking about what we thought of the music. I realized that Martín had both inspired me and terrified me at the same time.

I was inspired by the fact that Martín made his music so accessible, so tangible, so relevant to me. As an aspiring writer and guitar player, I felt like his music was saying to me, “See, art doesn’t have to be complicated or sophisticated. The only thing you need to do is to tell the truth.” The thought made me want to come right home and write this article.

What terrified me, however, was exactly that. Good art isn’t about fancy lyrics or about gorgeous guitar licks. Good art is about telling the truth. That’s the most difficult task there is.

Ninety-nine percent of the time when I’m writing an article, and I’m stuck, literally pulling out my hair (excuse the cliché, but it’s true), lying on my bed staring at the ceiling, or simply staring at the computer, fuming, it’s not because I’m looking for the perfect word, it’s because I don’t know how to say what I mean.

Pardon the imagery, but the best metaphor I think of is childbirth. Writing for me is like giving birth to a truth that’s been growing inside me, something I’ve never quite expressed until that moment when it leaves my head and shows up on the computer screen. That’s hard work. That’s what terrifies me.

And if I’m honest, that’s what I love about writing. I get to tell the truth. It scares me to the point of mental paralysis for weeks sometimes, but it’s what keeps me coming back to the keyboard.

So, I’ll end with a thanks. Thanks, Martín, for your concert. Because of you, I was able to write something today that I couldn’t have yesterday.

To download free mp3 samples of Martín Buscaglia’s music, visit:
http://www.geocities.com/martinbuscaglia/mp3.html

To view a 360° panorama of Café Libertad 8, visit:
http://www.libertad8cafe.es/popupsalamoovie.html