Plaza de la Virgen, a Day in Valencia

At a street café on the square, I order a portion of paella and red wine, stretch my legs out under the table, and watch the life around me with lingering glances.

Worn smooth by time, the mottled stone surface of Plaza de la Virgen shifts in color according to the light striking it. With determination, a woman takes photographs of a little girl dressed up like a doll, using a camera mounted on a tripod. The color balance of the dimly reflecting stone softens the girl's facial features into a perfect portrait. She poses, lifting her lace apron like a trained fashion model, and perhaps she is exactly that.

The square is filled with photographic still lifes, like stories standing apart from everything else. Often, it is simply a photograph, beautiful in its colors, that remains untaken.

In the shade of the trees by the blue-domed church, there is more room to breathe. An old woman sits on a stone bench, a lived life etched in the deep furrows of her face, glaring sullenly around her. Nearby, a young boy plays the guitar, singing The Sound of Silence with complete devotion. Two different phases of life brush past each other side by side, yet without touching. Time around them moves as one, but feels different within their cores. For the old woman, it is a slowly pondering stream of past memories or an almost stagnant fading of thoughts, whereas the boy's performance rhythmically traces the melody from one note to the next, carving out time precisely and consciously.

There seems to be some national holiday in Valencia today, and the youth parade in their magnificent traditional costumes. Child-aged girls look like dolled-up miniature adults. And they behave like grown women, judging one another with solemn, long, and envious glances.

I point my finger at the menu, choosing a small iron pot of their famous paella—containing chicken, rabbit, garrofó beans, ferraura green beans, olive oil, tomato, rice, saffron, and rosemary. I declare I want precisely that, and add a long-finishing local wine to the order. I can assure you, the dish is like a state of mind. I feel the urge to lick up every last sticky, saffron-yellow grain of rice from the pan, carrying the taste of spices clinging to the bottom.

On the wall of a nearby building is a large mural of an enormous paella pan floating in the sky, where a heavy-breasted opera singer spreads her cape like butterfly wings, displaying the burlesque fat of her body. Somehow, in all its lushness, it is magnificent.

Behind the fountain, a conifer leans precariously towards the light, looking as if it might fall over. It is like this very day, tilted sideways from too much wine, and I ask for the bill. La cuenta, por favor!

In the square, a voluptuous woman dressed in red takes selfies insatiably, searching for expressions, varying her beauty. Now and then, she fluffs her hair; insecurity and a dream caught in her camera, where doubt punctures wormholes into her hopes. Vanity is frustrating, just as beauty is fleeting, and my thoughts are like escaping, shape-shifting wisps of clouds.

The arrangement on the plaza shifts constantly, and the career women hurrying to their midday lunches introduce a complexity whose exact nature is not easy to guess. Rollercoasters of emotion like cunning shortcuts, female intuition like wormholes to the other side of the universe and back. A logistics of moods that does not march in a straight line from one thing to the next. In the middle-aged woman sailing across the square, one senses a longing for touch and passion, an intellectual personality. An independent modern woman who does not doubt herself, nor is neurotic about her appearance or charm. Clichés are often just repeated truths.

The rugged nonchalance of Valencia's Old Town, the harmonious colors and the patina, where around a street corner a new sight always unfolds. The city seems to have the rhythm of a normal heartbeat, without the pounding of drums or any sense of lagging. Footsteps automatically adjust to a meditative frequency, and one can always stop for a glass to maintain a buzz of pleasure, provided you don't cross the line, remember to order water with your wine, and coffee to accompany the cognac. You don't feel the passage of time on this self-indulgent city tour as the light seamlessly transitions through dusk into night.

In the darkening evening, I walk along the old riverbed, now converted into a park winding through the city, lit by dim gas lanterns, moving from one district to another in search of sleep. The daytime's ceaseless bickering of small birds has turned into silence, and people are sparse; a few restless souls suffering from insomnia walk by, avoiding eye contact. An old man walks his dog, a drunkard sleeps on a park bench wrapped in a dirt-stained blanket. A police car drives along the gravel path with blue lights flashing, scattering a flock of junkies swarming by the artificial lake into motion like a flock of pigeons. A group of women drinking champagne straight from the bottle stumble on their high heels, singing drunkenly. Further ahead, the pale, futuristic outlines of the opera house emerge. The nights seem to creep into the city along the old riverbed.

Madrid – Art and Tapas

As the train hurtles at three hundred kilometers per hour through mountain landscapes and olive groves, you barely have time to notice anything but colors blending into overlapping stripes. Sometimes the train slows, and your eyes catch a castle perched atop a mountain, surrounded by a whitewashed town, but the Madrid express refuses to linger. There is only one destination – Madrid.

The audiobook in my noise-canceling headphones feels like a bedtime story read in childhood, capturing that hazy moment just before falling asleep. Yet, there is no time to doze off as the loudspeaker blares out at full volume: "We are arriving in Madrid, please check your luggage. We hope your journey was pleasant, and we look forward to welcoming you back. Have a nice day."

We have arrived. The old section of Madrid's train station resembles a botanical garden with its massive palms and other tropical plants. Turtles and vibrant fish swim in a small pond, while birds wander through the undergrowth. It seems to absorb the stress of the frantic hustle and bustle around it, much like a rainforest absorbs carbon dioxide, and after the congestion of the platform, one finds their own leisurely rhythm returning to their steps. Soft light falls from the ceiling and gable windows in slanted, sharp-edged beams, where the air vibrates, heavy with oxygen enriched by the plants. I feel an urge to sit down, breathe deeply, and wash the train's frantic motion from my body.

Madrid is a metropolis where any newcomer is welcome, as long as they pay for what they order. The hotel's firm mattress shows an understanding of what the city demands of a back, and it is well worth the price.

The city center of Madrid feels fragmented; its multi-lane, wide avenues shatter the impression of an old town, casting even the grandest buildings into a sort of invisibility.

At the lower end of Gran Vía, an elderly woman plays the violin with the trembling hands of a retired symphony orchestra section violinist. The heat shimmers over the asphalt despite it already being autumn, and the violin's wavering voice is swallowed by the roar of traffic. "1 cent per minute," reads a billboard behind the woman; I give her a euro.

Madrid boasts magnificent buildings, sprawling parks, and world-renowned museums. It is a city that champions art, and you find it everywhere. In the Prado Museum, there is the Maja—both clothed and nude—possessing the confidence of a young courtesan who rules men with her body, her facial expression holding the secrets of the bedchamber. The museum's temporary exhibition halls always feature major international shows; this autumn, it is Rubens' turn.

Behind the Prado lie the lungs of the city, the Parque del Retiro. At its gates poses one of the dozens of self-important, pannier-skirted women scattered across the city, all cast from the exact same mold.

The park's art pavilion hosts an exhibition by Colombian artist Beatriz González, featuring her most famous work, The Suicides of Sisga. It was created based on a newspaper photograph, a clipping tied to a poignant tale.

The subject, a photograph in a daily paper, was taken just before a couple committed suicide together, leaping from a massive dam to certain death. They wished to preserve the purity of a love they held religiously sacred within a forbidden relationship. Rumor had it the man was insane, and either the Catholic Church or their families had forbidden the marriage. The couple decided to defy their cruel surroundings, sealing their shared destiny by stepping hand in hand into death.

They had commissioned a local newspaper photographer to immortalize their great love right before their joint plunge into the abyss, asking for copies to be sent to both of their families. They wanted to be remembered exactly like that—dressed in their Sunday best and happy. In the woman's gaze, there is a glimmer of defiant, sorrowful triumph. The man goes along with a passive, yielding acceptance.

The photograph is like a wedding portrait without a wedding, where a man and a woman want to tell the world they have committed to each other until the very end of their days, naively clinging to their faith. Love won; life lost.

The story made its way into the local newspaper as a touching narrative. Beatriz González happened upon the news and its grainy, blurred photo, and created her own version of it. It made both her and the couple world-famous.

Within these frames, anyone can invent their own backstory and make a statement, but the true story makes the naive image uniquely moving.

The artistic experience lingers in the graceful movements of the black swans on the lake by the Crystal Palace.

On short city breaks, you are forced to devour everything at once. And because art is the theme of this walk, weary steps lead toward the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, near the main railway station.

Before tackling the countless galleries, one can rest on a turquoise terrace before facing the crowds anew—enjoying the day's first and last glass of brandy, a Carlos I, in a warmed snifter alongside coffee and chocolate cake.

Pablo Picasso's Guernica is the museum's Mona Lisa. A colossal canvas, reluctantly returned from half a century of exile in New York to the land whose tragic moments it depicts. There is always a crowd in front of it, and having seen it so many times, in so many places, a glance from the doorway is enough. I am tired, too. The museum's halls hold works by all the great names of modern art—Dalí, Miró, and others. Performance pieces, century-old Dadaist films, postmodernist concepts like calculated madness, and the protest-fueled existential anarchism of the interwar years.

A bare room painted entirely in white, devoid of a single painting, where nothing happens; there is only a bench. Sitting there, you can confront your neuroses or simply rest a body weary from wandering. The soundproofed, featureless space feels like the loss of signal brought on by old age. You can even listen to the silence. And so, I seek refuge there, and after a half-hour nap, a museum guard gently nudges me awake with a friendly smile.

A successful artistic experience; we nod to each other like Japanese acquaintances.

I walk toward the exit. A man in a striped shirt sways to the rhythm of a massive metronome, like a clockwork toy escaped from its box. Depending on the angle, the metronome features a winking eye, which the man follows.

Large Spanish cities offer walking, coffee, more walking, red wine, tapas, and the noisy performance of everyday life. A girl sits on the street playing the flute, wearing a low-cut dress that reveals her cleavage, silicone breasts, and a silver pocket watch around her neck. I find a few euros in my pocket, and sharp, grey eyes carefully count the coins clinking into the flute case. In gratitude, she gives a strained smile, wipes her mouth, and then plays Johann Sebastian Bach's Bourrée like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull.

I whistle along in my mind for a few blocks—ta ta taa, ta ta taa, tata tata tata tata taa—memories drifting back to a Jethro Tull concert in Stockholm in 1970. My intoxicated friend sitting next to me in the hall fell asleep, and noticing this, Anderson paused his performance for a moment, pointing his flute at us. He shook his head and resumed even more intensely: ta ta taa, ta ta taa, tata tata tata taa.

Street life isn't just about breasts and silver watches, grey beards and feet sore from walking. Time is a space stretching from the beginning to the end, where everything unfolds, and you can travel back in time simply by scrolling through your tinted memories.

Hunger makes me stop at a sidewalk café in a grand plaza; I order a small bottle of three-towers Torres and some tapas. For the rest of the afternoon, I idle away, lazily watching the scene as if reading a cliché novella. A multi-story horse-drawn carriage hurries across the wall of a neighboring building, wheels tilted, urged on by a grim-faced driver.

In the square, a long-nosed human-dog dressed in shiny sequins begs in front of the restaurant, snapping its wooden snout like a centuries-old carnival creature. Madrid's living statue performances are in a league of their own, but the service is more a matter of luck. The tapas served are meatballs swimming in a watery tomato broth, tasting of chili, and it is best to order a brandy to combat the dish's army of bacilli—perhaps the game is not entirely lost.

A city of millions has its rough edges and dirty alleys, places where you are advised not to go, neither by night nor by day. Places not marked on tourist maps, which hold an irresistible pull.

Wandering aimlessly, you always drift downward, following the path of least resistance to somewhere unknown, like water. You stumble into places where life reeks in all its nuances, and the atmosphere strikes the mind like potent spices. Places where the struggle for existence crawls under your skin and dirt settles into the nails like mourning bands.

In a small square, a group of Africans is pressed together into a tight, clinging mass, chanting rhythmically without pause, with all their might: AAAOOOAAAOOO... The last warriors of some African savanna village have drifted across oceans and continents into Madrid's foul-smelling immigrant slum, now dressed in tracksuits. Yet, they had not forgotten their warlike, dancing rituals.

As a collective tribe, the group coaxed their collective soul into battle while chewing khat. As the trancelike melody urged these proud men to proclaim their existence, they were surrounded by the hostility of a foreign city, bare concrete walls, the blare of car horns, and the menacing presence of authority. AAAOOOAAAOOO... the walls reply like an echo; the entire square undulates with the defiant, ecstatic cry of a shattering, distant culture.

They had fled the mercilessly lethal rifles of child soldiers, looking back only to see the orange glow of their burning village against a black sky. The choice was to die or to run. On the coast, rotten rubber dinghies awaited to carry them, overloaded, to European refugee camps, provided they had the funds to pay. A game of chance where many drowned as a quick penalty; it was not a matter of ruthless natural selection where only the fittest survive, but pure luck. The boat either withstood the Atlantic swell or it didn't.

On the walls of the plaza's buildings, political graffiti serve as chronicles of horrors, demanding attention. On the other side of the square, the Red Cross distributes food bags to a long queue of pitch-black refugee women, infants tightly wrapped in shawls upon their backs.

There are weapons here, too. On the corner, a group of police officers keep watch over the scene, assault rifles cradled in their arms. Behind them, painted on the wall of a building, is a large face of a refugee child, its gaze holding a bewildered, questioning expression. It wasn't supposed to go like this.

As dusk falls, it is best to return to a safer environment, as predatory glances search the shadows for their prey. In the hungry poverty of this neighborhood's blocks, there are rights that do not exist elsewhere, and losses are always your own fault. The law of the land is the jungle law of survival. Hunger grows with walking, and not far from the dark, urine-stained alleys and ethnic fast-food joints lies a restaurant district bursting with abundance, its outer walls and interiors ablaze with color. The options are endless, and many restaurants lure you in with their authentic past. I find a corner table in a place with centuries of history behind it at the same address. A place where an ancient, thirsty traveler could order a carafe of wine, a wedge of cheese, and paper-thin slices of Serrano ham, carved as if with a guitar string. Like all metropolises, 

Madrid is indifferent to you; you get what you pay for, but not a drop more—and most often, vastly less. The wine, cheese, and ham are always excellent, so I order exactly that, watching a large mosaic on the wall depicting women dancing flamenco.