Day 31: Madrid
Nau mai
Yesterday we played our second Spanish show in Madrid.
Breakfast was taken seriously at the hotel Balneari de Rocallaura where we had holed up for the night after the Barcelona show. There was the usual continental fare, the bread and processed meats that fuel so much of the European commerce, but there was also a patchwork quilt of oven roasted bacon and an omelette station. I paid a visit to the omelette station and ordered mine with onion, cheese, and tomato. Alongside this I had a slice of baguette, salami, bacon, tortilla, churro, and slices of orange and rockmelon.
The drive to Madrid was one of the more beautiful drives I have experienced on this tour. It reminded me of driving through New Mexico, the deserts and scrubland, and the rugged mountains that our MAN TGE 3.180 panel van valiantly climbed to grant us the incredible vistas of this toughened landscape.
Lunch stop in Arcos de Jalón.
Like any good capital city Madrid houses plenty of traffic within its roads and we were happy to be able to contribute our vehicle and our trailer to these slow-moving queues. The driving culture felt a bit zippy, and Teddy was kept on his toes by urgent lane changes that flashed across our bows.
It was a beautiful day that we arrived to in the neighbourhood of Azca. Clear skies basked us in much needed sunlight and a gentle breeze fell upon the skin bringing about a temperature equilibrium that was wonderfully comfortable. A chorale of modernist buildings stood proudly around the plaza that we were parked next to, their bold design elements glinting in the late afternoon rays. Our venue was the Nazca Events Club, and we found it hidden underneath the plaza, accessed by a long driveway. Saying goodbye to the perfect weather we began the push, lugging or rolling case after case down into the dark to begin the setup for our penultimate show of this European tour.
The Nazca Events Club was a very solid disco club. There was a small stage in the central part of the room that was lit by a lighting rig that felt like it had been lifted from an arena. Of course, you need to have booths in a disco club and there were ample examples of this seating arrangement to be found along the walls, looking in on the dance floor. The bathrooms were extremely inviting with their rainbow washbasins, and I’m told that these bathrooms are the spot to hit in the club if you want to have a good pash with your dance partner.
After playing in a huge boomy room the night before it was great to get back to the intimate confines of a small club show. The whole evening had a great vibe that was jointly curated between two tired bands squeezing the last of their energy into the final couple of days of this tour, and a very excited crowd of Madridians who were happy we had made it all the way to their hometown finally. If you weren’t at this show you missed some excellent banter, and some excellent heckling from this crowd. Here are a few of my favourite moments presented in the bullet point format.
Katie delivers her entire vocabulario Español to the crowd in the space of an explanation about her argument with a taxi driver.
Jon picks up his 12-string guitar, and a heckler yells “got enough strings Jon?!”
Breakfast and Travel Updates is advertised in a very lengthy banter segment in which the URL of the website is stated multiple times. Several songs later there is a great heckling callback “what is your URL!?”
Liz uses the 2nd person plural form estais and realises that this is the first time she’s had to use this particular conjugation of the verb “to be”.
Shower Door Daily comes to you today with an experience from Hotel Balneari de Rocallaura. This was a valiant attempt at wet zone containment. There was a hinged glass pane with a rubber seal along the bottom that in fairness did a good job of keeping the spray confined to a narrow field of fire. This well implemented technology was defeated by a thing as simple as a cheap clip, the bathroom fit out skimping on an adjustable holder for the shower head just to save a few Euros. The result is a ≥ 45° trajectory for the water jet and the rest is simple trigonometry. Floor and towel are wet.
