Cafe Comercial is well over a hundred and twenty years old. It opens towards the Glorieta de Bilbao. In the morning there is breakfast and they cook lunch and dinner as well. Their tapas are good and the white wine is crispy cold. The coffee is that over-cooked, torrefacto stuff that you seem to encounter everywhere in Spain. The granizados, though, are cool and lemon-y.
There are black and white marble tables inside. They have been there for decades. The wooden chairs are functional but also comfortable. You can sit in one for several hours, reading a book or writing a poem or an essay.
For twelve decades middle-aged men, eccentrically but comfortably dressed, have wandered into the Cafe Comercial in the afternoon. They have taken individual tables and sipped sparingly at a coffee or a fizzy water, sometimes an ice-cold white wine or a beer with ‘limon’, making the beverage last for two hours or more. They have read books, serious literature, poetry, philosophy or history. Some have written things, good things.
The marble table-tops somehow cool the air and in the low afternoon light of a summer day, there can be few better places on earth to companionably be alone than in the Cafe Comercial on the Glorieta de Bilbao.
30 August 2008
The Greek National Tourism Office
I watch a lot of CNN -- somehow I've grown disenchanted with the BBC (except for parts of Radio 4 which, living in Spain now, I miss very much) -- but CNN International can also be both boring and repetitive. From time to time the advertisements are more compelling than the regular programming. For instance, in the wake of the Olympics the Chinese have launched a semi-tourism/awareness campaign which is wonderful, compelling, colourful and inviting. I spent five years travelling to China and since have not had much desire to go back for any extended time -- these spots are changing my mind.
On the other hand -- and there's always another one! -- the Greeks have dropped a clanger. What they ought to drop is their advertising agency. I'm not sure of the theme of the campaign, run by the Tourism Ministry, but it seems to be something like 'highlights of an amazing waste of money and time in Greece'. It is visually washed out and and out of focus and every character in it seems to suffer from a serious case of ennui! The scenes of Greece, completely pedestrian city-scapes, unattractive beaches, shallow and callow young people you wouldn't want to spend more than a few milli-seconds with, leave me more than cold, they repel me!
I promise never to go to Greece if you continue this awfulness, Greek Tourist Office/Ministry, but I promise to think about going if you will please take these things off the air and put the actors in them out of their misery! Remember what brought you here -- the Parthenon, islands, crystal seas, history, Zorba ...
On the other hand -- and there's always another one! -- the Greeks have dropped a clanger. What they ought to drop is their advertising agency. I'm not sure of the theme of the campaign, run by the Tourism Ministry, but it seems to be something like 'highlights of an amazing waste of money and time in Greece'. It is visually washed out and and out of focus and every character in it seems to suffer from a serious case of ennui! The scenes of Greece, completely pedestrian city-scapes, unattractive beaches, shallow and callow young people you wouldn't want to spend more than a few milli-seconds with, leave me more than cold, they repel me!
I promise never to go to Greece if you continue this awfulness, Greek Tourist Office/Ministry, but I promise to think about going if you will please take these things off the air and put the actors in them out of their misery! Remember what brought you here -- the Parthenon, islands, crystal seas, history, Zorba ...
Wow! Sarah Palin ...
Madrid, 30 August 2008 ...cool (ish) and partly cloudy (for a change!)
McCain has pulled this one out of his hat! What a choice! I've been reading and researching about this woman for the past several hours -- her story is as compelling as Barak Obama's, if not more! She ticks the boxes that McCain can't tick. I hope that she can stand up to the microscope that is about to be put to every chapter of her life. Glad I don't have to explain everything I was doing 20 or 30 years ago!
I wonder, too, if there is a connection to Michael Palin here somewhere? Monty Python takes Washington!
McCain has pulled this one out of his hat! What a choice! I've been reading and researching about this woman for the past several hours -- her story is as compelling as Barak Obama's, if not more! She ticks the boxes that McCain can't tick. I hope that she can stand up to the microscope that is about to be put to every chapter of her life. Glad I don't have to explain everything I was doing 20 or 30 years ago!
I wonder, too, if there is a connection to Michael Palin here somewhere? Monty Python takes Washington!
23 August 2008
Madrid, 23 August 2008, lives ripped from us ....
... that mark our place and in the sky ...
...the planes still bravely winging fly ...
It was warm and quiet on Wednesday afternoon. Madrid in August is, in my view, at its best. There is no traffic, the boiling July heat has given way to a milder warmth and for those restaurants that are open, no reservations are required. A great place to be.
Still, some people still work and that involves travel; others drive off to holiday homes in the sierras or fly to island retreats.
So, three days ago I drove out to pick up a colleague who was flying in from Switzerland. The traffic was light so that I noticed the ambulance behind me, surely one of the first, earlier than on a busy day and scooted over a lane to let him pass, siren screaming and lights flashing.
On the horizon the black smoke was just starting to boil up. The plane cannot have gone down more than a minute or two before. There was something terribly wrong. In my gut I knew that this was not just a normal fire, a warehouse or burning brush. Something very bad had happened. I picked up my colleague and we left the airport before chaos set in.
And today, another perfect August day in Madrid, there is a picture in ‘El Pais’ of the interior of one of the huge exhibition halls at the Feria Madrid, very near Barajas. It is one of those very functional buildings, with the framing visible on the interior and the floor an easy to maintain granite or marble – ochre, shiny, cold. It is so enormous that the line of people passing by on the far side occupies just a fraction of the photo. In the foreground are rows of sheet-covered bodies, stretching the length of the hall.
It must be very cold in there. The technicians have turned the air-conditioning to maximum, the living are wearing dark colours, heavy coats.
This is the same place that the bodies were laid out in the wake of the terrorist bombings at the Atocha station, a similar number of victims, a similar feeling of numbness.
This time the deaths are not the result of insane fanaticism but the result is the same. It feels as though lives have been ripped from us out of time. You should die old and surrounded by your loved ones, shouldn’t you?
...the planes still bravely winging fly ...
It was warm and quiet on Wednesday afternoon. Madrid in August is, in my view, at its best. There is no traffic, the boiling July heat has given way to a milder warmth and for those restaurants that are open, no reservations are required. A great place to be.
Still, some people still work and that involves travel; others drive off to holiday homes in the sierras or fly to island retreats.
So, three days ago I drove out to pick up a colleague who was flying in from Switzerland. The traffic was light so that I noticed the ambulance behind me, surely one of the first, earlier than on a busy day and scooted over a lane to let him pass, siren screaming and lights flashing.
On the horizon the black smoke was just starting to boil up. The plane cannot have gone down more than a minute or two before. There was something terribly wrong. In my gut I knew that this was not just a normal fire, a warehouse or burning brush. Something very bad had happened. I picked up my colleague and we left the airport before chaos set in.
And today, another perfect August day in Madrid, there is a picture in ‘El Pais’ of the interior of one of the huge exhibition halls at the Feria Madrid, very near Barajas. It is one of those very functional buildings, with the framing visible on the interior and the floor an easy to maintain granite or marble – ochre, shiny, cold. It is so enormous that the line of people passing by on the far side occupies just a fraction of the photo. In the foreground are rows of sheet-covered bodies, stretching the length of the hall.
It must be very cold in there. The technicians have turned the air-conditioning to maximum, the living are wearing dark colours, heavy coats.
This is the same place that the bodies were laid out in the wake of the terrorist bombings at the Atocha station, a similar number of victims, a similar feeling of numbness.
This time the deaths are not the result of insane fanaticism but the result is the same. It feels as though lives have been ripped from us out of time. You should die old and surrounded by your loved ones, shouldn’t you?
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