Solamente Mi

There’s this tiny windmill statue on my bookcase, a tacky tourist replica of Cervantes’ inspiration for Don Quixote’s adventures. It’s placed there, in the front of my living room where I’m forced to look at it every day, with careful intention.

 At age 16, I scribbled a list of mostly dumb life goals on the pages of a brown journal. In pencil it said “travel alone in a country where you don’t speak the language.” It seemed impossible, so dangerous, so brave. It took 9 years to get over that fear, when a standing invitation from a friend in Madrid and a tax refund check met for the first time.

 My six years of Spanish classes were not enough for any sort of cohesive travel plan. Madrid was to be my base, from there I’d travel to Consuegra, a 12^th century town in La Mancha where a hill crested with windmills is believed to have been one of the locations inspiring Cervantes to write Don Quixote. There was very little information available online, and nothing save a casual mention of the town’s existence in a few guidebooks. I bought a bus ticket, I think, from a Spanish Web site and stashed in the Important Folder of Documents that I would later leave on the plane.

 The night before I left Madrid for Consuegra, I pulled out a giant metro map and studied carefully. Even getting to the bus station on the other side of the city was going to be a challenge. Surviving the three train transfers unscathed, I took to walking in a direction that looked like somewhere a train station might be, noting how strangely the situation, locale and language barriers resembled another time I was lost, looking for a bus stop in Brooklyn, with a heavy backpack and blistered feet.

 “Perdoname, senorita. Buscando por,”

Shit. I think. Is it por or para? I never could remember this. Oh well, no matter. You’ve already committed.

“Buscando por el estacion del autobus.”

She says something I half understand and points. I thank her and keep walking.

 I eventually found the bus station and through the combined vocabulary of 25 words, bought a bus ticket from a dour middle-aged man behind the counter. I have no idea what time the bus returns from Consuegra, or if I even bought a return ticket. I have no idea where the bus even departs from, or, if we’re being honest, where Consuegra even is.

 My plan was simple, I’d get on every single bus and ask “Es correcto?” until I found the right one. Like they say, the 20^th bus is a charm.  Maybe. 30 minutes into the drive, panic sets in. We were stopping in towns I didn’t know the name of, and the bus driver never makes a point to tell us.  

 Shit, I think again. I find myself thinking this a lot. I’m on the wrong bus. I’m going to get stranded in the middle of La Mancha, only Don Quixote won’t be here to save me, and he probably doesn’t speak English anyway and everyone knows Sancho Panza is a terrible translator.

 I pop up a seat and ask the elderly man in front me “Donde esta Consuegra?” in my best, most rehearsed Spanish. He briefly glances up from his newspaper, gives me a once over and says, as if we were practicing canned responses in 10^th grade, “No se.” He motions to the bus driver and goes back to his paper.

 Yup. Doomed. Are there hotels out here in these fields, someone who will let me use a phone? Who would I even call? Should I just get off the bus now and hitchhike back to Madrid? I’m going to die in a field in Spain, which, all things considered wouldn’t be the worst way to go. At least there are olives. Yes, I’m going to die surrounded by olives.

 An hour later, somewhere in the Spanish countryside, I see Consuegra castle and what appear to be a handful of tiny windmills on the crest. Relieved, I hop up a few more seats to the front of the bus. The bus driver stops on the side of the road, turns to me, and says four words: “Hey. Lady. Tourist. Here.”

 My abundant anxiety was apparently more pronounced than my improperly accented vowels.

 The path to the windmills isn’t clear. In fact, there are no signs at all. I walk through a narrow road into the town, under a giant arch and clock tower. I pass two old men and a cat, the only living creatures I’d see for several hours. Consuegra is a ghost town.

 I keep walking. There’s a handpainted sign with an arrow and, anxiety finally subsiding, I acknowledge there’s a slight chance I’m being led to my death but ultimately decide I’m on the right path. I keep walking through cobblestone roads wide enough for just one car, between crumbling buildings 400 years old.  Up a giant, fantastically steep flight of stairs straight up the side of mountain. Then, up more stairs. Then, even more. I’ve spotted the first windmill. No more stairs, now, but a two mile hike. Okay, I can do this.

My delusions of speaking Spanish well enough to get by were about as giant as Quixote thought these very windmills to be. I’m alone on a mountain in Spain, ill-prepared and cold, on all fours attempting to climb up the edge of a very steep cliff leading to some castle ruins. This, I think, is possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.

The altitude is getting to me. Or maybe it’s the 50mph wind. Or maybe it’s the single cup of coffee sustaining me. Whatever it is, I brace myself against a 12^th Century windmill that inspired one of the greatest literary masterpieces, a work that so profoundly touched me when I read it the first time I came all the way to Spain, alone, to fight windmills for myself. I’m hundreds of feet above the red roofs of La Mancha villages. I’m eye level with mountains and clouds. I’m finally alone in a country where I don’t speak the language. Not only alone in that no one is traveling with me, but literally alone. There’s no one here.

 Inspired half by the power of my mountain top epiphany and half by the cold gust of wind that knocks me back to the ground, I scream a half victorious/half frozen scream before realizing I’ve been joined on the mountain by an elderly German couple and a group of French school kids.

 Halfway back down I stop in a small 18^th century Catholic church, with centuries old wooden pews, a gold altar, and a Plexiglas box of coin-operated fake candles. Still alone, I make an offering to St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers, storms, toothaches, and epilepsy, and continue back down the hill.

 The main drag into and out of town is 50 yards long, tops, and is home to what I gather is the town’s only tacky tourist/bulk candy/scarf store. An elderly Chinese woman who speaks no English and very little Spanish comes in from the backroom.

 I buy a bottle of water and point to the tiny windmills in a glass case.

“Dos, um, windmills? Por favor.”

“Que?”

“Windmills?!” I say, making my arms windmill blades in “I’m a little teapot” fashion.

“Ah! Molinos! Dos molinos?”

“Si! Monlinos pequenos!”

 She says something I don’t understand.

 I furrow my brow and make a distinctly American face, much like a deer who lived comfortably only ever having to make or listen to deer sounds, now standing in the middle of a 12^th Century road with the oncoming whirr of an engine. Squinty eyes, head slightly cocked to one side. It’s American for “I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re saying.”

 She slows down and asks again, in Spanish.  “How many people? Like, one, two, three,” holding up her fingers to make sure I knew she was counting.

How many people? I realize what she’s saying. I’m a woman alone, two hours from Madrid and seven from Barcelona. The town draws some intrepid tourists, but usually by bus tour and usually for festivals, maybe a school group or two, maybe even an elderly German couple, but apparently not a woman alone. She’s asking if I’m traveling alone.

 “Solamente mi.” Only me.  It sounded so much better in Spanish in a tacky tourist/bulk candy/scarf shop in middle of nowhere, Spain. Back home “only me” is akin to “table for one.” It means lonely, and lonely means sad. But more than that, traveling alone means danger. We’ve done an excellent job of discouraging women from being alone, lest they be judged harshly by a jury of their more sociable peers or risk harm to their safety. But alone on a mountaintop in Spain, I’ve never felt more connected.

“Que valiente!” She declares. How brave. Here, in Spain, solamente mi means brave.

 She points to the cut on my hand with concern. It looks bad, I try to say, but really it’s fine. It’s nothing. She makes the gesture of pulling a band-aid off and runs to the back, returning with a box of bandages. She takes my hand, and wraps the bandage around my hand like I’ve been fiercely injured while fighting windmills. Serious first aid for what is slightly more than a paper cut.

 “Para,” or maybe she said por, I never could remember these things, “la chica valiente.” For the brave girl.

 Lacking the vocabulary to express my gratitude, I clasp my hands to my heart and say simply, “Gracias,” paying careful attention to lisp my c in true Spanish fashion. In a Spanish tourist shop, in a language somewhere between Chinese and English, “woman traveling alone” translates roughly to “brave girls get taken care of by strangers,” and this is a language I love.

Tilting at Windmills, Spain day three part 1

“Look, your worship,” said Sancho; “what we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails that turned by the wind make the millstone go.”

“It is easy to see,” replied Don Quixote, “that thou art not used to this business of adventures; those are giants; and if thou art afraid, away with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat.”

My third day in Spain I took on the windmills. Though I saw them not as giants or enemies, the journey to get there and the hike to see them was as fierce a battle as any. I woke up early that morning and navigated the metro to the bus station on the other side of the city. in my bad Spanish, I bought a bus ticket to Consuegra that didn’t have any information on it. I didn’t know where the bus picked me up or dropped me off, and I only knew what time it left, not what time it returned. Down at the bus slips, I showed each bus driver my ticket and said “Es correcto?” until I found the right bus. And then I sat on the bus nervously for two hours hoping it was indeed correcto, and that I’d get off in the right place. Fortunately, I did. I arrived in the town so early there was nothing going on, no one awake, nothing open. Again, I was totally alone. This time in a small Spanish town in La Mancha, surrounded by buildings a thousand years old, and mountains millions of years older.

I started meandering through the town in an attempt to find a route to the windmills and I eventually came across a seemingly endless flight of stairs to the first two windmills. Though there was another two mile hike to the main set of windmills and the castle, I stopped and caught my breath and enjoyed the incredible view of La Mancha.

And then further up the road, just beyond the ruins, stood los gigantes. Don Quixote’s windmills in all their glory. The wind was so intense I often had to sit down on the ground or brace myself against the windmills to avoid being toppled right over.

On the way back down, I stopped in to this strange, old Spanish church at the start of the stairs. I put a 20 cents in a little automated box to light a battery operated candle. I sat in the church a moment and kept waiting for an old Spanish woman in a black veil to appear crying. The town was empty. With the exception of a French school group in the castle, I saw almost no one. Traveling alone was my windmill, and I’d fought an strange and intense battle against it.

In the afternoon, I headed back to the bus stop and waited for an hour or so before catching the two hour bus back to Madrid. It rained the entire time and I napped one of the best naps I’ve ever had.

Madrid, day one

After a not-so-pleasant overnight flight where no amount of ambien could quell the anxiety from the serious turbulence, I landed in Madrid at 8:30 in the morning. With my giant bag that I thought wasn’t that heavy until I had to tote it all over Madrid, I caught a train to Atocha knowing they had locker storage until I could meet up with my friends that evening.

 Even though it was just the train station, Atocha is beautiful. I spent probably 30 minutes just wondering around it, partially because it’s huge, but partially because it’s magnificent. We spend so much time and effort making buildings that are transient locations so gorgeous, and that is endlessly fascinating to me. It was also the site of the 2004 subway bombings, and there’s a nice memorial to the people who were killed during that tragedy.

After checking my bag (in my bad, broken Spanish) and losing a quick 40 pounds, I found my way out of the train station and over to the plaza in front of the Reina Sophia museum, where I watched a huge group of school kids in little red hats pour out of the building on a field trip, a dad play a game of futbol with his son, who used their bags and sweatshirts to set up a goal, and two women chase their dog with a cone on it’s head. The museum was closed that day, so I explored on foot – stopping for a café con leche and tortilla – which, in Spain, is like a crustless quiche filled with potato and onion, not the flat flour wrap of Latin America.

 Eventually I found myself strolling through an open air book market on the edge of Parque Del Retiro, where I paid 5 euro for an old Spanish map. The whole thing was delightful and wonderful, and old men were gathered to talk smack and young people rode their bikes. It’s only a block (uphill) in length, so I meandered up and explored some more, somehow ending up at the Prado Museum. Admittedly, I’m not a huge fan of renaissance portraits so the Prado wasn’t really my thing, but it was really neat to see Las Meninas in real life. My favorite Spanish teacher in high school used classic Spanish art to teach us vocabulary, so many of the paintings there were by artists I’d studied many years ago. Aside from that, it was kind of an ‘eh’ moment for me, though it’s entirely possible I’m just not cultured enough.

By this point it was around 3pm, and having not slept and flown across the sea, I was exhausted, not showered, and generally feeling icky. I picked up my bag and caught the metro to my friend’s apartment – clutching the tiny piece of paper with her address the entire time. Without a cell phone and with very limited Spanish, I was terrified of getting lost, though I did anyway. Eventually I asked a non-threatening woman and a baby and she pointed me in the right way, though I only understood about half of what she said.

 Shana and I then headed out for a quick tour of Madrid and cañas, where we walked around some cute neighborhoods and saw Plaza del Toros. Though the idea of bullfighting makes me uncomfortable, the building itself is undeniably beautiful, being heavily influenced my middle eastern architecture.

Cañas are the best thing in the world, and I hereby move that we bring them to the United States. They are tiny, cheap, beers, about ¾ of a pint, served with some mysterious set of snacks to be determined by the whim of the bar or restaurant. In my time in Madrid the following things were served with our drinks – olives, pickles, ham, tiny chocolate with cats on it, corn nuts, peanuts, fried eggs, toasted bread with cheese on it, and potatoes covered in cheese.

This is the plaza where we had our second round of cañas! There’s also an amazing mural here that I didn’t get a picture of.