As a tourist, I have been to Madrid many, many times. Twice with my parents, once in a school trip and a couple of times with friends. Everything just seemed so easy and beautiful as a tourist. Everyone just seemed to be doing the same activities as I did, which were visiting the Prado and the Reina Sofia. Everyone ate croquetas at Plaza Mayor and shop at El Corte Inglés. Everyone took taxis to go everywhere. At times, I even thought that everyone spoke perfect English.
However, as I grow older (and hopefully, wiser), I have come to realize that all those people that I considered “everyone” were also just like me- they were all tourists. I figured that a lot of them are French, British and Belgian. I understood that a lot (if not all) of them didn’t speak Spanish and that they were all there for the same reason: tourism.
I imagine that living in Madrid as a college student would be a completely different experience than that of a tourist. Hopefully, this time around my “everyone” would consist of other college students, of staffs at the pharmacy (or the bakery, the university or ‘lo que sea’) and of Madrileños in general. Like everybody else, I will take the metro to go meet up with my friends, instead of taking taxis as my main mean of transportation. Like everybody else, I will eat better croquetas (and other delicious tapas) in a different plaza– hopefully a smaller and cozier one than Plaza Mayor (even though I absolutely love that place). Like everybody else, I will know where to get cheaper sangría than the bars at Sol, where to find nicer (and more affordable) shops than the ones in Corte Inglés and where to have tasty dinner without having to pay the price of El Botín.
Hopefully, this time around, my Madrid experience will be a more ‘local’ one.
