In that first moment when I stepped off the plane it didn’t quite hit me that I had actually left New York, it hadn’t really settled in that I had flown to a new city. Even as I left the airport and made my way to my home (for the month) it didn’t quite feel like Spain, not just yet. In those first moments of arriving and adjusting it felt more like a new city rather than a whole new country, a whole new continent. Madrid is much like New York, in more ways than I had previously imagined.
The first change I noticed was the weather: when I left New York that night (May 30th) it was quite chilly, so hopping off the plane the next morning in my Adidas track pants and my Hunter College Athletics hoodie I felt the heat of Madrid immediately. However, unlike the heat in New York, Madrid summers (or at least for the month of June) are not humid.
The toilets in Madrid are very clean (perhaps an odd thing to notice, but if you’re from New York you can understand). The bathrooms here are most often labelled as “aseos” which means toilet. “Aseos” was not a word with which I was familiar with, I expected to see “baños;” however, “baños” is one of the least common ways I have seen bathrooms labelled here. If they are not labelled as “aseos” the second closest bet is to see “servicios.” But the bathrooms here are more often than not spotless – public and gas station bathrooms included.
On the note of cleanliness, the city lacks litter. The streets of Madrid are super clean, interesting because public trash cans are hard to come by. There aren’t many within a barrio but within the radius of a park they become more prominent.
The trains here in Madrid are also pretty cool, way better than those of New York. But I will go into more detail about trains in a separate post.
Además, the most noticeable thing was the atmosphere of Spain. The people here are just extremely amicable.
aseos – toilets
baños – bathrooms
servicios – services
barrio – neighborhood
además – moreover
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