By Helen Macrae
When I arrive in Madrid at the beginning of January, accompanied by a suitcase the size of a small planet and my mate H (and her slightly smaller suitcase), I’m looking forward to settling into the rhythm of Madrileño life. After a strenuous first week of sightseeing, and in order to take advantage of the fact work hasn’t yet started, we decide to reward ourselves with a Big Saturday Night Out and dust off our heels, make-up and pet hairpiece (he’s called Steve). As we trip out the door, we are confident of a brilliant night out…after all, we’ve both lived in Spain before, we know how to find the best places, we know when things happen, we know what’s what.
How wrong we are.
Our first, and perhaps most fundamental mistake, is leaving the flat at 9.30pm, about 4 hours too early. Having no dinner and necking a load of cheap red wine probably doesn’t help matters much either. When we arrive at our first bar-shaped destination, in typical Brit fashion we guzzle our drinks far too quickly and polish off all the free snacks in about five seconds flat, watched in disgust by the Spanish couple sitting opposite us, who are clearly having far too deep and meaningful a conversation to have eaten more than a few morsels. After contemplating stealing their food too but deciding against it, we leave the bar feeling ever-so-slightly sick, and begin prowling the streets for free alcohol. Normally we seem to be inundated with offers of free shots and promo people waving flyers at us, but since it’s so early they aren’t interested and instead stand around chatting, preferring to save themselves for later when the crowds come out and the real work begins.
Disappointed by the lack of interest, we take refuge in a nearby bar, but realise only too late that it is for pijos with drinks prices to match. Sipping our expensive-yet-disgusting wine, we take stock of the place and realise we have to get out of there, and fast, so we stumble out and into another bar where we are plied with a free cocktail that tastes suspiciously non-alcoholic. When I trip over a concrete bollard shortly after exiting this latest establishment, I’m ready to end it all there, but thinking quickly, H drags me into an Irish bar, where there’s a band playing live music, and we find a man smoking a pipe, possibly the highlight of the night so far. We start to get into the swing of things until we are charged for our drinks and realise we can’t afford to stay for another one as they are so expensive, so we leave shortly afterwards and attempt (unsuccessfully) to wangle more free alcohol from anyone and everyone we meet in the street.
By now we have been out for several hours, and the prolonged drinking is taking its toll on us physically as well as on our purses. In a last ditch effort we head over to Joy Eslava, lured in by the promise of free entry and fun times, but when we get there the place is dead (it’s just too early) and we can’t sit down anywhere as all the empty tables have been reserved, so we leave after spending a grand total of ten minutes in there, much to the confusion of the staff on the door. Hunger has now kicked in so we give up on the drinking and go on the hunt for food. Much to our dismay, the only place that seems to be open is McDonalds, but after a couple of seconds grappling with our respective consciences, we head in and settle down to enjoy our Happy Meals in peace. But no, we are not to be granted even this one small indulgence, as the security guard bears down on us and informs us that McDonalds is closing and could we please get out right now. Humiliated, dejected, exhausted and feeling rather sick after downing a Happy Meal at the speed of light, we finally give up and trudge home. As we head out of the city centre, in the opposite direction stream hundreds of Madrileños, chatting, exuberant and fresh, just about to start their night out.
I think we’ll do it their way next time.
