One Sunday Night

by annie

"I'd rather be sitting in a gutter, glad that I followed my dream, than sitting in a mansion saying 'I would have, but...'" Peter is gushing support of our travel aspirations over and over again with comments like this, and I'm grateful for it. We're standing in a loud, smokey Irish Pub in La Latina, where we just heard a live jazz quartet. Peter is a friend of Ben's and knew us when we walked in the door, "even before Ben waved to us." He's a friendly guy, avidly enthusiastic about our travel plans and has no problem mentioning that the US is low on his priority list of places to visit. He'd like to visit the States, but has so many other places on his list. He's originally from England, has been living in Madrid for 10 years and spent 6 years in the mountains of India before that.

I ask the same question to everyone I meet that has been to India: "Is it safe to eat the street food? Will it make me sick?"

Peter adamantly defends street vendors in India, stating that he only ever got food poisoning from fancy restaurants. His logic revolves around motive: street vendors have fierce competition and survive on word-of-mouth reviews ("if a guy has a bad hotdog, he tells all his friends"). Fancy restaurants attract rich people and tourists and don't rely on word-of-mouth because their fanciness does their advertising for them.

I hope he's right. I'd really like to eat street food in India and not regret it.

We invite Peter out for dinner and he says he's not hungry, the three beers will tie him over for a while. We leave with Ben, grateful to have met him, and step out onto the street gasping for fresh air. On the cold streets, we begin our search for dinner, complaining about the smoke still clingning to our clothes and our hair and our skin. "How do babies grow up healthy when they spend time in smoke-filled bars?" we wondered. "Should we even bother washing our clothes now, or just wait until we leave Madrid?" We end up at a tapas bar and order tostas with salmon, pickles and arugula, tortilla (Spanish omlette), baked goat cheese salad and empanadas. Green olives are served first.

Madrid is fantastic for walking, with it's winding cobbled streets, vivid street life and beautiful architechture to catch the passing eye. On this night though, our bellies full, the streets appeal much less as we battle cold winds threatening to steal our hats.