sunday 26 january – fly out to Madrid on the latest flight possible, had a couple of lovely red wine, nice to be on a flight which lasts more than 2 hours!
monday 27 january – start of the 3 day CDP1 course (consulting development program), lively set of participants, but too tired to go out in the evening with the others
tuesday 28 january – talking with max from poland, interestingly he has some friends in a family who migrated to the UK for work; their children who were certainly over 10 years old, were only averagely placed in classes in poland, but found themselves rated as near the top in their respective uk classes, although they would also have been struggling with the language I would have thought, if our experience is anything to go by, this is no mean feat, even assuming they had “reasonable”, but clearly low-level english knowledge beforehand, this is a terrible indictment, that someone from another country with a different syllabus and without mother-tongue english can jump over in-country pupils with mother-tongue language skills.
go for run around the park at the back of the hotel
then went to watch Real Madrid play at the Bernabeu, very high up, went along with james from uk, kersten from munich office and simon from krakow.
interesting that it’s a real family event with old to young represented, it was a late match so not so many young ones, but they were still represented
also at half-time everyone gets their meals out in a very organised fashion and turn away from the match to talk amongst one anoher
very high-up, almost dizzy feeling as if falling forward, not sold out, imagine less than half-full, but still 40,000 spectators
wednesday 29 january – end of course, bit more energy today, stay late in office working with couple of others who’d stayed back
don’t bother with evening meal, in any case have been eating too much
thursday 30 january – went through the quotations on name tags used on the course, rearranged to flow a bit better:
- “Business is like a bicycle, either you move forward or you fall over” – Anonymous
- “Only the paranoid survive” – Andrew Grove
- “Fear, envy, vanity, health, utility, profit, love, and entertainment, if you ever spend money it will be one of these reasons – Rod Mimpress ITT
- “The mind is like a parachute, it works better when it’s open, but it gets there much quicker when it’s closed” – Anonymous
- “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought” – Albert Von Szent Gyorgy
- “All the significant breakthroughs were breaks with the old ways of thinking” – Thomas Kuhn
- “If you think you can do a thing or you think you can’t do a thing, you’re right” – Henry Ford
- “Hindsight always creates 20/20 vision” – Billy Wilder
- “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics” – Benjamin Disraeli
- “Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital” – Aaron Levenstein
- “I am easily satisfied with the very best” – Winston Churchill
- “There are two types of people, those that do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group, there’s less competition” – Ghandi
- “Hands that once picked cottent, can now pick presidents” – Jessie Jackson
- “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute; but let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity” – Albert Einstein
- “Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today, it’s already tomorrow in Australia” – Charles Schultz
again, go for run around the park at the back of the hotel, this time building some more HIIT (high-intensity interval training) or “reps” – run for about 100m quite hard then recover over 200-300 metres; really feel it in my legs
in the evening, go to the shopping centre, al campo, buys some socks and a jacket, most things pretty cheap and interesting the 2 sets of socks which were made in portugal and even serbia.
went to the bar in the shopping mall and had a wonderful tortilla with spinach and prawns, some san miguel and a yellow spirit/schnapps from santiago de compstela
friday 31 january – finish early and go to ministerio nuevo and wait for katie to arrive via the underground train from airport
we go to hotel, check-in then go out for walk round west part of town and to the royal palace.
on the way back find to the hotel, find a couple of good bars for tapas – bar F1 was ok with simple food, slices of cheese, bread, chips with tomato sauce, but decent wine
bar F2 was an excellent, authentic, had an almost family atmosphere with really nice food, although the chickpeas confused katie a little and i discovered a great wine: Juan Gill, Jumilla
saturday 1 february
long walk day
went to breakfast and found a nice bakery called “la rollerie”, round the corner from where we’re staying at the hotel, pass a long line of men waiting for breakfast at a “soup kitchen” associated with a church it looked like. eve called during the breakfast struggling to find a spare set of keys for sophie and i help her find the set i use when going jogging, so the conversation ended “peacefully” fortunately.
set off for the long circuitous walk passing the market at Anton Martin, with some wonderful specialist market shops:
got lost going down to the museum at reine sofia, katie not too pleased at waiting 20 minutes since i took a wrong turn
we decide not to go in the gallery but continue the long way round the botanical garden, due to an abortion demo which is taking place on the main road from the railway station past the museo del prado.
we stop for coffee at a trendy place:
couple of cafe con leche, multo caliente for 3€ and a visit to the loo which produces puzzlement on those using to work out which sign is for men and which for women, signs were simply: bla, and
BLA, bla, bla,
bla, bla, bla,
seems to be most men went in the first, but according to katie, the men in the bar belonged to the second category, watching them talking
go round the botanical gardens for a pleasant stroll and starting and finishing the packet of Tucs biscuits, then wander up to the Prado Museum
the following made an impression on me, various painters’ works and items of interest:
Rubens – Peter Paul Rubens – 17th century, flemish. Created 1500 paintings in all, often copied works by Titian.
St George and the Dragon, St George on a magnificent horse driving a sword/lance into a dragon and a princess and lamb in the background
Rape of Europa, Jupiter turns into a bull and carries off Europa on its back
Saturn devouring a Son, Saturn is succeeded by Zeus, has the idea of Chronos/Time being represented by a scythe, which cuts off life
Three Graces, also done by others eg. Raphael in early 16th century; for Rubens it seems to coincide with the love and happiness in his second marriage. The three graces classically belonged to the retinue of Aphrodite and convey love, beauty, sexuality, fertility and life-giving forces.
Titian – 16th century, italian.
Charles V at Mühlberg, has a lance, more like a spear, bringing a couple of references with it – the centurion’s piercing of Christ’s side and the lance of St. George
Danae and the Shower of Gold, King Argos locks his daughter in a tower in an attempt to stop Zeus, who foils the plot by coming to her as a shower of gold.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses inspires many of the themes
Thomas Gainsborough, Thomas Lawrence, Sir Joshua Reynold – 18th century, british. Particularly like Gainsborough’s portrait with its psychological depiction as well. Next door was a prodigious collection of work by the german artist, Anton Raphael Mengs.
Velasquez – 17th century, spanish, leading painter at the court of the Spanish King Philip IV, also there was a separate exhibition dedicated to the royal family, showing margarita, his daughter from the second marriage to mariana and their son who became King Charles II of Spain.
Spinners, a key painting showing 2 parts to it, in the background a mythological scene with the tapestry of the “Rape of Europa” by Titian with Athene and Arachne and a girl looking out into the foreground image showing a scene of weavers/spinners
Francisco de Goya – 18th/19th century, spanish.
Naked Maja was placed next to a less-detailed clothed Maja, then 2 works which I liked:
Industry, based on Spinners, old women weave, symbol for cutting the threads of life
Commerce, merchants accounting, with stork as symbol for trust and loyalty
the third one of the series, Science, is a lost work.
Hans Baldung Grien – 16th century, german.
Three Graces, with 3 women and 3 children, a tree and serpent, various musical instruments and a child holds music, paired opposite:
The Three Ages of Man and Death, death holding a broken lance and hourglass is tugging at an old woman pulling at a younger woman in her prime, showing the fragility of life and the destruction of beauty.
Passing through the gallery, we went through a room similar to the one in the Capitol Building in Washington DC, circular with various statues, placed between the corridors leading into the room; also there was a copy of the Mona Lisa, done by da Vinci’s studio, possibly as a study or preparation for the final article, but looking remarkably clear and fresh, with the added advantage that you could go to within a metre of it, as others wandered by or stopped briefly before passing on.
We walk around near the Circulo de Bellas Artes, then head back to the hotel.
After resting a while and taking a bath to warm up, we go out to the look around the area around Plaza Sta Ana and Calle La Huertas, finding the best places so far, Casa Pueblo, (refer S1), playing Space Oddity and the Man Who Sold the World, serving excellent tapas, we had tapas consisting of spinach and cheese tortilla, followed by chickpea and elaborate cream crackers, decent beer too. Wandered round this much livelier area, got ripped off a bit at the Irish pub (refer map S2), one to avoid, before spending a few minutes in the jazz bar, Cafe Populart, which was packed with a concert going on, fantastic atmosphere (refer map S3).
Headed back to the hotel at a reasonable hour to pack and prepare for getting up early.
sunday 2 february
get up and go to “la rollerie” for breakfast and are the only ones there on a quiet sunday morning, then get couple of apples and some dates from the frutera y verdura place opposite the hotel, owned by a bangladeshi
easy flight back over the pyrenees and looking at the snow-capped peaks, then landing in wintry-looking munich and get back home for 5pm.
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