How do you find the city?

Right before I left for Madrid, over drinks in Cambridge, a friend of a friend leaned towards me and said You may come back to visit but its not going to be the same.  Whether he meant that Cambridge (Somerville, Boston) wouldn't be the same or that I wouldn’t is difficult to tell.  But, of course, the truth is both. Thus it was interesting to have two English friends (who don’t know each other) come back to Madrid recently for a visit.

Neither had been in the city for close to two years; both had lived here happily, as one tends to do in Spain. As someone interested in how others exist in the world, it was a good time to ask my friends whether they thought Madrid had changed since they’d been gone.  Because, when returning to a city that you have physically left behind, for one reason or another, it is easier to see the things that have changed and those that have stayed the same.

The answers to this question are actually pretty standard lately.  Madrileños seems a bit more serious than they used to be.  There are more people in the streets asking for help and selling small items like packets of Kleenex.  The metro costs more.  Yet, there are still plenty of patrons in restaurants; and small businesses and boutique stores are popping up all over the city.

But similar to how Alain de Boton’s friend asks about his new girlfriend “But tell me more about this Chloe… what is it that you see in her?” (Essays in Love 11:3), what I am really asking with the How does Madrid seem to you question, is What do you see in it?

And that answer is quite telling. Claire and Olivia each came to Madrid under different circumstances, had a relationship with the city, became new selves, and then left for different reasons.  Claire returned to London with her husband because that is the truth of sabbaticals and temporary work stints in beautiful, sunny countries.  Olivia packed her bags and headed to Madrid Barajas airport with a one-way ticket to India.

In coming back for a visit, they each saw the same physical Madrid: the cafes and bars, the streets and romantic buildings, friends.  But how they interpreted that was undoubtedly different.