Random Travel Notes

Random Travel Notes

1. I’m walking late at night through the somewhat busy streets of Madrid when I approach a very chunky obvious woman of the night in short skirt and tights standing on a street corner with her eyebrows. She catches me looking at her, her excess makeup, her sad alert face, and says to me in Spanish, “Come on. Let’s go.” And I say, “No, thank you.” Yes, I really do say, “thank you,” ever the well trained, polite, courteous if not courtesan older man. And she, of course, says, “Why.” And I can say, in Spanish, which gives me immense pleasure, “Because I have a woman I truly love very much.” And, although I know this is purely my projection, she looks at me admiringly, respectfully, acceptingly, as she smiles and turns away.
2. I am on the Metro headed for the Madrid airport and my flight home early on Sunday morning. Across from me seated alone on the train is an African woman staring at me. Very odd for an African woman to be starting at me, especially since she is obviously not a “business” woman, and when she sees me looking back at her she points to my shirt, a lovely purple T shirt I bought for three dollars at the Monastery of Debre Libanos in Ethiopia that has Amharic writing on it saying “Debre Libanos,” that I already deeply prize, but has faded with multiple washings very quickly, as has the obviously Ethiopian Orthodox cross on the front of the shirt faded, such that the shirt appears old and well worn.
   “I am Ethiopian,” she says smiling broadly at the mystical and unlikely possibility of connecting with Ethiopia – and an Ethiopian guide – as she heads for church of a Sunday morning on the Metro in Madrid, “and I couldn’t help notice your shirt. Are you from Ethiopia?”
   “No, I bought this shirt when I visited the Monastery at Debre Libanos,” I say laughing and pointing to the lettering on my shirt.
   To which she says, “It must have been a very long time ago.”
   And although at the time, it had been actually less than two weeks, it did already seem like an eternity, and I said, “Yes, it was.”