This is just a quick post to let you know that my latest short story, “Daphne,” has been published by Eunoia Review. You can read the full piece (it’s on the longer side) by clicking in the box below. If you enjoy road trips, awkward family encounters, or reflections on America, this one is for you.
This is the first of two short stories I have scheduled to be published this year (so far), and I’m immensely proud of both. I would love to know what you think of this story. You can comment on the Eunoia page or here, or even reach out directly to me.
And, as always, if you are interested in more of my fiction, you can always find the Press and Publicationspage in the menu.
Today marks the end of my sixth year in Madrid. I moved to Spain on September 1, 2017—the first of September being “moving day” in my life. No moving this year, thankfully. I’ve packed more than my fair share of boxes in my life.
I have lived in Madrid longer than any city other than Lawrence, Kansas, where I was born. In fact, I’ve now lived in this particular barrio, Puerta del Angel, even longer than I lived in Brooklyn, which is where I completed 10 Cities/10 Years oh so many years ago. I’m 8 years out from having completed that particular journey, which is a bit strange. I’ve almost not been doing 10×10 as long as I was doing it.
In Brooklyn: What a whippersnapper
Since moving to Madrid, a lot has happened, both personally and globally.
There was a pandemic (you might have heard about it), an attempted coup in my home country (you also might have heard about that), Elon Musk helpfully dismantled the myth of the Genius Billionaire, and a Spanish mom went on a hunger strike to defend her son’s right to kiss women whenever he wants. Other stuff happened too.
On the local side, after trying my hand at teaching English for a few years (I wasn’t good at it), I am now working full-time as a freelance editor and writer. Well, not exactly “full-time,” but you get the idea. I’m not sure how sustainable a “career” as a freelance writer is (the writing industry is going through a bit of a tumultuous time), but for the time being, that’s how I make my chedda.
More than almost any point in my life, writing has become my main activity. I’m currently co-hosting a writer’s group, and I regularly perform at an open mic in Malasaña. I’ve completed writing three novels since moving to Spain, one of which I’m actively shopping (ATTN: agents and/or publishers). I even had a short story based on that novel published in Across the Margin. Oh, and I wrote something for Newsweek.
What else?
Oh yeah, I met my DWOML, Helen. We’ve now been together for almost five and a half years, and apparently she isn’t sick of me yet. I highly recommend shacking up with your best friend.
Together, we’ve traveled on 3 continents to 11 countries (including, finally this year, the US) and more than a dozen Spanish cities.
After all our travels, we always return to Madrid, because we can’t get enough of 40°C weather (that’s 104°F for you Americans) and patatas bravas. Some day, we may decamp somewhere else (Berlin, perhaps?), but for now, Madrid is home. And it’s been a very good home for the last 6 years.
That’s it. That’s my Spainiversary post.
Here’s a song I’m really enjoying at the moment. It’s not Spanish. Cheers.
It took nearly four decades, but I finally made it to Africa. For my 40th, Helen and I traveled to Marrakesh in Morocco (the French spell it Marrakech, if that matters to you). We spent the better part of a week in Riad Ben Youssef, located in the Medina, a central business region of the city and an official UNESCO World Heritage Site that was founded nearly a millennium ago.
Other than an excursion for some Moroccan barbeque and a visit to a liquor store, we spent all of our time within the Medina. At 230 km², there is plenty to see and do there, and more than enough ways to get lost, which we did plenty. It didn’t help that the winding streets were often crowed with a mix of merchants, tourists, and motorcyclists speeding through.
Nonetheless, by the time we left, I felt like I had at least a basic understanding of the layout. Of course, on our way to meet our ride to the airport, we walked through a completely new area and I realized I hadn’t even seen a fraction of the city.
Getting Around in Marrakesh
Other than a bus from the airport and a return taxi (well, a guy in a van with his three children in the back), we got everywhere by walking. The host at the riad (our hotel; a “riad” is a residence with a courtyard within it) helpfully let us know about Maps.Me, an app that allows you to download full city maps to use offline. This was especially useful because neither Helen nor I had data, and Google Map’s offline mode is pretty weak.
With the help of our map and a list of places to visit, we haphazardly made our way around city. I say haphazardly because we didn’t really plan anything on this trip. In fact, though Helen had been to Marrakesh once before, neither one of has done that much planning ahead of time. We mostly went to relax and enjoy good food, which we did, and good drink, which took a little more effort.
Where to Find Alcohol in Marrakesh
As it turns out, one thing we would have known if we’d done more research ahead of time is that finding liquor in Marrakesh is pretty hard. Most restaurants don’t serve it and liquor stores are nowhere to be found in Medina. The only time we could get alcohol with a meal (including beer and wine) was when we ate at the fancier restaurants (liquor licenses are expensive in Marrakesh). Even at those spots, it wasn’t always available.
We also wanted alcohol for enjoying poolside at our riad, which required the aforementioned trip out of the city central. Another couple at the riad told us about a liquor store, the Mini Marché Majorelle, near Jardin Majorelle. There we filled a backpack with various inebriants and hiked it back to our riad under the hot sun. We lucked out in that our week there was relatively cool (32° rather than the ~40° it had been the week before), but when you’re saddled with a few pounds worth of alcohol, it doesn’t feel cool.
For our hunt for alcohol in Marrakesh, we initially turned to a common tool familiar to any traveler: travel blogs. When we searched for restaurants and other information (like, “where to find alcohol in Marrakesh”), Google spit out blog posts. It makes sense. Most serious travel bloggers (which, as I’ve said previously, I manifestly am not) know the tricks to getting recommended by the various search engines. They involve using keywords and key phrases, things like “best restaurants in Marrakesh” and “top hotels in Marrakesh”. If you insert enough of those into your blog, you’ll pop up when people search those terms. (Or, at least, that’s how it used to work; Google is always changing their algorithm, so who even really knows anymore?)
The thing about blogs, though, is that there’s really no reason to assume the information is correct. I mean, generally speaking, what we found was helpful. But a lot of writers who write these blogs present themselves as experts on cities they’ve visited three or four times. As I’ve said numerous times in this blog, even after a year living in cities, I never felt like I was an expert. And considering how quickly places change now, I don’t feel like I can claim to have much insight into the cities I lived in for 10 Cities. Which is to say, the blogs were generally helpful, but some of the “best restaurants in Marrakesh” were just places this guy had happened to walk into. And they didn’t help us find alcohol.
The Best Restaurants in Marrakesh
I have no idea if the places we ate at could qualify as the best, but we did have a few great meals. In fact, after a somewhat disappointing lunch of shawarma and falafel for our very first meal (both were dry), the food was fairly uniformly great. For more casual meals, we enjoyed the Google-challenging Falafel restaurant (if you want to find it, go to Maps and search for “Cafe restaurant Falafel”). Nothing fancy, but we had two meals there and both were exactly what we wanted (definitely try the falafel sandwich).
For fancier meals, we ate at Le Trou Au Mur (alcohol), Nomad (no alcohol), and, on our last night, Le Foundouk (alcohol). Le Foundouk was both of our favorite meals; cannot recommend the pastilla with chicken and the fennel salad with grilled halloumi enough. I’d describe some of the food as a slightly earthier take on foods you might find in Greece, though there were plenty of other options available beyond the local cuisine.
Also, the common drink you’ll get whenever you go to cafes or restaurants is Maghrebi mint tea (Thé à la menthe). It’s surprisingly refreshing, especially since I generally don’t like mint drinks. Most servers will pour it the way Spanish cider is poured in Asturias, well above the glass so that it waterfalls from nearly a meter up. Even if tea isn’t your thing, give it a try.
What to Do in Marrakesh
Again, I can’t actually tell you definitively what to do in Marrakesh. We only spent five days there. But, of the things we did while there, going to a hammam (Le Bain Bleu) for a hard scrub and a massage and shopping in the Medina markets were two highlights. Helen found a selection of kaftans that she negotiated a good price for, and I found a leather jacket that I negotiated a less good price for. In all, though, it was a successful shopping adventure (considering that we spent half the time dodging speeding motor bikes and donkey-drawn carts, it really was an adventure).
We were warned at the riad to not allow people on the street to “guide” us through the city or to the local tannery. We were told they would take us to more expensive shops or demand a tip for their “help.” There were people all over the city, mostly young men in their teens and twenties, who called after us as we walked the streets. They always assumed we were looking for the main square or the tannery, which we never were. Sometimes they were persistent, but most of the time if we just said “No thanks” or ignored them they moved on.
Morocco is a poorer country (a Moroccan dirham is worth about a tenth of a euro) that draws in relatively rich tourists. So, that kind of gamesmanship is to be expected. Call it running a scam or simply call it hustling, but people are going to find a way to get by.
Passing Time in the Riad
Ultimately, the highlight of our trip might have been the Riad Ben Youssef. Located around the corner from the historical Ibn Youssef School (which we didn’t visit), our modestly priced hotel was a perfect oasis in the midst of a often hectic city. It’s a three-story residence-cum-hotel with maybe four to six rooms available to rent. There were a few common areas, and breakfast was served daily on the main floor, but the first impression wasn’t immediately great.
Our room changed that impression. When we reserved our third-floor room, we didn’t realize we had the entire rooftop terrace to ourself. It included multiple seating areas, a separate tented area of seats (that one of the local workers used as his personal hookah tent when no one was there), and a black and white cat who regularly hung out. The cat wasn’t technically a feature of the hotel, but it felt like it.
We also had, via a spiral staircase, direct access to the pool. It wasn’t a big pool, but it was gorgeous, enclosed by four towering walls, and since none of the other guests used it, it was essentially our private pool. Even after we checked out, the riad let us hang out by the pool in the afternoon to kill time before our late-night flight. If you’re visiting Marrakesh, I can’t recommend highly enough having a pool all to yourself. In fact, if you’re going to visit anywhere, I recommend that.
The End of Our Trip to Marrakesh
As I said, we had a late flight on Friday. So, before we left, we visited one of the “landmarks” that we were told to see, the Secret Garden (Le Jardin Secret), which is situated in the heart of the Medina.
It was a small but beautiful enclosed park that, like so much in Medina, spoke to the long history of the city. Once a palace, the grounds now house various vegetation and animals (including, oddly, turtles), an ornate gazebo, and an elevated café. Worth a visit, though there were numerous other parks and gardens around that we didn’t visit that appeared to be larger.
It was a short trip to Marrakesh, but a memorable way to finally make it to my third continent; it’s a place I would definitely return to someday. We didn’t even scratch the surface.
So if Google brought you here while looking for “the best shawarma in Marrakesh,” sorry, I can’t help you out. Just try somewhere random, you may be pleasantly surprised.
After wrapping up the year that was with my last post, I popped over to England for Christmas with Helen and her parents and a couple of weeks in slightly colder, slightly grayer weather than we’ve got down here in Madrid. Before returning from our holiday excursion, though, Helen and I stopped into Dublin for a couple days to ring in the new year with her friend, Carmel, and to take an all-too-brief tour of the city.
This was my first time visiting Dublin (and Ireland for that matter), so I was excited to add it to the list of visited countries. It was a brief stopover, though, so if you’re looking for tips on what to do in Dublin or wondering if I hit up your favorite Dublin hotspots, chances are this post isn’t for you.
Which is not to say I didn’t see a lot. We packed in as much as we could in our short time in Dublin.
It was a bit of a whirlwind tour, but across a total of two full days—New Year’s Eve & Day—and a brief morning drive before our flight out on the 2nd, we managed to see Phoenix Park (twice), the Forty Foot (and the Dublin coastline), Clondalkin Round Tower (it’s both a tower and round), Temple Bar (though we didn’t stop here; as Carmel explained, “It’s a tourist area with overpriced drinks and people playing Irish music.”), and St Patrick’s Cathedral.
Up above you’ll see the famous Molly Malone Statue in front of St. Andrew’s Church. Can you guess which part of the statue tourists like to touch?
New Year’s Eve in Dublin, Ireland
We didn’t go out clubbing in Dublin for New Year’s Eve, which I’m sure is a thing people do. That isn’t really our scene (or at least not mine). Instead, we stayed in with Carmel, a few bottles of wine and a fifth of whiskey. Carmel is currently hosting a woman from Ukraine and that woman’s daughter was visiting while Helen and I were there. The mother actually went out on the town for NYE, but the four of us—one American, one Brit, one Irish, one Ukrainian—stayed in, drank, ate chocolates, and discussed life.
It might not have been a Lonely Planet guide to New Year’s in Dublin, but it was a memorable night and a chance to do what I like most, hear people’s stories.
Phoenix Park
New Year’s Day involved two major stops.
The first, Dublin’s Phoenix Park, was an absolute treat. I’d never heard of it and had no idea there was this big, beautiful park right in the middle of the city. We initially drove through on the morning of NYE (before going into town for lunch) and then on the 1st, we took a walk through it. We saw the giant Papal Cross, the gate to the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence (that must be a prime gig), and all the deer that roam freely through the park.
The Forty Foot
Later in the day, Carmel drove us along the coast until we reached the Forty Foot. You’ve possibly heard of it because Matt Damon was photographed there not long ago going in for a swim.
The water is freezing off of the coast of Dublin, but tons of people like swimming at the Forty Foot, including Carmel and Helen (I stuck to photography duties; my hands are cold enough without submerging them in arctic waters). As it turns out, it’s a bit of a New Year’s Day tradition to take an ice dip at the Forty Foot, so we weren’t the only ones there, even though we went later in the day as the sun was starting to set.
St Patrick’s Cathedral
Before we flew out on the 2nd, another of Helen’s Irish friends, Dawn, offered to drive us around so we could see a bit more of the sites and sights of Dublin. One of our brief stops was the Kilmainham Gaol, the former prison where the UK government used to hold and execute Irish revolutionaries before the nation’s independence.
We spent a little extra time around St Patrick’s Cathedral, one of the city’s numerous ornate churches (as Carmel said when I asked her to identify one cathedral, “I don’t know, we have a lot of churches here.”). St Patrick’s is the national cathedral of the Church of Ireland and, as Helen likes to say, has been around longer than my country. The famous satirist, Jonathan Swift, was at one time the dean of the church. To this day, it continues to be a central structure in Dublin’s religious culture.
There are two things I did not get to do this trip: tour the Guinness Storehouse or drink my way through the Jameson Distillery. I know, sad face. But, don’t be too bummed, because I did get to have my very first “real” Guinness (I have it on good authority from at least a dozen people that Guinness tastes best in Ireland; which, I suppose it did) and I consumed a couple liters of Irish whiskey, including Jameson, Bushmills (American Oak Cask Finish), and one or two others. I also returned with a bottle of The Busker, which I’ve yet to crack because my liver is on strike.
There are undoubtedly hundreds of things to do in Dublin that I missed, but, hey, this was my first visit and I fully expect to be back. Go ahead and sound off in the comments what I should do the next time I’m in Dublin. Until then, I always have my whiskey to take me back.
Is it just me or was this a reeeally long year? It feels like spring was a decade ago. Perhaps it’s because the summer was the hottest on record, the unrelenting heat making every day just drag on. Even more than 2020’s pandemic-elongated year, 2022 has felt markedly divided into periods. Three distinct ones.
First, of course, there was the winter/spring period. I’m sure some interesting stuff happened in the first months of 2022, but since that was 17 years ago, it’s hard to remember. I think there was a party or two. Whatever happened, it all culminated in a two week vacation to Greece (Athens and Hydra) and Sicily, Italy, my first trip to either country.
Upon returning from that trip, the summer immediately kick into high gear. From June to September, Madrid was smothered in a bracing heat, only occasionally breaking enough to breathe. Helen and I stayed in the city most of that time, only getting away to the slightly cooler Cercedilla for a weekend with her parents. Otherwise, our only escape was frequent trips to Madrid’s various pools, which, thankfully, are cheap but very nice.
Helen and I also saw The Smile in concert during one night of Madrid’s Noches del Botanico. If you’re unfamiliar, The Smile is the side project of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood (both of Radiohead) with jazz drummer Tom Skinner. Their album, A Light for Attracting Attention, splits the difference between Radiohead’s In Rainbow era and Thom’s solo material on Anima. With a slightly more improvisational spirit. A highly enjoyable concert experience (even if some random girl dumped her red drink on my white shirt two minutes before the concert began).
Then came October; the heat broke and we had a couple months of pleasant weather. That meteorological shift was marked by a trip to the south of Spain where I visited Cadiz for the first time and spent a week on the beach at El Palmar de Vejer. If you haven’t been, add it to the list.
This was perhaps the most prolonged autumn I recall having experienced since moving to Madrid, with a sustained string of warm days and cool nights, the leaves gradually changing colors. Of course, that all led into December, which has easily been the wettest I’ve experienced here. It might not be record-breaking (yet), but it’s notable that the sun has been in hiding the majority of the month (though it’s peeking through today), and more rain is expected up through Christmas.
But, we won’t be here for that. Helen and I are hopping on a plane soon and will be back in the UK for Christmas, followed by New Year’s Eve in Ireland—which will make it three new countries for me in 2022. Huzzah.
Highlights of 2022
At times, with the various posts about my trips, this managed to be the “10 Cities/10 Years Travel Blog.” But, of course, most of the year didn’t involve travel. There were long stretches of time that I was just here in Madrid, working, listening to music, writing, listening to music, seeing friends, and listening to music. There was a lot of music this year. (Last.fm can confirm.)
I don’t have a Top 10 Albums of the Year, per se (I love end-of-year lists, but some albums need more time to be appreciated), but these are the 2022 releasees that have gotten the most play in my ears this year, in no particular order (and with the possibility some will fall off in the future):
The Smile – A Light For Attracting Attention (Favorite track: The Smoke)
SZA – SOS (Favorite track: Nobody Gets Me)
Spoon – Lucifer on the Sofa (Favorite track: The Devil & Mister Jones)
Hurray for the Riff Raff – Life on Earth (Favorite track: SAGA)
Death Cab for Cutie – Asphalt Meadows (Favorite track: Foxglove Through the Clearcut)
Florence + the Machine – Dance Fever (Favorite track: My Love)
Kendrick Lamar – Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers (Favorite track: Mirror)
Carly Rae Jepsen – The Loneliest Time (Favorite track: Western Wind)
The Mountain Goats – Bleed Out (Favorite track: Mark on You)
I wish I could do the same for 2022 movies and books, but I rarely catch up with those until the next year (at the earliest). I did see a couple new releases; while I didn’t love it as much as I had hoped, Everything Everywhere All at Once was probably the most fun at had in theaters this year. Off the top of my head, the best movie I watched this year was Florian Zeller’s The Father (from 2020). There’s a slew of new releases coming out in the States right now that I hope reach Spain in the next few months.
As far as favorite books, again, I rarely read anything that came out in a given year. The only one I managed was Devil House by John Darnielle (lead singer of The Mountain Goats); definitely a fun read, especially if you’re interested in the Satanic Panic era of modern American history. Darnielle’s gift, both as a songwriter and a novelist, is his unflinching empathy for people of all types, particularly the “losers.”
Other books I read and loved this year (but written before 2022) were Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slapstick, Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, Andrea Levy’s Small Island, and Richard Wright’s Pagan Spain (easily the best book I’ve ever read about Spain). I also want to give a special shout out to Sapphire’s Push, which I had always dismissed out of hand (undoubtedly for ingrained racist bias), but which I found to be a reliably effective dramatic work.
To the Future
As far as personal creative output, it’s felt a bit underwhelming, despite finally finishing a novel that began as a short story idea over a decade ago, getting published in Newsweek, doing my first public talk about the 10 Cities Project, and bringing this very blog out of hibernation. I’m hoping 2023 will allow me to build on that momentum into something more productive and sustained. We’ll see.
But, whatever the year brings, I’ll try to be right back here recapping the year that was next December.
I hope your year was more ups than downs and more Scotch than soda.
This last weekend, Helen and I walked along the Manzanares River further than I’ve ever gone to find the Parque Lineal Del Manzanares (Linear Park of Manzanares Park). It was my first time visiting the park and I was pleasantly surprised to discover a massive park filled with green spaces, sculptures, ponds, and people playing frisbee and enjoying other activities.
There was even a small amphitheater. I was reminded of weekends in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, a similar verdant oasis in a bustling metropolis.
The Parque Lineal Del Manzanares, which is about an hour and a half straight south of my neighborhood, Puerta del Angel, is also home to La Dama del Manzanares (the Lady of the Manzanres), a towering bronze and steel sculpture of a woman’s head facing toward the city center of Madrid. It was designed by Manolo Valdés, a Spanish artist, and it is 13 meters tall (roughly 43 feet for my American readers).
Situated on the top of a hill in the center of the park, the platform on which the sculpture stands provides 360-degree views of Madrid, with Plaza de España visible in the distance. It offers one of the best views of the city I’ve ever seen. Although we were there before lunch and therefore weren’t around for nightfall, I have to imagine sunsets from that perch are absolutely breathtaking. Another time, perhaps.
Though the park has gone through major renovations in the last couple decades, including the construction of La Dama, the space where the park now exists has played a vital role through Spanish history. Ancient Roman ruins have been found in the park, and during the Spanish Civil War, the area was an important (albeit, ultimately unsuccessful) point of resistance against Franco’s forces. Though I didn’t specifically see any, there are apparently still trenches and other remnants of the war in the park.
Up until last Sunday, I had never heard of either Parque Lineal Del Manzanares or La Dama, which is proof that, even after five years in this city, there are still countless new discoveries to be made.
During the 10 Cities project, when I would leave each city after a year, I knew that I had only scratched the surface of those homes and there was still plenty more to see and discover. This last weekend was a fresh reminder of why I love cities: they constantly offer new experiences. They are a source of perpetual reinvention.
It’s reassuring to know I could live in Madrid for the rest of my life–I very well might–and still be confident that I haven’t seen it all. Who knows what the next weekend of exploration will uncover?
10 Cities/10 Years 