Madrid (2022)
Inhalt/Content
The Nerd Tour
As has become a tradition in every major city we visit, a day should also be dedicated to checking out some anime, manga, and game shops to get an impression of the local nerd culture. In fact, Madrid has countless such shops, some streets even only had this theme, and next to the smaller shops you could always find a “Generación X”, which is probably a chain of comic book shops here in Spain. For me, it was generally difficult to find a reasonable way through the city with all the shops (“Traveling Salesman Problem”): On the one hand, because we wanted to have lunch at an okonomiyaki or ramen restaurant in between, on the other hand, because the Opening times in Spain for shops for us as Germans take some getting used to. Almost every shop takes a break in the afternoon, which can be anywhere between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. and often lasts 3-4 hours. It makes sense to visit most of the shops in the morning or late in the evening, although many shops did not open before 10 a.m.
Early in the morning, we walked through Retiro Park again to get to the “Museo Nacional del Prado”. But here we only took photos from the outside, because a visit would have taken the whole day. After that, we set off from the south to visit as many anime shops (in most cases comic or game shops) as possible. We found many board games (some of which we had noted down in order to possibly buy them in Germany), but also many anime figures or tabletop accessories.
After we were able to visit most of the shops, we also arrived in the northern part of the city center, where we wanted to eat something around noon. We found a restaurant that was very traditionally Japanese and even offered okonomiyaki, which is my favorite Japanese food and is hard to find in Germany. So I took okonomiyaki and Nathalie ordered ramen. I was confused at first about how the okonomiyaki is fried here, as I didn’t see a large stovetop anywhere, but the dish was actually served in pans, from which it was eaten – and it was delicious.
After lunch, we went to the Temple of Debod, which was closed the day before. This is an ancient Egyptian temple and museum, but when we got there, there was an endless line in front of it. Because of Corona, apparently, only a few people were allowed to enter the museum at the same time and when we saw after 10 minutes that it was still not progressing (the people in the queue also looked quite exhausted), we decided to pass this sight after all and simply walk back towards the city center via the park in the south. In addition, the thought of looking at looted art there was not the nicest either. In the city, we found a Chinese stationery shop, where beautiful notebooks and other writing utensils could be found. In addition to notebooks for friends, a Chinese textbook, and anime Post-Its, Nathalie was also able to buy a zippered bag with bunnies on it (probably from the year of the bunny). This has then become our favorite bag.
The day ended again with Nathalie going running and training in Retiro Park and we had to plan the next three days after Monday and Tuesday were more or less only occupied with city tours. While Nathalie was preparing dinner, she also spoke with a woman from Albania who had just checked into one of the rooms. Nathalie helped her with the WiFi in the apartment and it turned out that the woman was an artist. So we stayed together in the kitchen for a while and she showed us her portfolio consisting of a large number of drawings of Albanian landscapes.
