Theater, Fireworks, Great Art

What a lovely weekend. Gabe and I wanted to see a movie, and I had read about an artsy little theater that shows movies of all sorts and at a third of the price of any other theater. What´s a day in Madrid without getting lost a thousand times -- half the day was spent walking around looking for it. But in the process we found some great, non-touristy parts of the city, a mix of a Chinatown and a Bohemian neighborhood full of life. Punk kids with purple mohawks, old men having coffee and arguing, churches with people getting married, kids screaming. We found the theater and opted for the American movie, All the Pretty Horses, instead of the 1944 French ghost movie showing before and a Spanish one showing later. They really do show everything. There are a couple documentaries showing next week and Almost Famous on Wednesday.

At night we walked to Villaviciosa and saw the fireworks that initiated this week´s festival. Fourth of July has nothing on Spanish fireworks. I thought the whole thing was the grand finale. It last for at least 20 minutes, and was beautiful. Madrid is so flat you could see them from anywhere.

And today to the Reina Sofia, the modern art musuem, where all I wanted to see was Antonio Saura. He´s a post Spanish Civil war artist that almost exclusively painted with blacks and grays and browns -- a lot of disfigured portraits, figures that look like piles of corpses, and crucifixions. Real morbid stuff, but intriguing especially if you know the history behind it. And then I got lost some more, waited forever for the bus, and I´m back home now. Classes start tomorrow, I think.