Despite living in Madrid for nearly two months, I still haven’t established a routine. The city is a constant hustle-and-bustle, and I am constantly tired. But for those of you wondering about my international lifestyle, about a “typical” day, I have decided to end the secrecy and reach into the vaults of my personal calendar and release the itinerary for one day and one day only, to let you glimpse my glamorous, albeit inconsistent, life.

This was Marie Antoinette’s downfall. “Let them eat cake.”

My better judgment notwithstanding, here it is, today’s schedule:

6:15 Wake to my first alarm. Hit snooze.

6:30 Wake to my second alarm. Snooze again.

6:45 Wake to my third alarm. You guessed it.

7:00 Realize I’m late. Lurch into the shower.

7:25 Eat a modest breakfast of pan de leche, ham lunchmeat, and cheese. Coffee optional.

7:30 Cram passengers deeper into Metro cars so there’s room for me.

8:15 Arrive at the IES Center (read: a Complutense dorm that rents us space).

8:20 Perch inside the lounge, get ousted by cleaning staff, sit on floor instead.

8:30 Finish the day’s homework, on the floor.

9:00 Rise, like a phoenix, and reclaim my glorious sofa seat.

9:45 Chat with friends, in English, like loud Americans, surrounded by side-eying Spaniards.

10:00 My first class: Internship seminar.

11:30 Eat lunch. Always a ham-and-cheese sandwich. Yes, I am adventurous.

12:05 Check my watch, realize I should’ve arrived at my internship five minutes ago.

12:15 Roll into the Complutense's Dental School by opening absurdly heavy doors. Damn.

12:20 Internship! Serenade some bacteria.

2:00 Crawl back to the IES Center. It’s a fifteen minute crawl.

2:15 Purchase vending machine chocolate, regret it within two bites.

2:30 My second class: Spanish language.

4:00 Herd more people inside subway cars.

4:30 Arrive at the Prado Museum, my final class. Gawk at art for ninety glorious minutes.

6:00 So many god**** subway riders.

6:15 Walk home and, en route, buy gel candies. Regret it. (This is every day.)

6:30 Arrive home, eat pastry with host family. I have a problem.

7:00 Take a nap. Eating is tiring. And it’s midterm week. I deserve a break today.*

7:05 *Speaking of, I should get McDonald’s —no, Nolan, resist the urge! Resist it!

8:00 Wake up, disoriented, wonder where I am.

8:05 Capitulate to readers: Write blog posts, manufacture creativity. You're welcome.

9:00 Eat! Today, fried pork and small baked potatoes. Not the most Spanish plate…

9:45 Finish writing this post.

10:00 I lied, I’m still working on it.

10:05 I lied again, I was procrastinating.

10:15 How is this not done? It’s just an itinerary!

11:00 Hasn’t happened yet, as of writing. But hopefully finishing my homework.

(More likely: Procrastinate, pretend I’m doing homework. That’ll fool myself!, I’ll tell myself.)

11:30 I like a little mystery in my life.

12:00 Remove the (unfinished) homework from my bed. Will I have started it? Who knows?!

12:05 Brush my teeth for the duration of the ABC song. (You know you do it, too.)

12:10 Dream of bacon. And chocolate. And gel candies. My favorite things.

There, now you’ve seen it. I’ve said too much. I hope you’re happy.

Featuring visits to Teatro Arriaga (opera house), La Ribera Market, St. James Cathedral, the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao (with an Andy Warhol piece), and St. Anthony Church.

To our surprise, we also chanced upon a bust of John Adams. While touring Europe to research models for the Constitution, he apparently stayed in Bilbao awhile.

(Saturday, February 27 and Sunday, February 28)

Featuring visits to Mount Igueldo (which we rode up and walked down), the historically aristocratic beach, Miramar Palace, St. Vincent Church, St. Mary Church, the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd, and some beautiful government buildings.

​(Sunday, February 28)

Featuring visits to the Mosque of Cristo de la Luz, the Cathedral of Toledo, the Synagogue del Tránsito (Sefardí Museum), the Monastery of San Juan de los Reyes, the Museum of El Greco, and the Church of Santo Tomé (with El Greco's "The Burial of the Count of Orgaz").

For my namesake and Catholicism, I shared a picture with El Greco's "St. Matthew."

​(Friday, February 26)

Hello, everyone.

I apologize for my absence the past two weeks. I had the stomach flu. It started in Granada and left me decommissioned an entire week, removing me from three days of class and internship. Somehow, despite being 6.500 kilometers from the University of Michigan, I still caught the campus plague. Not sure how that works.

Michigan never leaves you.

But don’t worry. It gets worse. I’ve been unable to access my messages and photographs because one night, in my viral delirium, amidst a hasty rush to the bathroom, I dropped my phone in the toilet. After which my first reaction was to rinse it off in the sink.

Yes.

It spent three days in rice, in a sock, on a shelf, then hobbled through a few days of sub-normal functioning, and finally collapsed. It’s visiting Apple tomorrow.

And last week, of course, I played catch-up. Trying times, these two weeks. But the stomach flu did have a silver lining: being confined to bed meant that I didn’t get lost in three days. New record. Another upside: I can share my experiences with the Spanish healthcare system. Spoiler alert: It’s not like the American one. Cover your ears, children. It’s public.

Yes, Americans, most developed nations have public healthcare systems. I didn’t personally participate in the public one; when I awoke after a rocky night, much to my surprise, the doctor appeared at the home. This categorized her visit as private and meant I’d paid out-of-pocket. Cash only. She watched me borrow money from my host mother.

The system is structured roughly like this: The government funds the vast majority of the healthcare industry through taxes and extends equal coverage to all citizens. Should citizens desire different or more immediate treatment, they can visit a private hospital and pay out-of-pocket. But in a country whose highest, most prestigious profession is medicine, the best physicians flock to the public system for higher prestige and lifetime employment, the latter of which all functionaries enjoy after passing an “opposition” exam.

Back to my bodily functions. Before leaving, the doctor prescribed five medications. For the biochemistry junkies (and actual junkies), I got ondansetron to prevent vomiting, as a shot in the hoo-ha; metoclopramide, also for vomiting; Sueroral Hiposódico, a yucky orange, fluid-and-ion-restoring Gatorade, whose English identity I still don’t know; acetaminophen; and my personal favorite, racecadotril/acetorphan, an anti-diarrheal that isn’t legal in the United States.

That’s right, my precious acetorphan, I’ll have to enjoy all of you before leaving.

Now, four of the medications were over-the-counter, so “prescribe” is a strong word. Even “examination” is a strong word, since she basically prodded my stomach and advised self-medication: “Here are some drugs. If you find yourself dying more quickly than usual, visit a hospital.” In her defense, though, you can’t do much more for the stomach flu.

But this reminds me of another run-in with Spanish healthcare. Three weeks ago when my roommate was suffering a rough cough, we visited a pharmacy and he requested cough medicine. The first bottle the “pharmacist” brought —and this horrifies me— was a homeopathic solution. I repeat: A homeopathic solution.

Now, in case you don’t google drugs in your spare time, homeopathic “medicine” premises that water molecules “remember” the shape of curative or active agents. But the “medicines” themselves don’t contain any active ingredients because lower concentrations are supposedly “stronger.” Which means the solution my roommate received was not medicine. It was sugar water. Why the pharmacist offered it first, I don’t know. Why the pharmacy even carries homeopathic remedies, I know neither. He didn’t buy it.

Criticisms aside, the experience is representative of, what seems to be, a more “natural” Spanish culture. Spaniards don’t appear to partake in the… let’s say, creative “health trends” of the States —anti-GMO, anti-vaccination, anti-gluten (all three of which are either ineffective or dangerous). I’ve seen evidence of only one health trend here, as a lone poster in a store window: “detox” cleanses. And I can’t be sure they’re popular.

Spanish food itself is healthier; they eat a Mediterranean diet with virtually no processing or added sugar. (And since this post has become Health Advice with Nolan, added sugars are the primary culprit in America’s obesity crisis. Not fats, the historically popular answer.) Perhaps diet explains the unfathomable Madrileño fitness, because they’re all in amazing shape. They’re all beautiful, too, but diets fails as an explanation there.

No healthcare system is perfect, including the Spanish one. It suffers limited public funding amidst rampant unemployment. But I find it admirable that, despite unemployment or pre-existing conditions, even a cancer-diagnosed homeless citizen could receive full healthcare without question. And that, Americans, is objectively better than our system.

Last Friday morning, I rose with groggy eyes and congested sinuses to board a crowded bus to Granada, a city of worldwide historical importance. In 1492, a recently united Spain expelled the final Muslim presence from Granada and, with its newfound security, financed a trans-Atlantic expedition to access Asian spices. Since I also recently visited Segovia, the crown’s medieval home, I’d like to reflect on Spain’s history.

Now, hold on. I know what you’re thinking.

Don’t exit out. History is fun, dammit.

The history of Spain reads like a bittersweet Shakespearean tragedy, a dramatic tale of triumphant rise, prolonged enrichment, and painful faltering.

Until the fifteenth century, Spain was an international non-player, a fragmented collection of kingdoms that loosely shared languages. But with the unification of Castile and Aragon under Isabella and Ferdinand, and with their bankrolling Columbus’ voyage, Spain (plus Portugal) dominated the international scene, ferociously importing American spices and gold, constructing unprecedented labor systems, and revolutionizing Western food, government, medicine, and science. That is, until its inflationary habits and strained colonial organization crumbled its economy, left it trailing behind streamlined empires (like Britain), and fostered within it a vulnerability to fascist dictatorship.

Bittersweet.

But that’s your history too, my love. It’s all Westerners’.

The United States is a reflection of Spanish history: imperialistic roots in monstrous Spanish and Portuguese empires; involvement in Latin American countries that were purposefully underdeveloped to serve Spanish imperial needs, and whose revolutionary turmoil was the aftershock of ours; a history of slavery pioneered by Spanish and Portuguese plantation and ingenio owners; a budding capitalism that necessarily developed from complex international trading. We, Americans, are Spaniards too.

For better or worse.

Early in my program’s orientation, a professor related the “two Spains” hypothesis. Exactly how popular it is, I don’t know, but it goes like this: Modern Spaniards reflect on their nation as if there were two, one that represents their rich culture and proud progress, and one that contains the nation’s historical blunders. The latter wasn’t their fault: the wrongdoing of misguided, unrepresentative leaders, a collection of unfortunate, often unavoidable circumstances. The former represents their best, truest selves. The following excerpt from the poem “Apología y petición” captures it:

Yes, yes, of course I was going to translate it:

What is Spain today? It’s a hesitant, chaotic democratic monarchy with economic dysfunction and Great Depression unemployment. A country whose children must, of necessity, live with their parents into their thirties, and whose government’s volatility reflects its forty-year-old adolescence. I recently read an op-ed in the newspaper ABC that desperately encouraged Spaniards to vote with continuity, not for new “trendy” parties, and that posited faithful democracy as the best (and perhaps only) solution to their economic woes.

Spain is also a country whose culture radically emerged from rigid Franconian dictatorship with an uncertain yet fierce pursuit of free expression. It is distinct. In the metro, in the park, wherever, couples osculate carnivorously, publicly, to the embarrassment of the puritanical American. Across the Complutense campus, student groups have defaced literally every building with gaudy graffiti, reading “anti-fascism,” “anti-capitalism,” and whatever other superficially poignant phrase they could produce. It’s “free expression?”

According to natives and my own limited observation, Spanish culture currently struggles to reconcile a proud yet tumultuous history with post-dictatorship rebirth. It’s a battleground for cultural cornerstones, new and old, all competing for dominance. Case in point, bull fights: In certain regions, bull fights are wildly popular, capturing a bloody yet rich cultural heritage, a spectacle of inexplicable gore, yet millions of Spaniards despise them for animal mistreatment —and for misrepresenting modern Spanish culture. The debate is a regular news story. Turn on the TV and there it is. Barcelona recently banned them. Madrid is heading that direction.

American culture is, by no means, static or homogeneous. But as I dip my toes into Spanish culture, there’s a noticeable tentativeness. Like a silent whirlpool of influences that could, without warning, swallow new influences or eject ones of centurial standing.

Spain stands at a precipice. It’s surveying its options. And the direction it chooses will, like the Spain of centuries past, draw our whole Western world with it.