What they miss about Madrid and chocolate orgasms

Yesterday I saw this really great programme on television. It was about Madrilenians living abroad, about their life and their roots. Every interview ended with the same question and the answers to this question were strikingly similar. “What do you miss most about Madrid?” “Well… to go out in the afternoon and have a coffee, the beers in the bar. You know, just to go out every day and have a drink.”

For me, as a recent immigrant in the city, the question is the reversed: “What do you like most about Madrid?” And the answer stays the same. I like it to go to the same bar every day after lunch and drink a coffee with the people there. It’s always full, filled with smoke. And while I drink my coffee others take a beer. I know the bartender by now (Jean-Miquel) and his assistant (Marta) and the waitress (Flore). They know me (Jasper) and what I drink (café con leche) so there’s no need to order.

Today I woke up feeling great – just another day in this beautiful city. I decided to do the day all the way the Madrilenian way. Alone in the office I had the time to do so anyway. I took my lunch, went down for a coffee and felt at home. After work I dropped off my laptop at home and did what you’re supposed to do: meet some friends for a drink. Today, I guess as I woke up feeling great, this part went differently.

For the after-work drinks I caught up with Valentina, Isabelle and Verena. Individually they’re just beautiful young girls, but together they’re probably the most girlish and fun group of people I’ve met in a long time. They’re a nice combination: a spicy Italian with curly hair and say-it-all expressions, a friendly Swede, blond, thin and posh and a truly wonderful German as cute as they get. And besides their looks, they’re a positive, happy threesome that makes you feel completely at your place.

But they’re as girly as girls can get, so they choose to go to an all-chocolate restaurant. I could get away with a fruit/cereal pie but furthermore it was 100% pure undisguised chocolate the girls were putting away. One of them, the “chocolate orgasmo”, made them make sounds that probably inspired the name and made me realise that there’s nothing better than a culture where it is normal (no: almost obliged) to just sit and talk and have fun with whoever, not because it’s weekend, but because it’s fun and nice and comfortable and better than being alone.

What I like most about Madrid? These girls and all their peers, male and female, and the time I spend with them, just taking a coffee or a beer or, occasionally, a chocolate orgasm.