Madrid May 2023

Champions League Final, Game One. Real Madrid vs. Manchester City. Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, Madrid.

The block surrounding the stadium is teeming with life. A foamy sea of people, mostly young men, mostly British, heaving to and fro like waves rocking a boat.

My cousin and her family live in an apartment across the street from the stadium. But which street, and which building?

We think we know and we think it is opposite the subway exit and on the other side of the heaving pre-game crowd.

There is no way to get to where we think we need to be without swimming through that crowd.

In we plunge.

It has been three years since our last international trip. Diving headlong into a huge, drunken crowd of football fans is a pretty dramatic way to end a travel drought. But what else are we to do?

In we go, empty beer cans crunching underfoot while we fight through the current. The crowd feels like the sea itself: vast, deep and completely unaware of our existence.

After several minutes of struggle, disoriented from 15 hours of flying, very little sleep and a gnawing hunger, let alone this dehumanizing mass of cheap beer drinkers, the four of us make it through to where we think the building should be.

It isn’t there.

Recheck Google Maps. Ah, there it is, closer to where we got off the metro, on the other side of the crowd we just struggled through.

Back into the throng we go, only this time with our sea legs and a better sense of direction. Soon we find ourselves across the correct street and entering the gate in front of the right building.

“Are you here for Miriam and Marcos?” says the guard at the front door, in perfect English. “They told me you were coming. Head on up.”

We arrive and it almost feels like we never left. Despite the fact that one child has grown from an infant into a serious-looking five year-old and another child has since been born - and is walking and talking and trailing her older sister to the table, petite fingers stretching out for slices of jamon - I feel like I have known these children my whole life.

And here comes Marcos, with his American T-shirt and a baggy pair of shorts, big chocolate lab at his feet, as nonchalant as if we had been there just yesterday and were merely stopping by to pick up something and oh, sure, why not stay for a beer and a chat?

The scene is both comforting and jarring. Comforting because this is family and, really, our feeling of family doesn’t change much over time. They may grow and mature and continue to evolve, but to us they feel the same.

Jarring because I am aware that it has been five years, that we have been through a pandemic for three of it and that lots of other life-changing stuff has happened as well: people have gotten sick, children have been born, we have all gotten older.

No matter what, it feels good to be here.

Miriam gets home. My aunt and uncle arrive, as does Lizzy, my other cousin, just back from her own epic trip to Mexico. We stay through most of the match, watching on television but hearing the action from across the street several seconds before it appears on screen. And we sing along with the crowd in the stadium, anthems of Madrid.

This was Day 1 of our maiden “post-Covid” journey, and it was an exhausting one. LAX to Atlanta, then on to Madrid. Each plane was packed with people. The area around our apartment in Malasaña - a newly popular zone for young Madrileno artists and hipsters - was packed. The metro ride up to my cousin’s place was packed - chock-full of football fans, drunk, mostly male, mostly British.

I leave their apartment wanting more. More catching up with my family, more watching the little ones dance around, more jamon, more Ribera del Duero. But the day - all 20 hours of it - has won, and it is time to get some sleep.

The important thing, though, is that we are finally here again.