The famous mishap in Madrid, November, 1989

This column from “On the Avenues” originally was published at NA Confidential on November 14, 2019. Kindly note that nothing came of my plan to tell the full story of my 1989 travel year, but hope indeed springs eternal. 

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Earlier in 2019 you may recall my promise to regale readers with tales of my travels three decades ago, and to illustrate these stories with freshly digitized slide photos from the trip,

Life got in the way and as has been my lifelong preference, I chose instead the path of least resistance — otherwise known as social media. The photos were posted at Facebook with truncated commentary, and now it’s a good news/bad news proposition. On the one hand, I failed to make time to do the writing necessary to properly spin the yarn. On the other, there’s actually an outline in place to do so.

Consequently, there must be a new plan. During the forthcoming cold weather season I’ll begin writing, illustrating and posting chapters. Concurrently the next round of digitization will begin, these being the slides from my travels and teaching assignment in Kosice, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) in 1991-92.

In the meantime, in an effort to fulfill at least a smidgen of my discarded promise, here’s the story of my life-altering day in Madrid, early in November of 1989.

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Thirty years ago at the beginning of November I arrived in warm and sunny Madrid after a grueling 40-something-hour textbook budget traveler’s Eurailpass journey by Atlantic Ocean ferry and French trains from cold and damp Ireland.

This is the sort of insane connection I wouldn’t even consider attempting nowadays, and if I did, just use my iPhone to book a $50 budget airline ticket and be done with the transfer in a single morning.

The better weather in Madrid was tonic for a growing malaise. Only in retrospect could I see this patch as a bone-deep, pervasive exhaustion from more than five months spent on the road—and with another month and a half scheduled to pass before returning home. Winter’s approach, as exacerbated by the claustrophobic Irish climate of daily chilly rain, might also have induced a measure of seasonal depression.

The object all along had been to stay in Europe as long as possible in 1989, dipping into January of 1990, and I had budgeted for this goal. However, traveling on a shoestring wasn’t always...Read more