From Munich to Madrid

Friends drinking Irish beer in Spain

While I sit in the BA Lounge at London's Heathrow airport, waiting for my flight back to Dallas, I thought I'd post a pic or two of my stopover in Madrid yesterday. I had been able to book my flight—without incurring any additional costs—with a one-day stop-over in Spain. My old friend Howard, whom I met back in 1975 during my trip through Israel, lives just 10 minutes away from Barajas airport, so it was a no-brainer to try to see him.

Howard carving the pig leg

Cuidado!

The evening started out innocuous enough, with Howard trying to not slice off his fingers while carving typical Spanish ham. You can see yourselves how delicious that oinker was!

Murphy's y tapas

After that we were off to the Irish pub around the corner (first carve, then drink, if you want to avoid serious injury!), where we had some fresh Murphys off the barrel.

Old buddies ...

... and a beautiful young woman

Before long, Howard's Mexican wife, Lydia, and his beautiful daughter Karen joined us for a quaff and tapas. You know that you're in Spain when the girls leave at 9:30 p.m. to buy the ingredients for that evening's supper!

To make a very long evening short, we sat together at home over more tapas and two fantastic bottles of wine until the very wee-ish hour of 2:30 a.m., with a 7:00 a.m. reveille looming. But one lives just once. The four of us (occasionally joined by the non-pictured Simon, Howard's third child—the lovely Sandra just recently moved away from home) had an absolutely wonderful evening, and I will make every effort to stop over next time the opportunity arises.

And now I am sitting here in the BA lounge, with about 30 minutes left until my flight starts to board. What an incredible week I have had. What a fortunate man I am to experience all this. And still I wish for nothing more than to share all this with my Judy, which, of course, is impossible. However, she has been with me on this entire trip—just ask Sabine, Wolfgang and Inge, and Howard's clan. Yes, Judy was present the entire time.

That's all for now, folks.


Jürgen