Sick of myself

Madrid only got worse. The hostel was so hot that I was sweating just laying in my bed. Got maybe an hour of sleep and my 5am alarm was mostly a relief. At 6am, the streets were still crowded with people for whom it was still Saturday night. The subway was not only hotter than hell, it was packed full of drunken zombies. Got to the bus station insanely early for my 8am bus (but with the metro various forms of broken, I wasn't taking any chances) and it was closed. Sat outside and waited for it to open. I have a confession to make: I really like bus station cafeterias. I like them the way some people like diners: they have character and are usually staffed by competent older men who also have character and it's Spain so the coffee is always good and they always have jamón. I had my heart set on café con leche and tostada con aceite (thick slabs of toasted bread with olive oil and salt, so good) at the bus station, but when it finally opened I found the cafeteria closed for repairs. The only other bar around didn't have tostada, only pastries that were nowhere near good enough to be as unhealthy as I'm sure they were. I'm all whiny for some reason--good thing I'm back to traveling solo because I'm really not very good company right now. And. The extreme tolerance I had been cultivating for bus travel? Long gone after having a car for three days. The trip from Madrid to Badajoz took six hours. I think it's only about a four-hour drive, but we stopped in every fucking pueblo in between. And my assigned seat was an aisle seat right behind the bus driver, which meant I had to either listen to crappy bus-driver-preferred radio (they all listen to crap) or turn my iPod up dangerously loud to drown it out. Jeez, I'm so grumpy I don't even like myself right now. Maybe it's the weather or something like that.

Anyway, six hours and three bus drivers later, I finally got to Badajoz, on the western edge of Extremadura. Extremadura is on the western edge of central Spain and is the poorest of the autonomous regions. Weatherwise, it's as if I'm descending farther and farther into hell. 41 degrees today, that's 106 F. The average summer temperature in Extremadura is 38, which is about 100F. Ouch. Arriving in a new town in Spain on a Sunday is always a bad idea: You'll feel really alone because Spanish people mostly don't go out on Sundays, expecially in small towns. Add 41 degrees to that culture, and you get a ghost town.

Badajoz seems to be in kind of a transitional state. There are some improvement projects going on, but overall it feels kinda neglected. It has a nice plaza with a big church and a fountain, but most of the other buildings are pretty run down. Like most Spanish towns, it has a castle; unlike most Spanish castles, it's in near total disrepair. Which I actually kinda liked. I probably wouldn't want to look at a falling-apart castle every day, but I've seen a lot of castles and this was at least something different.

The streets and plazas in Spain are pretty much all named after someone. One thing I like about Badajoz is the street signs (when they exist) tell you who the person was. Bad example: Calle Hernán Cortés, Conquistador 1485-1547. I can't really get behind naming things after Hernán Cortés, but that's not the point. For someone like me know doesn't know jack about history, the extra information is nice.