Karakoram Highway

Near my house, on Calle de San Eugenio 7, there used to be a press owned by a don Juan de la Cuesta where the editio princeps of the second part of Miguel de Cervantes's The Most Ingenious Knight Don Quixote de la Mancha was printed in 1615. On 23 April 1616 Cervantes died* --coincidentally William Shakespeare also died on that date, but not on the same day: Britain was still using the Julian calendar, whereas Spain had already adopted the Gregorian calendar*-- and was buried in the Convent of the Discalced (barefoot) Trinitarian nuns on Calle de Lope de Vega (formerly known as Calle de Cantarranas), although his death certificate is kept not far away, on the corner of Calle de Atocha and San Sebastián, at the eponymous church where nineteen years later, on the 28th of August, the remains of Lope de Vega, the playwright of Fuenteovejuna, who ironically had died in Calle de Cervantes (formerly, Calle de Francos) the previous day, would receive a Christian burial in a niche in the presbytery vault. That's the church I go to every Sunday.

Near my house there are also two peep shows flanking Calle de San Eugenio: Show Center Hollywood (Atocha 70) and Mundo Fantástico (Atocha 80). On Saturday afternoon I reached the eastern end of Calle de San Eugenio and turned left into Calle de Atocha. The pavement narrows next to the metro station entrance and I found my way blocked by two youngsters, probably in their late teens, each carrying a motorcycle helmet in their hands. They walked in front of me for a dozen metres until, on Atocha 70, they turned left into Show Center Hollywood. Out of the corner of my (left) eye, for a split second, I could perceive a certain feeling of uneasiness in their faces, just as I sensed the leftovers of my depleted innocence twitch to death. Unless... could it possibly be that that image was just a product of my imagination, which struggled to accept that they were the kind of people who attend those shows? Even at the risk of appearing like a real yokel in front of you, I must admit I had entertained thoughts such as, 'how funny is it that I got a house so close to two peep shows, that's something I can show off and joke about' before, but I had never seen anyone going in or coming out of them and I suppose I expected regular visitors to be more like, say, slimy dirty old men or a bunch of noisy and uninhibited stag-doers... As a matter of fact, I had never thought anybody would use them. Dumbfounded and embarrassed, I never turned my head to look at them.

Down Calle de Atocha, past the Reina Sofía Modern Art Museum and the under-construction floating-in-thin-air (just an illusion) Caixafórum building up Calle del Cenicero (Ashtray Street), Puerta de Atocha station stands majestically in the middle of construction work. On the eastern side of it, at the entrance of Cercanías Renfe (commuter trains) on Avenida de la Ciudad de Barcelona, the 11 March Memorial awaits, hidden behind a cylindrical white curtain, its inauguration this Sunday. Inside the station, a dismal male voice keeps announcing the next trains to depart from each platform on the PA. I just hope the "voice" gets more cheerful on Monday next week.

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A man on the yellow line (L3) was reading a Lonely Planet guide to the Karakoram Highway this morning. I could just read "Kara... Highway" and wondered "where's that???". I squinted but I couldn't make it out. I decided to wait: when he closed the book to get off the train I would be able to read the complete title, I thought to myself. So I stood still at a relatively short distance from him and didn't take my eyes off the book the whole journey. I needed to be disciplined and, more importantly, quick or I risked to miss it. A woman got between us. I threw a quick dirty look at her and she moved. I kept looking. Made an attempt to lower myself but I sensed he sensed the movement -too obvious-, although he didn't surreptitiously tilt the book to let me read it. Finally, at the last station, he closed the book and I got my prize: Karakoram Highway!!

For those of you who are uncultured like me, "the Karakoram Highway is the highest paved international road in the world. It connects China and Pakistan across the Karakoram mountain range, through the Khunjerab Pass, at an altitude of 4,693 metres (15,397 feet), by far the highest paved international border crossing in the world. It connects China's Xinjiang region with Pakistan's Northern Areas and also serves as a popular tourist attraction" (Wikipedia)*. Obviously, not everybody has Julien's geography knowledge. I was impressed when I asked him at lunchtime the other day what they called Myanmar in French (actually I said "Maynmar" if I remember right), and he said "Birmanie".