The Train to Madrid

It's been a long time since we drove to Madrid. Taking the train is so much more relaxed. The train from Alicante to Atocha Renfe station in the center of Madrid takes only 3 hours and 15 minutes, and there are several to choose from throughout the day. You buy a reserved seat, and you travel in comfort, with plenty of leg room and  free auriculares (earphones) to listen to music or watch a movie. Granted, it is invariably a movie in Spanish, also with Spanish subtitulos, and the subtitles are small enough unless you are sitting in the row immediately in front of the screen that they neither help nor hinder. I was sitting halfway back in Coche 4 and together with the distance and the glare from sun pouring in through the window next to my seat, I couldn't see all that well anyway. Still, I take the opportunity to view a dubbed-in-Spanish movie for free as the opportunity to have a Spanish lesson for free, so I followed along in between looking out the window at the passing scenery at beautiful, rolling hills, sometimes revealing freshly plowed terrain.

It's always interesting to guess what the name of the movie is and where it is from. When the language of a movie changes from its original, the title changes, too, and it usually isn't just a direct translation of the original. I had missed the opening credits, too--just looked up from the book I had been reading for my real Spanish class on Monday and noticed that the screen had switched from black with a DVD logo on it to live action, so I switched the dial from the pleasant American jazz I had been listening to in the background. This movie was about baseball, so I suspected it was originally an American movie. I became more sure when I thought I heard some talk about Carolina del Sur, but I don't know of any baseball team in South Carolina. However, at one point I heard the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner, so there was no doubt. I followed the story loosely about a lawyer daughter of an aging man who had been, I gathered, a baseball star earlier in his life, but now was just getting old.

This turned out to be a rather long movie, and we were soon to roll into the end station when the action concluded, without any crescendo, I must say, and the title appeared on the screen: Curvas de la Vida. Now I'm home and I've taken the trouble to use the Internet to find out what it was I saw. To begin with, I hadn't realized that the old thin man I saw in the distance was Clint Eastwood. The movie, in English, is Trouble with the Curve, surprisingly a very recent (2012) film.This review from a Charleston newspaper makes me realize that I missed what was probably the funniest scene in the picture by not seeing the very beginning.

Oh well. I enjoyed practicing my listening skills, and I excuse myself for not recognizing the aging Clint Eastwood from a distance by virtue of the fact that I didn't ever hear his voice--amazing how important the voice is to one's persona, I now think. I also enjoyed the scenery outside the gently rolling train as we made our way through the countryside going toward Madrid, and the sky really was as blue as it shows in the picture above. Next month a high-speed train is supposed to open between Alicante and Madrid--we've seen workers laying tracks and renovating the station for months. It should cut an hour off the trip, and I suppose we will take it once to see what it's like, but I doubt that I will be tempted to pay the assuredly higher price too often. Why do that if it will interfere with my language and film education?