Mollie Chandler  Journal Contributor

You cannot, in fact, rent a monkey in Granada. That’s what Galena was trying to tell us at intercambio, a Spanish-English conversational exchange at Café Diurno in the Chueca district of Madrid, Spain. She asked us where we’d travelled so far in Spain, and when the lot of us expressed our deep, undying passion for the Andalucian–albeit hippy—metropolis of Granada, she proceeded to tell us that you could rent a monkey there to give you tours.

I don’t think any of us questioned it, and when, a good ten minutes later, we all realized that she meant to say donkey, the better part of our leftover conversation time was just spent laughing. Though I’m certain that every traveler is issued a nice pair of rose-tinted glasses as soon as they set foot on romantic foreign soil, I still feel compelled to assert that the Spanish people are some of the kindest I have ever met (not to mention tolerant of my terrible language skills.)

There is something to be said for the New Englander, who boils your brain with his eyes if you bump into him, because his friendship is hard-earned, but that doesn’t detract from its twin pillar: the Madrilenian virtue of amiability. My host mother can relate to this cultural difference, as she was telling me at dinner the other night. She’s from the Basque country in the north of Spain, which is apparently the New England of this region.

“The people are nice where I’m from, but the attitude is different,” I told her when she asked me what the most striking difference was between Madrid and Boston. She nodded and said that it surprised her too when she moved here. “When you have a friend there, you have them for life,” she said, “but it costs more.” It seems strangely fitting that appreciation for Madrid as well as for home has come to me simultaneously.

Not to mention that the shoes here are gorgeous. If I had to dispense travel advice to anyone interested in Spain, I would put, “leave money in the budget for shoes,” right after, “live with a host family,” and “make sure to visit El Museo del Prado.”

Luckily, the latter, for Suffolk students, is free and colors the experience of Madrid in the saturated tones of Velazquez and the intricacies of Goya. In every aspect of its culture, Spain invites you in. Through the art, food, language, and lifestyle, Madrid offers a window into the country’s past and present, and, just by being here, I can see the construction of its future in ways either small or significant. As our feet pound the pavement on the sidewalks in Madrid, we walk on this culture, through it, and into it, changing and being changed as we go.