Meeting the Pathfinder

  Madrid, Spain
Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Travelling apparently runs though the blood of my family. My Belgian great-uncle Walter never married, is today 81 years old, and is preparing a one month backpacking trip with a group of twenty year olds to the north of India. He's constantly travelling either to South America, Europe, or Asia. He just returned from Japan, but if you ask him where his most memorable trip was, he'll tell you it's Tibet, where he wept when he saw the Potala Palace and climbed to Mt. Everest, even though he'll joke that he never made it to the top.

Having heard all his stories as a child, to me he was like an old Indiana Jones. So you can probably imagine my delight when I heard he was in Madrid and had arranged with my parents to come over for dinner. I told Ed all about my famous travelling great-uncle to prep him up for the grand visit, and we both decided we were going to squeeze info, details, and stories out of him.

He arrived with his typical travelling safari vest he never takes off while on the road, and since it had been a little while since I'd last seen him, although I found him to be in perfect physical health, he had turned very hard of hearing, hindering our conversations. Despite this, he talked and talked and talked about his recent trip to Japan and his upcoming trip to India.

03 Dinner with Walter

We had dinner that night at Gino's, a great pasta place walking distance from the apartment.  Coincidentally Walter mentioned he planned on going to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, just as Ed and I had talked about. We arranged to meet at 10 am at the museum door.

04 Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum entrance

The next day, Ed and I were 15 minutes late where Walter was waiting with a radiant smile. We started out museum tour in the Italian Gothic Painting gallery slowly moving to 16th century Flemish, French Rococó, Impressionist painting, Expressionism, Surrealism, and American Pop Art.

We finished the entire run-around at 2:30, unable to walk another step. The museum was extremely complete and huge, and I have to say even thought the Prado holds a special place in my memories, the Thyssen- Bornemisza was more enjoyable as far as the array of art works go. The Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza sure bought herself a staggering art collection, making her museum part of the "Golden Triangle of Art", together with the Prado and the Queen Sofia Museums.

06 Consulting the Guide

After the museum, Walter treated us to a quick all-you-can-eat lunch where we had more travel-talk and his and our upcoming destinations. We soon had to part ways and wished each other good luck and safe travelling, and he made sure we knew we could always stay with him if we ever go to Belgium.

After getting to know him, Ed was thrilled and said that was the kind of life he wanted for himself. All I could answer was that we were on our way....