Madrid in Manchester
- Claudia Moore
- Jan 9
- 4 min read
As you’ve probably noted from this blog, living in the UK, moving to the UK, and planning to move to the UK have occupied a large amount of my adult life. The experience herein resulted from reconnaissance I conducted on Northern England in the early 2020s. I knew I was headed back to the UK, and it was not going to be the South. This was my third move there, and I had some clear priorities. I wanted to be near an airport, which meant Manchester or Newcastle. (With hindsight, I discovered that York has a fast, frequent, reliable train link to Manchester Airport, and would have been an excellent match. Ah well.)
I made several trips during this reconnaissance. On one, I flew in and out of Manchester, conducting further travel by rail. I gave myself three days in Manchester to recover from the flights before taking the train to Newcastle, which was my primary destination. Having previously spent time there, I knew it didn’t need more than a couple of days. Its airport, however, is considerably larger than Newcastle’s. I was also looking forward to a pleasant train journey across the Pennines between the two cities. That was before I realized that the trans Pennine route was a monstrously unreliable line; the first, in fact, to be reclaimed by the Government after its privatization, due to unreliability. I ended up being lucky in that I only had to wait one hour past my planned departure due to a cancelled train.
I had hunted down a very cheap hotel on Bookings dot com that was in the city center. It was built in 1815 and was located in the exquisitely charming medieval quarter. It was situated above a pub on The Shambles.[1] Non-British readers may not be familiar with the Shambles that appear in many older British towns. It is not the name of a street, or even necessarily a structure, as I first thought. Historically, it was a meat market or slaughterhouse. Shambles repurpose nicely to shopping areas and were a quaint part of life in towns I frequented: Hexham, Manchester, York, and many more.
Being in the city center, I knew it would be noisy, but the convenience and charm of the location were worth it. My window overlooked the gothic Manchester Cathedral, all deep streaky greys and pitch black ironwork. The room was accessed via a series – I think three – long, steep staircases. The last one clearly pre-dated general public use. They might have been old servants’ stairs because they were ridiculously steep and narrower than the width of my suitcase.
The room was an impressive example of squeezing one in where humans would not otherwise reside. They even managed to make it en suite. It was approximately the size of a single bed with a one foot (30 cm) aisle along one side and the foot. The en suite contained a toilet, a sink the size of a pancake, and a shower stall large enough to stand in with a three inch margin all around. Brushing one’s teeth at the sink had to be done by standing outside, in the bedroom portion.
It was also extremely hot. I had prepared for a chilly Northern English climate. What I had not anticipated was that when a microscopic room is wedged into a crevice of a centuries old building, it’s not temperature efficient. It must have been in some eave where all the heat migrated. I had to leave the tiny window above the bed open at all times.
The stay was a tad uncomfortable, but uneventful until the last night. Apparently, there was a semifinal football match between Manchester City and Real Madrid. Real Madrid won. For those Americans unfamiliar with the practice, football fans in Europe have a practice of drinking and chanting/singing in a loud, tuneless way, in large groups, after a match. I learned that these large groups of drunken fans can keep the chanting up for hours. They must have been in a bar very near my hotel, because it sounded like they were right outside my room, from around 9 pm to midnight. They were undoubtedly seated outdoors. With my jet lag, that could have been prime sleep time for me. Not content to just chant, one fan found some kind of metal implement and banged it loudly in time with the chants. A few times, the sing/chanting would stop, and my heart would start to expand with joy. Then, it started up again. [2]
At one point in the long, long night, I closed the window. I had talked myself into believing that I could endure the heat if I was just relaxed enough. Unfortunately, even years of Buddhist meditation practice could not quite overcome the roasting conditions. I opened the window once again.
In Manchester (and points North), birds start chirping at 3 am. It is light by 5. Shortly thereafter, someone started loudly clanking metal furniture outside on the sidewalk, seemingly directly below the open window. At that point, I admitted defeat. Me, zero; Life with a twisted sense of humor, one.
Complaining is a popular British pastime, but it is done privately (or online). There, it can be abundant. But face to face in business settings, complaining is virtually non-existent. I knew that, and upon checking out the next morning, I decided I wouldn’t say anything about the nightmare that transpired the night before. The woman at the front desk displayed the quintessential British manner: kindly and tolerant. She chuckled amiably as she commented, “You heard that Real Madrid won last night.” We shared a smile and I headed to the next leg of my adventure. Secretly, I decided I was done with city center accommodations, especially in a 200 year old building.
I could focus on the discomfort: the heat, the noise, the kneecap popping staircase. But it is exactly this type of experience that makes travel so special. It’s about the way that travel changes you. It’s the way you have to adapt, constantly, like you’re playing a fast, graceful sport. And for me, traversing these experiences has built a deep, underlying self-confidence. How wonderful.
[2] In writing this article, I discovered that it was a wildly dramatic match where Madrid “stun” Manchester in extra time to reach the final [of something]. In that case, I can grant the revelers a slight allowance retroactively.
:)