Category: Madrid Diaries

After entering El Escorial or the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, and taking time to admire the architecture and paintings, I made my way to the library. The library at El Escorial is probably the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.  It is 54 meters long, 9 meters wide and 10 meters high, and the most impressive…

I had been to El Escorial before, but it’s incredible how notice different things each time you visit a place. This time I had traditional games on my mind from the conference, and I noticed something I missed the last time.   This time I spotted a number of paintings of people at play. There…

The day dawned very early. A glitch in the area’s electricity network had cut off power and air conditioning to the hotel from 1:00 in the morning. As the windows could not be opened, and fans were unavailable, and it was summer in Spain, it was sweltering. I woke up early. I wanted this day…

Monday, saw me on the road to Burgos.   Burgos was founded as a military town, but little by little it became a city of great economic power during the Middle Ages thanks to its monopoly over the trade of merino wool. It was also the capital city of the unified kingdom of Castile and…

The final day of the conference was another game share, but this time in the town center of Aranda. It was a lighter day with fewer people, and the focus was more on building on the relationships we had created in the last few days. It was for chance for us to talk, to understand…

The conference was interesting, the people were fascinating and what I learned was fun, hilarious, curious and strange. There was this game from France, that involved rolling a wheel of cheese. It was about the size of a scooter tire, and a rope was wound around it, then wrapped around your fingers, much like you…

How many of us have played rock, paper, scissors? We played it all the time in school—sometimes just as a game, sometimes to decide who would play first in a game, and sometimes to break a tie.  I remember a few years ago watching an episode of the popular TV show The Big Bang Theory,…

The second day of the conference was a fascinating experience. We were in a large park in Aranda, around a central area resembling a large basketball court, where all of us had set up our games to demonstrate and play. It was a heady experience, having people from different countries come and try out our…

Another fascinating person I met at Aranda de Duero was Marco. Marco was from Mexico and had decided to specialize in the spinning top.  He was on a tour of the world, performing magical feats with it and teaching everyone who wanted to learn. For many years in India, the spinning top has been a…

I think one of the most wonderful things about this conference was the absolutely exciting people I met there. For me, traditional games had primarily focused on table games, with a few outdoor ones, no doubt, but primarily table games. I realized that the people at the conference had gone way beyond that. They had…