OVERSEAS

Author: DAVE BARKER

MADRID - I have always dreaded Sundays at Middlebury. The day brings a late wakeup and a hearty brunch, but shortly after a final refill at the Ross pastry counter, the inevitable segue from dining hall to library looms. Underlining and typing carry me until dinner and then resume until sleep.

In Madrid, however, former home of the grisly Inquisition trials and capitol of a country that claims to have a third of the world's 85,000 Opus Dei members (think The Da Vinci Code), religion holds strong on the seventh day of the week. Sunday is truly, a day of rest. For me, rest from work leaves little respite from exploration of the city. My Sabbath starts early when the Rastro flea market opens in La Latina. Here I can procure everything from plaid slippers to French horns. Once packed with people, the Rastro should be avoided like a lot of the junk that fills the stalls. The tranquility of the Buen Retiro Park on the other side of Central Madrid lies just a 1 Euro 20 Metro ride away. However, with most stores closed on Sunday, it is a quick walk through less congested streets.

Little has bloomed in Retiro owing to a long winter, but I enjoy a nice bask by the side of a man-made lake. Rowboats are rented for a few Euros and a rather Bohemian contingent plays the drums nearby. Picnics in the grass almost always include a cheaper-than-water box of red wine. Upon exiting Retiro, I pass a most secular symbol, a statue of Lucifer. Thought to be the only statue of the devil in the world, Lucifer fights a snake in the statue much like I struggle to comprehend its presence in Madrid.

I see similar contrasts at the Prado Museum, free on Sundays. The canvases of the Spanish masters are displayed on the second floor. In the Velázquez wing, the most sober portraits of Hapsburg Kings hang just steps away from a depiction of the God of Wine, Bacchus, surrounded by peasants indulging in all sorts of libations. The grinning peasant who stares at the observer must be the happiest figure in the whole museum.

Overwhelmed and needing a cure for "aesthetisitis," the ailment triggered by long visits to art museums, I stroll back to the central city stopping for a gelato or an espresso shot that the Spaniards call coffee.

Being April, the option of a bullfight intrigues, but the slow death of six animals will have to wait for the San Isidro Festival in May. A crowded Flamenco venue not found in Foder's gets rolling around 10:30 p.m. as does free jazz at a café near my apartment. The library, at least for a few more months, never felt so far away.