My Library Dilemna

I've spent yesterday and today working at the Biblioteca Nacional.  I'm happy to report that my good luck with Spanish bureaucracy continues unabated.  I arrived with my passport, my letter of introduction from my chair (which I'd asked her to have notarized, just in case), and my certificado de empadronamiento.  Voila!  A Reader ID card, in just a few minutes.

I wrote.  I looked things up.  I consulted reference works.  I requested various books and read about the things I needed to know from them.  All of it while sitting at a wooden table in an elegant but poorly air-conditioned reading room.  In short, the action-packed life of the humanities scholar.  About the most exciting thing I have to report is the thing about the little light.  You see, the BNE is a closed-stack library, where you have to request your books.  You can't go the shelves yourself.  You turn in a little pink slip, and they go look for your book.  The cool thing is there is a little light on your assigned desk that flashes when your book is available.

Oh, another cool thing is the cafeteria.  A mediocre but hearty lunch at a subsidized price.  The really surprising thing – and this continues to astound me even after having worked here before, and knowing it was there – is the bar.  Yes, the BNE has a bar.  With beer on draft.  And in bottles.  And coffee (espresso, always espresso) Now, I don't drink anymore, but I do appreciate the ready availability of a fresh, hot cortadito.  And I just can't believe that, in Spain, they have a bar in their library.

But, dear reader, you may ask yourself, what is the dilemna to which my title refers?  Well, you see, it has to do with another library, the Ateneo de Madrid.  The BNE is the largest library in Spain.  The Ateneo is #2.  To get to the BNE, I have to walk about 15-20 minutes.  Yes, it's a lovely walk, along the park that runs down the middle of Madrid's most prominent boulevard.  There are fountains and flouring plants and statues.  It's shady.  But it's a walk.

"Ricardo," you may say to yourself, "you could use that walk.  It'll help you work off the bread and jamón that you are consuming daily in alarming quantities."  But, dear reader, you don't understand, the Ateneo is only one block from my house!!!!  I leave my front door, walk down the hill a bit and, BANG!, there's the Ateneo.  Another 15 minutes to the BNE, when I could be ensconced in it's old-school reading room, working there. The trouble is . . . the Ateneo is a private club and it would cost me around 200 euros to join for the year.  And I know that paying 200 euros to save myself the only regular exercise I am likely to get is the heart of folly!  

But, but, but . . . I wouldn't go to the Ateneo every day!  You see, the BNE has stuff I have to consult!!  Stuff that the Ateneo doesn't have!!  The Ateneo would just be for those days when I'm writing, and not really doing much research!!!!  Or when it's raining.  Or when it's the evening and it's too late to go to the BNE!!!  What do I do?!?!!?