Weekend in Madrid

It is 10pm Sunday night and I have just got out of the shower after returning from my trip to Madrid. The trip was great, but though I may of complained about how little I have here in San Lorenzo de Escorial, my room now feels like a palace compared to the hostel and my feet are still pulsating from all the walking I did.

After class on Friday, I went to lunch to get one last free lunch before we embarked upon our trip. I’ll spare you the details of the menu. I then went upstairs and finished packing, knowing that I was probably forgetting something. Angela was thinking of going with us, but decided to stay and relax.

Sarah Beth (Her actual name, but I’ll call her Sarah because I don’t want to type the extra four letters), Bianca and I walked down to the bus station. We had no clue where to go or how the bus process here worked. We knew we had two buses we would take and one was the short one and the other was the scenic long one. Well we got on the first one that got there and guess what, it was the scenic one. There were two other students on the bus with us, Katya and Katie. The trip over was uneventful and then we arrived at the Moncloa bus station. We had to meet up Sarah’s friend Greg. Sarah had problems working the payphone, but somehow Bianca made it work. It wasn’t too much trouble to finally meet up with Greg. Greg goes to school with Sarah in Seattle, and is studying in Madrid through the St. Louis school of law, and is in his 3rd week. He was a great guy and was a really great tour guide.

Our first matter of business was finding a place to stay. This is what I was most worried about. Not less than 2 blocks away, we found a hostel. We went to talk to the man and rented out a triple for 2 nights for a fair price. The man was creepy looking, but the place served its purpose. It was not a hotel room, but a small room with 2 beds, one was larger than the other. Bianca and Sarah shared the large bed and I got to have my own bed. We had a sink in the room and that was about it. No air conditioning, a shared restroom/shower. This place made my hotel room, which I thought was weak, seem much better. We left our stuff and ventured out into the city, having no idea that we would walk at least 15 miles (and I think maybe more) during that trip. At first the tour was just getting a feel for the city and seeing how closely it reminded me of a mix of London, NYC and Boston. For the first time I was able to really see what Spanish people looked like. The haircut that is in right now for girls and guys is the mullet. It is hilarious. The girls wear it very fashionable, but in my opinion it is terrible looking and my God, it’s a mullet. The women were very skinny, but being a boy for a second, they were not as impressive as I would of thought. There were some very attractive women, don’t get me wrong, but generalizing, the women were skinny, average height, had small or no backsides and there was not much plastic surgery when it came to their chests. Everyone had that disillusioned look that models have, but overall, it wasn’t anything that one was too impressive. The men had bad teeth, and a lot like the open button look. There was a lot of Beckum type haircuts and Puma wearing. The older women and men looked like what you would expect.

I first went to convert some of my American money. The price is 1.22 and I got the terrible rate of 1.35. Of course they just told me .74 cents and my being bad at math didn’t figure it out. What can ya do I guess. We started taking pictures of sights we saw. I need to find new poses because you have, picture of a building, picture of other building, oh now marty and building, oh a statute now. As cool as the sights are, I could see that being boring. Oh, my name for the trip was Don Martin, I like the sound of that. (said in Spanish of course). I decided to take a page from the book of I think one of Rick’s friends I don’t remember, so I purchased a small man animal, which was a dog in the Plaza del Sol. He was made in Souel, South Korea, so I named him Don Diego de la Sol. There is actually a store called “Casa de Diego” in Sol. We tried to do some shopping, but it ended up being siesta time, so a lot of stuff was closed. We then went to a church (San Lorenzo) and attended mass for a while. I took the time to pray about some thing going on in my life and to marvel at the architecture of the church. We saw the palace and many other sights I don’t know the names of. We stopped at a Spanish place that was set up like a dungeon. We ate tapas there. I had chorizo and it was very good, but it really wasn’t enough food. At night, we stopped at this plaza for drinks. It was nice to sit and talk outside over a few drinks. I really felt like I was in Spain then. After, we went to a bar and met 2 Americans and sat down and had drinks with them. They were from Ohio and were fun to talk to. We did get into some boring legal talk, which probably bored them a bit, but we can’t help it I think.

After, we called it a night and took the Metro back home. The metro was similar to DC in the coloring, but more NY like in the condition. It wasn’t too complex to figure out though. Sarah was worried the trains would come off the tracks, but they seemed pretty normal to me. Once we got home, we tried to get in the door was locked. We didn’t understand that because the guy told us that we could come home at anytime. We rang the door bell and he let us in. I guess that is what you meant, but that sucks having to wake him up each time. I went to bed after a long day of walking.

Outside our window as construction on the metro so we woke up early with the sound of jackhammers and noise. I took a shower and noticed I forgot my soap. Luckily, I was able to borrow Sarah’s. There was only warm water in certain hours, but I got in at the right time. We were hungry so we decided to eat at burger king. A lot of people hate eating American food in other places, but I think that doing normal things in other places is part of the fun. I’ll watch tv in a hotel, watch a movie in another city and eat BK in Spain. I ordered mine “Gigante”. Greg met up with us there and then we walked to do more sight seeing.

Sarah complained a lot about the garbage. She felt that the town did not do a good job at keeping things clean. There were actually people in neon green suits whose job it was to clean and I saw a lot of them, but I guess Seattle is much cleaner. There was a lot of trash and graffiti though, but I didn’t find it too distracting. I think there was a lot of pollution because my allergies where bad there. Not as bad as in DC, but I did sneeze blood a few times, which you probably don’t need to hear about.

One interesting thing about Spain is all PDA. There is so many public displays of affection and it isn’t all junior high kids. There are people laying down in parks just going at it. You kind of get used to it after a while, but it is very common.

We wanted to return to the church to take pictures, but it was closed. Diego did take a lot of pictures today though. Everyone needed shoes and I guess Spain is known for their shoes, so we went shoe shopping. Converting sizes was hard at first, and I had fun doing some translating for Greg. We probably spent 3 hours looking at shoes. I didn’t need shoes, but I guess all the shopping from days past with girlfriends, let me get through it. I almost decided to buy some shoes myself, but I decided to wait. Everyone found what they wanted, Greg got some cool brown shoes, Sarah Beth got two pairs of shoes, one for going out and another for walking around. Bianca got two pairs as well for those same reasons. I saw this pair that no one got, but I thought looked nice with like jewels on them or something…you know I’ll stop, boys shouldn’t talk about shoes.

A cool thing we noticed was all the street vendors selling bootlegs. They had this cool set up where they all had like sheets with ropes tied to all 4 ends in an X shape and the movies laid out. So when the cops came by, they would pull on the center of the X and it would make like a bag and they would run. It was awesome watching this actually happen when the cops raided the area. They were not raiding the vendors but these two girls that we think got caught shoplifting. A lot of cops came though and these guys jetted. We stopped at a department store, which reminded me of Hechts/Macys.

More walking and then we went into this church they made for Pope John Paul and there was an exhibit on Mary. A lot of pictures on her standing on a snake and cherubs. Some where little cupid looking folks and others were baby heads with wings. We debated what they were, like the history and if they were bad or good and why some where just heads with wings. I don’t remember anything from the Bible saying heads with wings.

We saw a cool Egyptian pyramid thing that was moved from Egypt to Spain block by block in the 1950s as a gift or help Spain gave them. We had a long discussion (mainly me) on whether they used chalk to mark and number the blocks. I think they did, they think that chalk would be a stupid idea.

We caught dinner at a random restaurant, but they were not serving full dinner yet so we got tapas and the food was way too little. We also drank Sangria. I don’t really like it but others like it a lot. It was ok. We noticed on TV how there was a super huge protest march in Mardid (other side of city) about some bombings. I guess there has been bombings in the city recently that we didn’t know about. That can’t be good. We then walked around again seeing more stuff and decided to have another small meal to complete our dinner. We ate at a place called Pan. I got a free wallet with my meal, but others who got the same thing, didn’t, so I think I got it because they girl thought I was cute. We were near the gay district though, so the people there reminded me of Southbeach.

More things happened these past few days, but I don’t remember it all right now. We returned on the metro to rest up. After a few hours of rest, we got dressed to go out to a club in Madrid that I guess a lot of Americans go to. The club is called Kapital. We stopped at a nearby bar and had a couple pitchers of beer. We were trying to save some money.

We had to pay 18 euros to get into Kapital. The club was like 5 stories tall, with an awesome outdoor bar/lounge on the roof. I didn’t much care for the music, but I am not much of a dancer, so it doesn’t really matter much. The drinks were very expensive, about 10 euros a piece and you had to buy tickets and then pay with them. So I decide to take a picture of Diego and the drinks and the bartender, who I don’t think liked me much, called management on me. I guess they thought I was trying to take a picture of the girl, but I didn’t even care about her, I wanted one of the dog and drinks. So I had to talk to the manager and delete the picture in front of her. I got over it though and tried to have a good time. There were actually a lot of Americans there, but I didn’t really talk to them. Then we ran into all these people from our program who where there too. It was a cool reunion and everyone had a great time. I guess after spending the weekend with the same people, it’s nice to see some new people. I had an interesting incident. I was dancing and I noticed this taller local black guy who was well build walking around through the dance floor just kind of pushing people out of his way. He had bumped into me on the way to the other side so when I saw him coming back, I just stopped dancing and stood still as he walked into me and did not move. So now he is pressed up against me and I’m just there standing my ground making the point that he doesn’t have the right to have people move out of the way for him. Well instead of going around like I was hoping, he decided to establish dominance and push into me and then he started to talk shit. I did not move and many thoughts were going through my head. I knew this guy could kick my ass and I knew we were on his home field. So, had I been at home, I would of probably been more assertive in telling him how he was wrong and standing up to him more, but instead I just bowed out and put my arms up in the white flag sort of way, looked down and stepped aside. He continued to talk shit in Spanish and I just stood there out of his way giving the impression that I wanted no trouble. It pissed me off I had to be such a pussy, but it was the smart and right thing to do. Later, Bianca went to go dance with the guy, which I thought was cool.

Greg had a great time dancing it up with Sarah Beth and other people from our school. Later in the night I mainly chilled and hung out with friends and talked. I switched to water because I knew I had a long day coming, but I did have a good buzz. At about 5:30am, I rounded up the troops and called it a night. We left the club and the trains didn’t open until 6am, so we took a cab to the hostel. When we arrived, the creepy guy let us in and later when I was going to the bathroom, he yelled at me to tell my friends that in Spain they turn off the lights. She said she did, so I don’t know what the deal was. We had to be out by 11:45am, and it was now 6 to 6:30am and I knew that if I feel asleep I would never get up. So instead, I laid in bed and rested, still awake. I got up early and took a shower and then rested. We were finally all up and ready by 11:20am when the guy comes in and gets our keys trying to push us out. We leave our bags with him and go see the city. He said he wouldn’t be open until after 6pm, so we had to find stuff to do during the day, which didn’t seem too hard.

It was our first day without Greg, we went to BK and it was closed so we took the train to the Prado museum. Once we got there, we walked around for at least an hour looking for BK. When we finally gave up, it ended up showing up right around the corner. We were really tired, and walking slow took our time and ate slowly.

After lunch, we went to the Prado Museum. It is free on Sundays. There were a lot of religious paintings and the main artists we saw were Goya, Rafael, El Greco and a few others. I was looking for one particular Goya painting and of course it was the last one I found. After, we all decided we were so tired that we should just watch a movie and relax and then head back to the hostel to get our stuff and go home. After much debate, we decided to watch Matagasdar, so we walked around for hours looking for a movie theater, when we finally find some, then we walk around again looking for the movie. Guess what, the movie is not out in Spain yet. So we failed in our pursuit and then got ice cream and relaxed. After, we just walked back to the Hostel and got our stuff. We walked over to the bus station and napped on our trip home. The walk from the station to our home was long and hard, even though it isn’t that far, but we were beat. I caught dinner outside the hotel and then crashed, not doing any studying. And there ended my trip to Madrid.