6/23/2010
So it’s been far too long since I’ve updated, but Madrid is way busier than I thought it would be. Since we’ve got class from 8:30 to 1, it means we barely have time to run any errands and take a siesta before we go out for the night. Now that classes are almost done, I’ll try to stay on top of it more.
Since it’s been so long, I have to go all the way back to two weekends ago, when we went to a concert series called Rock in Rio. This should be a whole post itself, but I’ll just post the highlights.
· We went with our Spanish roommate Tomas to drink beforehand at a tailgate thing. Tomas apparently only found out my name was Jonathan the day before, and thought my name was actually Jordan. So whenever he’d talk about me, he’d say “Michael Jordan” and do a basketball move
· Also, apparently Tallahassee sounds like a Japanese karate move to people from Spain, cause Tomas and his friend Juan kept doing Tallahassee karate chops to each other.
· Spanish people are crazy drivers. We were going almost 140 km/hr on the highway. That’s only like 86 mph, but the speed limit was 110, as was half of the traffic
· Juan bought ribs for us to cook and BBQ sauce from an American store. It was kinda assumed that as Americans, we would know how to grill and BBQ, which was left to me. Luckily, the ribs turned out awesome, and everyone was impressed by my American cooking. They also bought us some Bud heavys and were throwing around a football (an American one) so it really felt like a tailgate
· Rock in Rio was supposed to have John Mayer and Bon Jovi that night, but John Mayer is a pussy and went home sick, so it was only Bon Jovi. This made tickets really cheap and I was able to scalp one for 60E.
· Beer vendors at the concert were wearing mini kegs as backpacks
· Spaniards knew more Bon Jovi songs than we did
· Bon Jovi is still Badass.
· We didn’t get back til 5:30 am, and we had to leave for Segovia at 8:30. That was a fun day being touristy.
After that, we had a marketing test on Wednesday, then nothing until Friday when we left for Barcelona. The night before, however, we all went out to a club called Joy till 6am again. Everyone who went to the club decided to skip class that day, but I was determined to go, so I just didn’t go to sleep and went to class. Needless to say, it was interesting. After class, we went straight to the airport to go to Barcelona.
The weekend in Barcelona was a whole trip full of craziness, and it started before we even got on the plane. One girl in our group, Emily, didn’t realize that we would need passports to get on the flight since we were staying in Spain. Foreigners, though, always need them, so she had to rush to get hers and almost missed her flight. While we were waiting for the plane, which was delayed for a while, we went to the duty free and bought some champagne and liquor to drink in the hostel. Instead, we starting popping corks in the middle of the terminal, hitting some moderately crossed dressed European dude with one in the process.
Barcelona was awesome, plain and simple. The pictures can tell the story pretty well, so I won’t go into too much detail. We did the tourist thing and went on the double-decker bus for both days. The coolest tourist parts were seeing La Sagrada Famila (Gaudi’s Church), Casa Batllo (Gaudi designed house), and Camp Nou (Stadium for FCBarcelona). Besides that, the highlights include:
· Popping Champagne bottles in the airport terminal, and having Javi hit the somewhat crossed-dressed man with a cork
· Landing in Barcelona and realizing that we had no map, no guidebook, and weren’t really sure what our hostel was called
· Angry Jonathan making an appearance and getting pissed at his roommates
· Unknowingly paying 30€ each for pitchers of Sangria
· Going to the Icebar on the beach, where everything, from the walls to the cups, was made out of ice.
· Losing a bet to England fans at a bar after they scored first.
Now I’m only a week behind on updating, so the next post will include a trip to Sevilla and the best concert of my life, Muse.
Last night was one of our first big nights out with most of the program there, and it ended up being even more epic than expected. After a pregame at our apartment, we headed out to go rage at Puerta del Sol. The pregame lasted til 12:30, and we didn’t get to Sol until almost 1, which is when the people who have to take the metro home (which means basically everyone else who doesn’t live at Sagasta) realized that it was closing in 30 minutes. During this discussion, someone remembered our brilliant idea we came up with earlier in the trip: since the metro reopens at 6am in the morning, we might as well stay out drinking until then and take the metro home after. From this idea, our night of epicness began
We got convinced by one of the promoters in Sol to go to this bar that was offering free shots, and immediately left after we got those. From there, we tried to get to a bar that my roommate Jackie had heard of called la latina. One of the guys in the group, Javi, was with his cousin who lived in Madrid, so he was our leader and began to lead us to there. After we walked for a good twenty minutes, we realized that the la latina we were being led to was a region, not a specific bar, so we just went into some random bar along the street. When we ordered beers, the waiter must have assumed we were Americans, because she gave us all Bud heavys. After this bar, we went back towards Sol and somehow ended up in one of the American bars called O’Connell’s, where we danced to the American music and laughed at the tall and creepy Norweigan old man who was awkwardly dancing around the place.
The bar ended up closing around 3, which left us with another 3 hours to kill before we could get home, so we had Javi’s cousin bring us to another area. We couldn’t find an open bar, so most of us bought 1 € beers from the sketchy guys walking around. While we were deciding what to do, we wandered towards this drum circle that had a huge crowd gathered around it. Apparently this pissed off the residents of this area, cause some lady threw a bucket of water down at us to get us to leave, soaking half of the group. We eventually got into a bar that stayed open til 5:30, then went back towards Sol and got some churros and chocolate, before heading back to the metro when it opened. We got on the first car, which was filled with other drunk people who had stayed out till 6. In the end, everyone got home safe, and we got to sleep in the next day due to the national holiday.
I’m completely new to blogging and such, so this isn’t exactly the best writing. Bear with me as I get more experienced and can make these stories more interesting (though theres not really many ways I can make an airport delay sound interesting)
Well, I finally got to Madrid, even though it was a lot later than I planned. The trip from Tallahassee to Madrid was only supposed to take 16 hours, and that was including the 6 hours of time difference. It ended up taking almost 40, after weather and delays messed everything up. The flight was supposed to get into Atlanta at 4:30, but it ended up getting diverted to Augusta for 3 hours after circling Atlanta for an hour. By the time I got to Atlanta, it was 10:30, and my flight to Madrid was long gone. I ended up having to spend the night in Atlanta airport, then fly to JFK early in the morning and spend the day there. Finally, I got on a flight to Madrid and arrived at 8 in the morning. After a bit more difficulty in finding the ride to my place, I finally got in the car to head towards the actual city. Caroline and I rode with the guy from Madrid Easy, where he got our keys, got us some good breakfast, and got me into my apartment.
Since Madrid is a huge city, I was expecting the apartment to be ridiculously small, Luckily, this apparently isn’t true. My room is bigger than either of the rooms I stayed in the past two years at Gainesville Place and the Alamo, and I get my own bathroom. After unpacking some, exhaustion took over, and I passed out for a few hours. When I woke up, I got to meeting the new roommates. There’s Christine and Jackie, who are both on the UF program with me. Cassandra and Jennifer are also on the program, but they’re only here for a few days. There’s also a guy who’s actually from Spain, Tomas, who’s pretty cool as well.
After talking with the roommates for a bit, me, Christine, and Jackie went out to discover where the university is. On the way, we encountered our first obstacle: the metro. I thought I’d be pretty familiar with the metro after my trip to Paris, but apparently I forgot completely how it works. We found the line that we needed to take, and sat at the platform waiting for it. A few trains passed by, but they were for a different number, so we just waited some more. It took us 20 minutes for us to realize that there might be more than one platform, and out train was probably going to be there. After this revelation, we easily got on the right track, and headed towards Nebrija. We discovered that the “8 minute walk” they advertised was closer to 15-20 minutes, meaning that the whole trip could take almost 45 minutes from door to door. On the walk back we got some fantastic noms from a local store for less than 3 euros, and headed back to the apartment to get ready for dinner, which in Spain means ready by 9:30.
