No hablo español

I would like to begin by saying that Jill would’ve been a very helpful commodity this weekend. But she’s inconsiderate and in Argentina, making herself useless to me. Thanks Yill.

This weekend, Mandy and I went to Madrid. Everyone else in the group had decided to go to Milan, Italy. But it was a 14 hour train ride to get there, so we decided to go to Madrid (as Spain is a lot closer to Toulouse than Italy). Well so much for that plan because, when we went to the train station to buy tickets, we found out that it was going to take about 14 hours to get to Madrid also. Oh well. We went anyways. We bought tickets to leave Thursday afternoon, arrive Friday morning, then leave Madrid Saturday night, returning to Toulouse Sunday midday. I stayed up late Wednesday night trying to book a hostel or cheap hotel. Everything was booked, and I was pretty sure there must have been something going on over the weekend (which I found out later was the Gay Pride Parade for Madrid).

So, after taking an all-day long French exam on Thursday, we went to the train station and caught our train. We had to change trains at the border between France and Spain in a town called Irún. During the next train ride (the overnight one), we realized why it was going to take 14 hours to get to Madrid. We stopped almost every hour and sat at each train station for about 20 min. And when we were moving, we moved really slow. So, as you can imagine, we didn’t get much sleep. Sometime during this trip, I called Maria to ask her if she had any family in Madrid (hoping for a possible place to stay, since we were without a hotel). But she informed me that the entire family was going to be leaving the next day to go on vacations, so no free boarding.

Almost immediately upon stepping off the train in Madrid (at 7:30 in the morning, mind you), I found myself incredibly thankful for what French I know. My single year of Spanish in high school just wasn’t cutting it, especially since I have forgotten most of it. Because now we’re in Madrid very early in the morning, we’re very hungry, and we don’t have a hotel. Luckily there was a hotel reservation lady at the train station. We managed to get a hotel booked, though it cost about twice as much as we normally would have paid, but we only had to stay there one night (since the other two would be spent on the train). We then took the metro to our hotel (since the train station is across town from everything in Madrid), and checked in. The extra money spent on the hotel ended up being worth it as it was a pretty chouette hotel.

I would like to precede the following story with a disclaimer: I don’t really know the purpose of an embassy in another country. So here’s my story. A kid in our class told us before we left for Madrid that, if we had any problems or needed any help with anything, we could go to the embassy (since Madrid is the capital). He said it was kind of like guest relations for that country. So Mandy and I decided that, since we didn’t speak Spanish or know anything about Madrid, we would go to the embassy and get some information in English. So we set out in search of the U.S. embassy (with a map in hand; we’re not that stupid). We first found the British embassy and figured it may be good enough since they also speak English. But the gates were closed (I guess we should have expected as much). There was a sign that said, “This is not the British consulate. For problems with visas, immigration, etc, go to the consulate, blah blah blah.” So we decided not to try to get help there, as we no longer knew what you were allowed to do at that embassy. We continued our pilgrimage to the American embassy. Finally, we found ourselves outside its walls, and eventually found a gate with a guard. He told us to go around the corner to the entrance. But outside the entrance is a long line of people. The line is labeled “Immigration and blah blah for non-citizens” and everybody in this line has a bunch of paperwork. There’s a much shorter line for U.S. citizens indicating that you need an appointment before you can go in. We both realize that we have no idea what an embassy is really for and decide to abandon the cause and eat lunch.

But we’re in Spain, so noon isn’t a normal time to be eating lunch. After being kicked out of a café since it was closed, we wandered around looking for a place to eat. Nothing opens until about 1:30 because this is Spain and they don’t eat any meal at any normal hour. Luckily we stumble upon the Hard Rock Café and decide to go American for lunch. It was open, and they spoke English. Afterwards, we found a tourism center that had a bunch of maps and brochures, so we stole a bunch. We decided to go to a museum that had a Van Gogh exhibit, but we have to buy tickets for a certain time frame. So, while waiting for our time frame, we took a walk to the park in Madrid. I would like to let you know that Madrid has a very chouette park with all kinds of cool crap in it. While in the park, we see a group of people watching something on the ground. We go over and see this guy painting picture. Except he’s not using any brushes. And he’s using spray paint. Just spray paint and pieces of newspaper to help create weird effects with the paint. Within minutes he turns a plain piece if poster into a mess of color and soon after an actual picture. It was super-chouette. We hung around and watched him paint a couple and, of course, bought a couple (so you’ll get to see them when I bring them home).

By that time, we had to head back to the museum. Afterward, we went to the hotel to chill for a little while before dinner. But we then encountered the same problem in a search for dinner. It was about 7:30 or 8:00 (reasonable for France), but nobody was eating in the restaurants. They were all full, but everyone was just having drinks. But we found a restaurant and ate (with very bad service; the waiter was very uninterested in helping us, as was the case in many restaurants in Madrid). Afterwards, we went to the hotel to crash as we still hadn’t actually gotten to sleep the night before on the train.

The next day was mostly spent wandering around Madrid, shopping, and looking at stuff. We went to see the Spanish castle and the large church that’s next to it. The church was really cool. It was fairly white and the ceiling was really colorful, as were the stained glass windows. I was trying to decide if it was the Spanish style or if it had been recently restored. Either way it was pretty chouette. We then took the metro across town to see the bull-fighting stadium. By the time we got there, it was closed, and there are only bull fights on Sundays. But the building itself was really awesome. After that we just headed back to the train station (after another dinner fiasco of course). We spent another mostly sleepless night on a train, arriving back in Toulouse just after noon.

I spent the rest of the day feeling exhausted and therefore very much out of my element. I rode a bike to and from church, which didn’t pair up very well with being tired and lacking balance. At some point on the way home, my foot slipped off the pedal, and my sandal fell of in the middle of the street. Luckily a bus was coming. So I pulled the bike onto the sidewalk and waited for the bus to drive over my shoe. Finally I got my shoe back and made it home (sweating of course, since it’s mostly uphill on the way home from the city). As you can imagine, I crashed pretty hard that night when I finally made it to bed.