Fa freddo. Finally.
I am officially registered for winter quarter 2007 at SCU… crazy. Getting into my classes was really easy because I have to take a bunch of classes with freshmen (since I decided my international business minor pretty late down the line). Meeh, oh well, new friends? Heh.
The first half of Italian today was really enjoyable. Wednesdays are “culture day” and today we all had to present to the class about an Italian person that we interviewed sometime over the past two months that we’ve been here. Marilena and I didn’t really feel like branching out and we interviewed our host brother and dad. Last night. We made up some stories about them to make our presentations a little bit more entertaining for the class. Alessandro loved it and HOPEFULLY he’ll break out of his give-Tera-a-B-no-matter-how-hard-she-tries trend and will give me an A… hopefully.
In printmaking today I threatened a boy that was teasing me about having to fix my zinc plate. I literally told him that if what he had to say to me was something stupid, he shouldn’t say it at all because if he did I was going to sock him in the face. I was really frustrated today because I was having difficulties repairing the mistake I made a few weeks ago and my whole class knew it. However, I think my teacher likes me because I really do try hard in that class. I ask a lot of questions (because um, when I signed up for this class I didn’t have a CLUE about what printmaking even was) and he’s always very patient with me; I think he appreciates that I care about learning all the details of it. I dunno.
A blog-worthy event that happened in our house today: Kike was in the living room sewing something on the sewing machine so, since I always want to know everything about everyone, I asked him what he was making. His response? “I make Manuel pants and Luca see them and get jealous. So now I make same pants for Luca.” Can I just throw out a little reminder that Manuel is 21 and Luca is 25? Oh AND (even better) the pants Luca was jealous of are some black, linen, capris. HAHAHAHAHA, it was classic.
Marilena and I haven’t had hot water in our shower for four days now but she and I are both too scared to tell Kike and Susana about it… the water isn’t just “not hot” either; it is the temperature of freshly melted snow. I couldn’t stop shaking afterwards and had to get into my bed under all my covers, completely naked and still wet, for about 30 minutes in order to warm up!
I think Susana is losing her mind because she always hangs Manuel’s clothes in our room to dry then forgets about them. Anyways, I noticed there were a bunch of really comfy looking, wintery, socks soooo I figured that since they’ve been in our room for almost a month now I might as well adopt them as mine. Yup… right now I’m sitting here typing this wearing my host brother’s socks and they’re so warm and nice that I never plan on giving them back. :)
oh Pete.
November 7For those that know me well, you know how much I HATE talking about politics and controversial issues… well, let me tell you that discussing politics IN Italian is 30429384 times worse. Today my teacher opened up class with, “Che pensate del’aborto?” (translation: “what do you all think about abortion”). I said, “Sono d’accordo con aborto,” and stopped talking for the rest of class.
Firstly, I didn’t want to keep talking because I KNOW that I am very immature about discussing matters like that; once my mind is made up about something there is a slim-to-none chance that I’m going to change it. I know. It’s bad. I’m working on being more open-minded. I promise. Secondly, discussing abortion is an extremely personal thing. I have super strong views about it (that for sure aren’t going to change) because of my situation of having diabetes. Seven out of eight of the girls in our class were SUPER uncomfortable during the entire talk (my foot was tapping out of control) while one girl had a billion irrelevant and totally controversial things to say about it.
The rest of the class was manageable. Alessandro actually TAUGHT us stuff today… what? It was a first.
Family and Gender was the same as usual: stupid. I hate my teacher.
Today was finally cold in Italy! It was a beautiful day and the sun was out but it was about 10 degrees colder than usual; FINALLY. I’ve been WAITING for it to get like this.
Lately, i feel myself still missing Pete a lot. I’m not too sure why though because things between us haven't really changed. For some reason though, I do. I actually felt really bad for posting my journal entries from my Fall Break because after re-reading them a bunch of times i realize now that I refer to him a lot in very negative ways… I even warned him about it. He's not a a bad guy. I think that he and i are just both still kinda hurt about how bad things were before i left and we're both very defensive of ourselves which then gets translated into me looking like i'm a total bitch to him and he's a big asshole to me. We talked for a long time last night (i cried for the first time in, liek, a month!) but i ended up feeling better about things in the end.
I listened to my "Boys Really Suck" playlist all night long; heh, whaaaat? it has goood songs on it!
Meeh, if it wasn’t for Oil Shoppe, a long work-out at the gym, and the fact that I’m IN Firenze, today was a tough day in Italy for Tera Linsley.
um... my fingers hurt from typing
November 6It’s great to be back in Firenze. Today was pretty mellow; everyone’s just trying to get back into the swing of things. Other than class I spent most of my day typing out my journal I kept while in Madrid, Barcelona, and Budapest. My blog is up to 93 pages… yea, that’s a lot.
Let’s see… anything else exciting to report? Oh yea! I got a 92 on my Italian written exam (!); I think it might’ve been the highest grade out of both of Alessandro’s Italian classes. Cool.
In printmaking today I spent all three hours sanding down my mistake I made in class last Wednesday. It took forever and I’m STILL not done. UGH. My hand hurts. :(
I got a postcard from Jumie today. I read it, liek, a billion times. I miss my brother so much! My friends and I are in the process of planning out a road trip down to UCLA some weekend to party with him and his frat brothers. It’s going to be awesome. Let me know if you wanna go!
I’m sick again… I can’t wait til I see my parents on Friday cuz I know my mom is showing up with a bunch of drugs to cure my ailments.
I can’t believe it’s already November 6! Time has flooooown by.
back to Firenze
Today I’m too lazy to write paragraphs. Enjoy the bullet points:
-7:30: wake up feeling disgusting from last night’s charades at the Hungarian cafeteria
-8:30: decide dude at front desk sucks because of taxi incident
-9:30: arrive at Budapest airport and kiss Amelia goodbye (yea Wizz Air!)
-9:30-11:00: serious nap in airport
-11:15: check in and head to gate and get stuck sitting next to the fattest, mouth-breather, of a man I have ever seen
-13:00: flight from Budapest to Rome (hate planes)
-14:30: arrive in Rome and take tram to pick up luggage
-14:45: witness the largest luggage traffic jam on the conveyer belt I have ever seen (it’s the little things in life)
-15:30: take shuttle from airport to train station with the world’s worst driver ever
-16:52: train it from Rome to Firenze
-19:00: ride bus illegally without ticket to Villa Rossa
-19:15: walk home to Via Pepe
Blah blah blah… taxi + plane + tram + shuttle + train + bus + walk = home sweet home.
our final day, BOOO
November 4I surprise myself by how easily things freak me out. Last night I woke up around 3AM having to go to the bathroom. Our room was at one end of the hallway and the bathroom was at the other end and the thought of running all the way down the hallway to the bathroom (in case there were guys with chainsaws, axes, or other torture devices waiting for me) didn’t sound that appealing to me… so, just to see if she MIGHT be awake, I whispered Marilena’s name AND SHE RESPONDED and got out of bed and came to the bathroom with me! Oh god, I have problems I think… is it normal that I’m TWENTY YEARS OLD AND HAVE TO HAVE A BUDDY COME TO THE BATHROOM WITH ME CUZ I’M TOO SCARED TO WALK DOWN A HALLWAY BY MYSELF?!? Prolly not…
None of us slept very well that night; the wind was super strong, the beds were as hard as the floor, AND the freaking moon was in my eyes. UGH – oh well, it helped to get us going this morning: we were out by 9AM.
Okay, Hungary at 9AM is one big popsicle of a country. It was cold cold cold; people here have the whole “bundling” concept down, that’s for sure.
First we walked past the huge park by our hostel in the direction of Heroes Square. Today was some sort of national holiday/memorial/independence day (one of those but I’m not sure which one) in Hungary and the memorials set up in the piazzas on the way to the main Heroes piazza was packed with Hungarians carrying flowers to place on the monument. The memorials were actually really cool and we spent a few minutes strolling through them taking pictures until all our fingers were about ready to break off.
Heroes Square was decorated for the occasion as well. The monuments and columns were all covered in Hungarian flags with the center emblem cut out of them (which at the time we didn’t understand, but now do and will explain later).
We took a group shot in front of the statues; the guy who was taking our picture’s friend named Andreas who was wearing an AWESOME Canadian Tuxedo jumped and the pic with us… classic. The CT’s are starting to follow us everywhere…
Afterwards we got distracted by a castle and an outdoor ice skating rink behind Heroes Square. I REALLY wanted to go skating but our group was half injured and laf frozed so we decided against it. Booo… I’m for sure coming back some day and brining my brand new skates that I’m still only ever used once and going ice skating in Budapest (Pete, if you’re interested, you can come too). Hm, this really made me miss him…
The castle was really beautiful (and had a moat and everything!). Unfortunately the inside of it had an agricultural museum; we didn’t even have to discuss whether or not we wanted to go in. I’m sorry, but I have ZERO interest in the history of Hungarian agriculture and food growing techniques; call me ignorant (tee hee) but I just don’t.
Our next stop was the National Museum. It was pretty far from Heroes so we hopped on the metro. At the museum stop, we were walking off the train and were stopped by the Hungarian metro police. “Can we see your tickets?” Crap. We all pretended to scramble around in our purses looking for our non-existent tickets for a few minutes then gave in and told the four cops we’d all “lost them.” We paid the fine, which was only 10 euro, and the cops issued us a 3-day metro/bus ticket and let us go… hahaha, I can’t believe that we got rolled by the Hungarian cops for illegally riding the metro. I guess that’s what we get though for using public transportation for free for the past few days…
The National Museum was pretty cool; it inspired me to look up Hungary’s and the Soviet Union’s political history. About a week before we left on our Fall Break Eurotrip there were riots in Budapest in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Hungary’s up-rise against Soviet rule. The museum had tons of pictures and paraphernalia from that day 50 years ago. We also learned that the reason the flags with the hole cut out of the center were hanging everywhere is because during the time of the revolt, the Hungarians literally cut the Russian emblem out of the flags… that’s pretty hardcore symbolism right there. So, that’s kinda what I learned in a nutshell and am really excited to look up more (I’m a big dork).
Bytheway, did I mention that we are all cheap and didn’t want to pay for the museum so we got admission tickets for the free section of it but then snuck into the not-free section through the exit? Psh, that’s where all the good stuff was anyways.
After the museum we sprinted across the huge-street-of-death to a coffee shop and chilled (well, actually, defrosted in prolly a more appropriate word) for about 3 hours. Hahaha, it was funny; my friends make me laugh. I love people that make me laugh.
For the rest of the afternoon we went souvenir shopping on Vaci Utca. At first the cold was a little bit discouraging (to say the least) and I was pretty sure we were going to last for only about 30 minutes, but then we spotted H&M and we all got a little bit warmer on the inside! H&M was our first stop and we were in there for about an hour. We all bought a few things; um, how can you resist? God, I love H&M.
After that we continued our stroll down Vaci on a mission to find Budapest shirts, presents for dad’s, mittens and hats, and presents for friends at home. Check to all except one. We found a fabulous little soucenir store down a sketchy dark alley and were in there for about 20 minutes. I wasn’t planning on buying anything until I found a little, painted, wooden, guy (very Hungarian looking) on a corkscrew… best part? He was wearing an all-pink suit!
I’ve gotten Steph a present from every country that I’ve visited and thought this little dude would be a perfect addition to her gift. I picked it up and was walking around with it still browsing when I realized that a young guy that worked in the store was watching me… he wasn’t, liek, sexually watching me, but more suspiciously watching me. Everytime I looked up, there he was looking at me as if I was planning on stealing something? In the end I got so psyched out that I vetoed buying the corkscrew (even though it was perfect), put it back in the basket with the others, and we left.
About five minutes later, we returned to the same store cuz Kate decided that she wanted something from it afterall. I was still sketched out by the hawk-dude and decided to wait outside with Amelia. As we were waiting, the sun set (um, it was about 5PM) and it started snowing… oh yea, it also dropped about 10 degrees so into the store we went. WELL, I decided that since I was there I wanted to buy the pink corkscrew after all and was really confused when the basket with all the corkscrew guys was gone. Ehhh, then I noticed the contents of the basket were dumped onto the counter and lined up as if all the merchandise was being COUNTED! They really thought I stole the corkscrew! I was totally freaked out, ran out of the store, and never plan on returning again. I think this country hates me.
We shopped in the freezing snow for about 2 more hours and couldn’t find another pink one ANYWHERE. No joke. Kate and I were being souvenir store whores and went into every single one and couldn’t find a guy in a pink suit ANYWHERE! Booo, sorry Steph! He woulda been perfect for our night back at SCU this winter…
Then it was back to the hostel for a brief siesta/period of defrostation before we headed out to dinner. Around 7, we headed out to catch the bus downtown.
Okay. All those times that I wrote about how it was “freezing” compare NOTHING to how mother-fucking-cold it was that night. The bus didn’t come for about 20 minutes and by the time it did I was shaking and wet from being snowed on. It had to be about 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Total. I was tempted to leave my friends and spend my evening in the underground begging for dinner with the homeless people cuz then at least I wouldn’t be frozen.
On the bus, Marilena and I started to seriously re-think our trip to Hamburg three weekend from now… if you don’t know where Hamburg is, google it now. It’s right up there with the North Pole. I dunno, are Chris and the boys on his German volleyball team worth being completely miserable and frozen for three days? Updates on our decision to come…
For dinner that night we made it to the all-you-can-eat-Hungarian-restaurant that we’d gotten a flyer about the day before. I felt like it was a mixture of Coco’s and my elementary school cafeteria; but it didn’t matter… I was fine for a last meal. I ate about 10 euro worth of vegetables and drank about 50 euro worth of wine and champagne. I sampled some of the “Diabetic Cake,” yes this was its real name, but it tasted like play-dough and I couldn’t manage to eat any more of it after the first bit.
Other than the boring family next to us staring at us the whole time, our waiter being totally retarded, the awkward (but ballsy) boy that came up to talk to us then wouldn’t leave us alone, and the fact that the four of us ate AND drank waaaay too much, it was a great time. We even took advantage of the smoking-is-allowed-in-restaurants-in-Hungary concept. Heh.
On our trek home I realized I was wasted cuz it seemed only half as cold outside as it did on the trip there. Also I called Pete. I've been missing him ever since Halloween and I knew the whole ice skating rink that morning pushed it to the point where i had to call him. Meeh, it was really nice to hear his voice... we hardly talk anymore and when we do it's really formal conversation. I miss the old way with my favorite person. A lot. Anways, falling asleep that night was easy – aaah, what a fabulous last day of fall break
BORAT
November 3
Outside when we woke up: IT WAS SNOWING! No joke; the skies were grey and there were snow flurries all over the place! It was so exciting but at the same time kinda scary cuz a) this was the second time IN HER LIFE that Marilena had ever even seen snow, and b) Tera Linsley doesn’t do cold or snow… FORTUNATELY, it only lasted about an hour then cleared up to be a BEAUTIFUL (yet still freezing cold) day.
After taking advantage of free breakfast offered by our hostel, we bundled up for our day of sightseeing in the freezingness. I wore my warmest clothes (that were hardly warm at all): my Diesel sneaks, jeans, wife beater, long sleeve shirt, black zippy sweatshirt, and a scarf… not gonna lie, this is what I wear at home when it gets to be around 50; I was a goner.
So we left our hostel around 10AM and hopped on the bus (woot for MORE public transportation) heading toward downtown. The guy at the hostel laughed at us when we asked how much/where we needed to buy tickets from – heh, ooo so this is one of those countries where paying for bus tickets was OPTIONAL… gotcha! ;)
On the bus we were obviously the dumb Americans: firstly it was a rough ride and we were falling over onto people for most of the time. Secondly we were the only ones NOT dressed for a blizzard.
“gmphstrompster” – oh hey guys, I think this is us! The Hungarian language is sophisticated and unpronounceable jibberish. We hopped off at the stop a local told us to get off at then (after stopping in a bookstore for a much needed Hungarian travel book) headed toward the center to buy tickets for a two-hour bus tour that took us around both Buda and Pest.
For our hour in between ticket buying and the tour departure we decided to explore St. Stephen’s Basilica (wait, who the heck was St. Stephen?) across the street. The interior was incredible! Everything was in a reddish marble with gold trim… it was just as beautiful as Saint Peter’s. After exploring the inside we paid our 400 finfers to climb to the top of the dome. Literally we climbed a million stairs for about 20 minutes straight. It was PAINFUL but absolutely worth it. The view was breathtaking. We were in the tallest structure in both Buda and Pest and could see the entire city! However, it was about 10 degrees at the top though so we only lasted up there for a little while…
Our tour was on a horribly yellow (why is my favorite color always butchered SO badly?!), fish tank of a bus, filled with old people except us. Whatever, it was so worth it. Our guide, Jeno was great – he thought we were Dutch! Cool. He narrated all two hours of the tour in English AND German; god, it’s gotta get real old telling the same jokes twice in a row all day long.
The various things we drove by and learned about in both Buda and Pest included Heroes Square, the Parliament Building, the Opera House, the Royal Palace, the Danube River (that divides Budapest into Buda and Pest), etc. It was so worth the 4000 finfers (about 14 euro). After the tour our anxiety about being in a random place was greatly decreased.
We ate lunch in the nearest restaurant to the tour drop off cuz it was freezing. The restaurant was called “Wallstreet,” and turned out to be one of the 10 restaurants recommended to eat at in Pest according to our Hungarian travel book. We ate goulash… it was fabulously delicious (even if it WAS boiling hot).
When it was time to pay, it took us about 45 minutes, 3 pieces of scratch paper, 1 cell phone calculator, and 50 calculations to figure out how many finfers each of us owed and THEN how many euros each of our finfers were worth. The bill totaled about 12,000 finfers – after that, I was totally lost and grateful to have Marilena, the math minor, with us!
Then we bundled back up and headed back out into the cold. Unfortunately the Opera House was closed and we weren’t able to peak around the inside (which is sposed to be really awesome) because I think there was a show that evening… maaaan.
After being rejected from the Opera House, we scrambled down to the metro to get out of the freezingness. We had been wondering all day why the streets seemed kinda empty then we realized it’s cuz people travel in the metro underground where it’s warm (unlike us, who were WALKING ON THE SIDEWALKS OUT IN THE COLD). Navigating was difficult because all the stop names were unpronounceable and looked exactly the same, but somehow Amelia managed to get us to our next destination: The West End City Center (AKA one of the hugest malls I’ve ever been in). It was packed full of Hungarians. I guess that makes sense though, in a place where, half the year it’s below freezing, might as well give the people a cool mall to hang out in! We roamed all four floors for a while (I bought a green hat to match my eyes that lately are overwhelmingly green… not from tears for once) then came across Paradise Cinemas…
Yes, we spent Friday afternoon watching a movie at the theaters in Hungary! It took Kate and I, liek, 15 minutes to work up the courage to go ask the hot guy working there if any of the movies playing were in English… turned out FOUR were (with Hungarian subtitles)! Woooo! We paid our 9000 finfers for tickets (about 4ish euros/6 dollars… sweet, because movies at home are prolly up to about 11 dollars by now) then 410 finfers (less 2 euro) for a HUGE Coke Light and headed into the theater…
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t too brilliant for us to see BORAT in a foreign country. It made America looked like a big, fucked up, asshole.
I’m not sure if it was the scene where Borat and a fat man were chasing each other around naked, or when Borat was chatting with feminists about how women have smaller brains than men, or if it was when he announced to an arena of Southerners at a rodeo that George Bush should drink the blood of all the Iraqi people after we kill them all… but I’m not gonna lie, the four of us felt very ashamed and embarrassed to be Americans walking out of that theater. I tried not to speak until we were out of the crowd… maybe they’d think I was German? I must admit, the movie WAS hilarious, BUT I think I’ll feel a little more comfortable enjoying it in a room full of Americans.
It was about 8:00 by the time we got to the hostel. The ride home was complicated by the fact that the metro line we needed to take to get to our bus stop was shut down for the evening for construction… soooo we waited out in the freezingness for our beloved bus #7 to show up. None of us remembered what the stop of our hostel was called. Hm, I guess for the first time since we’ve been here, we were comforted by the fact that our hostel is marked by the point where the streets start to get dark and scary.
The original plan for the evening was to go to a pay-16-euro-and-get-all-you-can-eat-and-drink-of-Hungarian-food-and-booze restaurant but we all felt full from goulash at lunch and decided to walk to a nearby restaurant as recommended by the guy that worked at the front desk (that was watching TV with his girlfriend… it was so cute).
It was ice cold outside on our walk to Paprika (that we got lost on) but it was so worth it! For about 10 euro each we got HUGE main courses, and split a bottle of wine, and two huge deserts. We were considering e-mailing Rick to let him know that if he ever was interested in writing a Budapest travel guide he should for sure include Paprika!
During dinner we opened up maps and guide books and planned out the events for our FINAL day of our Fall Break Eurotrip. Since dinner was done around 11 and we had to get an early start the next day, we called it a night and crashed early. WHAT a day.
Budapest
November 2I woke up that morning feeling like someone had taken a rake to my throat and smelling like an ashtray… EW. So in my lifetime I have smoked two cigarettes total (woot for junior year with Mark Anderson in the Jack N the Box parking lot at 2AM) but last night the vending machine at Pipperment that sold every brand of cigarette you can possibly imagine was just too cool to pass up, so Kate, Amelia, and I chipped in for a box.
I found the half-full box in my purse this morning but seriously it feels like someone set the entire box on fire, put it in my mouth, and made me swallow. I have the worst sore throat of my life. How people can smoke several packs a day and still be able to breathe and talk is amazing (and totally disgusting) to me.
After cleansing myself of ashtray, we packed up, checked out, and started our day.
First stop? Starbucks of course. My latte made my throat feel a little bit better.
Our flight to Budapest wasn’t until 18:40 so we had the whole day to tour. First we took a stroll down Las Ramblas. Souvenir shopping, a million tourists, stands selling HUGE chickens, pigeons, turtles, and squirrel-like creatures, homelss people, and statues that were really people later, we ran into the ocean!
A really cool column/monument was set up at the shore marking the spot that Columbus returned to after discovering America. Of course we stopped to take a million pictures (mostly of us riding on the back of the larger than life, bronze, lions that bordered the monument).
After a stroll down the shore/harbor (which was really pretty) we decided we wanted to spend the rest of our time absorbing the gothic architecture that Spain is known for. Unfortunately everything was covered in scaffolding. First we saw the Barcelona Cathedral; horribly gothic and horribly ugly but still pretty cool. Then we hopped on the metro and headed toward Gaudi’s “La Familia Segrada Cathedral.”
Okay, Gaudi was one of those brilliant, mathematician, freaks. The cathedral wasn’t complete when Gaudi died but he knew that he couldn’t finish and left behind a specific detail and plan of how it’s sposed to be completed. Unfortunately, funding for its construction comes from the entrance fees paid by visiting tourists (the four of us contributed 20 euro). Basically, its estimated completion date isn’t until 50 years from now! The cathedral is gnarly… it’s probably the biggest drip castle I’ve ever seen.
The rest of the afternoon was pretty uneventful until it was time to go to the airport: we walked about 20 blocks looking for another building by Gaudi but gave up cuz we got sick of walking, ate Subway (the final meal in our American food binge) and interneted it until it was time to go.
Amelia had arrived in Barcelona by plane separate from us and claimed she knew where the bus was to get us to the airport. After a million, “Are you sure?’s” we left the hostel in the direction of the bus stop. Well. After walking around the plaza with all of our heavy bags for about 20 minutes and reading and not understanding any of the bus maps, I walked all the way back to the hostel to ask where the bus stop was. The hostel lady pointed us in the complete opposite direction of the plaza that Amelia lead us to… By the time we got on the bus, we were 45 minutes behind schedule and were all stressing about missing our flight.
THEN, things got weirder at the airport when our flight wasn’t listed on the departures schedule… ehhh…
Europe has a bunch of small and cheap Southwest-ish airlines (I seriously haven’t paid more than 130 euro for any of my flights which is convenient when you’re a college student that wants to do everything but has limited means to do it with). Anyway, the airline we were scheduled to take was called “Smart Wings.” Um, there was no evidence that Smart Wings even existed and when we asked information where we were sposed to check in, the guy sent us to an unmarked check-in stand. We got to the check-in 5 minutes before it closed…
In the terminal (after my pump yet again caused a ruckus in security) we had a little time and did some shopping. It was confusing cuz our flight was scheduled to leave at 18:40 but when we got to the gate (which was totally empty) the board said that it left at 17:45… um, it was 17:50 – DID WE MISS OUR FLIGHT?! Thankfully no. Smart Wings is just retarded. The flight’s original departure time WAS 17:45 but since they sold tickets that said 18:40 they had to delay it. I know, I still don’t get it.
The flight was about 2ish hours. For once I didn’t fear for my life. I spent the entire time writing in my journal and didn’t really have time to think about the prospect of plunging into the ground from 35,000 feet in the air. Hm.
Our flight was about ½ full and consisted of four Americans (us), and all the rest Eastern Europeans that were all speaking to each other in languages I’m not even going to pretend to understand. All I know is, Hungarian boys are hot… our flight had about 6 potential husbands on it. Yess.
At the airport we got our passports stamped (YAY!) then proceeded to prance around and cause a big scene taking pictures with anything and everything that said “Welcome to Hungary!”
A cool girl we met in the Barcelona airport gave us some tips about the country (touristy-type things) and after grabbing a map and exchanging our euros for Forints, which I’ll go into later, we hopped in a Zona Cab the color of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (cabs here are sketch/rip-offs and the girl told us that Zona is the only way to go) and headed to the hostel.
Bytheway, the temperature at this point was -1 degree centigrade… that’s about 28 degrees Fahrenheit. The forecast for the next day was snow. Eh…
At the hostel (that we thought was going to be a hotel), after Kate fell and slid all the way down the handicapped ramp, there was a little drama about our room since we had four people instead of three… it ended up being a little more expensive than we were planning but everything turned out okay.
The hostel was a convent. Seriously, each room had two double beds and walls that were painted solid white. The two beds were about one foot high (perfect for getting on your knees to pray at night…?), a tiny dresser, and a window that had a perfect view of a very Eastern Euro church complete with flying buttresses. Oh yea, I also found a copy of the Old Testament on my bed… I think someone’s trying to tell me something. When we arrived it was about 10PM and our floor seemed like it was completely empty! Everytime I had to go down the hall to the bathroom or to Kate and Amelia’s room I RAN cuz I was so creeped out by the place!
Before bed we had a group meeting about plans for the next day and a discussion about Hungarian currency. Earlier at the airport I gave the exchange lady 50 euro and she gave me back 14,000 Forints. Hahahaha, I had a 5000 forint bill! The exchange rate is pretty funny… 1 euro = about 255 forints (for you Americans to understand, 1 dollar = about 200 forints). Hungary uses the euro too but aren’t officially adopting it until 2012. It’s crazy, our cab ride from the airport costed 3,600 forints!
(Bytheway: from this point on I’ll be referring to forints as “finfers” cuz I couldn’t remember what the right word was and “finfer” came out. Meeh, understandable… both words have two syllables and start with F’s…?)
I was a smidge annoyed cuz everyone started freaking out about being in a country where we didn’t speak a lick of the language… I tried to calm them down but it didn’t help. I think the only reason I wasn’t freaking out was cuz we had to deal with all the language barrier crap in Brussels (where they speak DUTCH I finally found out) and sure it sucked at times but the group I was with was so mellow that I almost didn’t notice the fact that no one spoke English. I mean, it’s going to be a little complicated, sure, but nothing to freak out about.
To soothe my nerves I fell asleep listening to The Fray. That guy has such a hot voice. I love it.
Happy 20th Marianne!
November 1Waking up was horrible. Our room was a mess. We felt like crap. We vowed never to drink vodka (well, okay, 5 euro vodka) ever again.
Somehow we managed to drag ourselves out of bed at a reasonable hour to do the tourist thing cuz that day was our only full day in Barcelona. To relieve the pain that was our whole bodies, we had a mix of Starbucks and McDonald’s for breakfast. It was an exciting moment in my life to realize that the combination of tall, iced, nonfat, chai latte and medium fries really takes hangover pains away… everyone should try it sometime.
Our first attraction for the day was the Picasso Museum. After a quick metro, then a long walk in circles down small, dark, allies, we managed to cling onto a big posse of tourists all heading toward the museum. The area that the Picasso Museum was located in looked more like what I imagined Spain to look like. Rather than being dirty-gross-downtown-LA type city, it was full of little streets and tall apartment buildings.
The museum was cool. Even though I think I’ve seen a few traveling Picasso exhibits in the past, and this one didn’t have any of his really well-known pieces, it was still worth it. There are a few things I love about Picasso: at age 15 he was painting in a style that I’d KILL to paint like at any point during my life. When he was depressed during his “blue period” he literally painted everything blue. He did about 60 studies of Velasquez’ “Las Meninas,” and this museum had a BUNCH of them which was really cool cuz we saw Velasquez’ original “Las Meninas” only a few days before in Madrid! His porn sketches entertained Kate and me for a good 20 minutes. We walked by the “shrinking bed” painting about 6 times and the bed REALLY did shrink and enlarge as you moved to different viewpoints. He mastered the classics and impressionism and even created an entirely new art technique that had a HUGE impact on art from there on out… Picasso was a total freak, but also a total genius.
We got in trouble about 10 times while in the museum for “going the wrong way,” “standing in the aisles,” and “talking too loud,” even though EVERYONE ELSE in the museum was going every which way, standing right in the middle of the walkways, AND talking just as loud as we were..
At one point Marilena was reading to us from Rick’s book about one of the rooms in the museum and a random lady came up to us and was like, “SH! THIS IS A MUSEUM.” Um. Duh lady. I think she was just jealous of us… I mean, she had to go to the museum all alone. Prolly cuz she has no friends… whatever though, that’s not a good enough excuse for her to come be a big bitch to us.
After a quick stop in the gift shop, Kate navigated us to our next destination: The Barcelona Chocolate Museum.
Unfortunately it was a big disappointment. Don’t go if you’re in Barcelona; it’s a waste of 3 euros. The coolest thing I remember was a lifesize copy of Michelangelo’s ‘Pieta’ … CARVED OUT OF CHOCOLATE! I bought Steph/wife/best friend some truffles and am really hoping that they’re not really gnarly by the time I finally get back to SCU… in two months… crap, they’re going to be gross huh? I’m retarded.
After the Chocolate Museum and getting really lost and still not being able to get a hold of Chris to try to get my phone back (which I REALLY did lose the night before… I was being serious that time when I said I lost it, guys), we decided we wanted to spice up our day and head to Museo Erotica. Rick mentions this sex museum in his travel book, then I found a pamphlet with a map and directions to it at the Chocolate Museum and figured it’d be pretty cool. As I was leading my friends down the abandoned dark alley that the map said to go down we were all a little nervous and thought we were for sure going to get kidnapped.
Well, we DID find the museum and unfortunately, it was closed?! What?!? Boooo… then it occurred to us that it was November 1st, which is All Saints Day, which is, liek, THE most religious holiday in Spain. God, we wanted to go to a sex museum on the most religious day of the year. Heh; hell anyone?
So then we trekked back up Las Ramblas, ate a delicious lunch at Subway, and I FINALLY got in contact with the guys that had my phone (thank god I didn’t freaking lose it!). Amelia and I hopped on the metro to go claim it. At their apartment we went up seriously 1 million stairs – wow, I have NO memory of going up THAT many stairs the night before!
The afternoon siesta once we got back was FABULOUS. The four of us literally slept for three hours.
That evening we planned on meeting up with Marianne and some other people to go out for her birthday dinner (HAPPY 20TH BIRTHDAY MARIANNE!). It was an SCU/Alpha Phi reunion. After finishing several bottles of really cheap wine (so much for never drinking again) we walked to a restaurant “near” (but really about 20 blocks away from) her apartment. Our group consisted of nine people, eight of which were SCU (we love you Amelia). It was the four of us, Marianne, Kathryn, Megan (who had flown in for the weekend from Paris), Hiliare, and Kelsey. Dinner was fun (and super cheap) and I love Megan; she was full of gossip and cracked me up the entire time.
After dinner we headed to a bar called “Pippermint.” It was full of SCUers when we got there; hahaha I love our school. Marianne bought us a gigantic cup of beer. Literally though, the cup was about two feel tall that held, liek, 5 liters of beer. It took 10 girls, drinking out of 10 straws, for about 30 minutes straight, to finish it! By the time we DID finish it, Marilena and I cut ourselves off for the evening (em, there were going to be NO repeats of the evening before…).
God I had so much fun at this bar:
-we had an A Phi reunion complete with group pics and a hottie tottie (I wish Ange and Rachel coulda been there though).
-Ryan called me but unfortunately couldn’t make it to hang out with us cuz Pippermint was kinda in the middle of nowhere. Whatever, i'm assuming now that we’ll randomly run into each other somewhere down the line. Haha.
-A boy that none of us had ever met from our SUF program was at the same bar as us – crazy.
-Boys we met about a month ago in Capri were at the same bar as us – crazy again.
-I decided that I approve of Marilena’s friend Dave cuz, even though we’ve met three times now, he was finally not being a big douche bag and is actually pretty cool.
-Scott Harding is my new favorite person; we got stuck sitting together for about two hours and he entertained me the whole time with his dance moves.
-Marianne and I decided we must be related since we’re both Philipino AND have a trip planned for sometime in the near future to return to the homeland and get in touch with our roots.
-ALSO, Marianne and I signed in mouse sign language from across the bar to each other all night; I love her.
-I took a bajillion pictures and will post them on Facebook shortly
After our cab ride home we were DEAD TIRED… getting in at 2:30AM on a night you weren’t planning on going out at all is pretty impressive if I do say so myself.
HALLOWEEN
October 31
We arrived in Barcelona at 7:30AM. I felt like crap. I slept total of maybe an hour because the lady sleeping in the bed next to me was creeping me out AND snoring louder than my dad. Our sleeping room on the train was about the size of the third-class rooms in the movie TITANIC. One person could stand at a time. My bags didn’t fit on the luggage rack so I had to use them as a pillow for the entire trip to Barcelona… it was really really uncomfortable. At one point during the night, I got up to go to the bathroom (which was really gross and smelly) and came back to find the door to our room locked… ehhhh. Hello? I was sitting in the hallway at 3AM knocking for about 10 minutes until creepy lady woke up and let me in.
When we got to the train station, we dragged ourselves to the metro and headed toward our hostel. Thank god it was super easy to find since none of our brains or bodies were functioning correctly from lack of sleep (even though Kate and Marilena both took night-time Nyquil for the ride… I shouldn’t have passed it up).
We arrived so early to our hostel that we weren’t allowed to go to our rooms yet so we rolled ourselves a few blocks away to the nearest McDonald’s to hang out in. We got there so early that they hadn’t really even opened yet. McD’s was a bad idea since they didn’t have comfy chairs so after 15 minutes of sitting there we moved across the street to Starbucks.
For 45 minutes I was passed out in a couch-like chair. Seriously, I was out cold. I musta looked like a homeless person… oh wait, I just looked at Marilena’s picture that she TOOK of me while I was sleeping and I DID look like a homeless person. I didn’t care at the time though… I felt like crap and my nap gave me some needed energy to get through the next hour.
After feeling like we were being annoying in Starbucks for taking up chairs but not ordering anything we decided to waste some time in the internet café. When in doubt, play on the internet? It lasted only 30 minutes before we decided to head towards El Corte Ingles… as we walked we prayed not to see any SCUers (since we looked like greasy zombies). Well, we ran into two. It was embarrassing. The three of us looked like shit. They informed us that the IES campus that all the SCUers go to school at was two blocks in the direction we were walking and if we didn’t want to see anyone, we should STOP walking that way. We ran the rest of the way to Corte Ingles in with our heads down… if we saw people they def didn’t see us cuz we were big greasy blurs.
At Corte Ingles we made another go at buying costumes for that night and actually got somewhere. Our plan was to dress at the Fanta Girls. We decided that the multi-colored trashbags we found would make potentially good dresses. So we bought about 20 rolls of bags in each of our prospective colors, a roll of saran-wrap, and a roll of tape... it was going to be the cheapest Halloween costume of my life. It was brilliant.
We headed back to the hostel and sat around for another hour waiting for our room to be cleaned then were finally able to take our MUCH needed siesta. It lasted about 3 hours… I felt a billion times better afterwards. Our fourth travel buddy, Amelia, showed up during nap-time (with a backpack that was the size of an average-sized person)! It was so exciting! She spent the first part of her break visiting friends in Germany and was now scheduled to stay with us for the rest of the time in Barcelona and Budapest. Marianne also stopped by to say hi! Haha, I love her and her creepiness.
Then came Halloween costume time. For a good two hours we tried our hardest to make really cool, but street appropriate dresses out of trash bags. It was like an episode of Project Runway in our room… well, a Project Runway gone retarded. Note to everyone: wearing plastic bags is really really really complicated (cuz they rip VERY easily…). After the first half hour of attempted costume making, the fifth of vodka and 6-pack of Diet Red Bull came out. It all kinda went downhill from there. Eventually our room had four drunk girls, laying on the floor in their underwear, surrounded by shredded, multi-colored, trash bags. Eventually we threw in the towel completely and decided that Halloween 2006 was going to be a costume-less one. With the final drops of sobriety in us we put on clothes, loaded on the make-up, and headed out for the night.
After causing a ruckus in the metro by walking the wrong way through the turn-stiles, and taking pictures with the hottest model ever (that was on billboards in every single metro) we started our walk to Marianne’s apartment for a little bit of pre-partying. She claimed her apartment was “really close to the metro stop…” well, it was so far away that we felt it was necessary to stop at Asia (I can call it that cuz I’m Asian :) ) to buy some more vodka. We found a fifth that cost only 5 euro -- dun dun dun, this was a very bad drunken decision of us (a little bit of foreshadowing for you…).
After reunioning with a bunch of SCUers and Phi’s we headed to our next destination. I guess it was a guy named Travis’ (yes, another SCU guy that I’ve never met before; surprise surprise) 12:01 that night so he and his roommates were having a party for him at their apartment. After another “short walk,” and a trip up a million flights of stairs we got to their apartment which was already out of control with people (half SCU and half strangers). We got so much crap for not having costumes that we huddled in the kitchen and broke into our 5 euro bottle of vodka.
From that point on I don’t have much to report. I vaguely remember something about Amelia warning us that the drink she made us was ridiculously strong (but not believing her cuz when I drank it I could hardly taste the alcohol – that’s always a bad sign), the Spanish police being called and having to leave the guys’ apartment, walking down a never-ending street for about an hour towards Las Ramblas (but never making it), Amelia spilling her vodka with a little bit of Fanta all over my feet, Marilena’s friend Dave being drunk, our posse being drunk, getting lost from the Spain group we were walking with… It was around the third mile of walking when I realized I had lost my cell phone and Marilena broke her sandal and was now walking around Spain with only one shoe on that she and I decided to call it a night. We hailed a cab and 5 minutes later were back at our hostel. It was midnight. Um. The end. That’s all I want to say about Halloween 2006.
The zoo, daylight savings, and Ryan
October 30This morning we planned on getting an early start because it was our last day in Madrid. SO Kate and I set our cell alarms for 9:00 (hey, that’s pretty early…) the night before and after a rousing game of LEMON, that I will be laughing about for the rest of my life, headed to sleep. Well… my phone woke me up at 8 FREAKING AM. Pete, who I honestly can’t remember the last time I talked to, decided to give me a little wake up call. It was nice talking to him I guess. A little random but nice.
Marilena, Kate, and I are all three in the get-over-being-dumped-by-your-boyfriend stage and have spent a lot of the past 3ish days talking about the shitty/good times of the past, the shitty times of the present, and the probably-shitty-but-i-don’t-really-want-to-think-about-it time in the future when we get back to SCU. All I know is that it’s good to have girls like them to talk about everything with.
After my phone call (and a long discussion) none of us were in the mood to sleep so we got to packing and showing and having the traditional morning round of karaoke. Then Marilena and I decided to run across the street to satisfy our Starbucks fix. We were a little confused cuz it wasn’t open yet…um what? I mean, I know our rolling in at 9:30 was a little bit earlier than the typical 11AM breakfasts we’d been having but it seemed like by 9:30 on a Monday it’d be open. Weird. Whatever. It was worth waiting around for 30 minutes!
After checking out of Narnia (and paying our bill which came to 57 euro each… for three nights… how sweet are hostels???), we stowed our luggage and hopped on the metro; today’s destination? THE MADRID ZOO (obviously).
After trekking off-road on a dirt path following “Zoo” signs from that metro, we finally got to the front entrance! And found out it was closed…
Well, okay, it hadn’t opened yet for the day. The sign said it opened at 11:00, cool. It was 10:30, we only had 30 minutes to wait. Well, at 11:05 the entrance was STILL deserted except for us and some leaf blower dudes that were blowing the leaves right at us…hm…why wasn’t the zoo open yet?!?
Then it hit us: SATURDAY WAS DAYLIGHT SAVINGS!
Everything from the morning started to fall into place: Pete woke us up at 7AM, not 8AM like we thought (bastard), Starbucks opened at 9:00 (we got there at 8:30 not at 9:30 like we thought), the metro was unusually PACKED this morning cuz we hit it right during work-rush-hour-traffic, AND we didn’t get to the zoo 30 minutes before it opened, we got there an HOUR AND THIRTY minutes before it opened! Fuck… we all felt a little retarded that morning to say the least.
We decided to spend the next hour walking through Casa de Campo (the gigantic park that the zoo was located in) in search of a desperately-needed-by-majority-of-our-group bathroom. Rick mentioned this park in his guide book and said that tourists should try to “skip Casa de Campo’s strange mix of rental rowboats, prostitutes, addicts, a zoo, and an amusement park.” He was not kidding. Sure the condom wrappers/used condoms here and there were disturbing but even MORE disturbing was running into some hideously disgusting prostitutes that we assume were just getting off a hard night’s work… ew.
We walked 45 minutes before finding a bathroom. No, we walked so far that we got back on the metro and rode it two stops back to where the zoo was. Hahaha, if it wasn’t for our thrilling talk about getting married and other freaking scary things like that in the future, time woulda gone by REAL slowly.
When we finally got into back to the zoo it was up and running (yay)! Some memorable things from the zoo: animals aren’t in cages, they are separated from people by a little moat; I was waiting for them to hop on over to hang out with us. The pacing/angry looking bear that ate its own carrot-colored poop. The dolphin show was awesome, and the guy trainer in it was hot UNTIL he put a fish in his mouth for a dolphin to eat it out of. The gazelle porn show. The 5 minute long rhino piss followed by his buddy drinking it up. The blonde monkey gymnast/Kate’s idol. The escaping birds from the flamingo tank…etc. THE ZOO WAS AWESOME. Rick was so wrong.
After several hours at the zoo we headed to La Corte Ingles. According to Rick, this was a HUGE mall-type-thing that was all over Spain. Our first stop was the Mercado cuz we were totally famished from our 45 minute walk/morning full of animal viewing. At La Corte Ingles, we got a little bit confused about what was going on and therefore had a very confusing time there…
-trip 1: into the Mercado to buy sandwiches which we ate on the stairs 5 steps away from the checkout…
-trip 2: immediately after finishing our sandwiches we headed BACK into the Mercado on a mission – buy dinner for tonite. We ended up peanut butter, jelly, a loaf of bread, and a bag of Oreos. Heh. On our way out we were all 4 hit on at the same time buy a guy our age that “recognized our California accent.” He invited us to his apartment to cook cuz he knew how much it sucked to travel and have to eat out all the time. A little creepy but it was a cool invitation – he seemed normal, he was prolly just super lonely. Maybe next time buddy!
-trip 3: Then it was up the elevators on a search for Halloween costumes for the next night in Barcelona. Specifically we wanted to dress up as the Italian flag… not too sure how though. After riding up eight escalators to the top floor of Corte Ingles without so much as dropping a cube of cheese on the escalator and laughing at a lady in fancy shoes when she kicked on of our bread stick crumbs across the fancy-ladies-clothes level we gave up.
-trip 4: back down all eight floors of escalators to pick up some necessary supplies that we forgot to buy earlier from the Mercado.
-trip 5: back UP all eight floors of escalators determined to find costumes (we felt like we weren’t being creative on the previous trip up).
-trip 6: back DOWN all eight floors of escalators and out of Corte Ingles feeling defeated but with hopes to be inspired by something in a store window on the walk home…
A totally bizarre, crazy, thing happened in Corte Ingles when we first arrived. After feeling a little tap on my arm I turned around to see none other than my long lost buddy RYAN SHEA! I was speechless! I seriously didn’t know how to respond to seeing him. Seriously, Ryan and I have a really random friendship. He is from Colorado and we met when I was in 7th grade (and he was in 9th grade?) at a soccer camp in Squaw Valley. At the time Britney Spears was getting really big and the boys thought it was funny to call me Britney because I guess the blonde hair/tan skin thing made me look like her? Ryan was, liek, the leader of the call-Tera-Britney craze and managed to get the entire camp to call me that… thanks. a. lot. For a few years after camp he and I remained pen pals (god, I need to go find those letters when I get home) and even though I’m the worst pen pal ever, he and I managed to stay in touch pretty well.
WELL, four years later he and I both ended up at SCU. Weird, but cool that I went to college with a boy that I met way back when I was in 7th grade. We hung out only a few times though cuz I was in my lame phase where I ONLY hung out with Pete all the time and Ryan was busy with graduating. I seriously didn’t think I’d ever see him again after he graduated last Spring AND THEN I SEE HIM RANDOMLY IN A GROCERY STORE IN SPAIN! If that’s not a sign that we’re destined to be together or something I dunno what is! Hahaha. He said that he was heading to Barcelona in a few days and that we should hang out then. I was SHAKING when I was writing down my phone number for him! I haven’t felt like that in forever… hopefully he didn’t notice. God, how freaking crazy.
We left Corte Ingles around 3:30 and weren’t too sure how to spend the rest of the six hours until our train left. A little bit of internet café here, two hours in a booth on the second floor of McDonald’s, a few failed attempts at shopping for costumes in Halloween stores later we grabbed our bags from Narnia and hopped on the metro toward the train station.
Our dinner was classic: PB&J (made with a fork) picnic in the terminal. :) Adios Madrid!
Tapas and Hooker Row
October 29Today was Day #55 in Europe… we’ve hit the half way point – um, WOW that was fast!
Last night I rolled around for about 2 hours before I was able to fall asleep (I could here Kate doing the same… our beds are like musical instruments: everytime one of us moves a different note is squeeked out).
Also, the streets were loud and alive well into 6AM this morning… DON’T YOU PEOPLE EVER SLEEP?! Whatever, it was good to get our 10 hours in cuz the day was another long day of museums.
Okay… Madrid is DEAD on Sundays. ZERO shops are open and since we live in an area that has only shops, it made a huge impact on the crowds.
After Starbucks (where the girl that works there knows my name and my order due to our excessive visits) we headed to Plaza Del Sol and hopped on the metro. After a little confusion (we forgot where we were going on our way there…) we arrived at the train station. It worked out well thought cuz we were able to buy our train tickets to Barcelona for tomorrow. We’re taking a sleeper train! It leaves at 10PM tomorrow night and arrives in Barcelona at 7:30AM – this should be interesting.
The train station was really cool; the inside was decorated like a tropical forest complete with a huge pond of turtles! We took pics, don’t worry; the Madrid train station turtles will be posted on Facebook shortly.
After being harassed by an old man we hopped back on the metro and headed toward the bullfighting museum. Unfortunately, bullfighting season ended a week ago (figures that we JUST missed it. UGH); the museum was our best alternative… yup. It was closed. Rick lead us astray – it’s okay though. The “Plaza Del Toros” was really cool. We peaked through the gates and checked out the inside of the stadium, it was HUGE! The actual plaza had a lot of fun statues and stuff too… it was an ideal picture taking opportunity.
The it was back to the metro (psh, we’re so metro savvy) and off to the “Clothing Museum.” Well. We never quite found the clothing museum… we hopped off the metro where Rick told us to but never found the actual street it was on even though we did ask a girl working at a newspaper stand, a taxi driver, and a guy at a bar. THANKS everyone!
We did however enjoy the perfect weather on our stroll through a park and got to check out a little bit of the Universidad de Madrid campus (which looked like it would fit in with all the back-east colleges at home; it was beautiful).
For lunch we headed back in the metro to Plaza Del Sol and got sandwiches at Pan&Company. The best part of lunch was the souvenir/happy-meal-esque-prize coffee mug that came with our meal. Random but awesome; it’s the little things in life. :)
On our walk home we enjoyed some McD’s soft serve and got a good laugh from BRAVO’S PERRITOS CALIENTES… classic.
God I love Spanish siestas (actually, ours was more like a Siesta Phi-esta). Today’s lasted about 1 ½ hours. Haha.
After the group siesta we got beautiful and started to organize our evening. I’m proud to say that the three of us are very mature travelers. We’re thrifty and look for deals (but aren’t cheap and haven’t passed anything up because of the cost), we sight see all day long until our feet are flat, we use public transportation, we don’t get wasted everynight… today I didn’t consume a single drop of alcohol. I dunno, I’m pretty proud of us.
After an emergency trip to the farmacia (for some emergency antibiotics that they handed over the second they understood what we were talking about for a ridiculously cheap price) we headed out for dinner. Tonight we were hungry for tapas.
At Vinoteca in Plaza Santa Ana we consumed SEVEN plates of tapas… our plates included fried cheese balls, fried spinach and cheese sticks, tomato and mozzarella salad, THREE tortillas verduras, a curry chicken salad thing, a goat cheese and caramelized onion thing, and lots of bread. Ok, sooo we didn’t really branch out and try traditional Spanish plates but we left Vinoteca 2934820% satisfied.
After dinner we headed back up Hooker Row (prostitution in Spain is legal according to Rick and the going rate is 27 euro a round. No joke. Seriously though, prosititutes line the street on the way to Narnia and they were close to our age…) to Narnia to call it a night.
Before bed we played a few rounds of LEMON and MASH, listened to Jack’s Mannequin, and packed for our trip east to Barcelona the next evening… Buenas Noches!
Quote of the Day:
“I guess we can try speaking Spitanglish… someone MIGHT understand us.”
we love Rick
October 28God it feels good to start the day with Starbucks! Our plan for sightseeing today was to take the walking tour that’s printed in Marilena’s Euro tour book. Our guides for the day? Rick and Anne… the author and his wife. :)
First we stopped at Plaza del Sole (which looks WAAY different during the day than it did the night before) where Marilena read us a brief history about the various buildings that bordered the huge piazza. Then we waited in a crowd of Asian people in order to take a picture at a spot that marked the dead center of the entire country of Spain! Cool!
Second, Rick recommended we walk to the Royal Palace. It was a little ways walk away so we were strolling along, taking pictures, and stumbled across Plaza Mayor. It looked a lot like Piazza San Marco in Venice. It was beautiful; we took tons of pictures! We even took pics of the cutest, most stylish, little 3 year old, blonde boy. He loved us too and kept following us around. Hehe.
Eventually we made it to the palace. Apparently Spain has a king and queen and this palace is used for different important ceremonies throughout the year. First we took pictures in the gardens in front (where they were filming a movie!) then we went and waited in line to tour the inside cuz Rick’s guide book had a detailed description of the interior.
The atmosphere around us while we were waiting in line was priceless. We had perfect weather, beautiful people to watch, a circle-turning fluffball of a dog to laugh at, Canadian tuxedos to take pictures of, homeless people playing really good music on a keyboard in the middle of the plaza, and fun friends to talk to.
On our way into the palace (woot for being a student and only having to pay ½ price admission) there was a little drama with the metal detector. Marilena was spacing out a little and had to go through it, liek, four times and was so flustered by the time she got in that she took someone else’s Spain guide book thinking it was hers and then proceeded to freak out about karma for the remainder of the day.
The palace was AWESOME. Every single room was beautiful. Kate got in trouble by every single guard working there for taking pictures with her flash… good job Kate. Good job.
Our next stop after the palace was the Prado Museum. On our trek there we stopped into an Irish pub called O’neils for a beer (hey, why not? It was lunch time anyways…). I LOVE irish pubs because the people that work in all of them always speak English! We made friends with the bartender; she was really cool. She gave us directions to restaurants that seved good paella for dinner and educated us in Irish slang (did you know that “wanker” basically means “jerk off?” Now you do.).
After our beer we continued our walk to the Prado (without a map… karma bit us in the ass: Marilena stole the book then we lost our map. Ugh). Then Marilena had a hard time going through security AGAIN (this time cuz of her swiss army knife).
Ok, if you ever visit Madrid and know or care at all about art GO TO THE PRADO. I felt like a total dork cuz I was getting REALLY excited about the paintings they had in their collection. God, to name a few: Durer’s self-portrait, Adam and Eve, lots of Reubens’, lots of Velasquez’s, lots of Raphael, lots of Carravaggios… I recognized paintings all over the museum! It was so freaking exciting.
After the Prado we grabbed some sandwiches at VIPS where we saw the same German guys from the night before. We awkwardly ran away from them when they started talking to us…
THEN we saw two guys from SCU that were studying here in Madrid (that, of course, I didn’t know since I’ve come to realize that I know basically no one at SCU).
THEN we sat down for churros con chocolate and I looked up and saw Allie Sevy (!!!) a girl I haven’t seen since high school! God, SMALL WORLD (that keeps getting smaller…)
Bytheway, churros con chocolate were really good. You literally get a plate of churros and a coffee mug full of hot chocolate sauce, dip, and eat. Unfortunately, the “Churro con Chocolate” sexual position (which is disturbingly disgusting) I’d learned about the night before kept flashing in my head while we were eating… THANKS KATE.
We got back to the hostel around 5ish, turned out the lights, and passed out for a good two hours! We were exhausted to say the least.
For dinner we enjoyed some really great (but safe with only veggies and chicken) paella! Omigod, I LOVE PAELLA! We’re def going to have to get some more before we leave Spain…
On our walk home, Kate and Marilena got soft-serve from McDonald’s… FYI if you go to Madrid and go to McD’s at 11PM expect to see a big posse of gothic kids cuz they all hang out there. Haha, we were definetly out of place…
Tonight we decided to stay in for the evening. By the time we got back to Narnia it was, liek, 11:00 already. We figured that we were going to go out every night in Barcelona and since we had a long day of museums and tours lined up for tomorrow we might as well crash early.
Today was awesome. I love my travel buddies. I love Madrid. It’s so great to love your life… right now, I do.
Quotes of the Day:
Kate - “Who did I give a lap dance to last night?” Tera – “Me.”
“Wait, did they have midgets back then?” “No, they were invented kinda recently.”
“You’re such an uomo.”
“I had a really disturbing dream last night about a guy with no arms…” “Um, Kate that wasn’t a dream.”
Madrid!
My alarm went off at 6AM this morning… I threw my cell phone across the room and fell back asleep for 10 more minutes. My head was hurting (from celebratory-end-of-midterms-cocktail-hour the evening before) and I was exhausted (from getting home at 2AM after a fun night out with Dan). Our flight to Madrid was at 10:30 and Marilena and I planned to meet up with Kate at 8 at the train station… I MEANT to take a shower BUT for the second day in a row we had ZERO hot water (which makes showering really really painful).
We made it to the Firenze airport with plenty of time to spare. At the airport, SCUers flocked from all directions – literally we were on a flight with Brittany, Alexa, Alyssa, Maggie, Emily, Kendel, Kate, Kate, Marilena, and me. Hahaha, how cool is that?
On the plane in the row behind us were a few girls from our SUF program that none of us really knew. They were THE dumbest girls I have ever evesdropped on. Kate, Marilena, and I spent most of our flight sleeping/laughing at these girls (black’s not a color; wait, it’s a number? No joke…).
ALSO on the flight we were stuck with a flight attendant that must’ve been having a really bad day. I mean, that’s the only excuse I can think of that might’ve inspired the hatred that she had toward me. Before we took off, I had my iPod headphones on (but my iPod off) and she came up and tapped me on the shoulder telling me that I had to take them off to listen to the safety shpeal. So I took them off, listened, and put them back on when it was over and began to mentally prepare myself for the flight (I HATE airplanes).
She came up to me AGAIN. Tapped me hard on the shoulder. Tapped my iPod (??). I threw my hands up and smiled and apologized and explained that I didn’t realize I couldn’t have them on. She looked me deep in the eyes and said in an incredibly mean, condescending voice: “This is not a joke,” turned on her heal and stormed away. What? We didn’t know how to respond other than completely laugh at her. I mean it wasn’t like I was fucking around or anything… psh. I hate her… (I got in trouble again when we were landing, heh. Whoops.)
The flight was about 1 ½ hours. It went fine. I mostly slept.
We landed in Madrid around 1:00 and didn’t arrive at our hostel until 5:00… We were lost for FOUR hours! First we got lost in the airport. THEN we got lost in on the metro (and ended up in a region where NO ONE spoke English and Marilena got hit on by an entire restaurant full of guys). Then we got lost on the metro AGAIN. Then we tried to WALK to our hostel but our bags by then felt like they had multiplied in weight. So at last we gave in and got a cab and arrived at Hostel Nuria 5 minutes later.
Madrid is beautiful.
Hostel Nuria (which we referred to all weekend long as Narnia) was interesting and very hostel-esque. Our room had three beds, a sink, and a shower. Yea, it took Marilena about 10 minutes to realize we were missing something kinda important: a toilet? Turns out it was a community toilet in a midge closet down the hall… ehhh…
After getting settled as best we could and taking showers in our midge shower without flooding our entire bedroom, we headed out for the evening. Our night began with a quick trip to STARBUCKS! There are a million Starbucks’ here… it was one of the best/most expensive tall, iced, non-fat, chai tea, lattes I’ve ever had!
The part of Madrid we were staying in remind me a lot of 5th Avenue in New York. TONS of shopping and TONS of people all hurrying to get someplace. Our first stop? H&M! God, I love that store and can’t help but buy numerous things whenever I go there. I swear though that everything I bought was totally necessary! :)
We dropped off our loot at Narnia around 9:30ish and headed out again in search of edible Spanish food and Sangria. We walked for about an hour and found no good restaurants but we DID run into Alexa, Maggie, and Sam who were staying in a hotel nearby Narnia. The six of us ate at Zahara’s (the Spanish version of Coco’s). After three jugs of Sangria, and after being shushed by people eating in the restaurant next to us, we went on a search for a fun pub.
In Plaza Del Sol we made friends with some guys from Berlin (that were all wearing the same shirt). They taught us a few German cuss words then the group of us trekked to a bar called Dubliners – super American… but awesome. Haha, I even ran into my friend Jamie from high school who was studying in Madrid. Small world…
It was a debauchery of dancing, drinking, smoking, Sexy Back, pictures, German boys, etc. Towards the end of the evening Marilena and Kate both disappeared outside and by the time I joined up with them I found them both texting ex-boyfriends. Ehhh, I really hoped that it wasn’t going to be like this everyday! I’m not really okay with wasting time, money, or tears even from calls and texts from them while I’m in SPAIN! Wait, what Kate?? WHO did you text? Perritos Calientes?
After getting completely lost on the way back to Narnia (you guys should have listened to meeee cuz I really did know where I was going) and NOT eating chocolate covered churros we finally passed out. Woo, fabulous first day; we love Madrid!
Quotes of the Day:
“Whenever I say ‘gracias’ with a lisp I feel like a homosexual male.”
“Fichen Fic, ya!”
“Maybe this place was built before electricity was invented?”
Midterm Day
October 26Today started out at 7AM. I spent all evening yesterday making outlines for my two midterms today and by the time I got to memorizing them I was so exhausted that I went to sleep early. It’s nice though because Marilena and I had the same two tests today sooo I had her to cram with this morning.
Memorizing everything was actually really easy. We were Family/Gender and Italian masters by the time we were done eating our toast and coffee. At breakfast I almost attacked Susana and Kike with my butter knife… Marilena and I were studying and they were both talking to eachother when all of a sudden I heard my name and some laughing so I looked up and asked what was so funny and Kike was like, “We bet that before tests Tera prays.” Um… WHAT?! Once again, the fam thinks I’m totally incompetent and have to PRAY TO GOD in order to do well on tests. I was a little bit insulted this time… ugh, whatever. I do well on tests. I get good grades. I’m smart. And I know it so I guess that’s all that matters.
My tests today did, in fact, go very well. Italian was harder than I thought it was going to be and Family/Gender was easier. I think I did very well on both.
After midterms, Marilena and I treated ourselves to yummy sandwiches at Oil Shoppe. We also ran a bunch of errands for our trip tomorrow. Yeah… TOMORROW WE ARE TRAVELING EUROPE ALL BY OURSELVES FOR TEN DAYS! Yikes! I haven’t actually even started thinking about tomorrow and am probably going to spend the entire evening packing. Man oh man. If anyone wants to rescue me and call me with something really fun to do tonight… please do! Otherwise I’ll be here buried under some crunchy/some unwashed clothes.
For the next 10 days I’ll most likely be in really expensive cell phone territory sooo I’m going to resort back to my old ways of screening my calls so as to save a couple dollars. HOWEVER, if you’re in Barcelona, Madrid, or Budapest CALL ME so we can hang out! Otherwise, BUONE VACANZE and HAPPY HALLOWEEN to everyone!!!
Scary… we’re officially half way done.
