As far as finding an exciting, blog-worthy story goes, this past week proved to be a bit of a challenge. Thankfully, salvation came in the form of two adventures. The first took place on Thursday night. It was just before sunset and I was running, ok briskly walking, along one of my favorite routes in the Spanish countryside. I was getting close to Ronda and had just turned to trudge up a massive hill when I suddenly heard a loud “neigh”. Pausing NSync’s, “Pop,” on my iPod I looked up to the top of the hill where a beautiful, white horse stood looking at me from its pen. What happened next was so ridiculous that if I had seen it in a movie or read it in a book I would have died from its cheesiness. But the fact that it actually happened upgrades this story from a cheddar-cheese fest to a more tolerable feta-level. Therefore, I’m going to go ahead and share it with you all whether you want to hear it or not.
As I continued to walk up the hill the horse kept looking at me and neighing. So when I reached the top, I rounded the corner and walked over to the its pen to stand by the gate. Well, the horse saw where I was and left its look-out point to walk over and stand by me. Having grown up watching, “My Little Pony,” and reading cool books like Pony Pals, I can tell you that this whole scenario was a dream come true. He even lifted its head over the gate and let me pet him! I started to walk away but my new friend was not pleased. He started to follow me along the fence. So in what probably made me look like a 10-year-old (or a leading-candidate for a public intoxication ticket) I started to run back-and-forth along the fence. Apparently the horse was not appalled by this ridiculousness because he started to run with me! We kept this up for a few minutes but the impending darkness forced us to cut our game short. My guess is that he probably would have won anyways. Walking away I could see my pal as he lingered by the fence for a few minutes. I like to think he was waiting to see if I would come back, but my guess is that he just wanted some food…or to check out the sexy mule across the road. It’s a tough call.
The next story takes place in a little town called Madrid. After school on Friday, six of us loaded up a bus and drove 8 hours to get to the capital city. Our plan was to see the sights during the day and watch the biggest “futbol” game in Spain Saturday night: Barcelona vs. Real Madrid. We were all so excited! One of the girls in the group even said that she had an, ahem, source that would get us into the stadium during the match! (Just to spare you the heartbreak, this source proved to be a no-go in the end. So don’t get your hopes up).
Anyways, the first night we stayed in my shadiest hostel to date. It was conveniently located by the bus station but I’m pretty sure that it was a hospital before someone decided to put locks on the doors and call it a hostel. Every level had a long, white-tiled hallway with florescent lights that flickered when you walked beneath them and the other tenants were, well, old men. In the morning when we were checking out to move to our central-Madrid hostel our friend Joe pulled back his sleeves to reveal to all of us a series of spider bites that he had obtained from his bed the night before. So if you’re into this sort of camping-while-inside lifestyle, Hostel Welcome is for you.
Ok, now for the fun stuff. After checking into the way cool Cats Hostel we travelled all over Madrid and saw the AMAZING, WONDERFUL, BEAUTIFUL Prado Museum as well as the Grand Palace, the Plaza Mayor, and of course the Real Madrid Futbol Stadium. We ended up taking a tour of the stadium where we got to take “pictures” with the players (for namesake, I of course chose Kaka) see the trophy room and sit in the player’s super comfy field chairs.
By the end of the day we knew that we were not going to be able to get into the stadium to see the game so we all just planned to just eat dinner, walk over to an Irish pub and enjoy the craziness that comes with a European soccer game. Well 8:15 p.m. rolled around and in keeping true to Spanish traditions, had yet to eat dinner. Now it just so happens that one of my friends, Georger, is the biggest Real Madrid fan you can imagine and she was a bit concerned that she would miss part of the game if we stayed at the Tai restaurant we had all agreed to eat at. So in the end I offered to leave with her and we ended going to a tapas bar where we could eat and watch the beginning of the game at the same time. Turns out two guys from our hostel were there and in a very non-date-like situation, the four of us ended up hanging out.
After tapas and a very unimpressive showing of Madrid in the first half, the four of us switched venues and went to the pub to watch the game. The place was PACKED. You know that vibe you get at Allen Fieldhouse when the game is just about to start? Goosebumps, manly tears, that whole bit. Well, I didn’t get that feeling but everyone else certainly seemed to. It was great! The two times Barcelona scored a goal, half of the bar would go absolutely nuts; hugging, screaming and pouring their drinks on the floor. And while the other side of the bar wasn’t able to celebrate a goal, the many times Ronaldo failed to score for Madrid allotted them the opportunity to groan and shout “joder” very loudly.
In the end, Madrid lost 0-2. It was sad. I know that if they had only been able to pull it off that the city would have been like Carnaval on the grandest of scales. But while we weren’t able to celebrate a win, Georger, the two guys and I ended up staying at the pub and then going over to a dance bar a little later to enjoy the night life. After a very fun night filled with an Irish woman named Lisa who talked about the positive changes having children had on her body, a student from Syracuse University (sorry Rosie, he hadn’t taken any of your classes)a guy who was a little too good at time management and a great DJ we decided to call it a night and headed back to our hostel at 4 a.m.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
Italy, Vending Machines and Nazis...Oh My!
Ciao! This past week was Spring Break and four of my friends (Amanda, Abby, Joe, Kristen) and I decided that the time had come to leave our beloved Spain and travel to the pasta-capital of the world, Italy. The plan was simple enough: fly to Milan, take the train to Rome and see as many cities in between as we could. In the end, no one died. A true success. But as with everything else that has happened this semester, there were a few bruises along the way.
Milan:
After a very long day of travel the four of us ended up in the center of the Milan bus station around 10 at night. Thankfully, ye’old GoogleMaps said that we were only a few blocks away from our hostel and we left the station eager to sleep on a nice, clean bed. Well, as we got closer and closer to our hostel we began to notice that we weren’t exactly in the ritzy part of Milan. Paint fumes filled our nostrils as we walked by walls graffiti and the locals in the area weren’t exactly sporting Armani tuxes. But we finally found our hostel and were relieved to find it clean and safe-ish.
After we put our things down we ventured out again to find us some dinner. This time we not only noticed the graffiti but an unusually large number of women lining the streets. I believe they are what you call, “working” women. If this didn’t tip us off to the fact that we were in a slightly-shady area of town then the naked man hanging out of his window or the vending machines did the trick. Yes, in addition to your typical cookies and candy bars, these vending machines were packed with practical items such as condoms, pregnancy tests (you know, just in case your vending-machine condoms fail you) and pesto! Clever Italians.
Needless to say, we didn’t really see the side of Milan that we were expecting. But that just made it all the more fun.
Other things that happened in Milan: Abby was hit on by a 40-year-old British many who liked her because she was, “difficult” and Joe, Kristen and I set off a grocery store alarm by accidentally walking out of the fire-exit door.
Venice:
Our next stop was Venice. We were only there for a night but everyone agreed that with its random alleyways and beautiful buildings, that Venice was by far the best Italian city we explored. After walking around for a bit we all decided to take a break in our hostel and ended up watching about 30 minutes of E.T. in Italian. For those of you not hip on dubbed-over movies, when translated, E.T.’s famous “phone home” line is actually, “telephono casa.” Eventually we left the hostel and dined on fantastic spaghetti and red wine. All of the bars and such unfortunately closed early but we entertained ourselves throughout the night by walking around the city and choosing random corridors to explore. Everything was going fine…then we met the Nazi.
During our exploration I noticed a statue of Mary surrounded by flowers (my guess is that it was for Semana Santa) standing right outside the train station. I walked over to investigate and the rest of the group followed suit. Well while we all examined this curious sight an older man walked over and said in Italian, “Who died? Oh, Jesus Christ died.” Odd, we all thought, but ok. Then he started to try to talk to us. It was pretty late and for safety sake we all kept quiet and tried to ignore him. He didn’t get the hint and pretty soon he was trying to talk to us in English. This is about the time that my friend Joe thought it would be a good idea to ask him in German if he spoke German. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” Joe asked.
The question seemed to puzzle the man and he finally fell silent. We took the opportunity to leave and started walking away when we suddenly heard, “Wait! Deutsch!”
We all turn around to see the same man holding out his phone running to catch up with us. “Deutsch, wait,” he said. “Adolf Hitler is my friend!”
Confused we all looked down at his cell phone where, sure enough, he had a picture of the Fuhrer pulled up on the screen. Well, at this point we were about 99-100% sure that this man was a loony. This is also when we realized that no one in our group speak could speak German. So in what sounded like the seagulls in, “Finding Nemo,” we all started to rapidly-yell, “Nein, nein,” and quickly turned to leave.
“Wait! Adolf Hitler is my friend. Adolf Hitler is my friend!” The man would not give up and was still following us so we did what any French tourist would do in this situation…we ran. Looking over our shoulders we could see that the Nazi was running after us and could hear him yelling, “Adolf Hitler is my friend!” I don’t know why he was shouting in English, but no matter. Countering his chant was the sound of all of our seagull-voices yelling, “Nein! Nein!”
We finally found a spot to hide under one of the many famous bridges in Venice and stayed there until the shouts of, “Adolf Hitler is my friend,” faded into the distance. Thus we learned to never claim German citizenship again.
Other things in Italy:
Pisa: Random down pour that drenched us all on the way from the Leaning Tower to the train station (it started when we left the tower and ended when got to the station).
Florence: Karaoke to “What’s Up,” we don’t know the lines but the Italians can’t understand us and give a rip-roaring round of applause at the end.
Rome: Awesome pub crawl at night, brief nap in the Italian sun on the lawn of the Roman Forum the next day. Oh, and we saw the Pope! He was extremely far away and we would have heard him speak if it hadn’t been for Rob…you wouldn’t understand.
Milan:
After a very long day of travel the four of us ended up in the center of the Milan bus station around 10 at night. Thankfully, ye’old GoogleMaps said that we were only a few blocks away from our hostel and we left the station eager to sleep on a nice, clean bed. Well, as we got closer and closer to our hostel we began to notice that we weren’t exactly in the ritzy part of Milan. Paint fumes filled our nostrils as we walked by walls graffiti and the locals in the area weren’t exactly sporting Armani tuxes. But we finally found our hostel and were relieved to find it clean and safe-ish.
After we put our things down we ventured out again to find us some dinner. This time we not only noticed the graffiti but an unusually large number of women lining the streets. I believe they are what you call, “working” women. If this didn’t tip us off to the fact that we were in a slightly-shady area of town then the naked man hanging out of his window or the vending machines did the trick. Yes, in addition to your typical cookies and candy bars, these vending machines were packed with practical items such as condoms, pregnancy tests (you know, just in case your vending-machine condoms fail you) and pesto! Clever Italians.
Needless to say, we didn’t really see the side of Milan that we were expecting. But that just made it all the more fun.
Other things that happened in Milan: Abby was hit on by a 40-year-old British many who liked her because she was, “difficult” and Joe, Kristen and I set off a grocery store alarm by accidentally walking out of the fire-exit door.
Venice:
Our next stop was Venice. We were only there for a night but everyone agreed that with its random alleyways and beautiful buildings, that Venice was by far the best Italian city we explored. After walking around for a bit we all decided to take a break in our hostel and ended up watching about 30 minutes of E.T. in Italian. For those of you not hip on dubbed-over movies, when translated, E.T.’s famous “phone home” line is actually, “telephono casa.” Eventually we left the hostel and dined on fantastic spaghetti and red wine. All of the bars and such unfortunately closed early but we entertained ourselves throughout the night by walking around the city and choosing random corridors to explore. Everything was going fine…then we met the Nazi.
During our exploration I noticed a statue of Mary surrounded by flowers (my guess is that it was for Semana Santa) standing right outside the train station. I walked over to investigate and the rest of the group followed suit. Well while we all examined this curious sight an older man walked over and said in Italian, “Who died? Oh, Jesus Christ died.” Odd, we all thought, but ok. Then he started to try to talk to us. It was pretty late and for safety sake we all kept quiet and tried to ignore him. He didn’t get the hint and pretty soon he was trying to talk to us in English. This is about the time that my friend Joe thought it would be a good idea to ask him in German if he spoke German. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” Joe asked.
The question seemed to puzzle the man and he finally fell silent. We took the opportunity to leave and started walking away when we suddenly heard, “Wait! Deutsch!”
We all turn around to see the same man holding out his phone running to catch up with us. “Deutsch, wait,” he said. “Adolf Hitler is my friend!”
Confused we all looked down at his cell phone where, sure enough, he had a picture of the Fuhrer pulled up on the screen. Well, at this point we were about 99-100% sure that this man was a loony. This is also when we realized that no one in our group speak could speak German. So in what sounded like the seagulls in, “Finding Nemo,” we all started to rapidly-yell, “Nein, nein,” and quickly turned to leave.
“Wait! Adolf Hitler is my friend. Adolf Hitler is my friend!” The man would not give up and was still following us so we did what any French tourist would do in this situation…we ran. Looking over our shoulders we could see that the Nazi was running after us and could hear him yelling, “Adolf Hitler is my friend!” I don’t know why he was shouting in English, but no matter. Countering his chant was the sound of all of our seagull-voices yelling, “Nein! Nein!”
We finally found a spot to hide under one of the many famous bridges in Venice and stayed there until the shouts of, “Adolf Hitler is my friend,” faded into the distance. Thus we learned to never claim German citizenship again.
Other things in Italy:
Pisa: Random down pour that drenched us all on the way from the Leaning Tower to the train station (it started when we left the tower and ended when got to the station).
Florence: Karaoke to “What’s Up,” we don’t know the lines but the Italians can’t understand us and give a rip-roaring round of applause at the end.
Rome: Awesome pub crawl at night, brief nap in the Italian sun on the lawn of the Roman Forum the next day. Oh, and we saw the Pope! He was extremely far away and we would have heard him speak if it hadn’t been for Rob…you wouldn’t understand.
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