Back to the Capital

A short account of this weekend´s activities. Pictures are already up on my Flickr page, although I still didn´t manage to snap off quite as many as I would have liked. Oh well.

Friday I had a test for language class, which I think went pretty well. I may have messed up bit on the essay part, but only because I didn´t use a ton of subjunctive tense like the teachers probably wanted us to. Otherwise, I think it was pretty coherent and complete.

Afterwards, I hopped on for my free bus ride to Madrid. We arrived at the hotel and I began to scavenge around for lodging. I was extremely lucky to find that Anastasia and Tyler´s room had -for no apparant reason, whatsoever- an extra cot already set up in it. Needless to say, I was extremely psyched to have my own bed to sleep in. That night, hung out with some people and we went out and got some really good Japanese-style food. They had sushi which we tried, although it wasn´t terribly impressive and cost a lot. We went back to the hotel to get ready to go out, but took our sweet ass times doing it and didn´t manage to leave until 1:30 or 2. We only had enough time for one drink at the Irish bar we went to, then they began to close.

It´s interesting to notice how much more strict Madrid -the country´s capital- is about enforcing the new laws concerning bars and public drinking. As of January 1st, there were put in place regulations on how late a bar (although not a club) can stay open and serve alcohol. Apparantly that time is 2am in Madrid (I think it´s later down here by an hour). These laws are carefully enfored by the police, as well. Alicante, a relatively podunk resort city is way more lax about almost everything in this department. Cops don´t seem to mind public drinking, bars aren´t held at gunpoint to close at the 2 or 3am cut-off time, etc. I think generally I´m used to the idea that the bigger it is, the less these kind of things are enforced (New York being a perfect example). In Madrid, packs of motorcycle cops were combing the streets busting up any sign of botellon, while the botellons in Alicante are always left alone, not to mention the fact that the city willingly cleans up after them.

Anyway, since all of us were too tired to hit up the clubs (and there were plenty to choose from), we decided it best to head home and get some much needed sleep. I was happy to be able to do so in my sweet cot.

Saturday, I fully intended to get up early enough to join the group for the tour of the Senate, but I realized that sleep mattered a whole lot more to me. The report from those that was that it wasn´t anything special so I didn´t feel too bad about missing out. I opted to walk around by myself and enjoy the city, which I did indeed do. I found a very cool park that had a hill offering an excellent view of the Palace and the outer portions of the city. It is known to have a breathtaing view of the sunset, but unfortunately we never had time to get up there and see it. I also walked through a park that had a statue of Don Quixote. After that I wandered over to Plaza Mayor to try to find some friends. I met up with Ana and we went to El Museo de la Reina Sofía, which is (awesomely) free on Saturdays after 2:30. Now I thought the Prado (a classical art museum) was pretty cool, but I was totally stunned at how amazing the Reina Sofía was (a modern art museum). It has astounding collections of Picasso, Dalí, and Miró. We opted to get the audio headsets for 3€ (the usual price for admission), which I´m glad we did. Being able to see Guernica (it´s gigantic) was intense, and the goes for the Dalí paintings, which up close in their original glory was beautiful. They put those behind glass so you can get up really close and notice all of the crazy detail put into each of Dalí´s insane creations. The dude was definitely tapped. There was also a showing of some of the early movies of Luis Buñuel (the father of Spanish surrealist film) that he did with Dalí. The one I caught a piece of was also pretty tapped, but extremely interesting to watch.

The idea behind surrealism in movies was to convey a point through intensely visual metaphors. The result can being extremely unsettling at times, and it isn´t always immediately apparant what the director is trying to convey (especially if one is unfamiliar with the context of the film). Surrealism in Spanish cinema became extremely common once Franco was in power, since the only way films would be approved by censors was if they contained nothing that was easily discernable as contrary to the ideals and policies of the regime (thank you Profesor Rose and Spanish Civil War on Film). Buñuel had many followers and imitators, so seeing some of his early, pre-Franco work was cool.

We walked around and kind of ran through the top floor which was all modern art from 1940s and up. This was cool, but after having already spent 2 hours looking at "classic" modern art, our brains were beginning to overload a bit. When trying to leave, we managed to stumble into all of the museum´s temporary exhibits as well, which were also extremely cool, but we just didn´t have the mental capacity to handle more art at that point. We must have spent almost 3 and a half hours in the museum, and I really would have liked to go back again another day just to be able to digest everything more fully.

Saturday night was to be my birthday celebration, but it was notoriously difficult to round up any formidable number of people, nevermind the fact that it´s a huge pain in the ass walking around a gigantic (uber-bustling) city like Madrid with a big group. Instead, I ended up going out with a group of 7 or so people that happened to all be chilling in the same place at the same time. We lost a couple of heads early on because of disagreements over dinner (someone always wants to eat at TGI Friday´s when there´s one around for some reason). We ended up getting a kebab and watching the second half of the R. Madrid-Barça game, which I would have liked to have seen all of. It ended in a disappointing tie (not disappointing if you´re a Barça fan though). After that we pretty much just wandered around a particularly buzzing neighborhood stopping in for a drink here or there. I was happy to be completely lost and then suddenly look to my left and see the same microbrewery I had visited the last time I was in Madrid. We stopped in and topped the night off with a thirst-quenching, ultra-fresh beer. Once again, we opted not to go to clubs, which suited me fine. Instead, we just walked back to the hotel which at this point was quite close. Ana and I chilled out on the balcony for a bit (we had an incredible view of the Gran Via) and then turned in.

About 3 hours later we were awake and packing up to check out. Everybody piled onto the buses and we headed over to the Prado which I skipped out on since I had been the last time, and was in no mental-state to walk through again anyway. Instead I sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful day. Headed over to the park soon after and tossed the disc around until it was time to get on the buses and head back to Alicante. Regardless of the fact that I should have just gone to bed right after dinner, Eric insisted on taking me out for a few birthday drinks, since Sunday was my actual birthday, and he wasn´t in Madrid to celebrate the first time around. I couldn´t really say no.

So all and all, it was a very fun weekend. I´m quite happy I decided to go back to Madrid, and would highly recommend it to anybody who is interested in visiting Spain.

I wanted to go to Granada next weekend because it seems like a place I really need to visit while in Spain. Everybody that goes says they love it. Unfortunately, I don´t think going will be the greatest idea since I´ll be leaving for Spring Break 3 days later. Maybe I can squeeze it in at the end of the program.

I have more I could write about, but I have much to do on the computer while I still have time left.

Thanks to everybody that sent along birthday wishes through facebook/email/text message/otherwise.

Love, Peace, and Chicken Grease