Another week, another set of Spanish lessons learned.
Last week consisted of class, card games, chocolate con leche, ladies night, ping meeting pong, and speaking a lot of Spanish. Monday night we decided to hit the town for the first of many weekly ladies nights, we learned the hard way that nothing is opened on Mondays but luckily we were able to find a café bar and drink Moscato, laugh, and share life stories. It goes without saying we are moving ladies night to a more social evening next week. Classes are going well, it’s nice now have relationships with professors and knowing names, also everyone feels comfortable in class and it’s a lot less stressful. I really enjoy my grammar and vocabulary classes the most, they are smaller, about fifteen students and involve a lot of class activities and speaking, not lecture based but interactive. Also this week I received the amazing news that my mother will be embarking on a journey of her own in April to come visit me over my spring break and we will spend two days together in Oviedo until we jet set of to Ireland. So obviously it was a fabulous week. And all this was done with the anticipation of heading to Madrid, Spain’s capital, since we got a day of for Saint Thomas the
Aquinas.
So Thursday was really the start of our weekend and was our evening with Luna and Paula our contact partners, they took us to their friends bar where they preceded to flirt with boys and ignore us so a group of us decided to peace out and found our own Irish pub to play cards in and socialize. We socialized far later than was wise for a seven thirty am bus ride that had you out of bed by six am to make it in time. But that lesson will probably continue to go unlearned. The next morning a group of twelve very tired Americans boarded the five hour long bus ride to Madrid. We were divided up into two groups of six staying at two different hostels on the first night, then the other group had booked our same hostel for Saturday night. The bus was pretty uncomfortable but with Sarah’s neck pillow I was able to get a few hours of shut eye. When I feel asleep it was to glorious mountains and a sun slowly rising up over the horizon. When I woke up a while later I was enjoying the central Spanish desert and its unique vegetation and a cloudy sky. When I fell back asleep it was slowly beginning to rain and we were nearing another mountain range. When I woke up again the mountains and plains had been covered in a white blanket and we could not have been more disappointed. Though the snow covered mountains were beautiful I was not prepared for such weather, clothing wise. Luckily when I woke up from a third nap, a fiveish hour bus ride is a long time, we were out of the snow section and just entering chilly, cloudy Madrid. Dodged a bullet there.
We got in around one p.m. and headed into the subway to go to our hostel. I was traveling with a lot of people that had never been out of the US let alone seen a subway before so I enjoyed helping them buy their first tickets and showing them how to read a subway map. After a short ride, only one euro, we were at stop. After a short walk we found Mad Hostel, our home for the next two days. People thought I was some sort of road guru because I was able to guide us without a problem to our hostel, they were disappointed to find out I simply wrote down the directions on the websites. After settling in and checking in we headed to a close supermarket to buy food for the weekend, to save money from the expensive restaurants. Of course peanut butter is scarce here so we settled for a milk chocolate white chocolate swirl spread, bread, tex-mex Doritos (the only Doritos they have here), and more chocolate sopresas. Our hostel is pretty cool it has roof access, but it was too cold to utilize it for more than fifteen minutes and the view consisted of taller buildings, and we had individual lockers in our rooms so no one was scared to leave stuff in our rooms. Rick Steves inspired I had compiled a list of potential things to do in Madrid and we dove right in. Our first stop would be the Temple of Debod.
In 1968 Egypt gave Spain a temple as a gift from the Egyptian government. Franco had help save some major monuments when the Nile river rose and this temple from 200 B.C. was their idea of a thank you. The temple was amazing. It had two large stone archways before the actual temple, which was huge and looked like it could have been filled with booby traps. The two arches are surrounded by a large pool of still water and at the rear of the temple is a huge fountain and a great view of Madrid. The temple was free and you were allowed to take pictures without flash so if you click on the link at the bottom of the email you will be able to see pictures. The temple walls were made of hard sandstone and were the same size of block that makes up the many pyramids. My favorite room was a hall of hieroglyphics, there were pictures of all the hieroglyphics underneath and then descriptions of what they meant. It was really amazing to see ancient history and I couldn’t stop imagining life during that time, plus I felt like Indiana Jones. The temple was full of ruins and hidden rooms and small crawl spaces, it makes me even more excited to visit Egypt with my Aunt one day, in the distant future. After wandering through and taking pictures it was decided that a nap was in order, plus a lot of us were coming down with the flu and not feeling one hundred percent. We walked past the huge royal palace and stopped in a café for colacoa and café con leche. We walked through plaza mayor a famous site and plaza in Madrid and laughed at the many costumed gypsies charging money for pictures. In attendance were Minnie Mouse, Spongebob, a white statue, three heads, a clay man, and a very fat man in a small poor quality spiderman suit. The plaza mayor was constructed in 1619 by Philip III, who has a huge statue of him riding a horse in the middle, this is where they use to put on plays and executed prisoners. By the time we reached our hostel Hanna, Carrie and myself were feeling very under the weather. The rest of the group had headed off for some shopping and we decided we needed to rest up to go out the next day and see more of Madrid. We spent that night playing cards, heading to bed early, and cooking to death in our million degrees room.
The next morning Hanna and I felt right as rain but poor Carrie still couldn’t stomach anything. We headed downstairs for our free breakfast of hot chocolate, orange juice, and croissants. After an unfulfilling meal we packed up and headed out for the Palacio Real (royal palace.) We arrived around eleven to a large line, but the weather was warmer and we had the amazing sounds of gypsy accordion players and men playing the music glasses to keep us company. These artists mean business here, they all sell their own CDs and the music glass guys play classic songs on cups of water, it was really impressive. Finally we made it into the palace and thanks to our international student cards we were able to knock our admission price down from eight euro to 3.50, score. The palace is huge and home to over 2,000 rooms. The royal family no longer resides there, they have a different giant mansion down the road, but the palace is still used for special events and parties. For some basic fun history about the palace, it was built in the 18th century when an important fortress burnt down. It was commissioned by Philip V who was French and built it to model Versailles. His wife was very Italian though so it is decorated largely in the Italian style and is the third largest palace in Europe. Our first stop of many in the giant palace was the armory. This was absolutely awesome the armory houses old armor and swords from Charles V, Philip III, and Ferdinand. The oldest piece is a shield dating from 1492. Inside are a ton of mannequins and horses poised in their famous positions wearing this thick heavy armor. It was so thick and you could see the way they formed it to bend at the knee and elbow and the many hinges and straps that held it in place. Downstairs we saw a ton of little kid mannequins and found out that it was customary for everyone in the royal family to wear armor during war for show and it was so strange to see such intricate pieces for a ten year old. There were also a lot of huge beautiful swords that were actually used in battle. The horses were also decked out in their armor and it’s amazing they didn’t throw a fit being covered in heavy metal and carrying a man. They also had a lot of old fashion guns, some made of ivory with beautiful carvings, some were taller than I am and I have no idea how they were fired. This was a no photo zone but I manage to snatch a few illegally.
Our next stop was the “room” of paintings, try many rooms. The painting use to hang all over the castle and were mainly religious themed which was pretty cool. I always enjoy seeing the way different people depict the life of Jesus through paintings and it was interesting to see the many forms and activities of the holy family. After the rooms of paintings we were onto the main event, the actual palace rooms. We entered and walked up the grand staircase, it was the grandest staircase I have ever been on. And of course there was a Spanish man shouting no foto no foto, ruining my awe and wonder moment. The ceilings were all painted with the most beautiful frescos and of course the room is decked out with statues, mirrors, chandeliers, and trim. The next rooms we walked through were the guard room and the hall of columns, which was originally the ballroom and dining room. The next room was the ever impressive throne room with red velvet walls and twelve mirrors to indicate the twelve months of the year. The ceiling fresco depicted traveling to the new world and Rick told us to play the game find the Native Americans. The next rooms were the antechamber, Gasparini room, Charles III bedroom, porcelain room, and the Gala dining room. The Gala Dining room has a table the size of a bowling lane that can seat up to one hundred and forty four people. The next rooms were the cinema room, silver room, china room, royal chapel, queen’s boudoir, Stradivarius room, billiard and smoking room, queens tea room, and the fine woods room. Each room was gaudier than the next and full of the most impressive and expensive furniture and chandeliers I have ever seen. Don’t worry I snapped some illegal photos here too. Rick has a self guided tour through the palace so I was able to read my travel book and walk through the rooms understanding their old purposes. The last stop on our trip was the old pharmacy. It was chalk a block full of old medicine vials and the old laboratory they used to brew their various concoctions.
After our many hours of wandering we visited the palace gardens and the many statues in the park area. People were hungry so we stopped at a cheap café for bocadillos and drinks. Our small meals didn’t satisfy our hungry stomachs so we stopped back at our hostel for chocolate spread sandwiches before making it to our next stop. Carrie is obsessed with modern art, an English major intellectual type, so we had to stop by the Centro de Arte Renia Sofia or the modern art museum. We walked over and I literally felt like I was in the Jocelyn in Omaha, it’s funny I still don’t understand how a row of lined paper with a water stain can be art across an ocean. It was kind of cool though to see the many works of Picasso and Salvador Dali. This museum houses the Guernica a famous Picasso work that is hanging on the wall of most Spanish class rooms. Another cool aspect of the museum was that it was actually Madrid’s first public hospital and many of the displays were in the mental ward so the windows were barred. I was more interested in the building than the art so obviously I sat on a bench for a long part of the hour. After getting our culture on it was time to hit up another important plaza in Madrid.
We headed off to la puerta del sol a place of many demonstrations and huge groups of Spaniards hanging out. We saw an old man carrying around a free Egypt sign. It is home to the famous Madrid statue of the bear pawing the berry bush. This is a symbol for Madrid because bears use to be prevalent in the royal hunting grounds and the madrono tree produces madrono liqueur. We spent some time exploring the various stores and restaurants poking around on the side streets. We actually found a restaurant called Iowa, the menu consisted of mainly bacon and eggs, I guess that’s all they think we eat in Iowa. After wandering for a bit we found a café and ordered pops and reenergized for a while. We played some cards and hung out before we decided to head back to the hostel and take for a little R and R. Carrie was still pretty sick so I wanted her to take a nap anyway. Hanna and I sat down stairs and get this, they sold beer from a vending machine for one Euro, gotta love Spain. Eventually we decided to hit up the town with the rest of the group. Though we were both too lazy to change so I hit up the Madrid nightlife in leggings, a tie dye sweatshirt, a red plaid scarf, and my purple camp rain jacket, looking fly. We explored different clubs and grew to appreciate the cover free establishments in Oviedo. Hanna and I returned to the hostel shortly after heading out to prepare for our early morning of flea market shopping.
Sunday morning we woke up bright and early, eight am, enjoyed our free breakfast, packed up, and headed out for el Rastro. El Rastro is the largest flee market in Europe and rick suggested you get there before eleven a.m. so obviously I obeyed. We started out in the plaza mayor enjoying browsing the very, very impressive coin and stamp collection presented by these old men who were absolutely serious about their game. Oh and I should mention that since we were too lazy to put on our nice clothes the night before, and since I was going to church later, we were wearing dresses and leggings and it was the coldest day, I thought my feet were going to fall off. We wandered through the many stalls, if I may say so I found some pretty great gifts for my family. We spent a lot of time at the mineral tables obviously and I saw a ton of cinnabar for sale, a mineral that we learned about in class that we weren’t allowed to lick because it contained mercury. After browsing till about ten thirty we were freezing and decided to break in a café for colacao. After an hour of warming up we hit the stalls again and it was instantly evident why rick recommended before eleven. I have never seen so many people before in my life. We had to fight to get back up the street let alone buy anything. Around twelve I broke off from the group to attend mass at the church connected to the palace. Mass ended up taking place instead though under the cathedral in the crypt. This was pretty haunting mass experience. The echoes were serious and I was literally surrounded by dead bodies in the floor and walls, but the crypt was pretty and once again many people were in attendance. I am slowly picking up various parts of the mass in Spanish, getting a missalette in Spanish is on my list of things to do this week so I can at least follow along.
After mass I met up with the group at our hostel and we ate the rest of our bread and chocolate in the common room before leaving for the metro. Our bus left at four and it was a long, bottom paining ride back to Oviedo. They play American movies on the bus that they dub over in Spanish, so they are always teasing me. I made it home in time for dinner and Amparo was waiting for me wanting to hear all about Madrid. She had texted me Friday night when I was hanging out in the hostel with all my friends saying she hoped I was having fun. Everyone was jealous of our host mother host daughter love.
This week so far has been flying by and a lot of fun. We have been meeting the cafeterias after lunch to play cards and on Tuesday we played Spanish baulderdash. Today, Wednesday, I went on a glorious hike in the mountain with some friends, oh and last night we celebrated our second ladies night, on a Tuesday this time, but it was still like four Euro for a glass of wine, cheaper alternative is definitely needed. Amparo and I have been having many hour long conversations about petroleum and immigration haha I am really stepping up my game here. She says I am improving and I am finding that I understand a lot a lot more of what she is saying and she has to explain less and less. My speaking still needs a lot of work, but she is always telling me to not worry by May I’ll be a Spaniard, so I am not going to. Classes are interesting and my vocabulary has greatly expanded in only three weeks. I hope you all are enjoying the snow, I skyped my friend Michael and he showed me the snow piled up to his door. I will leave you with another list of things I have learned or observations I have made in Spain.
Hasta Lluego,
Elizabeth
1. Spanish television contains nudity, terrible language, and the middle finger.
2. Old woman and old men parade around the cities at night, woman bundled in thick fur coats and men in their Sunday bests.
3. Dos besos means more than dos besos on a weekend night.
4. Puta madre means hell yes.
5. Expect to eat have a baguette of bread at every meal.
6. The exchange rate is worsening to 1 USD =1.427 Euro (my bank account cries daily).
See my pictures at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=330549&id=563560128&l=843ca72834
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