"The night is young!"

What a night. Beer tasting at home, followed by bars and streets until 8am. I love Madrid. Why say in words what can be better said in pictures and video?

Drinking beers from different countries before going out. And Andrew.

Good times at the bars

The following video is the best way to summarize the night. Mobile drinking flamenco dance party meandering through the back streets of Madrid around 4am.

So much fun

Mariana talking to the guitarist, he was good.

Walking home sometime around 6am.

I LOVE this picture. The view is from Maya's bathroom. From left to right: When we got home, when we went to sleep, when we woke up. Madrid is fun.

Beer and football. And more beer. Followed by more football.

I finally got my real beer!


But more on that later

Yesterday I was on my own while Maya was at school. My only goal for the day was to find a bank and change my dollars to Euros before all the banks closed at 2pm (yes, 2pm. In Spain they tend to care more about life and family than work, what a concept). This excursion was a colossal failure. Admittedly, I got a pretty late start. Instead of heading straight to the bank, I took the subway down to the center of the city and wandered around. I checked out a lot of the side streets and back alleys people tend not to explore, which resulted in a nice balance of quaint shops/restaurants and complete nothingness. Oh well.

A market, similar to Pike Place. Lots of food inside, including FANTASTIC salmon. Also plenty of "What the hell is that?" foods that I decided to pass up for the time being.

Interesting sculptures in one of the many small parks between main roads.

Madrid, like any large city, is not without its share of crazy people. This would be a good place to mention that I was too slow with my camera to take a picture of the man walking around La Plaza de Cortez in a black KKK uniform.

This is one of the many huge, intricate buildings in Madrid.

This type of architecture is absolutely everywhere, I love it.

Anyway, back to the bank situation. In my wanderings, I felt that going to a bar and having some tapas and a beer was more important than going straight to the bank. After all, it was only noon and the banks were open until 2pm. Plenty of time, right? Well after leaving the bar one of the first hints of a bank I saw was a building that said "Deutsches Bank." "Fantastic!", I thought, "If they don't speak English I can speak to them in German, I can definitely get my point across" (I'm a moron). That exchange went something like this:

"Hola"
"Hola, hablas Ingles?"
"No"
"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"
"No"
"....shit"

Note to self: Deutsches Bank means it is owned by a German company, not that they speak German. Something to keep in mind. Anyway, she told me (through a couple English words and pretty extreme hand gestures) that I couldn't get Euros there, but she gave me directions to a bank where I could. I made it there eventually (they were pretty bad directions) and went up to the lady at the counter. She also spoke no English, but when I got my point across that I needed to change dollars to Euros, one of the security guards tapped me on the shoulder and said "Only clients". Well for the love of... by the time I made it to a third bank it was 2pm and everyone was getting the hell out. Mission: Disaster.

I headed to Maya's school afterward and met up with a bunch of her teaching friends, and we all went to a bar nearby. We got a few rounds while watching Real Madrid kick some Getafe ass. Maya's friend Andrew (who is from the states) is my kind of people. Typical exchange when we aren't surrounded by Spanish:

Andrew: "Want another round?"
Me: "Always"
*15 minutes and one beer later*
Andrew: "Want another?"
Me: "We've been over this"
*We get big beers instead of the typical 5-6 ounce cana*
Andrew: "Sorry for partying"

10 Euro for 5 small beers and 2 big ones isn't too bad I'd say. Especially when every half hour or so the bartender puts another plate of tapas in front of you. Tapas are awesome, it's kind of like the Vegas "free drinks while you gamble" thing, except "free snacks while you drink." First was a plate of assorted nuts, then potato chips, then chunks of potatoes covered in a sauce I can't identify, then a plate of small crackers and sausage slices. I love it.

Yes, Kyle eats potatoes in Spain. Believe it.

Afterward Maya and I headed to an "Irish" bar where I FINALLY got a Guinness and we watched some good football. We're all going out again tonight, but I'm anticipating even fewer English speakers. Time to practice my German and annoy people? I think so.

Yeah, let's bring Kyle around children, what a great idea

I had my first real day in Spain today. And by real, I mean I wasn't walking around in a jetlag-induced stupor. Yesterday Maya and I went on an exhaustive walk around Madrid for about an hour and a half, which was clearly a good idea after walking around the city after I got off the plane with about 50 pounds on my back. Got some fantastic pictures though. We checked out a good amount of the city.

HUGE PALACE

Today I went with Maya to her school where I talked to all of her children. They're learning English and most are able to ask and answer questions about favorite things, foods, activities, sports and the like. I had to pretend I loved Real Madrid all day (go Sounders). They had a huge problem with my name. They asked me about my brother and sister, who were very easy.

"My brother's name is Brad"
"Ohhh, como Brad Pitt!!"
"Yes, like Brad Pitt. My sister's name is Lisa"
"Ahh, Los Simpsons!!"
"Yes, yes. My name is Kyle"
"Calle?"
"Kyle"
"Carl?"
"Kyle" *I write my name on the board*
"Oh, Keelay!" *phonetic*

Kids.

I also met a lot of her coworkers. They all caught me a little off guard, because the normal greeting in Spain is the cheek kiss, which I'm totally good at now. Some of them some who spoke no English. We had some very awkward conversations. I'm actually remembering quite a bit of my high school Spanish, which is astounding. Not nearly enough to converse though. Thankfully a lot of Maya's friends like to practice their English. Still no Germans in sight, so I've just been speaking it to Maya when I'm sick of everyone speaking Spanish and I have no idea what's going on. Here's a picture of one of Maya's classes I spoke to:


After class we went to a camp that the majority of Maya's students are at this week. This place is the best damn camp I've ever seen, all of the buildings are new and awesome, there are a ton of futball fields around, they have a legitimate lab, a pool, and so on. Maya wants to live there forever. Check out the pictures, it's a really nice place.



Those pictures would be a little more impressive if the weather wasn't so angry. Speaking of which, there was an AWESOME lightning storm on the drive home. Lots of sheet lightning, and it was very frequent. I tried to take video of the lightning strikes but it turned out horribly. Schade.

Spain is awesome, but good lord do I miss real beer. Every beer here is exactly the same; a light, largely tasteless beer similar to Bud Light or the like. And the servings are very small. I would kill for a real pint of a good IPA or a Porter. Tomorrow I'm on my own while Maya is at work, I'll be looking for good places to wander and hopefully I can remember enough Spanish to get around ok. At least "beer" is a pretty universal word.

10 hour flight? Kill me

And so begins my journey. I’m sitting in a lounge in the Frankfurt airport trying to charge my Europhone and beginning the repression of the memories of that 10 hour flight. You know a flight is really pushing it when you comfortably, and not in quick succession, start and finish 3 full length movies in addition to attempting to sleep (and failing) for about 4 hours. The flight was not all bad though. The girl sitting next to me, Lina, was returning to Germany and provided some engaging conversation, laughs, and a great opportunity to practice mein Deutsch (and boy does it need practice). Her English was not so good, so our conversations were a delightful mix of my bad German, her bad English, and confused looks.

As horribly long as the flight was, Lufthansa is a fantastic way to do it. In-flight movies, tv and food aside, they served some damn good beer. Warsteiner is definitely a better in-flight beer than Budweiser (sorry Matt). Speaking of the movies, those were surprisingly good also. Lufthansa, instead of offering a single movie to their entire cabin, has touch screen monitors in the back of every seat. I could choose between 12 movies and a number of tv shows. My picks:

The Invention of Lying: Very good movie, really funny.

Where the Wild Things Are: Good movie, though a little out of my age range. Good for moms and their kids.

Big Dogs: Hilarious. Robin Williams and John Travolta are really good in this. Lina and I were starting to anger our neighbors because we were laughing so hard. Yes, we were awesome enough to synchronize our movies. Made bathroom breaks difficult.

Lina is awesome and gave me her email address, intent on showing me around where she lives and goes to school, Karlsruhe and Heidelberg. I’m still not entirely sure where those are yet, so this could be an adventure.

Sleep was just out of the question. I don’t know what it is about old people. They will wake up at the crack of dawn only to hit the sack at 7pm, but when they’re on an airplane they just don’t know what to do with themselves. I’m trying to sleep while a number of them are wandering around the aisles speaking unusually loud in a German dialect I can’t even begin to dissect. Keep in mind this is the middle of the night, it’s pitch black outside, and the lights in the cabin are off. Freaking old people. On Seattle time it is now (I think) 2:40am and I will be without sleep for another 14 hours at least. However, it is now a beautiful morning in Frankfurt. Luckily, like Captain Planet, Superman and WALL-E, I am energized by the sun and I am not fazed. Armed with my money belt and decoy wallet, I am ready to face the perils of Madrid and can hopefully make it to Maya’s place without incident. I will land in Madrid alone and with a tenuous, at best, understanding of Spanish. This could be fun! Bring it, Spain.

The only thing in my decoy wallet. This will either get me a hearty laugh, or get
me stabbed. Let’s see how long it takes for it to get stolen! Count: 1 day