“You ants, stand back!”

Location: Madrid, Spain

Saturday May 29, 2010

Little pleasant surprises are always great on sightseeing excursions. Isabella and I planned to go to Madrid’s Archeological Museum. But as we were walking there, we noticed that very near it was the National Library. Larger-than-life white marble statues guarded the grand front steps leading up to the auditorium, while the actual front doors sat modestly to the left. We walked in to ask the security guard where the Archeological Museum was. It turned out that the National Library and the Archeological Museum shared the same building, but had two different entrances.

Cervantes, w00t w00t!

Since we were in la Biblioteca Nacional (National Library) (whose stacks are only accessible for people doing research), we spent most of our free time visiting their temporary exhibit: <> Isabella and I pored over framed maps, lithographs, and paintings, and encased manuscripts and books. It was fascinating to see how cartography and the shapes of the countries have changed overtime. And to see famous, old books and pictures printed in their native languages from around their time: Ulysses (Homer), old hand-printed/decorated/gilded Bibles, Two Treatises of Government (Locke), El sueno de la razón produce monstrous (Goya), Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels), King, Death, and the Devil (Dürer), and so on… Everything was just amazing. I still do not think it was humanely possible to do what Dürer did. I mean, the intricacies of the every part of that print were astounding. We also observed how much these old books influenced the fantasy children books we read when we were little. For example, maps of centuries before were just like maps you would find at the beginning of a storybook. You know, the map that you find yourself constantly flipping back to in order keep track where the characters have traveled?

Velázquez in front of the Museo de Arceología!

We spent a bit of time in the Archeological Museum. Having only an hour, we only got to go through one (large) room. Even though we had a limited amount of time, Isabella and I did get to look at the lewd ancient Greek pottery. Where would we be without erotic clay water jugs? The centaur/fawn-like creatures were actually masturbating, I think… .

We joined a group to visit el Templo de Debod guided by students in La Universidad Complutense (the Spanish partner university with the IES program). We only got the outside view of the templo because it was closed in the afternoons during the weekend. Instead, we hung out all together on the green lawn with other Spaniards on the grass, some of us practicing our conversation with the Spanish university students. One of the students, Carlos, I believe, spoke great Spanish and English, but he only spoke in Spanish to us, of course. For some reason, I love when speakers of different languages speak English and imitate the American accent. Carlos did that when he suddenly spoke English: “Ew, I hate bugs,” when a bee was flying near our group. When we asked about the Spaniards view on Americans, Carlos said that a lot of people have a negative take on Americans, because of the actions of the U.S. government. But he says that he likes Americans, we are just people, like everybody else. Yes, it did sound like a diversity commercial. Like when Sacred Heart launched their diversity billboard campaign with Turk and J.D.

I pregamed for the night in a park next to the metro stop of La Avenida de los Parques, near the homestays of Alex, Nikita, and Valentina. Toasting to finding some beautiful European men under the yellow park light, it was very collegey in Europe. Nikita was very concerned that there were kids walking around. But everything was fine. In our state, the four of us decided that we would make a pretty good joke, being a diverse group with a white, an Indian, and two Asians. It would go something like: “Un blanco, una morena, y dos amarillos caminaron en un bar…” On our way to El Tigre (a bar where we met Isabella and Lauren + three of her visiting friends) even, we watched young people drinking mixed drinks on the metro, and we walked passed a pedestrian plaza in Trueca (Madrid’s gay neighborhood) full of people pregaming openly. There were so many containers of alcohol everywhere and mad people (100-150?) having a good time.

Alex got us a round of Sprite and Bacardi at El Tigre, because he felt bad for getting us lost (we wandered around for, like, 30 minutes before finding the bar). The drinks also came with (pretty shitty) tapas of all sorts. Perfect drunk food. Other than Burger King and Starbuck’s, you can’t get much more American than El Tigre. It’s the hotspot for American tourists, because of the cheap drinks and the almost frat-like atmosphere. We met two Americans there: Chase (a tall, blond Clark Kent look-alike [read: this and not this; although I really like him in this {confession: current Wallpaper!}]) who’s teaching English in the city and Trevor (average-height, balding, Irish-looking, loud, and beer-drinking) who’s visiting Chase but knows Spanish because he grew up speaking it in his neighborhood. The two decided to tag-along with us, so we club/bar-hopped with them, searching for a club that didn’t charge cover. We entered a few awkward places that played music that was hard to dance to, like, Elvis.

In our wanderings, we ended up ditching Clark Kent and plus one for a group of Spaniards that Alex, Nikita, and Valentina had met a couple of nights before. They called the group in general Nick Jonas’s group, because one of the guys looked like Nick Jonas. Haha. I wouldn’t say it’s an exact match, because the real guy looked taller and older, but the Spaniard definitely could have used Nick for his Facebook doppelganger. Valentina warned that Nick could expect hookups/ be a mad creeper because he looks like Nick Jonas (yeah, he could get those preteen girls). I guess he did act that way, because he randomly put his face right by mine on the left while he reached around my right side to light his cigarette. So Nick Jonas. Haha. He did all this while Isabella and I were talking to two gay guys in Nick Jonas’s posse: a cute, skinny, tall, dark-haired guy named Joe and a shorter, less-attractive, balding (but just as nice) guy named something-that-I-don’t-remember. The two of them gushed about Hollywood and LA (Isabella’s hometown). When they heard that we go to Yale, they flipped ape shit over Gossip Girl. Like, they totally love Gossip Girl. Joe and his friend excitedly asked if Constance was real. We had to break their hearts by telling him no. L

Joe told me he grew up in Germany but now lives in Madrid, because he's half German and half Spanish (it's like if we were married, Rach). So he's fluent in both languages. I told him I knew how to say one phrase in German. But then couldn’t think of “Du bist ein schlecht junge” on the spot. Damn it!

Lauren and I ended up ditching around 3 (or was it 4?) when we got to the last club that we were going to try. The bouncer ushered us, i.e.: all the foreigners, into a special paying line, and allowed Nick Jonas’s group to go in for free. I wasn’t going to give that institution 10€ for that kind of “special treatment!” Bullocks!