Madrid

Three weekends ago I went to Madrid with Kellie and Kendra (friends from school). Kendra has a friend from back home, Justin, who is teaching there for a year so we got to stay with him and he showed us around the city. This was the second trip where I went somewhere and had a local who knew the city and could show me around; this is definitely the way to travel. It takes all the uncertainty out of being somewhere you’ve never been and they know which sights to see and which to skip. We got in on Thursday afternoon; Justin met us at the airport, got us on the metro, and took us to his place. We showered and changed—me into shorts and a t-shirt because it was wonderfully warm—then went to Parque del Retiro. Retiro is the largest park in Madrid, and is a very popular local hangout. It’s beautiful, filled with tree lined avenues and grassy partitions where you can sit. There are tons of cool statues and monuments—Madrid is mad for horse statues, every statue is a person on a horse or on a chariot except the chariot which is pulled by lions and the one that’s a seashell pulled by seahorses—and even a man-made lake with rowboats. We found a nice patch of grass and sat around in the sun for an hour or two, it was such a wonderful break from the cool weather in Prague. We left and went to get food, kebabs which are similar to gyros and are delicious. They are pitas filled with shaved lamb, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and some fantastic cream dressing. I was a fan of the kebabs and found my way to a few more vendors before the trip was done. We went out that night to a British music club, it was kind of interesting not your typical club. They played lots of what I would call punk type music, Oasis and The Strokes were the only bands I knew. The next day we got up and Justin took us all over Madrid. We walked around for a bit, saw some famous squares and courtyards and then got lunch. Lunch was interesting; we ate at the Museum of Ham which is Madrid’s chain restaurant. It’s a two story affair with a deli-type lower level and a sit down restaurant above. As you may have guessed the have a lot of ham, whatever I ordered was much better than I expected, delicious even. The coolest part of a Museum of Ham is there are literally hundreds of ham hocks hanging from the walls. It’s hard to explain how many there actually are, on one small wall in the upstairs we counted around 120. Walking in and seeing that many pig legs dangling from the ceiling is a bit surprising, but the food is good so I’m all for it. After lunch we walked around the city a little bit, the financial district was fantastic. I think I could really trust a bank that looked like a palace, they aren’t going anywhere for a while. After walking through parks and down promenades we ended up at Museo del Prado which, according to aboutmadrid.com, “the Prado is considered one of the most important art galleries in the world.” It was a cool museum, they had a ton of Goya and other famous Spanish artists but my favorite part was on the first floor, tucked into a corner was a whole gallery of Roman statues. I love those old statues and they had a bunch of them. A close second was the information room which had the 9 muses in a giant semi-circle. I guess these particular statues were made around 100 AD, lost until the 1500s, dug up and some how the queen of Sweden end up with them. Her people put all the heads back on the statues but got all but one wrong—not sure how they messed that up—and then replaced one of the heads with a replica of the queens head. I thought that was pretty funny but I suppose that if I were a monarch with a bunch of awesome old statues I put my face on one of them too. It was back to Justin’s for naps and food before we went out again, this time to a more traditional dance club. The next morning, we got up and got right back to seeing the city, right after lunch. Three course lunch menus are a big deal in Spain so we had to try one out. It was very tasty but way more food than I could eat. The best part was the paella, a traditional Spanish rice dish. We saw the Egyptian temple, which is an authentic temple from some year BC that the Egyptian government gave to the Spanish government for helping them with some other temple, kind of convoluted I know. Anyway, it was disassembled, shipped to Spain, and reconstructed in Madrid on a ridge that overlooks a lot of the city. It was pretty neat and the view was fantastic. I’ll deviate from the story here to mention how massive Madrid is, it’s giant. Expansive in every direction. We took the metro from Justin’s place in the southeast of the city to the city center and it took at least a half hour each time, 45 minutes more often. And that was only crossing about a third of the width of the city. In Prague 45 minutes on the metro will get you across the whole city, easily. From every ridge and hill the city took up almost the entire view. It was great to visit but it made me appreciate manageable Prague where you can get from place to place without too much hassle. And we’re back, after the temple we saw the royal palace and its connected gardens and cathedral. The gardens were quite pretty and the cathedral was nice too, fairly new—1800’s—and didn’t have that old cathedral feel that I find so compelling but pretty none the less. The palace itself was fantastic, massive and opulent beyond almost anything I’ve ever seen. It was built during the 1600s and you can see the wealth of the Spanish empire and its New World colonies everywhere. My favorite part of the palace was the armory. They had on display a few hundred suits of armor and weapons and old guns, all interesting stuff. I have read a lot about the power of heavy cavalry and its battlefield dominance but until I saw up close and in person fully armored horse models I didn’t under stand how intimidating they really were. And I was just seeing the armor on a few individual, wooden horses. I can’t imagine standing in a field with hundreds of real armored horses charging at me, it was eye opening and very cool. We had dinner, and then met my friend Tierney Black, who I know from high school and is studying in Madrid this semester, and went out for sangria and dancing. The next morning we went to Mueso Reina Sofia, a modern art museum. I liked it a lot, more than Prado. They have a ton of Picasso and Salvador Dali. I really like Dali and it was cool to get to see his stuff in person. The top floor has so really modern “art” the kind of stuff that I don’t consider art. I say that, “if I can do it, it’s not art.” My favorite piece of non-art was a canvas on a frame with a slit down the middle. No paint, no drawing, just a cut in the middle of the canvas. If that’s museums quality art then I have a lot of printer paper from when I had Exacto Knives that they should look at. Still, it was a fun museum and I’d go back and spend more time there. We went back to Justin’s so I could pack up and get ready to leave and the girls could get ready to go to a bull fight. I had an easy flight back and caught the last metro of then night back to my apartment to end an awesome weekend. The trip to Spain was a lot different than the trip to Ireland. I was glad to stay in one city and not spend so much time on buses. I got to see a lot more of the city and got to do many more cultural activities. Also, adding travel within a weekend trip is too much. Finally, I love Lufthansa, we flew with them to Spain—SpainAir back through the Star Alliance—and just like on my flight over from the US, the Lufthansa crew spent the whole flight feeding us and giving us free drinks. Much better than anything I’ve ever flown in the US. They fed us on the 55 minute hop from Prague to Frankfurt, then again on the flight to Madrid but I fell asleep. I awoke after everyone was done eating and they went to the back to get me a meal anyway, it was great.

Ireland

I spent the past weekend in Ireland, seemed like a cool place to go and ryanair.com offered cheap tickets. I went with some friends from the program. Kellie from UW La Crosse, one of the girls she lives with, Kendra, and another girl named Meagan. We left on Thursday the 6^th at 11:30 and the rest of the group, my roommate Jack and some other guys flew in on Friday. We ended up not spending any time with them but that worked out just fine. We landed in Dublin around 1 PM but didn’t get out of the airport until 2 PM because the people ahead of us in the passport line must have been using fake passports. We all got through really quickly but some people took forever, oh well. We got into the city on an airport shuttle and it was filled with Welsh people in town for the 6 Nations rugby game between Ireland and Wales. They were so stereotypically Welsh, mustaches and everything. They were all in their 40s or 50s but they talked to us and answered some questions for us. We were talking about driving on the wrong side of the road because looking out the bus window I kept wondering why no one was driving the cars. We couldn’t decide if the clutch on British cars was on the left side like in America, turns out that it is. We got into the city center and got off the bus. We walked to our hostel and got settled in. The hostel was pretty solid, decent beds, clean bathrooms, and a really good continental breakfast. We decided to go to the Guinness factory first and that was a good choice, it was awesome. We got there at 5 and they close at 6 so we didn’t have a lot of time to spend in the museum which was a shame. It is huge, 6 floors, and has a ton of cool displays. They had a whole floor with videos that explained the brewing process and I didn’t have time to watch them. I could have spent at least 2 or 3 hours there but alas. We then went up to the gravity bar on the 7^th floor to get our free Guinness. The gravity bar is a brilliant idea; it’s a 360° panoramic view of Dublin and the rest of the Guinness factory. The factory complex is massive, I’m pretty sure that I read that it’s 62,000 acres and I think that they brew 1,000,000,000 pints a day. In the gravity bar the bartender explained to me the proper way to pour Guinness and why it’s done the way it is. You’re supposed to pour ¾ of a glass and let it sit for two and a half minutes while the nitrogen sinks and the creamy head rises. After the beer settles the bartender tops off the beer by pushing the tap in the opposite direction so that beer but no nitrogen pours and behold, Guinness. We went back to the hostel and made some spaghetti with red sauce. Unfortunately with the dollar weak and the Euro strong and the high prices in Ireland food—and everything else—was pretty expensive so we cooked our own food. We ate our dinner and then went to meet some Americans who are studying abroad in Dublin who the girls had met in Prague. They took us to Dublin’s oldest pub and one other place for a beer. We made it an early night because we had to get up early in the morning to catch a bus to Cork. If any of you ever end up in Ireland, the bus is not the method of transport you want to take. It’s cheap, but that’s because it is excruciatingly slow and not very comfortable. We had to stop in every small town, traverse every round-about, and drive slowly the whole 5 hours. I was a bit disenchanted with the course the trip was taking at that time but it ended working out. My flight out left on Sunday morning at 6:50 my trip really ended on Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t too happy about spending 10 hours of my trip on busses. We didn’t get into Cork until evening and then walked around the city until we found a place to eat. The reason we went to Cork was Meagan met an Irish guy, Eddie, in New York this summer where she live and he was working. Eddie agreed to pick us up and take us to his friend’s house so we could crash there. Eddie plays pro rugby for a local team and the guys we stayed with are on the team with him. There was Tamale (not sure on the spelling but sounds like the candy) who is from New Zeeland and a German guy who’s name I never quite figured out. They offered us couches and an extra mattress they have. Not luxury accommodations but free, so better than a hostel. They took us too a couple local pubs, the coolest one was called The Castle Inn. It was a total mom and pop place; the bartenders were actually an old couple in their 50s or 60s. The bar was mostly a hallway, with a bar in it and the whole place was jam-packed. It was really awesome to go to a local pub in Cork with the natives. It was also fun to try the local beers. I had Murphy’s Stout and Beamish and Bulmer’s, an amazing cider. We called it another early night, in order to get up and see the Blarney castle. It’s a really cool castle a lot more medieval than the other ones I’ve seen, I enjoyed it. I did kiss the Blarney stone, I’ve been told that people pee on it and that it’s not the real Blarney stone and all those things but I wasn’t going to go there and not kiss it. After the castle Eddie took us back to Cork to go watch the Ireland vs. Wales 6 Nations rugby game. This game was a huge deal; if Wales won they would win the whole tournament—the Triple Crown—and would have a chance to win the Grand Slam which is going undefeated for the whole tournament. I guess that the Grand Slam doesn’t happen very often. And if Ireland won then they would still have a chance to win the whole thing because then each of the 6 teams would have at least one win. I’m not totally sure about all that, the guy that was telling me about this had a thick Irish brogue, was talking fast, and may have made some assumptions about my prior knowledge of the tournament. But I think that I get the gist of what’s going on. Anyway, we went to a local rugby pub to watch the game. Apparently they don’t have maximum occupancy laws in Ireland because the place was so packed it was a battle to get into the pub and getting a beer was even harder. The whole place was overrun with Welshmen (and women), and when Wales ended up winning 13-12 in a really good game they all went nuts. They were changing and singing the whole time and it was cool to see them all rowdy when they got the away win to clinch the tournament. We had some lunch and then I had to get on a bus to head back to Dublin so that I could catch my flight out early Sunday morning. It was another long, unpleasant bus ride with a one exception. I talked to an interesting Irish girl for part of the ride. Her name was Niamh, which for some reason is pronounced Neev. When she introduced herself there was much confusion, at first I thought her name was Leaf, then she spelled it and I was more confused, then she explained that it’s a traditional and very common Irish name. She was interesting and was telling me about college in Ireland—she’s half way done with her freshman year—and was traveling to Dublin to visit some other colleges because she was going to transfer to switch tracks. She explained to me that when you start college you pick a track based on what job you want to have and train specifically for that job. It was cool to hear some things about Ireland and living in a small Irish town from someone who lived it. She, like all Irish people was very friendly and open. They are so willing to talk to anyone and are the friendliest people you can imagine. It was a great break from the downcast, non-engaging, cold demeanor of people in the Czech Republic. But it does get a bit over the top at times at times. The Irish not only don’t follow the urinal of separation rule, they talk to each other, and to total strangers, at the urinal. This is friendly taken to an extreme and violates American Man Law. I guess they do things differently over there. I had a great time in Ireland and would love to go back for an extended period of time but it’s nice to be back home.

A Quick Update

Just a few things, a more in depth account of Ireland to come.

I'm having a great time, keeping
busy and doing lots of cool new stuff. I just spent the weekend in
Ireland with some friends. We were in Dublin briefly then went to
Cork where a friend of mine has a friend. It was pretty cool to hang
out with some authentic Irish guys and go out with them. Ireland is
full of the nicest people I've ever met, it's was a pleasant change
from the Czech Republic where no one even makes eye contact. I have
been so busy with trips and excursions around Prague that my time here
is flying by. I can't believe that I'm already more than a quarter
done with my trip. I was very fortunate in my apartment assignment.
I am with 3 other guys and there is an apartment of 4 girls in my
program next door. It's a great group for the most part. The guy
that I share a room with is a tool and doesn't fit in, or do dishes.
That's ok though because he isn't around all that much and the rest of
the people are great. We live in the George apartment (not sure why
they're called that) so we have George family dinners and George
family outings. They are really fun. A couple of the others are
really good cooks so we have dinner and dessert and sit around and
drink lots of wine. We even have a candle. I am going to Madrid next
weekend and then I'll be in the Czech Republic for a while. Doing
some trips around CR I hope and playing rugby. I am really excited
for this upcoming rugby season, I have been enjoying practice and have
been renewing my interest in rugby. The weather here is starting to
warm up a bit and I'm hoping that trend continues.