the soupmenu

Here are some great links of recent…..

http://restaurantgal.com/

blog of a girl who quit a decent job and now works as a sever telling the daily insanity of humanity.

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http://www.doublefine.com/comics/mark_comic.php3?n=137

great simple daily comics. Make sure you go through all of them.

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http://www.mapbuilder.net/

you can make your own gmaps on the fly. For you internet stalkers, here’s a basic one of me……..

The trick to blogging is to do it when the experience is recent in your memory….i’m bad at this.  I wait too long and then have to do large recaps which leave out the small stories, the exact feelings, and impressions of the experience.  :-\

On to the recap….

To fight jet lag I only took a short nap and then headed out into the streets of Madrid…alone.  At first I was kinda concerned with knowing very little Spanish and wondering around a capital city on my own.  I had a map, key’s to beth’s piso, and my wallet…..time for adventure.  I loved just walking around the city.  Madrid is a wonderful classic, yet modern, European City.  You could travel down certain streets and fool yourself into believing that you were in the 15^th century….yet go into a shop and use a credit card.  My general rule of thumb was to go the opposite direction of any tourist groups or busses.

I had turned on a street right next to one of the famous cathedrals.  I noticed that a side door was open.  I peeked my head in and immediately felt a rush of cold, damp air.  I ventured inside.  Turns out I had wandered into the mortuary of the church.  The door was open because there was a small construction crew remodeling a small area of the mortuary.  They didn’t care that I was there so I took my time walking around.  The place was amazing.  There were very few lights on, but large beams of bright sunlight would shine through stained class in the side rooms.  There were caskets on the walls, on pedestals, and in the floor.  It was just an eerie place…but one of my favorites in Spain.

I continued walking around on my own for the next two days.  I fell asleep in a park, ordered wonderful food by the ‘point and grunt’ method, and saw children play futbol in a plaza.  The whole time I would basically avoid most human interaction.  I was very nervous to even try to speak Spanish.  At the end of the two days on my own it felt odd that for the first time in a long time I went days without really communicating with people….yet very refreshing.

Every night we made sure to go out.  We went to some interesting places where we had a great time.  The best place was a bar that was themed as a cave.  The best thing about the bar is that you could actually order certain drinks where part of the drink would come from a stalactite in the ceiling.  I believe it was just milk or cream, but it was a great concept to bring the theme to the drinks.  I did not see anyone do a body shot off of stalactite juice though.  :-\

On my last day in Spain I went out to purchase some wine to take home.  I go to a small wine shop and basically want to pick some random bottles and leave.  The owner of the wine shop was extremely nice and while he spoke less English than I speak Spanish we fumbled through conversation to where he told me about some good wine.  The next thing I know I had a glass of a wine that I just bought in my hand.  We kept on talking.  He had his own glass now and refilled mine.  He kept on refilling and refilling while we discussed the importance of travel and learning new languages.  The next thing I know, I had just spent an hour and a half splitting a full bottle of wine with the owner of a wine shop in Madrid who I could barely speak to.  That kind of friendliness is not found in a lot of places anymore…but times like this really make me remember why I like people.

Overall I had an amazing time in Spain.  I really love the European style of life.  Their love of food, drink, relaxation, conversation, and anything of beauty can make anyone want to move there in a heartbeat.  I know I will probably travel to some cheaper places soon, but I know that this trip has just sparked my desire to visit/live in Europe.

Oh flights….you are always so interesting. To get to Madrid and not pay a million dollars, I had to fly from Orlando to D.C. to Frankfurt to Madrid. Flight number one was basic. Someone was originally in my seat so I had the flight attendant had them move to their correct seat. One lady was on the opposite side of the plane…she was busy talking on her cell phone so it’s obvious that she was to important to actually think about where she was sitting. She had to move to the other side and other people had to scoot over to fix everything. After we landed I was picking up my stuff. I noticed a bag of trail mix in my seat pocket. Yum…..i guess someone left it from the flight before….i take it out and look at it…hmmm this would be great for the next two flights. I decide to not be skeevy and I put it back. As I get out of my seat and move towards the front something makes me look back. I see the girl who was next to me reach into the pocket and pull out the trail mix. I bet she had a fun time watching me grope her trail mix that she had put in the seat pocket at the beginning of the flight. J. Flight #2 was decent. There was a full row of kids behind me, but they were surprisingly null. I sat next to a guy who was perhaps 25 and a month away from being out of the military. He had been in Italy for a year and had met his girlfriend there. He had a great pickup line…..’I’m sorry’…….He had bought a car in Italy. A couple days after buying it he was driving around not quite knowing what he was doing. He ended up running head on into another car. That’s how they met. Love conquers all.

I like seeing events where stereotypes are crushed. I also think it’s hilarious when stereotypes are super reinforced. I had to go through customs in Frankfurt. I walk up to a little glass box cube with two divided cubes with windows in them. Inside are two extremely German guys wearing full out green uniforms. The uniforms were quite posh and looked like they were from the 50’s. Both men had huge perfectly trimmed handlebar mustaches. They would lackadaisically stare at your passport for a minute, stamp it, and then turn and spout something off to the other guard in German. The whole situation could have been a cartoon. I smiled.

There were some other sights while traveling that I deem as ‘classic’ (fat American grunting on the plane, retired couple fighting over food in the airport, southern family trying to find their gate in the Frankfurt airport) yet I already feel like these stories are becoming to common for me to need to cover.

After mild confusion at the airport and metro…..I was in Madrid.