The Greatest Thing Ever

I went to my first professional sports game on Tuesday. Not only a professional sports game, but a soccer game. Not only a professional soccer game, but a European soccer game. Not only a professional European soccer game, but a REAL MADRID GAME. (real means royal here, not real, in case you were wondering)

Let me tell you the story. It was the night before the game, and I saw that some people had posted about it on Facebook. I really wanted to go but figured it would be ridiculously expensive. I decided on a whim to ask someone how much he paid for them, and lo and behold his friend was selling two tickets for cheaper than usual! So I convinced my roommate to go with me and less than 24 hours later there we were, sitting in the second row of our section (the worst section, but still the second row!) watching some of the greatest soccer players in the world crush the opposition like it's their job. Which it is.

You must realize that, although it doesn't seem like it now, the above story was really very dramatic and suspenseful while it was unfolding. I mean I REALLY wanted to go to this game. Really a lot. You can ask my roommate. I was freaking out before, during, and after. Still am. Time for PICTURES!

The advertisement for the game (we played Lyon, France):

The field/stadium before the game:

 Us before the game:

Me staring intently:

Our side taking a free kick:

Their side taking a free kick:

People straightening up the turf at the half! You don't see that on TV!

Now you feel like you were there, right? Ok, I took a lot of pictures. But it was that great. We were sitting next to some true madrileños who were cursing the entire time, making it easy to tell how the game was going in case I suddenly forgot. I'm not really sure what all the fuss was about considering that Madrid wins almost all their games and they easily took this one at 4-0. Truly an impressive team.

Day Off

Wednesday was a national holiday here in good old España, which is usually nothing too exciting because there are national/regional/local holidays around here just about all the time. This one, however, was kind of a bigger deal than the normal ones, it was the Día de la Hispanidad, otherwise known as Columbus Day. Yes I see the irony here. I in fact added to it by spending the day doing incredibly un-Hispanic things.


First off, I slept instead of going to the parade. Ahem. But I heard it was nothing special. So there.


Secondly, my roommate and I ate Indian food in the "multicultural" neighborhood of Madrid, Lavapiés. First spicy food I've had in this country, and quite delicious at that.

Thirdly, we went to the least Spanish museum in Madrid, the Thyssen. It was free! Most museums are free for students at least one day a week, but not this one, so that made it pretty sweet. What made it not so sweet was the long line and early closing time. I'll just have to go back another time...

Lastly, and most Americanly, we made brownies for a girl in our group whose birthday is this weekend. Yes, I said brownies. We had to go to the more upscale grocery store, El Corte Inglés, to find brownie mix. Yes, we made them out of a box. Later that night we realized we didn't have butter. So we went to the grocery store in the middle of the night. I happened to be wearing a pajama shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, with my hair unbrushed and looking rather unkempt. No, I could not have looked more American. No Spanish woman would be caught dead in that outfit. No Spanish woman would even own that outfit as a matter of fact!

We did make the brownies in the most Spanish way possible, though. That is, in a cardboard "mold" because brownie pans don't exist here, in a toaster oven because our real oven doesn't work. Too ridiculous? Proof:

I actually ended up quite thankful that we didn't have a real brownie pan, because it wouldn't have fit in the toaster oven. The sides of the cardboard one had to give a little as it was... In the end they actually tasted quite nice though! Since tupperware is also hard to come by, we put them in a big plastic container that formerly held crackers. Like one of these. Altogether a great experience I'd say. Happy Columbus Day.

Being Historical

A good bit of our class here is devoted to history, so last weekend and this weekend we've taken field trips to places associated with the royal history of Spain. First stop was El Escorial, a town north of Madrid with a monastery that was huge because the king built it to live there. It was very plain and austere compared to other royal abodes.

We also went to the Prado both last week and this week, each time focusing on a different era. We got to see the famous Las Meninas of course, and a lot of Goya as well. This is this front of the Prado with a statue of Velázquez (he's kind of a big deal here), although this part is not used as the entrance anymore.

Yesterday we took a walking tour around the Paseo del Prado and saw some more historical sites, such as the botanical gardens (not so great in the autumn...) and the Puerta de Alcalá, aka Madrid's Arc de Triomphe:

Lastly, we took a tour of the Palacio Real, one of many royal palaces constructed over the years by the kings of Spain. It definitely reminded me a lot of Versailles, but it's smaller and it seemed like more attention was paid to each room instead of someone throwing a bunch of gold and fabric everywhere just because they can. There was one room whose walls were covered entirely in porcelain! All the little details of every wall and piece of furniture were incredible. We unfortunately weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but here you can see the outside:

In other news, I will be travelling to Rome for the long weekend that we have at the end of October, which is super exciting because that's when my birthday is! I cannot wait for the food.... If anyone has any suggestions as to what to do there let me know!

Barcelona

Super busy weekend in Barcelona! The weekend before this past one, that is. We (my group from school) took an overnight train there and back, something I'd never done before. Unfortunately this was not the type of train with beds, so sleeping was rather difficult. On the way there we were crammed together without a lot of space, but on the way back at least we had more room and reclining chairs. We arrived bright and early and went to Parc Güell, of Gaudí's design.

The most notable "art" in the park is the tilework everywhere, but the park as a whole is really the work of art. In the background of this photo you can kind of see the cave-like part, which is totally different from the tile part but all the same concept! Next we continued with the Gaudí theme by going to the Sagrada Familia, which turned out to be my favorite part of Barcelona. I was so impressed by his fusion of modern elements with the medieval concept of a gothic cathedral. My camera takes pretty awful pictures in anything less than ideal lighting, but this one turned out well:

Every inch of the place is covered in detailed and elaborate design of some kind, which makes everything fascinatingly beautiful. It's taken a ridiculously long time to build the whole thing, and it's not even close to being done yet. Going to see the completed version is officially on my bucket list! For the rest of the day on Friday we went to the beach, where the water was freezing (swam in it anyway) and surprisingly clear.

On Saturday we saw some more Gaudí, this time his apartment building called Casa Milà. We got to go on the rooftop terrace and through one of the apartments. Living there would be so incredible! Here's a picture of a tower on the roof:

This guy's imagination was really crazy. Next we went up to Montjuic, a large area higher up a hill/mountain. This area includes a fortress:

as well as the Miró Museum, a fountain, the National Museum of Catalonian Art, some gardens, the Olympic Stadium (Barcelona hosted in 1992), the Olympic Park:

and I imagine a whole bunch of other stuff that we did not come across.

On Sunday we did not do anything super picture-worthy, although we did go to the Picasso Museum. The entire weekend there was actually a big festival going on with tons of parades and concerts, making the whole city pretty crowded but with a really lively and fun atmosphere. It was cool to walk around and see the city celebrating. Other random cool things: staying in a hostel for the first time and the Catalan language. Caution, if linguistic rants bore you, please skip the next paragraph.

Many people think that Catalan is just a dialect of Spanish, but actually it is its own language and not comprehensible to native Spanish speakers. Of course they share a ton of vocabulary and they are both Romance languages so they have basically the same grammar, but nevertheless there are enough differences to make them quite distinct. Catalan actually shares a lot of attributes with French as well. I talked to a native French speaker there and he said reading it for him was pretty easy because it looks a lot like French. Everyone who grows up in Barcelona/the region of Catalonia speaks both Catalan and Spanish, but I think they prefer speaking Catalan as part of the whole regional pride thing. As if my nerdiness is not yet apparent, I bought a Catalan newspaper to try to decipher for fun. We'll see how that goes.

Well that was my three day weekend in Barcelona! We were able to cram in a lot of stuff in a short period of time so I think we hit all the highlights! I would love to go back for a longer stay eventually. One day....