sitting in the madrid airport.
Well, right now I’m at the airport in Madrid. Spain is coming to an end and I’m onto Portugal. In Portugal, like Spain, people don’t really speak English. Even moreso, I’d guess, primarily because Spain (particularly Madrid) has a lot of overseas English teachers and it’s also closer to the rest of Western Europe. This will be interesting. I don’t even know how to say “Hello” in Portuguese, or “Thank you,” or ANYTHING. This will be a learning experience for sure.
In fact, this whole trip has been a bit of a huge learning experience. The first day after Tin-Win and Sherry left, I was a little uncomfortable. Luckily, I already had experience working the Metro in Madrid and knew the area, more or less. It certainly made things a lot more comfortable. What wasn’t comfortable was dragging my luggage through the Metros which were like a million degrees. That’s not fun. By the time I got from the previous hotel to the hostel, I was sweating and out of breath. Even worse, the hostel had a sign outside, but was locked and didn’t make it clear as to how one was supposed to get in. Turns out there’s a button you have to push. And also, once you get in, there is no immediate reception desk, and one must keep climbing up onto the third floor where one can locate the reception desk because there is a teeny tiny sign that says “RECEPTION,” with an arrow. Turns out that sign was NEW also. So initial wanderers were left to fend for themselves as far as finding the reception desk went. Lol.
The first day, I more or less holed up for half the day in my room. I was friendly and introduced myself to people IN my room, and luckily hit it off with two girls, Sarah and Bonnie. Bonnie was actually leaving the next day, so that was shortlived, but Sarah will still be in Madrid until the end of the week. It certainly made it a lot easier to find girls of my same age who were from America (Sarah) and Australia (Bonnie). They could speak English and were actually there to travel. Most of the other people (in particular, women) were just temporarily in the hostel, not seeing sites, not meeting people… because they came from Ireland, Scotland, America, Canada, etc. to teach English and nothing more. They had plenty of time to scope out Madrid later. For now, all they were doing was looking for apartments.
So I definitely hung out with Bonnie and then mostly Sarah… she’s from Atlanta and is studying for a half year in Salamanca. Twas fun because she is kinda down to do whatever… those people are always cool.
The other people met were mostly Aussies. Or at least the Aussies were most accepting and friendly of me. Most of them were on three month or twelve month holiday, and one girl told me that I should go to Australia to get a job because everyone of talent is moving out of Australia and into Dubai, and there were many, many job opportunities. Actually sounds kind of appealing, though I don’t know if I can hack the weather there or not.
Anyway. So that’s a quick recap. More to come. These are totally completely out of order, which sucks. I did pretty well in keeping the cruise shit in order, but you know what? I don’t feel like doing that orderly crap. So I’m not going to do it. So there.
(PS – There’s a “FREE PUBLIC WIFI” thing at the airport but it’s not fucking working, GRR! I wonder if they block that shite here or what? Because they have the pay WiFi (via Kube) too? Or maybe too many people are just using it? I’ve no idea…)
(PPS – A note about the Madrid airport… it is HUGE. And really nice looking. But needlessly huge. I mean really. It’s so needless. They spread this shit out like a mofo. I have no idea why. For example, from entrance, IN THE SAME TERMINAL EVEN, since there are four terminals, there are gates that take 15 minutes to get to! WTH!)
September 25th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
glad u met ppl