It only seems right that I end this blog in the hungover state in which I have written so many of these posts.
It was my work leaving party last night...or "despedida" as they call it here and I think everyone enjoyed one too many drinks. The 9 of us in the department went out for a lovely dinner to Mabel´s favourite restaurant, Makkila, and the amount of food that was ordered was ridiculous. In classic Spanish style, it all was all made to share, and we had croquettes, Spanish omelette, Spanish ham, bruschetta, pork, a goats cheese salad, spicy Spanish potatoes and lots more - all the food I love and am definitely going to miss. And of course with that all, we were all on the "cañas". A "caña" is a wee Spanish beer that everyone orders here. The guys were sweet enough to get me a wee leaving present as well, a photo of all of us in a beautiful frame, sweets and big card with lots of lovely comments signed by all of them, and of course I cried, which of course is now caught on camera. Cringe. Then I had to make a speech, which after a few beers and in a "fragile" state ended up being a complete mess. Anyway, we then headed on to a bar, after ditching the Big Boss who, (shhhh - no one really likes), and a many gin and tonic were ordered and the conversation moved on to sex, cocaine and Geordie Shore. Here it´s called "Gandía Shore". It´s fair to say that this morning, everyone is looking a little bit pale.
So that´s it, my time in Spain has come to it´s end and I can´t quite believe it. Highlights - I don´t know, there are too many to choose from. The girls at work have been so lovely to me and I am really going to miss them all. Yes, there have been some days where I have had shit all to do, but generally I am kept reasonably busy - for Spanish standards anyway - and it is a fantastic experience to have. Events Management is definitely something I would be interested in doing in the future. The Spanish way of working life is damned relaxed and although in some senses this can be great - arriving into work late and no one caring, taking your time to do tasks, lots of coffee and fag breaks and a middle-day siesta - it also pinpoints the reason why the Spanish economy is so bad, and although I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here, it is sadly not where I want to live in the future. I think my department is special, we all get on so well and there is a sense of humour between us all, which is what made last night even more great. As Mabel said last night "I wish we all went out together more".
Of course there are also all my British and American friends I have made and I have good memories with them too. The number of pre-drinks I have hosted at my puny flat, having the neighbour complain far too many times, and the number of nights out finishing at 7am - is something I will never forget. Spanish nightlife is pretty crazy and it´s fair to say that everyone effectively dies the next day. Clubs in the UK are closed by the time people start going out here, and arriving back in daylight is something I wasn´t entirely used to. Kapital, Shoko, Joy Eslava, Starstudio, Space Monkey, Ocho y Medio - been to them all. Best nights, hmm, our St. Andrew´s day party where we all dressed up in tartan and painted the Scottish flag on ourselves, whilst Jared, a guy we all think is a bit of a "legend" turned up with his Ohio flag, not really understanding that it wasn´t just a "where you are from party". Any nights out with Andrew have been great, and very drunken - I blame him for all my chunders. The top one being a spontaneous Tuesday night out which ended up with us dancing on a bar, getting cava poured down our throats and people dressed up as LMFAO in their underwear dancing around the place. I have to also mention Oktoberfest which was absolutely brilliant. Cheesy music and some good old routines, whilst chugging litre glasses of beer and high fiving a terrible Elvis tribute act. I had my 21st birthday in Kapital, the 7 floor club which I absolutely love, but sadly I don´t remember much of that night. I´ve been told I was having a good time though as I ran up and down all the floors with no shoes on. Kapital the other weekend with Emily was pretty good as well, running away from creepy Spanish men and Emily telling a guy that he was a 5 after he asked her to rate him.
With these friends I have also traveled around Spain, taking the party with us of course, and those weekends that we haven´t traveled we have found something else to do. Madrid has so much opportunity for that. The Retiro Park is genuinely one of my favourite places in the world, and generally Madrid is just a really beautiful city and always thriving.
Living on my own has been a challenge certainly and it definitely has advantages and disadvantages. I would, however, recommend it to anyone. There have been days where I have felt lonely and it is with that that you really have to push yourself to either meet up with people or do something productive. It´s good to keep busy. And there have been days where I guess I have had too much time alone with my thoughts, and I am a mahoosive overthinker, and this can really affect you, and make you feel sad, worked up, or even a little bit crazy. But, as I have mentioned before, there are advantages and generally I have loved it. It´s so relaxing and so free and as cheesy as it sounds, you learn a lot about yourself.
The first blog I wrote was "La gordita inglesa" as I very much worried I would put on lots of weight here because of the Spanish food. Sorry to say, I have, I feel like a whale right now, but at the end of the day I have enjoyed myself and in a few days everything will be back to normality and back to a healthier lifestyle. People talk about the "Mediterranean Diet" and how healthy it is, but let me just say something, Spanish food is NOT healthy. EVERYTHING is fried, dripped in olive oil and salt and practically everything is full of carbs. Beers aren´t seen as alcoholic drinks here, it´s just the same as having a coke, and so you drink it whenever because seriously, that´s what they do.
My flight back to Edinburgh is on Sunday night and it is a weird feeling knowing that it is not a return. 2 hours left in this office, and I can feel that the tears are building up.
Madrid, Spain - you have been fantastic. Te querré para siempre.
Friday 6 June 2014
Wednesday 4 June 2014
DAY 229: Los nombres españoles
Spanish names very much entertain me:
Ángel = Angel - boys name - loser
Concha = Either shell or vagina - take your pick
María del Luz = Mary of the Light - that´s a name, it´s not just "Maria"
María del Mar = Mary of the Sea
Nacho = Ignacio - "Nacho" is like the "Mike" of Michael for Ignacios - guacamole anyone?
María Jesús = Mary Jesus - a girl´s name
Jesús María = Jesus Mary - a boy´s name
Ilumindada = Illuminated
Fidel = Faithful
Mar = Sea
María Juana = sound like anything weedy?
There literally can be María Anything or María Del Anything. Some Marias will mix there first first name, María, with their second first name. So for example, Mabel, famous Mabel, her name is actually: María Isabel, so she becomes MA - ría isa - BEL.
Other names for some reason I find "interesting": Borja, Almu, Pilar
My favourite surname has got to be "Gordo", which literally means Fat.
All Spanish people have two surnames, one from their dad and one from their mum, and women do not take the men´s names when they marry. So first of all, it´s awfully long to say "María del Mar Illuminada González Pérez"...especially when you have a boring name like "Sarah Law". However, some of the surnames are often repeated, so a person could literally be "Fidel Mar Gómez Gómez". The Gordo surname was of great pleasure to me also in this sense as I came across a person with the surname "Cara Gordo" = Fat Face.
And of course, even though I always sign "Sarah", the Spanish have never quite conquered the "h" on the end. I am not Sara, I am Sarah. Get it right!
Ángel = Angel - boys name - loser
Concha = Either shell or vagina - take your pick
María del Luz = Mary of the Light - that´s a name, it´s not just "Maria"
María del Mar = Mary of the Sea
Nacho = Ignacio - "Nacho" is like the "Mike" of Michael for Ignacios - guacamole anyone?
María Jesús = Mary Jesus - a girl´s name
Jesús María = Jesus Mary - a boy´s name
Ilumindada = Illuminated
Fidel = Faithful
Mar = Sea
María Juana = sound like anything weedy?
There literally can be María Anything or María Del Anything. Some Marias will mix there first first name, María, with their second first name. So for example, Mabel, famous Mabel, her name is actually: María Isabel, so she becomes MA - ría isa - BEL.
Other names for some reason I find "interesting": Borja, Almu, Pilar
My favourite surname has got to be "Gordo", which literally means Fat.
All Spanish people have two surnames, one from their dad and one from their mum, and women do not take the men´s names when they marry. So first of all, it´s awfully long to say "María del Mar Illuminada González Pérez"...especially when you have a boring name like "Sarah Law". However, some of the surnames are often repeated, so a person could literally be "Fidel Mar Gómez Gómez". The Gordo surname was of great pleasure to me also in this sense as I came across a person with the surname "Cara Gordo" = Fat Face.
And of course, even though I always sign "Sarah", the Spanish have never quite conquered the "h" on the end. I am not Sara, I am Sarah. Get it right!
Monday 2 June 2014
DAY 227: Los Viajes
I´ve been lucky enough to do quite a bit of travelling whilst I have been out in Spain, so here are my highlights:
1. Valencia (Take 1) - Arriving in Valencia at 2.30am, drunk after a good few litres of drinking homemade mojitos from plastic coffee cups with straws, hailing a cab at 3.30am telling them to "take us to the best club" was pretty cool. There we arrived, an open air dancefloor and an inside full of white sofas with sexy dancers and everyone wearing masks for Carnival. I ended the night (or should I say morning...8am...) being pushed back to the hostel by Andrew in a shopping trolley. Good laugh.
2. Lisbon - I fell in love with that city, it is gorgeous! So unique and so colourful and so different from Spain. We stayed in an awesome hostel called "HOME" which was really just like a home. And of course there was "Mamma´s dinner", a feast of traditional Portuguese food done on the cheap with a toast to this old woman "Mamma" at the end, each with a shot glass of port.
3. Salamanca - A day trip. Arriving at midday and leaving at 3am. A big group of us friends altogther. A very hot tour guide. A few handfuls of shots from the famous shots bars there including a "mamada" involving no hands and lots of whipped cream. The first time I have asked for a blow job at a bar. (Mamada means blow job....didn´t actually give someone a blow job, I´ll just point out).
4. Valencia (Take 2) - Another day trip. "LADS" trip. An all day boozer of beer, wine, sangria, vodka, gin, more beer whilst watching fireworks and running away from fire crackers. I made up a story to some American twat that I was with child, married to a man called Abdul and had had another child at 13. The imbesile belived me.
5. Toledo - Pretty pretty Toledo! Definitely worth a visit if you live in Madrid. It is the old capital of Spain, even though it is very small. We got to see the start of a Spanish wedding and we gorged on marzipan as that is what Toledo is famous for. Seriously, they have marzipan EVERYTHING.
6. Barcelona - Fantastic Bank Holiday weekend. There´s so much to do in Barcelona, both cultured and not. I had some good friends living there which is always nice. It was sunny (I of course burnt on the beach). I went to a "magic fountain" show - sounds lame but was freaking awesome. I ate lots of food. Caught up with friends. Saw the impressive Sagrada Familia Cathedral. Had an amazing brunch (yes that is going on the list). I LOVED Barcelona. So different to Madrid.
Travelling is a great experience. You meet so many people. You see how different places, even in the same country are. Everyone should do some travelling. You learn a lot and have fun.
1. Valencia (Take 1) - Arriving in Valencia at 2.30am, drunk after a good few litres of drinking homemade mojitos from plastic coffee cups with straws, hailing a cab at 3.30am telling them to "take us to the best club" was pretty cool. There we arrived, an open air dancefloor and an inside full of white sofas with sexy dancers and everyone wearing masks for Carnival. I ended the night (or should I say morning...8am...) being pushed back to the hostel by Andrew in a shopping trolley. Good laugh.
2. Lisbon - I fell in love with that city, it is gorgeous! So unique and so colourful and so different from Spain. We stayed in an awesome hostel called "HOME" which was really just like a home. And of course there was "Mamma´s dinner", a feast of traditional Portuguese food done on the cheap with a toast to this old woman "Mamma" at the end, each with a shot glass of port.
3. Salamanca - A day trip. Arriving at midday and leaving at 3am. A big group of us friends altogther. A very hot tour guide. A few handfuls of shots from the famous shots bars there including a "mamada" involving no hands and lots of whipped cream. The first time I have asked for a blow job at a bar. (Mamada means blow job....didn´t actually give someone a blow job, I´ll just point out).
4. Valencia (Take 2) - Another day trip. "LADS" trip. An all day boozer of beer, wine, sangria, vodka, gin, more beer whilst watching fireworks and running away from fire crackers. I made up a story to some American twat that I was with child, married to a man called Abdul and had had another child at 13. The imbesile belived me.
5. Toledo - Pretty pretty Toledo! Definitely worth a visit if you live in Madrid. It is the old capital of Spain, even though it is very small. We got to see the start of a Spanish wedding and we gorged on marzipan as that is what Toledo is famous for. Seriously, they have marzipan EVERYTHING.
6. Barcelona - Fantastic Bank Holiday weekend. There´s so much to do in Barcelona, both cultured and not. I had some good friends living there which is always nice. It was sunny (I of course burnt on the beach). I went to a "magic fountain" show - sounds lame but was freaking awesome. I ate lots of food. Caught up with friends. Saw the impressive Sagrada Familia Cathedral. Had an amazing brunch (yes that is going on the list). I LOVED Barcelona. So different to Madrid.
Travelling is a great experience. You meet so many people. You see how different places, even in the same country are. Everyone should do some travelling. You learn a lot and have fun.
Friday 30 May 2014
DAY 224: El trabajo
1 week at work left....whaaat? Thought I would do a few more blogs over the next week to "finish up" the experience.
1. Mabel - Mabel Mabel, how many times have I mentioned Mabel in this blog? Too many! Why? Because I love her. Went out for lunch on Wednesday with her and all we talked about was boys and getting drunk - a very intellectual conversation of course. I didn´t realise Mabel was such a wee "party animal". She was telling me all these stories about how she was chundering at the weekend, and how she got pissed on Monday night by herself and was really hungover on Tuesday. I had no idea. Like her even more now. So fun. She was also telling me the whole big story about how she met her boyfriend of 8 years. 15 years older, divorced with two kids, and from the photos, I´m sorry Mabel but he is not a looker. He is punching! She then advised me to stay away from Spanish men, which of course I already knew, and then quizzed me on my love life, saying that the men in the office "drool over me"..I was like hahaha Mabel, you´re so funny...the only boy who drools over me is my dog, Djibril.
2. María Ángeles - The girl who sits opposite me. Love her a wee bit too. She always talks about her obsesssion for Ryan Gosling, which of course is one of my obsessions too, so we get on pretty well. She thinks I am a "party animal" and always says she´s jealous that I´m 21. She´s 35 and married to a handsome French man and they have the cutest daughter who I am always being showed pictures of.
3. Cristina, Lucía and Gabi - Another 3 of the girls working in my department and again all so lovely. Lucía is really quiet and doesn´t look Spanish at all what with her ginger hair and freckles. Cristina is just really laid back and "hippy", and Gabi is one of these people who is always in a good mood and always calling me "Saritaaaa".
4. Almudena. "Almu" as she gets called. Oh Almu. What a name. She´s kind of dull but I guess nice. I just like the fact she gets called "Almu".
5. Nacho. "Nacho" is the nickname for any guy called Ignacio in Spain. It´s a bit like Michael to Mike. He´s sweet. The only man in our department. Very touchy feely, as all the Spanish are, and is proud new dad to his daughter "Blanca"...aka "White". I´ll miss Spanish names!
6. Pedro, beautiful Pedro. Have to go and see him on Monday to say goodbye and to give him his Hendrick´s gin which my father told me to buy for him. "It´s made in Scotland Sarah, it´s made in Scotland!" I never see Pedro because he works in a different department but I know him because he´s friends with my dad and organised the internship for me. It´s so funny when he comes up to our floor because every woman just sits there, mouth open and staring. He´s a very nice man - his nephew not so much, and ugh, his nephew is starting work here on Monday and says we have to "go for a coffee together" - all the girls in the office are teasing me.
7. Working in events. Got called down to one of the event rooms today, and expecting to be helping out, the event had finished and they were all just sitting there chatting with the left over food, which of course I pounced at. When your money situation is low, you take all the free food you can! This a fairly normal occurance.
8. The tower. So I work in a tower in the north of Madrid which has 50 floors and I am on floor 47. Takes so long every morning to get up there as the lift stops at practically every floor. It´s like the bloody metro. The view over Madrid is absolutely amazing though.
All in all, I´m really going to miss work. At times it has been super dull and there have been times when I´ve had shit all to do, but no, generally it has been a great experience and everyone on the team is so lovely. They are throwing me a farewell party next Thursday, starting off with dinner and then apparently going "loco" (As Mabel put it) with a night out afterwards. The last day of work is going to be emosh, especially on a hang.
1. Mabel - Mabel Mabel, how many times have I mentioned Mabel in this blog? Too many! Why? Because I love her. Went out for lunch on Wednesday with her and all we talked about was boys and getting drunk - a very intellectual conversation of course. I didn´t realise Mabel was such a wee "party animal". She was telling me all these stories about how she was chundering at the weekend, and how she got pissed on Monday night by herself and was really hungover on Tuesday. I had no idea. Like her even more now. So fun. She was also telling me the whole big story about how she met her boyfriend of 8 years. 15 years older, divorced with two kids, and from the photos, I´m sorry Mabel but he is not a looker. He is punching! She then advised me to stay away from Spanish men, which of course I already knew, and then quizzed me on my love life, saying that the men in the office "drool over me"..I was like hahaha Mabel, you´re so funny...the only boy who drools over me is my dog, Djibril.
2. María Ángeles - The girl who sits opposite me. Love her a wee bit too. She always talks about her obsesssion for Ryan Gosling, which of course is one of my obsessions too, so we get on pretty well. She thinks I am a "party animal" and always says she´s jealous that I´m 21. She´s 35 and married to a handsome French man and they have the cutest daughter who I am always being showed pictures of.
3. Cristina, Lucía and Gabi - Another 3 of the girls working in my department and again all so lovely. Lucía is really quiet and doesn´t look Spanish at all what with her ginger hair and freckles. Cristina is just really laid back and "hippy", and Gabi is one of these people who is always in a good mood and always calling me "Saritaaaa".
4. Almudena. "Almu" as she gets called. Oh Almu. What a name. She´s kind of dull but I guess nice. I just like the fact she gets called "Almu".
5. Nacho. "Nacho" is the nickname for any guy called Ignacio in Spain. It´s a bit like Michael to Mike. He´s sweet. The only man in our department. Very touchy feely, as all the Spanish are, and is proud new dad to his daughter "Blanca"...aka "White". I´ll miss Spanish names!
6. Pedro, beautiful Pedro. Have to go and see him on Monday to say goodbye and to give him his Hendrick´s gin which my father told me to buy for him. "It´s made in Scotland Sarah, it´s made in Scotland!" I never see Pedro because he works in a different department but I know him because he´s friends with my dad and organised the internship for me. It´s so funny when he comes up to our floor because every woman just sits there, mouth open and staring. He´s a very nice man - his nephew not so much, and ugh, his nephew is starting work here on Monday and says we have to "go for a coffee together" - all the girls in the office are teasing me.
7. Working in events. Got called down to one of the event rooms today, and expecting to be helping out, the event had finished and they were all just sitting there chatting with the left over food, which of course I pounced at. When your money situation is low, you take all the free food you can! This a fairly normal occurance.
8. The tower. So I work in a tower in the north of Madrid which has 50 floors and I am on floor 47. Takes so long every morning to get up there as the lift stops at practically every floor. It´s like the bloody metro. The view over Madrid is absolutely amazing though.
All in all, I´m really going to miss work. At times it has been super dull and there have been times when I´ve had shit all to do, but no, generally it has been a great experience and everyone on the team is so lovely. They are throwing me a farewell party next Thursday, starting off with dinner and then apparently going "loco" (As Mabel put it) with a night out afterwards. The last day of work is going to be emosh, especially on a hang.
Monday 26 May 2014
DAY 220: ¡Como no te voy a querer..! ¡Hala Madrid!
For those of you who have the delight of having me on snapchat, you will know that I was very much "going hard" this weekend. Yes, it was the Champions League final of Real Madrid v. Atletico Madrid, and Madrid....was wild.
I´ll start off with Friday night though as I went off to one of my favourite clubs, Kapital, which is one of the biggest in Europe with 7 floors. Hosting the pre-drinks yet again, because I am lets face it an oh so a fabulous host, I decided to use up any left over alcohol from previous pre-drinks by making a sangria. This consisted of a big red bucket filled with 3 bottles of wine, a bottle of gin, a third of a bottle of vodka, fanta lemon, lemon concentrate and chopped up fruit. Very, very lethal...but very very yummy. The Spanish certainly know what makes up a good drink. Anyway, fair to say it went down a storm. Miss Neighbour Next Door was once again not happy, as she banged on the walls on several occasions, but as per usual, we ignored her, only ever silencing ourselves for like 30 seconds after she had banged. That woman will be glad to see me go next week! So after pre-drinks, of everyone being fascinated by a very lively Lorena who had been drinking since the early hours, and of course a little bit of dancing to the Spice Girls, we headed out to "Kapi" to bust some moves. The night was mainly spent on floor número 4, the reggaeton floor, grinding it up on Spanish men and trying to bag ourselves free drinks. There, we came across a man who claimed he was the footballer Marcelo´s bro, and after not believing him at first, he pretty much proved us wrong with lots of photos with Marcelo on his phone and the fact that they really did look very very alike. It was at that point I then decided to head up to the smoking area on the 7th floor where I was continuously hit on by one very persistant Spanish man who would just not leave me alone. He told me that going home with him would be "the night of my life" and that I have "never experienced good sex until I had been with him". I beg to differ, love. After then telling him that I was not going to go home with him, he then, proper gentleman and all, invited me to the bathroom so he could "show me his huge penis". I declined the offer. That wasn´t the only compliment that night I got though, as as I complemented Emily´s friend, Vanessa, on her outfit, she goes to me "What? Are you serious? I just wish I could dance like you!"....I think she was joking....me stumbling around taking selfies is not what I would qualify as being a good dancer. But hey, thanks anyway.
Now I must talk about the football. Have I ever been excited about football? No. But how can you not be when THIS match is going on in the very city you are living in. As I said earlier, Madrid, was crazy. I met up with Sanderson, a huge huge football and Real Madrid fanatic to go and find a bar to watch the match in. Now, thinking we were being clever, we thought we would go nearly 3 hours before the match in order to get seats, and just start drinking early. We weren´t clever though as everyone else had exactly the same idea and trust me, every single bar was filled to the brim. It was then at this point we decided to walk back to mine, go to the corner shop to get LOTS of booze and watch it mine. Emma then came round to join us and then Andrew and his friend Beth after telling him he could only come round if brought us food. Which he did, the sweetie. I´ll put it out there, I didn´t think the first half of the match was very good, and I was pretty sure that Atletico were going to win after that first goal. ¡Vamos Real! You could hear the guy in the flat opposite me lighting some sort of fireworks from his balcony and we knew that as soon as we headed outside, everyone was going to be getting "mad wit it" - I do live right next to San Bernebeu after all...! My mother, meanwhile, was texting me from a bar with my Dad, cheering about the fact that she could stay in the bar for another half an hour, and therefore she would buy herself "yet another strawberry daquiri"...oh Mum. We decided to stay in the flat for a while before heading out to the madness and when we eventually left, we stopped back at the corner shop and I have never seen that place so full or crazy. Normally it´s just me in there buying my diet coke and cigarettes, but this time, oh my god, there were like 50 people all screaming and so much stuff was being stolen. All the alochol was gone and so was basically all the food. It was then time to head down to Cibeles. Now the saying goes that when Real Madrid win everyone goes to this area, Cibeles, and if Atletico win, to a place called Neptuno. Police were absolutely everywhere, and as we got to centre, there was the biggest crowd (thousands and thousands of people) - I don´t think I´ve ever been so squished. It was madness. There were fire crackers, flames, beer everywhere and of course so much chanting. "COMO NO TE VOY A QUERER...." "ASÍN REAL MADRID! ASÍN! ASÍN"....."HALA MADRID".....I was so into it....as my snapchat lovers should know. The plan was to wait there whilst the team flew back from Lisbon to Madrid. They would arrive back and come to Cibeles, at about 2am...what was planned. But no, they didn´t end up arriving until 6am and we had long gone before then, apart from Sanderson, who stayed by herself, in that shambles of a crowd, until the very end. I have never seen her so passionate about something. I don´t think ever seen any fan that passionate about football.....and I have two older brothers.....Hearts season ticket holders and all.....GO THE JAMBOS!. Somehow, I didn´t end up getting home til after 5am though.
I met up with Emma on Sunday for lunch and we sat in a cool "urban playground/plaza", eating tostadas and watching live Spanish music. It was great and so "hipster". Again, the atmosphere was buzzing. After then a little siesta at Emma´s pad, we met up with Sarah again for some more Real Madrid madness in the Puerta del Sol, where at 8.30pm the team would arrive and show off the cup. Was pretty cool, was pretty cool. Another huge crowd and another lot of chanting. As Sarah then stayed on afterwards for some beers with some other friends, I decided, sensibly, to go home. I had lasted on about 6 hours sleep the entire weekend and my bed was very much needed. Avoiding the metro, as my line goes to Bernebeu, where the team where then heading, I walked back, and my bed was so comfortable. I did not want to leave it this morning.
So here I am, second last Monday of work....not really doing any work. Coffee in my hand, pencil skirt on, tired as fuck and smiling about my fantastic weekend. Madrid I love you. ¡Hala Madrid!
I´ll start off with Friday night though as I went off to one of my favourite clubs, Kapital, which is one of the biggest in Europe with 7 floors. Hosting the pre-drinks yet again, because I am lets face it an oh so a fabulous host, I decided to use up any left over alcohol from previous pre-drinks by making a sangria. This consisted of a big red bucket filled with 3 bottles of wine, a bottle of gin, a third of a bottle of vodka, fanta lemon, lemon concentrate and chopped up fruit. Very, very lethal...but very very yummy. The Spanish certainly know what makes up a good drink. Anyway, fair to say it went down a storm. Miss Neighbour Next Door was once again not happy, as she banged on the walls on several occasions, but as per usual, we ignored her, only ever silencing ourselves for like 30 seconds after she had banged. That woman will be glad to see me go next week! So after pre-drinks, of everyone being fascinated by a very lively Lorena who had been drinking since the early hours, and of course a little bit of dancing to the Spice Girls, we headed out to "Kapi" to bust some moves. The night was mainly spent on floor número 4, the reggaeton floor, grinding it up on Spanish men and trying to bag ourselves free drinks. There, we came across a man who claimed he was the footballer Marcelo´s bro, and after not believing him at first, he pretty much proved us wrong with lots of photos with Marcelo on his phone and the fact that they really did look very very alike. It was at that point I then decided to head up to the smoking area on the 7th floor where I was continuously hit on by one very persistant Spanish man who would just not leave me alone. He told me that going home with him would be "the night of my life" and that I have "never experienced good sex until I had been with him". I beg to differ, love. After then telling him that I was not going to go home with him, he then, proper gentleman and all, invited me to the bathroom so he could "show me his huge penis". I declined the offer. That wasn´t the only compliment that night I got though, as as I complemented Emily´s friend, Vanessa, on her outfit, she goes to me "What? Are you serious? I just wish I could dance like you!"....I think she was joking....me stumbling around taking selfies is not what I would qualify as being a good dancer. But hey, thanks anyway.
Now I must talk about the football. Have I ever been excited about football? No. But how can you not be when THIS match is going on in the very city you are living in. As I said earlier, Madrid, was crazy. I met up with Sanderson, a huge huge football and Real Madrid fanatic to go and find a bar to watch the match in. Now, thinking we were being clever, we thought we would go nearly 3 hours before the match in order to get seats, and just start drinking early. We weren´t clever though as everyone else had exactly the same idea and trust me, every single bar was filled to the brim. It was then at this point we decided to walk back to mine, go to the corner shop to get LOTS of booze and watch it mine. Emma then came round to join us and then Andrew and his friend Beth after telling him he could only come round if brought us food. Which he did, the sweetie. I´ll put it out there, I didn´t think the first half of the match was very good, and I was pretty sure that Atletico were going to win after that first goal. ¡Vamos Real! You could hear the guy in the flat opposite me lighting some sort of fireworks from his balcony and we knew that as soon as we headed outside, everyone was going to be getting "mad wit it" - I do live right next to San Bernebeu after all...! My mother, meanwhile, was texting me from a bar with my Dad, cheering about the fact that she could stay in the bar for another half an hour, and therefore she would buy herself "yet another strawberry daquiri"...oh Mum. We decided to stay in the flat for a while before heading out to the madness and when we eventually left, we stopped back at the corner shop and I have never seen that place so full or crazy. Normally it´s just me in there buying my diet coke and cigarettes, but this time, oh my god, there were like 50 people all screaming and so much stuff was being stolen. All the alochol was gone and so was basically all the food. It was then time to head down to Cibeles. Now the saying goes that when Real Madrid win everyone goes to this area, Cibeles, and if Atletico win, to a place called Neptuno. Police were absolutely everywhere, and as we got to centre, there was the biggest crowd (thousands and thousands of people) - I don´t think I´ve ever been so squished. It was madness. There were fire crackers, flames, beer everywhere and of course so much chanting. "COMO NO TE VOY A QUERER...." "ASÍN REAL MADRID! ASÍN! ASÍN"....."HALA MADRID".....I was so into it....as my snapchat lovers should know. The plan was to wait there whilst the team flew back from Lisbon to Madrid. They would arrive back and come to Cibeles, at about 2am...what was planned. But no, they didn´t end up arriving until 6am and we had long gone before then, apart from Sanderson, who stayed by herself, in that shambles of a crowd, until the very end. I have never seen her so passionate about something. I don´t think ever seen any fan that passionate about football.....and I have two older brothers.....Hearts season ticket holders and all.....GO THE JAMBOS!. Somehow, I didn´t end up getting home til after 5am though.
I met up with Emma on Sunday for lunch and we sat in a cool "urban playground/plaza", eating tostadas and watching live Spanish music. It was great and so "hipster". Again, the atmosphere was buzzing. After then a little siesta at Emma´s pad, we met up with Sarah again for some more Real Madrid madness in the Puerta del Sol, where at 8.30pm the team would arrive and show off the cup. Was pretty cool, was pretty cool. Another huge crowd and another lot of chanting. As Sarah then stayed on afterwards for some beers with some other friends, I decided, sensibly, to go home. I had lasted on about 6 hours sleep the entire weekend and my bed was very much needed. Avoiding the metro, as my line goes to Bernebeu, where the team where then heading, I walked back, and my bed was so comfortable. I did not want to leave it this morning.
So here I am, second last Monday of work....not really doing any work. Coffee in my hand, pencil skirt on, tired as fuck and smiling about my fantastic weekend. Madrid I love you. ¡Hala Madrid!
Monday 19 May 2014
DAY 213: Me meaban los perros
The past couple of weeks have been fairly "normal" ones in Madrid. We had a bank holiday, yet again, on Thursday, so I was out for drinks on Wednesday night with a few friends....aiming to get the last metro home at 1.30am but instead arriving home 4.30am....my bank holiday was spent in bed watching Harry Potter. Last Friday it was Emma´s birthday, a big flat party eventually shut down after a neighbour called the police followed by a night out at Ocho y Medio Club...which if I´m honest is all a bit of blur, but apparently I was being very "loving" which I guess is better than my classic angry Sarah drunkeness. This most recent friday we went to Shoko but bailed quite early due to the lack of good music. When I say early, I mean 4.30am....this is Spain after all. On Saturday I went to Alcala and watched "Tangled" with Liz and Leo for I think the third time this month....such a loser....but such a great film...and then yesterday I met up with my friend, Emily, from Germany, who has just arrived in Madrid for univeristy after doing her Erasmus year in Paris. We drank A LOT of sangria...the jug seemed to be bottomless...and then chilled in the Retiro park with Liz and Lorena, where I happily indulged in an afternoon tipsy siesta on the grass in the sunshine. That was soon followed by yet more booze with a couple of beers with some good old chat about babies, Spanish tendencies, food, men and my now favourite Spanish phrase "me meaban los perros"......"I was so drunk, dogs were pissing on me"....aka "I passed out".
Work has been fairly busy and I think I will be really sad when I leave it....depite some things driving me crazy, Mabel, as always, is such a sweetie, firstly organising a going away dinner for me, and secondly, after just spending the weekend in Ireland this weekend, where she met up with Niall Horan´s parents (family friends yanno...), asking them to get Niall to send me some One Direction stuff....hahaha, such a babe. I must also note that now into her summer wardrobe she is looking even more stunning. She walked in last week in this outfit that someone like Nicole Scherzinger would wear, hair done perfectly wavy, pretty make-up and killer heels....she looked like a blooming supermodel. No surprises when later that week, she told me that I was looking really nice and I blushed bright red thinking "omg the supermodel is saying that!" I actually feel as though I´m becoming more arrogant with my looks whilst I´m here though what with men always shouting "guapa" at me down the street. Not that I approve of this, and knowing that the men here only do it because of my pale skin and light hair and the fact that all Spanish men are complete sleazes....but still....when I walk down the road or into a club in Newcastle, lets be honest...I am not going to get that sort of attention!
Liz was asking me the other day if I am going to miss my wee apartment here. I guess there are kind of mixed feelings in regards to that. There are downsides to living alone definitely, you do get loney and you really always have to make an effort with people to keep your social life up. I´m also just a massive mahoosive over-thinker, so spending all that time alone can make your mind go a bit mad and fill up the ash tray with hundreds of cigarette butts! On the plus side, there is so much freedom, when I´m hungover I don´t have to talk to anyone (not the most sociable hungover person here....in fact...I generally just dislike people when I´m hungover...), I can eat when I want, sleep when I want, ignore tidying up for a while and of course the best part...NAKED TIME! I would say I spend 90% of the time in my flat naked....I´m even sleeping naked now, which before I ALWAYS had to have my jammies on lol. The only downside to being naked is the cooking part....oil splutters are not the funnest on bare skin!
Finally, although I´ve never been the biggest football fan ever.....of course the excitement of Atletico winning this weekend was great fun....town was filled with people in their Atletico strips all weekend and every single madrileño was in a good mood. ¡Viva Madrid!
Work has been fairly busy and I think I will be really sad when I leave it....depite some things driving me crazy, Mabel, as always, is such a sweetie, firstly organising a going away dinner for me, and secondly, after just spending the weekend in Ireland this weekend, where she met up with Niall Horan´s parents (family friends yanno...), asking them to get Niall to send me some One Direction stuff....hahaha, such a babe. I must also note that now into her summer wardrobe she is looking even more stunning. She walked in last week in this outfit that someone like Nicole Scherzinger would wear, hair done perfectly wavy, pretty make-up and killer heels....she looked like a blooming supermodel. No surprises when later that week, she told me that I was looking really nice and I blushed bright red thinking "omg the supermodel is saying that!" I actually feel as though I´m becoming more arrogant with my looks whilst I´m here though what with men always shouting "guapa" at me down the street. Not that I approve of this, and knowing that the men here only do it because of my pale skin and light hair and the fact that all Spanish men are complete sleazes....but still....when I walk down the road or into a club in Newcastle, lets be honest...I am not going to get that sort of attention!
Liz was asking me the other day if I am going to miss my wee apartment here. I guess there are kind of mixed feelings in regards to that. There are downsides to living alone definitely, you do get loney and you really always have to make an effort with people to keep your social life up. I´m also just a massive mahoosive over-thinker, so spending all that time alone can make your mind go a bit mad and fill up the ash tray with hundreds of cigarette butts! On the plus side, there is so much freedom, when I´m hungover I don´t have to talk to anyone (not the most sociable hungover person here....in fact...I generally just dislike people when I´m hungover...), I can eat when I want, sleep when I want, ignore tidying up for a while and of course the best part...NAKED TIME! I would say I spend 90% of the time in my flat naked....I´m even sleeping naked now, which before I ALWAYS had to have my jammies on lol. The only downside to being naked is the cooking part....oil splutters are not the funnest on bare skin!
Finally, although I´ve never been the biggest football fan ever.....of course the excitement of Atletico winning this weekend was great fun....town was filled with people in their Atletico strips all weekend and every single madrileño was in a good mood. ¡Viva Madrid!
Thursday 8 May 2014
DAY 212: El reencuentro ecuatoriano
After my wee break in Barcelona I had some visitors come to Madrid - Graeme and Elaine who I spent my "gap yah" with in Ecuador. They weren´t staying with me, to their own benefit of not having to deal with my unwashed dishes, stench from the shower drain and general mess, and despite me having to go to work in the mornings, it was so great to see them in the afternoons.
On Monday, after a reasonably busy day of work and a fair amount of sweating in my tight pencil skirt, which I really shouldn´t be wearing in this weather, I headed off to meet the others for some chill time in the Retiro Park...truly one of my favourite places in the world. Now, seeing as we don´t have a beach here in Madrid, this is where people go to tan and so to Matt´s delight (Graeme´s friend), I found a nice wee patch with lots of practically naked women. After that, I took them to another great place, the Círculo de las Bellas Artes, which has a rooftop bar overlooking Madrid. It´s so lovely, and although expensive, is really worth it. We indulged in some cava, whilst Graeme kept saying to me "you have such a great life here Sarah" and although I guess I do, I had to remind him, that drinking cava on a rooftop bar in the sun isn´t actually part of my daily life here.....maybe for someone from Made In Chelsea though! The next stop was to my favourite restaurant in Plaza Santa Ana, Tartufo, where I have been far too many times, showing the others the Spanish way of ordering lots of tapas and gorging on sides of jamón and manchego cheese. I felt bad not going out with them after the meal, of which the last hour consisted of taking each other´s phones and messaging people on Tinder, but Graeme had a wee "date" planned anyway and Andrew, who came along with us, took Matt out for a few drinks after too... it was sleepy time for me though as I´ve started trying to be "sensible" during weekdays....hmmm....
Drama happened on Tuesday, the crack of the screen of my beautiful iphone causing it to completely not light up at all. I´m a phone addict so this was just not an acceptable occurance, and it especially did not help for later on when I was meant to be meeting the others. However, all got fabby, I was recommended a phone repair shop in town, and left my poor baby there all beaten up, to be collected later all fabulous and new. Anyway, I was meeting the others (and Lucy) to go to the Madrid Open (ATP World Tour) and it was so much fun. They had got there earlier whilst I was at work and then Lucy and I joined them about 4pm just in time for the brilliant Ferrer/Ramos match. Ferrer won, much to what seemed the crowd´s delight, as even though they are both Spanish, Ramos is Catalan...oooh. The others really enjoyed it and it was their first time watching live professional tennis so I was really glad I got us tickets. And my mum, the tennis addict, was very jealous. Elaine then had to rush off for her flight and Lucy off on a date (people are getting lucky this week ;) ) and so Graeme, Matt and I then went off for yet another meal out, before again, I called it a day.
I feel like I´ve had a non-stop couple of weeks what with Izzy coming, then being ill, then going to Barcelona and then having the Ecuador lot here, but I can´t really complain...it´s not a bad life! Knackered yesterday, I had a big siesta and avoided once again any cleaning, and today I finished my uni essay, finally (nothing else to do at work)...so I´m a pretty happy bunny. Emma´s birthday night out this weekend with perhaps another wee trip to the Retiro but apart from that, not much else to do but enjoy my last 4 weeks!
On Monday, after a reasonably busy day of work and a fair amount of sweating in my tight pencil skirt, which I really shouldn´t be wearing in this weather, I headed off to meet the others for some chill time in the Retiro Park...truly one of my favourite places in the world. Now, seeing as we don´t have a beach here in Madrid, this is where people go to tan and so to Matt´s delight (Graeme´s friend), I found a nice wee patch with lots of practically naked women. After that, I took them to another great place, the Círculo de las Bellas Artes, which has a rooftop bar overlooking Madrid. It´s so lovely, and although expensive, is really worth it. We indulged in some cava, whilst Graeme kept saying to me "you have such a great life here Sarah" and although I guess I do, I had to remind him, that drinking cava on a rooftop bar in the sun isn´t actually part of my daily life here.....maybe for someone from Made In Chelsea though! The next stop was to my favourite restaurant in Plaza Santa Ana, Tartufo, where I have been far too many times, showing the others the Spanish way of ordering lots of tapas and gorging on sides of jamón and manchego cheese. I felt bad not going out with them after the meal, of which the last hour consisted of taking each other´s phones and messaging people on Tinder, but Graeme had a wee "date" planned anyway and Andrew, who came along with us, took Matt out for a few drinks after too... it was sleepy time for me though as I´ve started trying to be "sensible" during weekdays....hmmm....
Drama happened on Tuesday, the crack of the screen of my beautiful iphone causing it to completely not light up at all. I´m a phone addict so this was just not an acceptable occurance, and it especially did not help for later on when I was meant to be meeting the others. However, all got fabby, I was recommended a phone repair shop in town, and left my poor baby there all beaten up, to be collected later all fabulous and new. Anyway, I was meeting the others (and Lucy) to go to the Madrid Open (ATP World Tour) and it was so much fun. They had got there earlier whilst I was at work and then Lucy and I joined them about 4pm just in time for the brilliant Ferrer/Ramos match. Ferrer won, much to what seemed the crowd´s delight, as even though they are both Spanish, Ramos is Catalan...oooh. The others really enjoyed it and it was their first time watching live professional tennis so I was really glad I got us tickets. And my mum, the tennis addict, was very jealous. Elaine then had to rush off for her flight and Lucy off on a date (people are getting lucky this week ;) ) and so Graeme, Matt and I then went off for yet another meal out, before again, I called it a day.
I feel like I´ve had a non-stop couple of weeks what with Izzy coming, then being ill, then going to Barcelona and then having the Ecuador lot here, but I can´t really complain...it´s not a bad life! Knackered yesterday, I had a big siesta and avoided once again any cleaning, and today I finished my uni essay, finally (nothing else to do at work)...so I´m a pretty happy bunny. Emma´s birthday night out this weekend with perhaps another wee trip to the Retiro but apart from that, not much else to do but enjoy my last 4 weeks!
Monday 5 May 2014
DAY 219: Barcelona
Spain is keen on their bank holidays, or "puentes" as they call them here, so after only being back for four days of work, last week we had 3 days, or in my case, due to being ill one of them, 2. The plan had originally been to go to La Rioja with Liz, but with a lack of funds, Liz unfortunately had to bail and so I was left to decide what to do. Taking my mother´s advice, I spontaneously booked flights to Barcelona for 4 nights, as not only is it a great place to visit but I have a few friends from uni who live there. Unfortunately, about an hour after I had booked it though, I fell ill. I had a fever and a headache, was being sick and generally felt like I couldn´t move, once again, this is just a classic case of dehydration for me, but after then missing work the next morning and sleeping til about 3pm, I was fine to head to Barcelona Wednesday night.
Now I´ve never come across this before, but apparently airlines can overbook their seats?! How, is beyond me, as surely with technology these days stuff like that shouldn´t happen. However, I arrived at the airport in plenty of time, and when I went to check in they told me that my seat was on standby and that I might not be able to get on the plane. What the fuck? I was incredibly angry, and so storming through to the gate, I waited for everyone to board before they told me if I could get on or not. Luckily....I could, with the slight inconvenience of them then checking in my bag and a hefty 45 minute wait to get it back when arrived in Barcelona. However, there was Hannah waiting, all hugs and kisses, and as we hadn´t seen each other in months, there was a lot to catch up on. Once into the centre of town, we then headed to a restaurant, each buying a delicious steak, and of course, being in Spain, we were eating them at midnight!
Thursday was beach day and as my pale-skinned, heat.suffering, Scottish self, I felt I should be prepared, so I lathered on the factor 30 and bought about 4 bottles of water (which wasn´t even enough). Of course though, being me, my back went the colour of a lobster, and whilst everyone panicked and thought this was horrendous, I sadly just had to admit that I was "used to it"...sore skin from sunburn is now something, that especially living in Spain, I have become accostomed to. The beach was packed but very beautiful, and at about 6pm, Hannah and I decided to take ourselves off for a big jug of sangria....it´s a tough life.
Now, if there is one thing that Madrid needs more of, it´s brunch places. There are several in Barcelona and they are so so cute and so so yummy. On Friday "brunch-time", I had a beautiful quinoa salad (my new favourite word as I don´t really know how to pronounce it) and Becky had these amazing pancakes which I´m sure I would have just inhaled if I had ordered them. It was such a cute wee cafe and served everything from donuts to cakes to salads to sandwiches to eggs benedict on waffles. Our next stop was Barcelona´s famous cathedral, La Sagrada Familia, and wow, it is impressive. First of all, it´s huge, and secondly, the sculpturing and artwork of it is just so intricate and beautiful. Every single part of it is so detailed. I didn´t actually go inside, cba with the queue, but it was lovely to see anyhow, of course with a few sneaky tourist snaps. Hannah and Becky then dropped me off at Izzy´s flat, who amazingly lives right next to it, and we chilled on her balcony in the sun with some good old cups of tea.....where of course, I burned even more.
That night, the four of us, plus 3 of Izzy´s friends, went to a really good tapas restaurant called La Tosca. Really good food for a really good price, and on top of that, very very cheap cocktails. I lost my Amaretto Sourz viginity (twice) and also indulged in a very strong caiprinha and some bitter lemon thing. It was fair to say that by the end of the night, we were all feeling a little bit "tipsy"...and then there was Izzy...pissed, with her classic sleepy drunken eyes on, and stripping off in the living room when we got home :P (Sorry Izzy, just thought I would mention that). However, being a morning person, she was up bright and early Saturday morning all dandy and chipper, whilst I reached for the bucket full of water and begged for some ibuprofen.
Saying that, it wasn´t long before I was sipping on the booze again as it was time to meet Vicky and we hadn´t seen each other in a long loooong time. Like our regular nights in Newcastle together, where we went to either Bar Berlise or Bar Ru on our favourite Ozzy Road, we ordered some nachos and potato skins with a mixture of cocktails, of which was mostly persuaded by our very friendly waiter. After that, now verging on obese, we went off to Parc Guell which is a park showing Gaudi´s main pieces of work through mozaics and beautiful buildings. Unfortunately, the wait to get into the actual "Guadi bit" was far too long, so instead we just walked around the open park space, but it was still lovely and the view of Barcelona was beaut. That night, we met up with Izzy to go and see the "magic fountains" and I have to say that this was probably my highlight. It probably sounds corny, but I´ve never seen fountains like it before. They changed colours, changed effects and music was playing alongside the "show". We also got soaked whilst at it, trying to take one of our many selfies with it in the background. Anyhow, it was a really good way to end a great day.
Cultural time for Sarah on Sunday and a trip to Barcelona´s big museum, the MNAC, which I kept accidentally calling the MCAT, causing the others to think that I was now into all that mcat jazz. I don´t think Vicky even noticed when I told her that we are going to the MCAT, it´s an easy mistake to make! It was cool, and definitely very different from the Prado in Madrid, with less portraits and less paintings of Christ. There was also a cool terrace on top of it, which again was great for a few cheeky snaps. Unfortunately that morning, we had also tried to go to this big food market, which from what I´ve seen pictures of is pick n mix heaven (my favourite thing everrrr), but it was closed for the puente darn it. On our way there we also encountered a grotesque old man who stopped in front of me and oggled at my (not even on display) boobs whilst moving his tongue around his mouth and making horrible sounds. Grim. Once again, I HATE Spanish men. We then joined Hannah and Becky for lunch in a sushi restaurant, right beside Barcelona´s Arc de Triomf. Izzy had kept mentioning this arc, and I was getting so confused thinking, I sweaaaar that is meant to be in Paris, but turns out, it´s just another wee one.
I was really sad leaving on Sunday evening because I had had so much fun and Barcelona is just so cool....I might even prefer it to Madrid (!!!) ...did I just say that?! The city has so much character and there was so much to do. I struggled with the heat, of course, but that´s nothing new, and I think also there were a lot more toursits than there are in Madrid. But no, great few days and I´m glad I did it before I leave in a few weeks time!
Now I´ve never come across this before, but apparently airlines can overbook their seats?! How, is beyond me, as surely with technology these days stuff like that shouldn´t happen. However, I arrived at the airport in plenty of time, and when I went to check in they told me that my seat was on standby and that I might not be able to get on the plane. What the fuck? I was incredibly angry, and so storming through to the gate, I waited for everyone to board before they told me if I could get on or not. Luckily....I could, with the slight inconvenience of them then checking in my bag and a hefty 45 minute wait to get it back when arrived in Barcelona. However, there was Hannah waiting, all hugs and kisses, and as we hadn´t seen each other in months, there was a lot to catch up on. Once into the centre of town, we then headed to a restaurant, each buying a delicious steak, and of course, being in Spain, we were eating them at midnight!
Thursday was beach day and as my pale-skinned, heat.suffering, Scottish self, I felt I should be prepared, so I lathered on the factor 30 and bought about 4 bottles of water (which wasn´t even enough). Of course though, being me, my back went the colour of a lobster, and whilst everyone panicked and thought this was horrendous, I sadly just had to admit that I was "used to it"...sore skin from sunburn is now something, that especially living in Spain, I have become accostomed to. The beach was packed but very beautiful, and at about 6pm, Hannah and I decided to take ourselves off for a big jug of sangria....it´s a tough life.
Now, if there is one thing that Madrid needs more of, it´s brunch places. There are several in Barcelona and they are so so cute and so so yummy. On Friday "brunch-time", I had a beautiful quinoa salad (my new favourite word as I don´t really know how to pronounce it) and Becky had these amazing pancakes which I´m sure I would have just inhaled if I had ordered them. It was such a cute wee cafe and served everything from donuts to cakes to salads to sandwiches to eggs benedict on waffles. Our next stop was Barcelona´s famous cathedral, La Sagrada Familia, and wow, it is impressive. First of all, it´s huge, and secondly, the sculpturing and artwork of it is just so intricate and beautiful. Every single part of it is so detailed. I didn´t actually go inside, cba with the queue, but it was lovely to see anyhow, of course with a few sneaky tourist snaps. Hannah and Becky then dropped me off at Izzy´s flat, who amazingly lives right next to it, and we chilled on her balcony in the sun with some good old cups of tea.....where of course, I burned even more.
That night, the four of us, plus 3 of Izzy´s friends, went to a really good tapas restaurant called La Tosca. Really good food for a really good price, and on top of that, very very cheap cocktails. I lost my Amaretto Sourz viginity (twice) and also indulged in a very strong caiprinha and some bitter lemon thing. It was fair to say that by the end of the night, we were all feeling a little bit "tipsy"...and then there was Izzy...pissed, with her classic sleepy drunken eyes on, and stripping off in the living room when we got home :P (Sorry Izzy, just thought I would mention that). However, being a morning person, she was up bright and early Saturday morning all dandy and chipper, whilst I reached for the bucket full of water and begged for some ibuprofen.
Saying that, it wasn´t long before I was sipping on the booze again as it was time to meet Vicky and we hadn´t seen each other in a long loooong time. Like our regular nights in Newcastle together, where we went to either Bar Berlise or Bar Ru on our favourite Ozzy Road, we ordered some nachos and potato skins with a mixture of cocktails, of which was mostly persuaded by our very friendly waiter. After that, now verging on obese, we went off to Parc Guell which is a park showing Gaudi´s main pieces of work through mozaics and beautiful buildings. Unfortunately, the wait to get into the actual "Guadi bit" was far too long, so instead we just walked around the open park space, but it was still lovely and the view of Barcelona was beaut. That night, we met up with Izzy to go and see the "magic fountains" and I have to say that this was probably my highlight. It probably sounds corny, but I´ve never seen fountains like it before. They changed colours, changed effects and music was playing alongside the "show". We also got soaked whilst at it, trying to take one of our many selfies with it in the background. Anyhow, it was a really good way to end a great day.
Cultural time for Sarah on Sunday and a trip to Barcelona´s big museum, the MNAC, which I kept accidentally calling the MCAT, causing the others to think that I was now into all that mcat jazz. I don´t think Vicky even noticed when I told her that we are going to the MCAT, it´s an easy mistake to make! It was cool, and definitely very different from the Prado in Madrid, with less portraits and less paintings of Christ. There was also a cool terrace on top of it, which again was great for a few cheeky snaps. Unfortunately that morning, we had also tried to go to this big food market, which from what I´ve seen pictures of is pick n mix heaven (my favourite thing everrrr), but it was closed for the puente darn it. On our way there we also encountered a grotesque old man who stopped in front of me and oggled at my (not even on display) boobs whilst moving his tongue around his mouth and making horrible sounds. Grim. Once again, I HATE Spanish men. We then joined Hannah and Becky for lunch in a sushi restaurant, right beside Barcelona´s Arc de Triomf. Izzy had kept mentioning this arc, and I was getting so confused thinking, I sweaaaar that is meant to be in Paris, but turns out, it´s just another wee one.
I was really sad leaving on Sunday evening because I had had so much fun and Barcelona is just so cool....I might even prefer it to Madrid (!!!) ...did I just say that?! The city has so much character and there was so much to do. I struggled with the heat, of course, but that´s nothing new, and I think also there were a lot more toursits than there are in Madrid. But no, great few days and I´m glad I did it before I leave in a few weeks time!
Tuesday 29 April 2014
DAY 213: La Visita de Isabel
Having not seen my friend Izzy since the end of uni last year, I was so excited on Friday for her to come and visit from where she is Barcelona. After arriving early evening, the first thing we did was crack open a bottle of red in preparation for the long catch up we desperately needed and then headed to one of my favourite restaurants in Madrid, Tartufo.
The rest of the weekend I had to put on my tour guide cap and I was fairly proud of what I could remember and how to get to places....my sense of direction isn´t the best and the invention of google maps on your phone is normally of big use to me. We started off by going to the Royal Palace which is absolutely huge. Each monarch had about three big rooms for wardrobe, sleeping and "chilling" and the decor was detailed with gold, paintings and intricate patterns on the walls. The next stop was for a fro-yo and a wander before a good old siesta and a night out.
Bringing Izzy into the Puerta del Sol (the place where it all happens) at 1.30am, we scrounged around for promoters who all wanted us to go to their particular club. After almost being persuaded to go to a place called Palace, we decided it wasn´t really our scene. He originally started his spiel with how it was house and electronic music and when we asked if there was commercial stuff he just agreed with us as to get us in. It´s probably pretty clear by now that that´s not really my thing and Izzy, being a big fan of The Den, Floritas and Dirty Pop in Newcastle, was on the same level. After then telling this random guy that the club, Joy, was shit, we ended up there, with an awkward moment of seeing him in the club and eating my words. However, it turned into a great night, with a bit of hat-stealing, running away from creepy Spanish men and dancing like we did in the toon. A night out with Izzy has never been a dull one.
Surprisingly, we felt less hungover on Sunday morning than we did on Saturday.....it seems to be that one glass of wine now can have a serious effect on how my head feels the next morning. The first stop for us that day was El Rastro, Spain´s biggest flea market and I´m really glad we went because Izzy seemed to really enjoy it. The best stall we came across was a crown stall and we spent a good 15 minutes taking selfies whilst trying them on before the owner started to realise that we were in fact not going to buy anything. We did think, however, it was a weirdly good look, that sort of elfish look that maybe could be taken as a new fashion statement in Newcastle....that´s "edgy" right?
Afterwards, we met up with our fellow course mate, Minna, for some good old Mexican food and then headed to the Prado museum, where I tried my best to be "cultural" and explain to Izzy my favourite paintings. I think the best I came up with though was "so this painting is famous". A walk through the beautiful Retiro Park was then on the cards before the lovely Spanish sunset hit, ending the night in El Tigre, one of my favourite bars in Madrid where you get mojitos the size of your head with platefuls of free food alongside. Oh, and then we had another fro-yo.
All in all, it was a fantastic weekend, potentially one of my favourites, and we are already planning now a trip to Murcia...although with 5 weeks left, I´m not sure how possible that will be.
Work is dull but it´s only a 3 day week this week and tomorrow I am off to La Rioja with Liz...the land of the Spanish wine!
The rest of the weekend I had to put on my tour guide cap and I was fairly proud of what I could remember and how to get to places....my sense of direction isn´t the best and the invention of google maps on your phone is normally of big use to me. We started off by going to the Royal Palace which is absolutely huge. Each monarch had about three big rooms for wardrobe, sleeping and "chilling" and the decor was detailed with gold, paintings and intricate patterns on the walls. The next stop was for a fro-yo and a wander before a good old siesta and a night out.
Bringing Izzy into the Puerta del Sol (the place where it all happens) at 1.30am, we scrounged around for promoters who all wanted us to go to their particular club. After almost being persuaded to go to a place called Palace, we decided it wasn´t really our scene. He originally started his spiel with how it was house and electronic music and when we asked if there was commercial stuff he just agreed with us as to get us in. It´s probably pretty clear by now that that´s not really my thing and Izzy, being a big fan of The Den, Floritas and Dirty Pop in Newcastle, was on the same level. After then telling this random guy that the club, Joy, was shit, we ended up there, with an awkward moment of seeing him in the club and eating my words. However, it turned into a great night, with a bit of hat-stealing, running away from creepy Spanish men and dancing like we did in the toon. A night out with Izzy has never been a dull one.
Surprisingly, we felt less hungover on Sunday morning than we did on Saturday.....it seems to be that one glass of wine now can have a serious effect on how my head feels the next morning. The first stop for us that day was El Rastro, Spain´s biggest flea market and I´m really glad we went because Izzy seemed to really enjoy it. The best stall we came across was a crown stall and we spent a good 15 minutes taking selfies whilst trying them on before the owner started to realise that we were in fact not going to buy anything. We did think, however, it was a weirdly good look, that sort of elfish look that maybe could be taken as a new fashion statement in Newcastle....that´s "edgy" right?
Afterwards, we met up with our fellow course mate, Minna, for some good old Mexican food and then headed to the Prado museum, where I tried my best to be "cultural" and explain to Izzy my favourite paintings. I think the best I came up with though was "so this painting is famous". A walk through the beautiful Retiro Park was then on the cards before the lovely Spanish sunset hit, ending the night in El Tigre, one of my favourite bars in Madrid where you get mojitos the size of your head with platefuls of free food alongside. Oh, and then we had another fro-yo.
All in all, it was a fantastic weekend, potentially one of my favourites, and we are already planning now a trip to Murcia...although with 5 weeks left, I´m not sure how possible that will be.
Work is dull but it´s only a 3 day week this week and tomorrow I am off to La Rioja with Liz...the land of the Spanish wine!
Friday 25 April 2014
DAY 209: La drama sigue...
So the drama continues...
As mentioned the other day, Marta left and everyone was shocked. Yesterday then, Mabel pulled me to the side and just started crying into my arms. Apparently Marta had bad-mouthed her in a 3 page essay to Human Resourses when she left, telling them that she was a terrible boss and horrible to her and a lot more. She had told our big boss, Marta Colomina, that Mabel badmouthed her all the time and was trying to get her job, and then she told some of Mabel´s closest friends at work that Mabel was fake and wasn´t the person everyone thought she was. I was completely shocked. As everyone should know by now, I love Mabel. To me, she has been a great boss - she is friendly and supportive and clear and very professional in her manner with everyone. You can also see just how much she gets on with everyone throughout the office. I was aware that there maybe was a bitchy vibe in our team of 8 women with some of the girls, as Marta didn´t really get on with them that well, however, it´s not something that I have ever experienced with them and I haven´t witnessed anything outright horrible, especially from Mabel. We all sit together and I have not once witnessed a horrible attitude from Mabel towards Marta. Because of this, now Human Resources are looking into it all and scanning emails exchanged between Mabel and Marta and other people to see if there is any written evidence and we are all getting questioned on how Mabel is as a boss. Meanwhile....Marta was messaging me telling me not to believe anything I hear from Mabel. Christ.
Since all that, there has been sooooo so much bitching in the office and I came home shocked that 30 year old women were acting this way. Not impressed. However, it is quite interesting and dramatic. There´s also this thing going about that Marta has had another job for about 2 months and when she was off ill before Easter she was actually working there. No notice given to anyone at our company or anything. Crikey.
Today, the bitchiness seems to have died down, but the story of today was a false fire drill where all the lifts stopped working. We were told after 40 minutes waiting outside in the cold, and wind which was basically just smelled of people smoking, because I´m not kidding, EVERYONE seems to smoke in Spain, that we would have to take the stairs back up to our floor. Now, we work in a tower with 50 floors and mine is number 47 so I wasn´t best pleased with this seeing how unfit I am. Luckily, LUCKILY, the lifts started working again, so now I am back to being the fat ass that I always am!
Noelia, the newish girl, who I wasn´t too keen on before, has also started being nicer to me. I think it´s because she has just started this new project with Alumni that I usually work on with Marta and so I have to teach her everything. She said to me today "Sarah what am I going to do when you leave?! I can´t do this without you!" Well well well look at that....I´m very pleased indeed. Everyone is going to miss the slaw :P
As mentioned the other day, Marta left and everyone was shocked. Yesterday then, Mabel pulled me to the side and just started crying into my arms. Apparently Marta had bad-mouthed her in a 3 page essay to Human Resourses when she left, telling them that she was a terrible boss and horrible to her and a lot more. She had told our big boss, Marta Colomina, that Mabel badmouthed her all the time and was trying to get her job, and then she told some of Mabel´s closest friends at work that Mabel was fake and wasn´t the person everyone thought she was. I was completely shocked. As everyone should know by now, I love Mabel. To me, she has been a great boss - she is friendly and supportive and clear and very professional in her manner with everyone. You can also see just how much she gets on with everyone throughout the office. I was aware that there maybe was a bitchy vibe in our team of 8 women with some of the girls, as Marta didn´t really get on with them that well, however, it´s not something that I have ever experienced with them and I haven´t witnessed anything outright horrible, especially from Mabel. We all sit together and I have not once witnessed a horrible attitude from Mabel towards Marta. Because of this, now Human Resources are looking into it all and scanning emails exchanged between Mabel and Marta and other people to see if there is any written evidence and we are all getting questioned on how Mabel is as a boss. Meanwhile....Marta was messaging me telling me not to believe anything I hear from Mabel. Christ.
Since all that, there has been sooooo so much bitching in the office and I came home shocked that 30 year old women were acting this way. Not impressed. However, it is quite interesting and dramatic. There´s also this thing going about that Marta has had another job for about 2 months and when she was off ill before Easter she was actually working there. No notice given to anyone at our company or anything. Crikey.
Today, the bitchiness seems to have died down, but the story of today was a false fire drill where all the lifts stopped working. We were told after 40 minutes waiting outside in the cold, and wind which was basically just smelled of people smoking, because I´m not kidding, EVERYONE seems to smoke in Spain, that we would have to take the stairs back up to our floor. Now, we work in a tower with 50 floors and mine is number 47 so I wasn´t best pleased with this seeing how unfit I am. Luckily, LUCKILY, the lifts started working again, so now I am back to being the fat ass that I always am!
Noelia, the newish girl, who I wasn´t too keen on before, has also started being nicer to me. I think it´s because she has just started this new project with Alumni that I usually work on with Marta and so I have to teach her everything. She said to me today "Sarah what am I going to do when you leave?! I can´t do this without you!" Well well well look at that....I´m very pleased indeed. Everyone is going to miss the slaw :P
Thursday 24 April 2014
DAY 208: Vuelvo a Madrid
Back in Madrid and it´s raining....it was sunnier in Edinburgh!
So it´s actually been a fairly dramatic week at work. Marta, one of the girls on my team, appeared on Tuesday 2 hours late in her jeans and suddenly announced she had quit PwC (as of that day). She didn´t give any reasons for it and hadn´t informed the boss or human resources or anyone, she literally just gave no notice and said she had just come in to collect her stuff. Now, I´ve known for a while that she never really got on with the other girls on the team, but was shocked that as she walked away, no one even hugged her goodbye. Confused and assuming I hadn´t understood the Spanish correctly, I went after Marta to ask what was happening and she just repeated that she was leaving and that she would be back at 1pm to tell the boss and that then she would explain to me. About half an hour later, Mabel came in, unaware of this news and her reaction was literally "well Marta is fucked up in the head"....really a bit harsh Mabel...don´t really like that, love. Anyway, Marta didn´t return and so I messaged her to ask what was up. About 6 hours later she replied "I am moving on to a better life and my despedida (farewell party) is on Thursday. I hope to see you there". In addition to this, she didn´t invite anyone else in the department. I´ve always thought that some of the girls at work could be a bit bitchy, but since then it´s really been taken to an extreme...bitch bitch bitch bitch.
So that was that and I felt I bit bad that just that morning I was considering leaving the job slightly early....however, despite my boredom here at work, literally have fuck all to do these days, I think I will now stay on - 6 weeks isn´t long!
It is nice to be back but coming back to an apartment by yourself can be a bit hard and so far this week I´ve not really done much. A lot of tv has been watched and I´ve been crying away at both Made In Chelsea (poor Binky) and Eastenders....I really am far too emotional :P.
Anyway, this weekend will be fun as my friend Izzy from uni is visiting me, and I´ve got to get my "tourist cap" on.....San Bernebeu.....Retiro Park....The Palace........let´s hope the sun comes out again! Then next weekend, well actually as of Thursday as Spain is giving us yet another holiday, I am off up to the north of Spain with Liz for a wee "break" (yes, both of us already need a break!). As to do it as cheap as possible, we have found a random person on the internet who is driving up there and who we are effectively just going to hop in a car with. Probably not something my mother would approve of but with the two of us I´m sure we´ll be fine!
Hasta luego.
So it´s actually been a fairly dramatic week at work. Marta, one of the girls on my team, appeared on Tuesday 2 hours late in her jeans and suddenly announced she had quit PwC (as of that day). She didn´t give any reasons for it and hadn´t informed the boss or human resources or anyone, she literally just gave no notice and said she had just come in to collect her stuff. Now, I´ve known for a while that she never really got on with the other girls on the team, but was shocked that as she walked away, no one even hugged her goodbye. Confused and assuming I hadn´t understood the Spanish correctly, I went after Marta to ask what was happening and she just repeated that she was leaving and that she would be back at 1pm to tell the boss and that then she would explain to me. About half an hour later, Mabel came in, unaware of this news and her reaction was literally "well Marta is fucked up in the head"....really a bit harsh Mabel...don´t really like that, love. Anyway, Marta didn´t return and so I messaged her to ask what was up. About 6 hours later she replied "I am moving on to a better life and my despedida (farewell party) is on Thursday. I hope to see you there". In addition to this, she didn´t invite anyone else in the department. I´ve always thought that some of the girls at work could be a bit bitchy, but since then it´s really been taken to an extreme...bitch bitch bitch bitch.
So that was that and I felt I bit bad that just that morning I was considering leaving the job slightly early....however, despite my boredom here at work, literally have fuck all to do these days, I think I will now stay on - 6 weeks isn´t long!
It is nice to be back but coming back to an apartment by yourself can be a bit hard and so far this week I´ve not really done much. A lot of tv has been watched and I´ve been crying away at both Made In Chelsea (poor Binky) and Eastenders....I really am far too emotional :P.
Anyway, this weekend will be fun as my friend Izzy from uni is visiting me, and I´ve got to get my "tourist cap" on.....San Bernebeu.....Retiro Park....The Palace........let´s hope the sun comes out again! Then next weekend, well actually as of Thursday as Spain is giving us yet another holiday, I am off up to the north of Spain with Liz for a wee "break" (yes, both of us already need a break!). As to do it as cheap as possible, we have found a random person on the internet who is driving up there and who we are effectively just going to hop in a car with. Probably not something my mother would approve of but with the two of us I´m sure we´ll be fine!
Hasta luego.
Friday 11 April 2014
DAY 195: La Semana Santa Viene
So another
4 months down in Madrid and it´s time for my Easter holidays and I´m really
looking forward to a relaxing week at home. Spain definitely has had both its
fun times and hard times and the whole experience is something I will vividly
remember.
If I think
about work, I came out here terrified, and speaking Spanish all day every day
was so intimidating. Luckily my Spanish has improved a lot but with Mabel
speaking to me in English all the time, perhaps I should be better. I think the
whole thing when learning a language though is confidence and the more you
speak it, even if you do make mistakes, the more you will improve. Anyway,
despite her always speaking English to me, I have to thank Mabel for a lot.
She´s so kind and has always been so supportive of everything and she is a
really fantastic businesswoman. On top of that of course we have the fact that
she is bloody gorgeous. I know I´m not a lesbian but I definitely am attracted
to her ha. Her boyfriend is a lucky lucky man! The rest of the team are lovely
too and Mariangeles is another girl who I ´ve really appreciated here. She sits
opposite me and we chat all the time (this time in Spanish)…mainly about Ryan
Gosling! It´s been really nice sitting with her for the past 8 months and
despite her being a good 15 years older, she´s really been a friend. We of
course have the people I don´t like though, and for people who know me well,
the list of people in this world who annoy me is probably far too high! But
anyway, first we have Noelia. Noelia came about a month ago and she is an
intern like me but a few years older. Anyway, if I´m going to be honest here,
she just absolutely loves herself and I can see her judging me every day and
she always makes snide wee comments which piss me off. She´s so patronizing as
well and thinks I can´t speak Spanish so just doesn´t like talking to me.
Almudena is another one, or “Almu” as she gets called, which I don´t know why
cracks me up. She´s nice I guess but just very…very.. dull. Finally, we have
the German girl, Alex. It´s very much a love-hate relationship. For an 18 year
old she is very close-minded and judgemental and comes across quite rude, but
at the same time I do go for coffee breaks with her a lot and today we got on
ok so I haven´t closed my opinion completely on her yet. I think she´s just
complicated to understand, plus I guess we are just very different people.
Anyway, enough of that bitching and back to work – sometimes boring, sometimes
difficult and sometimes enjoyable – the matter of the fact is though that it
has been a very good and possibly rewarding experience for me.
When I come
back after Easter I will hardly have anytime left here and I know I´m going to
miss the friends I´ve made out here a lot. I don´t really socialize outside of
my work with my colleagues but of course I will miss them too. If I´m honest we have probably had too many
nights out of drinking far too much, doing silly things, kissing boys and
munching on McDonalds but that is part of what the year abroad is about, in my
opinion (that´s coming from the view of clearly a drunken mess). And of course
we have had fun travelling…..Valencia….Lisbon….Toledo….Salamanca… - I literally
just want to travel all the time now!
It also
took me a while to embrace the Spanish culture. First of all…they eat so bloody
much! I still don´t understand how most of them stay so thin – I swear they are
eating at every moment of the day whether it be a “snack” (although to me a
sandwich is not a snack?) or a big 3 course meal…with of course lots of bread
and litres and litres and litres of olive oil. Olive oil is literally put into
every single food they have here. You see people buying 5 litre bottles of it
in supermarkets and that’s just to get them through the week! I for one am
looking like a plump pudding. In addition to that, it took me a while to get
used to them eating so late. I have lunch at 3/3.30pm every day and I´ve been
out for dinner with friends at midnight, which isn´t even unusual! Spanish
timetabling is something else as well…it´s so relaxed and mightily inefficient –
the amount of times I have complained about at it this year has led me to write
my assessed university essay on the year abroad this year about it. We also
have the culture of the men, the very pervy, very sleazy, very sexist men. In
clubs they want to grab you at any chance they get, so much so that two of my
girl friends have ended up punching men in the face, and I´ve left the club
fuming ranting my traditional “I hate men” speech. In the streets they yell at
you and ask you to sleep with them and the sad thing is, that you just kind of
have to get used to it!
However, as
much as I do complain about things though, and I do like to complain, Madrid is
a great city. The madrileños are incredibly friendly and welcoming people and
the city is beautiful and always thriving. It feels like a city that never
sleeps and everything is also all so cheap (apart from make-up…almost every
British girl I know here really misses Boots). I can´t really complain about
the weather here either – blue skies and well today, its 27 degrees. Of course
I am sunburnt, and of course the Spanish are still going round in their unfashionable
polo-necks!
Anyway
that´s me off for just over a week. A nice big lunch with Sanderson after work
today to celebrate and then Newcastle tomorrow followed by HOME. Here´s to my
final stint in Madrid after Easter!! Not much longer to go!!!
Monday 24 March 2014
DAY 177: Lisboa
Having booked it back in January because of the cheap flights, off I went to Lisbon this weekend, and I loved it - what a great city. I couldn´t quite get over that it was a capital because it really did seem like a small old town and it was notably different to Madrid, and Spain in general. All the houses were either painted white or bright colours like pink, green, yellow or blue and each roof was bright orange or "terracota". It was also very cobbly with lots of hills (almost like Edinburgh!) and there were little trams about everywhere (unlike Edinburgh! . don´t get me started). Unfortunately when we arrived it was raining and not too warm so our first stop was of course lunch. Maybe a stupid decision but we actually went for pizza instead of typical Portuguese food and mine had banana on it, which although doesn´t sound too good, was amaaazzing. A bottle of wine was also consumed (and we had started drinking on the plane at 10am that morning ;) ). After lunch, we did a lot of walking around and by this point I had already decided how great I thought the city was.
Our hostel was called "Home" and it was pretty cool, all decorated like a house with a sitting room, dining room and "study", and the people who worked there were fun and friendly. They also offer you a welcome drink which is a sort of cherry liquor in a shot glass, which Sarah and I made the mistake of downing straight away, when as we discovered afterwards, you are meant to sip on it. Oops. However, they did mess up our room allocation so the second night we had to sleep in the office. We didn´t go out the first night because I was basically dying from a number of coughing fits, not helped by the fact that after each fit I would go out for a cigarette, so we just chilled in our hostel room which was a four-bed dorm. The other guy in our room was a weird older English guy. He had set his alarm for 5.30am and didn´t wake up which meant there was a good hour of me getting angry until we decided it was time to wake him up. One of the hostel workers had also come in to wake him up, saying that he had a flight to catch, but he didn´t really move. Anyway, after a bit of shoving and "excuse me...excuse me" he sat up and laughed and just goes "Hey! How are you doing?"...freak. We asked him if he had a flight to catch, because of what we had heard from the hostel worker, and he said that it wasn´t until 10am. Strange. So then we asked him to turn his alarm off for a while if he wasn´t getting up. He went back to sleep. The alarm went off again. The fiasco continued for another half an hour. We also think he missed his flight as we were pretty sure he was with the "rowdy" group of annoying older bald men who had been in Lisbon for the Tottenham match and we had heard them leaving early on, chanting away Tottenham songs and generally being a "disturbance".
It ended up being a good thing that we didn´t go out though as it meant we weren´t hungover for the walking tour we had signed up for the next morning. Our tour guide, Hugo, was really cool and relaxed and I found it all pretty interesting, and again, beautiful. Luckily it wasn´t raining that day but it was still fairly "chilly". Anyway one of the things that I geekily found interesting was that Harry Potter actually has Portuguese influences. JK Rowling apparently taught English in Lisbon for a while and used certain aspects for inspiration. For example, school kids in Lisbon literally go around in black uniforms with black capes, we saw a few, and they literally looked like they attended Hogwarts! The character "Salazar Slytherin" was also taken from an evil Portuguese dictator called "Salazar".
The tour ended around late-lunchtime and by this time we seemed to have acquired two followers - Sim and Claire. We had met Sim the day before and she was nice and everything but didn´t have much chat. She was Lithuanian and looked like a sort of punk-hippy and I was probably a bit of a bitch making impressions of her voice later on. The other girl Claire, was Australian but lived in London and yeah, she had noooo chat. I mean she was DULL. Anyway after the tour they overheard we were going to find lunch somewhere so decided they would "tag along". After not long we realised that we didn´t really want to have lunch with them and so lied to them saying that I had to go back to the hostel to take medication for my cough. Lies! Anyway, it didn´t work because they then, being all nice and all, decided they would accompany me and wait. We weren´t even talking to them the whole journey back, we really didn´t understand why they wanted to hang around with us so much...even though we are, lets be honest, brilliant. We got back to the hostel and I said that I actually wanted to chill for a bit so we scuttled off to our room and waited about 20 minutes, hoping that they would leave. Of course they hadn´t though, and there they were waiting for us at the bar in reception. Great. So we went out with them before saying that we weren´t actually hungry and that they should go and eat if they were. Thank fuck. We got rid of them. That was a good hour and a half wasted. I don´t think we are very nice people...
We decided to stay in the hostel for dinner on Saturday night because we had heard good things about it. It was called "Mamma´s dinner" and "Mamma" was the old Portuguese woman who owned the hotel and she cooked a lovely three course meal of traditional Portuguese food for all of us. At the end, everyone was poured a shot glass of port and a toast was made to Mamma, how cute. (We didn´t down this one..) By this point, we had made other "friends", including another Australian girl called Abbie. Abbie was cool and I´m not going to lie, I think I fancied her a bit. We also got on like a "house on fire" as they say and we all went out on the hostel´s pub crawl together. The pub crawl had good intentions. The first bar was completely free for an hour, and we abused this by getting quite a few vodka lemonades, depsite the crowd. However, it wasn´t quite hitting us and the drinks were definitely not as strong as in Spain. I liked the atmosphere though because there seemed to be "no rules"...everyone could smoke inside and the streets were filled with people drinking outside. It was all pretty casual, so I felt a bit sorry for the American girls in the group who had come very dressed up. However, we later discovered that was in fact for the mission they were on of I think probably fucking a guy every night of their travels throughout Europe. They definitely got a lot of attention anyway, especially the girl we just called "legs" because her pins were so beautiful and long. The second bar was shit and we didn´t even get a drink because the bar was so crowded. We then contemplated going home but thought we should experience more of the nightlife so went on to the club. Again, we didn´t drink because it was about 10 euros for a test-tub-sized mixer, so we just decided to dance. I loved the dancing because it was all the early "noughties" hits like Flo Rida, Black Eyed Peas and Usher and despite the cock fest that was going on, literally there were about 3 other girls in the club, we had fun. I´m not saying being surrounded by guys is a bad thing, in fact most of them were pretty fit, but of course being European, the sleaziness took over and I wasn´t such a fan of someone brushing his cock up against me from behind.
Hungover the next morning with about 2 and half hours sleep, disappointing considering the night we had, we decided to just chill until we needed to leave for out flight. To be fair, I guess we had drunk quite a lot throughout the day and we abused happy hour slightly, drinking fish-bowl-sized glasses of wine for 1 euro. We talked to Abbie for a good two hours about her travels through Europe and the time seemed to pass. I was quite sad leaving, especially coming to work this morning, but oh well...will be travelling in the summer so I´m looking forward to that.
Our hostel was called "Home" and it was pretty cool, all decorated like a house with a sitting room, dining room and "study", and the people who worked there were fun and friendly. They also offer you a welcome drink which is a sort of cherry liquor in a shot glass, which Sarah and I made the mistake of downing straight away, when as we discovered afterwards, you are meant to sip on it. Oops. However, they did mess up our room allocation so the second night we had to sleep in the office. We didn´t go out the first night because I was basically dying from a number of coughing fits, not helped by the fact that after each fit I would go out for a cigarette, so we just chilled in our hostel room which was a four-bed dorm. The other guy in our room was a weird older English guy. He had set his alarm for 5.30am and didn´t wake up which meant there was a good hour of me getting angry until we decided it was time to wake him up. One of the hostel workers had also come in to wake him up, saying that he had a flight to catch, but he didn´t really move. Anyway, after a bit of shoving and "excuse me...excuse me" he sat up and laughed and just goes "Hey! How are you doing?"...freak. We asked him if he had a flight to catch, because of what we had heard from the hostel worker, and he said that it wasn´t until 10am. Strange. So then we asked him to turn his alarm off for a while if he wasn´t getting up. He went back to sleep. The alarm went off again. The fiasco continued for another half an hour. We also think he missed his flight as we were pretty sure he was with the "rowdy" group of annoying older bald men who had been in Lisbon for the Tottenham match and we had heard them leaving early on, chanting away Tottenham songs and generally being a "disturbance".
It ended up being a good thing that we didn´t go out though as it meant we weren´t hungover for the walking tour we had signed up for the next morning. Our tour guide, Hugo, was really cool and relaxed and I found it all pretty interesting, and again, beautiful. Luckily it wasn´t raining that day but it was still fairly "chilly". Anyway one of the things that I geekily found interesting was that Harry Potter actually has Portuguese influences. JK Rowling apparently taught English in Lisbon for a while and used certain aspects for inspiration. For example, school kids in Lisbon literally go around in black uniforms with black capes, we saw a few, and they literally looked like they attended Hogwarts! The character "Salazar Slytherin" was also taken from an evil Portuguese dictator called "Salazar".
The tour ended around late-lunchtime and by this time we seemed to have acquired two followers - Sim and Claire. We had met Sim the day before and she was nice and everything but didn´t have much chat. She was Lithuanian and looked like a sort of punk-hippy and I was probably a bit of a bitch making impressions of her voice later on. The other girl Claire, was Australian but lived in London and yeah, she had noooo chat. I mean she was DULL. Anyway after the tour they overheard we were going to find lunch somewhere so decided they would "tag along". After not long we realised that we didn´t really want to have lunch with them and so lied to them saying that I had to go back to the hostel to take medication for my cough. Lies! Anyway, it didn´t work because they then, being all nice and all, decided they would accompany me and wait. We weren´t even talking to them the whole journey back, we really didn´t understand why they wanted to hang around with us so much...even though we are, lets be honest, brilliant. We got back to the hostel and I said that I actually wanted to chill for a bit so we scuttled off to our room and waited about 20 minutes, hoping that they would leave. Of course they hadn´t though, and there they were waiting for us at the bar in reception. Great. So we went out with them before saying that we weren´t actually hungry and that they should go and eat if they were. Thank fuck. We got rid of them. That was a good hour and a half wasted. I don´t think we are very nice people...
We decided to stay in the hostel for dinner on Saturday night because we had heard good things about it. It was called "Mamma´s dinner" and "Mamma" was the old Portuguese woman who owned the hotel and she cooked a lovely three course meal of traditional Portuguese food for all of us. At the end, everyone was poured a shot glass of port and a toast was made to Mamma, how cute. (We didn´t down this one..) By this point, we had made other "friends", including another Australian girl called Abbie. Abbie was cool and I´m not going to lie, I think I fancied her a bit. We also got on like a "house on fire" as they say and we all went out on the hostel´s pub crawl together. The pub crawl had good intentions. The first bar was completely free for an hour, and we abused this by getting quite a few vodka lemonades, depsite the crowd. However, it wasn´t quite hitting us and the drinks were definitely not as strong as in Spain. I liked the atmosphere though because there seemed to be "no rules"...everyone could smoke inside and the streets were filled with people drinking outside. It was all pretty casual, so I felt a bit sorry for the American girls in the group who had come very dressed up. However, we later discovered that was in fact for the mission they were on of I think probably fucking a guy every night of their travels throughout Europe. They definitely got a lot of attention anyway, especially the girl we just called "legs" because her pins were so beautiful and long. The second bar was shit and we didn´t even get a drink because the bar was so crowded. We then contemplated going home but thought we should experience more of the nightlife so went on to the club. Again, we didn´t drink because it was about 10 euros for a test-tub-sized mixer, so we just decided to dance. I loved the dancing because it was all the early "noughties" hits like Flo Rida, Black Eyed Peas and Usher and despite the cock fest that was going on, literally there were about 3 other girls in the club, we had fun. I´m not saying being surrounded by guys is a bad thing, in fact most of them were pretty fit, but of course being European, the sleaziness took over and I wasn´t such a fan of someone brushing his cock up against me from behind.
Hungover the next morning with about 2 and half hours sleep, disappointing considering the night we had, we decided to just chill until we needed to leave for out flight. To be fair, I guess we had drunk quite a lot throughout the day and we abused happy hour slightly, drinking fish-bowl-sized glasses of wine for 1 euro. We talked to Abbie for a good two hours about her travels through Europe and the time seemed to pass. I was quite sad leaving, especially coming to work this morning, but oh well...will be travelling in the summer so I´m looking forward to that.
Monday 17 March 2014
DAY 169: Las Fallas
We had done a wee project translation thing on Las Fallas in Valencia at university last year and so I was really excited that I had booked tickets to go this weekend, even if it was just for 24 hours. Sophie, Mei and I hopped on the bus with the "tour group" who we had gone to Salamanca with and were buzzing for the oncoming antics. Jorge, the group later, the one that we all thought was very lovely looking in Salamanca, was there aannnd he remembered my name - what a cutie (girly scream). Unfortunately though, and just my luck, Mei had already got with him on one of the other trips to Cádiz during Carnaval a couple of weeks ago so he was firmly in her eyes only.
Anyway off we went, riding at the back of the bus (coz we all rebelious n shit) with a group of oh so annoying American boys. I mean seriously, they were those kind of people who thought they were THE shit, pumping their "g" beats loudly and bashing their beer bottles about. I might not have minded so much if they were British, as anti-American as that sounds, but their voices saying "this is fucking awesome bro" all the time was just bloody annoying. On top of that, they blatently thought they were hot, and no, they were not even average-looking, they were ugly. Anyway, I´ll stop my bitching. We stopped off halfway along the journey so that everyone could pee and I decided at this point I would get on board with the drinking and bought myself a beer. Sophie was like "ooh Sarah you´re such a lad" and I was like "I´ve been twiddling my hair listening to Cheryl Cole on my ipod for an hour...think that makes me very far from it".
We arrived in Valencia, late of course, and the choice of the group was to either do your own thing or carry on the bus to the beach. We went to the beach. Mei wipped off her clothes off into her bikini, much to Jorge´s satisfaction, and we sat there drinking and playing games until the early evening.
Feeling slightly pissed, we got on the bus back to the centre and felt that food was in order, and so where else did we go, but Subway. Not my first choice, I´m quite a sucker for sitting down in a nice restaurant whilst we sip on vino and eat leisurely, but Subway was fine and I had my first ever foot-long. The rest of the night mainly just entailed more alcohol consumption around the streets, plazas and gardens of Valencia, which by the way, seemed like a completely different city to two weeks ago. There were so many people there, every single one of those people was drunk and every single bar, club and restaurant was open, filling to the brims. There were even queues in the corner shops as everyone went in to buy their alcohol for the big "botellón" (the Spanish word for a drinking party on the street).
I met a lot of people on this trip, which I always like doing. First, we have Rachel from the West Country, lovely girl who I bonded with over going to the toilet together. (Us girls always like doing that for some reason). As we ran along from the bridge where we were watching the fireworks to the restaurant which we had decided was the "designated peeing area" the owner of the restaurant stopped us and told us we needed to buy a drink this time or otherwise we couldn´t use the toilet. We obliged and each bought a big glass of red wine, obviously not needed, and got into a deep drunken chat about love, heartbreak and boyfriends. We arrived back at the bridge half an hour later being like "I love this girl" whilst everyone wondered what on earth we had been doing in the toilet for so long. Another group of memorable people I met were the Mexican girls. They were so friendly and so funny and when I told them I was from Scotland they got way too excited. Turns out that they, all from Cancun, are going to Scotland for "spring break". Not going to lie, I´m slightly confused, a group of girls going to Scotland for a wild week of partying instead of their hometown which is probably the main hotspot for "spring break" in the world, but oh well each to their own. I just hope they understand that the trip might just not be as wild and that parties on the beach in their bikinis are likely to be much less fun along the Scottish coastline. Finally, there were the other two American boys, Jake and...Cooper..Wow Cooper was drunk and I took this opportunity to tell him that this Polish guy called Tom, who was with us that night, was my twin brother, I had had a baby when I was 13 and that I was married to a guy called Abdul who was back in Edinburgh looking after my child. Cooper belived all of this and I had the time of my life telling him.
Al in all, I have to say Las Fallas wasn´t what I expected. I wanted to go because it is a big festival in Spain and I wanted to see the big statues and bonfires around the town get set alight. I actually wanted, for a change, to be a bit more "cultural". However, all the trip was a straight 24 hours or so of drinking. Fun, but could have done it in Madrid to be honest. My voice is dying today and I am looking forward to this afternoon´s siesta.
Anyway off we went, riding at the back of the bus (coz we all rebelious n shit) with a group of oh so annoying American boys. I mean seriously, they were those kind of people who thought they were THE shit, pumping their "g" beats loudly and bashing their beer bottles about. I might not have minded so much if they were British, as anti-American as that sounds, but their voices saying "this is fucking awesome bro" all the time was just bloody annoying. On top of that, they blatently thought they were hot, and no, they were not even average-looking, they were ugly. Anyway, I´ll stop my bitching. We stopped off halfway along the journey so that everyone could pee and I decided at this point I would get on board with the drinking and bought myself a beer. Sophie was like "ooh Sarah you´re such a lad" and I was like "I´ve been twiddling my hair listening to Cheryl Cole on my ipod for an hour...think that makes me very far from it".
We arrived in Valencia, late of course, and the choice of the group was to either do your own thing or carry on the bus to the beach. We went to the beach. Mei wipped off her clothes off into her bikini, much to Jorge´s satisfaction, and we sat there drinking and playing games until the early evening.
Feeling slightly pissed, we got on the bus back to the centre and felt that food was in order, and so where else did we go, but Subway. Not my first choice, I´m quite a sucker for sitting down in a nice restaurant whilst we sip on vino and eat leisurely, but Subway was fine and I had my first ever foot-long. The rest of the night mainly just entailed more alcohol consumption around the streets, plazas and gardens of Valencia, which by the way, seemed like a completely different city to two weeks ago. There were so many people there, every single one of those people was drunk and every single bar, club and restaurant was open, filling to the brims. There were even queues in the corner shops as everyone went in to buy their alcohol for the big "botellón" (the Spanish word for a drinking party on the street).
I met a lot of people on this trip, which I always like doing. First, we have Rachel from the West Country, lovely girl who I bonded with over going to the toilet together. (Us girls always like doing that for some reason). As we ran along from the bridge where we were watching the fireworks to the restaurant which we had decided was the "designated peeing area" the owner of the restaurant stopped us and told us we needed to buy a drink this time or otherwise we couldn´t use the toilet. We obliged and each bought a big glass of red wine, obviously not needed, and got into a deep drunken chat about love, heartbreak and boyfriends. We arrived back at the bridge half an hour later being like "I love this girl" whilst everyone wondered what on earth we had been doing in the toilet for so long. Another group of memorable people I met were the Mexican girls. They were so friendly and so funny and when I told them I was from Scotland they got way too excited. Turns out that they, all from Cancun, are going to Scotland for "spring break". Not going to lie, I´m slightly confused, a group of girls going to Scotland for a wild week of partying instead of their hometown which is probably the main hotspot for "spring break" in the world, but oh well each to their own. I just hope they understand that the trip might just not be as wild and that parties on the beach in their bikinis are likely to be much less fun along the Scottish coastline. Finally, there were the other two American boys, Jake and...Cooper..Wow Cooper was drunk and I took this opportunity to tell him that this Polish guy called Tom, who was with us that night, was my twin brother, I had had a baby when I was 13 and that I was married to a guy called Abdul who was back in Edinburgh looking after my child. Cooper belived all of this and I had the time of my life telling him.
Al in all, I have to say Las Fallas wasn´t what I expected. I wanted to go because it is a big festival in Spain and I wanted to see the big statues and bonfires around the town get set alight. I actually wanted, for a change, to be a bit more "cultural". However, all the trip was a straight 24 hours or so of drinking. Fun, but could have done it in Madrid to be honest. My voice is dying today and I am looking forward to this afternoon´s siesta.
Friday 14 March 2014
DAY 166: Me duele el pie
I love Mabel. If she knew how much I went on about her, she would find it creepy, but I do. She is so cool. And being the wee babe that she is, she recommended her hairdresser to me who says they will do it cheaper for me just because I´m her "friend". Oh Mabel you wee babe. And I´m going to get my hair done like hers haha.
I don´t think she was too impressed with me yesterday though as I arrived into work 45 minutes late, still drunk from the night before. I´m guessing it was pretty obvious anyway. After going out for dinner with a few friends, Lucy, Andrew and I decided to go to a foam party at Pacha. Knowing before I went in that this wasn´t going to be a good idea and that I needed to remember to go home early, I ended up (of course) getting drunk and (of course) getting absolutely soaked in the foam. You could have gone swimming in that club it was so foamy, and it was so bloody dirty as well with everyone grinding on each other all wet. I had done my hair all nicely before I went out as well, all curled, which I never do, but of course I came out of the club (at 4.40am) looking like a drowned rat. Anyway, I don´t get how this happens, but I must just go into a serious deep sleep after drinking, but I (of course) missed all my alarms and woke up, luckily, at 8.50am - ten minutes before work! Now being in Spain and all, it is quite the norm for employees to arrive late, getting in for 9.30 am when you are meant to arrive at 9 always goes unnoticed. However, 9.45am, the time at which I arrived, was pushing it a little and Mabel give me a bit of a mean look. I was definitely still drunk as well, giggling away to myself and dropping things, and then the hangover hit me later on in the day, once I had left.
So I´ve fucked up my foot a little, all of you lucky enough to receive my snapchats will know this. It´s pussy and bloody on the top, with a massive blister on the bottom, and it is slightly sprained. And yes, this is all from Wednesday night. And no, I do not know how I did it. Anyway, I am literally hobbling along in pain at the moment and wore 3 socks today to work, making me foot look ever so fat. Don´t know how I´m going to cope tomorrow though as I´m off to Valencia again, and seeing as it´s a day trip, there will probably be a lot of walking.
But yes, Valencia tomorrow for "Las Fallas", a Spanish festival involving setting things alight, parades and dressing up. Just like we did in Salamanca, we are getting on the bus at 10am in Madrid and leaving Valencia at 4am Sunday morning. Sunday will be a sleep day.
I don´t think she was too impressed with me yesterday though as I arrived into work 45 minutes late, still drunk from the night before. I´m guessing it was pretty obvious anyway. After going out for dinner with a few friends, Lucy, Andrew and I decided to go to a foam party at Pacha. Knowing before I went in that this wasn´t going to be a good idea and that I needed to remember to go home early, I ended up (of course) getting drunk and (of course) getting absolutely soaked in the foam. You could have gone swimming in that club it was so foamy, and it was so bloody dirty as well with everyone grinding on each other all wet. I had done my hair all nicely before I went out as well, all curled, which I never do, but of course I came out of the club (at 4.40am) looking like a drowned rat. Anyway, I don´t get how this happens, but I must just go into a serious deep sleep after drinking, but I (of course) missed all my alarms and woke up, luckily, at 8.50am - ten minutes before work! Now being in Spain and all, it is quite the norm for employees to arrive late, getting in for 9.30 am when you are meant to arrive at 9 always goes unnoticed. However, 9.45am, the time at which I arrived, was pushing it a little and Mabel give me a bit of a mean look. I was definitely still drunk as well, giggling away to myself and dropping things, and then the hangover hit me later on in the day, once I had left.
So I´ve fucked up my foot a little, all of you lucky enough to receive my snapchats will know this. It´s pussy and bloody on the top, with a massive blister on the bottom, and it is slightly sprained. And yes, this is all from Wednesday night. And no, I do not know how I did it. Anyway, I am literally hobbling along in pain at the moment and wore 3 socks today to work, making me foot look ever so fat. Don´t know how I´m going to cope tomorrow though as I´m off to Valencia again, and seeing as it´s a day trip, there will probably be a lot of walking.
But yes, Valencia tomorrow for "Las Fallas", a Spanish festival involving setting things alight, parades and dressing up. Just like we did in Salamanca, we are getting on the bus at 10am in Madrid and leaving Valencia at 4am Sunday morning. Sunday will be a sleep day.
Sunday 2 March 2014
DAY 155: Valencia
So after deciding to go on a very spontaneous holiday to Valencia for the weekend, we booked a car, booked a hostel and I faked tanned til my skin was orange - bring on the sun! I met Andrew and his flatmate, Margarida, along with two Greek people I didn't know and we headed to the car rental place, carrying bags of clothes, food and alcohol. On our way there we came across a traffic jam literally caused by a couple who had decided to stop in the middle of the road, put on their hazard lights and make out passionately in the front of the car, not even joking...they must be some seriously horny people.
As we started on our journey, Andrew wapped out this massive tank of mojito he had made along with plastic coffee cups with lids (sensible so that they don't spill in the car) and straws - perfection. We had probably passed about 15 minutes before I was on my third, much to the Greeks disbelief. You could see their faces wondering who these drunken Scottish people were. The car journey took a few hours, with me being the "dj" plugging in my ipod to the car, much to everyone's satisfaction I'm sure. Andrew and I got progressively more pissed as the others stayed sober and kept asking to stop the car so that we could both pee and smoke, such great people to travel with! We eventually arrived in Valencia at about 2am, where we had now missed check in and had to wait outside for someone to come and open up. Andrew and I were so desperate to go out at this point that we considered just changing and sleeping in the car, but then the fitty hostel man (who we couldn't work out how he was fit - he was bald) arrived and all was dandy. The Greeks and Magarida weren't too keen on going out, so Andrew and I abandoned them and hailed a cab of the main road. We just asked him to take us to a good and popular club and he was very wise with his selection as it was freaking awesome.
Part of the club was open air and then inside was all white with fit girls in sequined swimsuits dancing on podiums. We danced away, picking up masks as we went (it's the weekend of the Brazilian festival Carnaval) and drank more and more until the early hours, with perhaps a tactical chunder in between. Leaving the club at 6.30am, we unsuccessfully tried to google map our hostel and ended up walking for a good hour (although I must admit that part of that journey I was actually getting Andrew to push in me a shopping trolley we had found on the street). We got home at 8am, when it was already daylight, and crashed until about 12pm, trying not to wake the others up.
So of course the next morning (or afternoon, whatever) Andrew and I were in desperate need of food, so after watching the Carnaval fireworks in the main square, all of us went for a big lunch of paella and just a splash of beer. It was pretty evident to Andrew and me though that the Greeks were more interested in doing the cultural stuff, whilst Andrew and I just wanted to die. So we went our separate ways for a few hours, doing a bit of walking, a bit of mask shopping and ending up of course in an Irish pub. The beer there was rancid, but determined to get drunk again, we forced ourselves with a couple of pints, before finding ourselves sleepy and needing to go back to the hostel for a siesta. I didn't actually sleep, which was a bit shitty as later in the night I just could not hack anything. My belly was bloated and we were literally walking round the bars in Valencia with masks on and what I felt like a pregnant stomach. We did meet up with the Greeks and Margarida at this point, but it was clear by now that our conversations just didn't "flow". As we all arrived back at the hostel the Greeks were going on about this ancient Roman town they wanted to see as we left Valencia. Obviously, being the uncultural messes we are, Andrew and I were not pleased with this, so we suggested they got up at about 9 and went and did it and then we would all go the beach at lunchtime before our long journey back to Madrid. They agreed to this...
Well....the next morning we woke up at 10am and everyone was still in bed. Check out was at 11am and the Greeks (like they had been all weekend) were so slow at getting themselves out. As we eventually got into the car, Theo, the guy, said he would google map the beach, we didn't have time now to go to the Roman town - thank God. Well, the sly little fucker that he was gooogle mapped the Roman town instead of the beach and so took us the wrong way. How cheeky. We were passing a sign at a roundabout for the beach when Margarida said "Theo are sure it's not that way?" At this point Theo said, "See I would quite like to go to the Roman town so thats where I've been giving directions to." I was not impressed. I could feel my inner bitch coming out. "We agreed we would all go to the beach though because of the time" I said, and you could see Theo's face just bubbling with anger. I would not back down though, I was being a right dick to him and I didn't even care - it was sunny, I was tired and hangover and I never get to go to the beach. "But is there something special at the beach?" Antonia, the Greek girl asked and I was just like, err don't get all cultural and intelligent with me missy...(I didn't actually say that.) ANYWAY, what happened was we split up, the Greeks went to the Roman thing and the three of us went to the beach and it was sooo much fun and so nice and hot. We then pied out on tapas and ice cream, chilled in the sunshine and then headed back to meet them (and they were late - of course).
The journey home was dull, and after just 15 minutes of my music (even though I refrained from playing One Direction and Cheryl Cole) Theo abruptly asked if we could switch to his ipod. Eurgh. Now judging on appearances I was pretty sure we would be listening to some sort of heavy rock, Theo is long haired and pierced, he then proceeded to play song after song of Greek Eurovision songs! Wtf. Come on, a bit of Miley Cyrus and Will.i.am is better than that shit, no? He was bopping away and so was Antonia, so Andrew and I bitchyly put in our headphones. The journey ended with Margarida's music.
Anyway all in all it was a fantastic weekend. I now feel dead and disgusting and have some how hurt my leg and I think I have broken my toe. Oops!
As we started on our journey, Andrew wapped out this massive tank of mojito he had made along with plastic coffee cups with lids (sensible so that they don't spill in the car) and straws - perfection. We had probably passed about 15 minutes before I was on my third, much to the Greeks disbelief. You could see their faces wondering who these drunken Scottish people were. The car journey took a few hours, with me being the "dj" plugging in my ipod to the car, much to everyone's satisfaction I'm sure. Andrew and I got progressively more pissed as the others stayed sober and kept asking to stop the car so that we could both pee and smoke, such great people to travel with! We eventually arrived in Valencia at about 2am, where we had now missed check in and had to wait outside for someone to come and open up. Andrew and I were so desperate to go out at this point that we considered just changing and sleeping in the car, but then the fitty hostel man (who we couldn't work out how he was fit - he was bald) arrived and all was dandy. The Greeks and Magarida weren't too keen on going out, so Andrew and I abandoned them and hailed a cab of the main road. We just asked him to take us to a good and popular club and he was very wise with his selection as it was freaking awesome.
Part of the club was open air and then inside was all white with fit girls in sequined swimsuits dancing on podiums. We danced away, picking up masks as we went (it's the weekend of the Brazilian festival Carnaval) and drank more and more until the early hours, with perhaps a tactical chunder in between. Leaving the club at 6.30am, we unsuccessfully tried to google map our hostel and ended up walking for a good hour (although I must admit that part of that journey I was actually getting Andrew to push in me a shopping trolley we had found on the street). We got home at 8am, when it was already daylight, and crashed until about 12pm, trying not to wake the others up.
So of course the next morning (or afternoon, whatever) Andrew and I were in desperate need of food, so after watching the Carnaval fireworks in the main square, all of us went for a big lunch of paella and just a splash of beer. It was pretty evident to Andrew and me though that the Greeks were more interested in doing the cultural stuff, whilst Andrew and I just wanted to die. So we went our separate ways for a few hours, doing a bit of walking, a bit of mask shopping and ending up of course in an Irish pub. The beer there was rancid, but determined to get drunk again, we forced ourselves with a couple of pints, before finding ourselves sleepy and needing to go back to the hostel for a siesta. I didn't actually sleep, which was a bit shitty as later in the night I just could not hack anything. My belly was bloated and we were literally walking round the bars in Valencia with masks on and what I felt like a pregnant stomach. We did meet up with the Greeks and Margarida at this point, but it was clear by now that our conversations just didn't "flow". As we all arrived back at the hostel the Greeks were going on about this ancient Roman town they wanted to see as we left Valencia. Obviously, being the uncultural messes we are, Andrew and I were not pleased with this, so we suggested they got up at about 9 and went and did it and then we would all go the beach at lunchtime before our long journey back to Madrid. They agreed to this...
Well....the next morning we woke up at 10am and everyone was still in bed. Check out was at 11am and the Greeks (like they had been all weekend) were so slow at getting themselves out. As we eventually got into the car, Theo, the guy, said he would google map the beach, we didn't have time now to go to the Roman town - thank God. Well, the sly little fucker that he was gooogle mapped the Roman town instead of the beach and so took us the wrong way. How cheeky. We were passing a sign at a roundabout for the beach when Margarida said "Theo are sure it's not that way?" At this point Theo said, "See I would quite like to go to the Roman town so thats where I've been giving directions to." I was not impressed. I could feel my inner bitch coming out. "We agreed we would all go to the beach though because of the time" I said, and you could see Theo's face just bubbling with anger. I would not back down though, I was being a right dick to him and I didn't even care - it was sunny, I was tired and hangover and I never get to go to the beach. "But is there something special at the beach?" Antonia, the Greek girl asked and I was just like, err don't get all cultural and intelligent with me missy...(I didn't actually say that.) ANYWAY, what happened was we split up, the Greeks went to the Roman thing and the three of us went to the beach and it was sooo much fun and so nice and hot. We then pied out on tapas and ice cream, chilled in the sunshine and then headed back to meet them (and they were late - of course).
The journey home was dull, and after just 15 minutes of my music (even though I refrained from playing One Direction and Cheryl Cole) Theo abruptly asked if we could switch to his ipod. Eurgh. Now judging on appearances I was pretty sure we would be listening to some sort of heavy rock, Theo is long haired and pierced, he then proceeded to play song after song of Greek Eurovision songs! Wtf. Come on, a bit of Miley Cyrus and Will.i.am is better than that shit, no? He was bopping away and so was Antonia, so Andrew and I bitchyly put in our headphones. The journey ended with Margarida's music.
Anyway all in all it was a fantastic weekend. I now feel dead and disgusting and have some how hurt my leg and I think I have broken my toe. Oops!
Wednesday 26 February 2014
DAY 151: El Finde
The weekend back home was awesome. I ate so much of Judith´s lovely home-cooked food, cuddled with dog, caught up with a couple of my friends and did A LOT of shopping.
Thursday Night - Arrive in Edinburgh (after a horrendously slow boarding of the plane a la Spain) and get picked up by Mum. At home we proceed to drink a bottle of red wine and feast ourselves with food. So was not much different to my lifestyle in Spain.
Friday - Shopping. Again, something I´m quite keen on in España, the difference being this time that mumma is with me, aka...I wasn´t funding the expenses. Bought way too much stuff, and mostly all summer clothes, so the weather better pick up in Madrid soon! The rest of the day was filled with more eating (bread and Camembert - so again not really taking a break from the food in Spain) and Mum getting me to test a bed from one room to the other to see if "noises" can be heard. Yes, she wanted me to roll around and jump up and down to assess the slyness of having sex in it - don´t ask - all I can say is, it´s for particular guests that are coming, not for her and my father thank god.
Saturday - A cheeky morning virgin cocktail with a friend (so so Chelsea) in Cent O Tre on George Street with a lot of chat about how things are, facebook stalking and gossip. A big lunch then of lasagne and cheese to follow with some family friends. Saturday night was a chilled one with the padres and I had almost forgotten how amusing (and sometimes irritating) it can be to watch tv with my father. As we watched "Take Me Out" Dad decided to rate each girl. "Paha no one´s going to pick that whale Clarissa" and when she did get picked "I don´t get it. I don´t get it." Such a charming father.
Sunday - A glorious roast for lunch - yes I´m obese ok - and then back to Madrid. Was pretty sad coming back actually and arriving back at my wee apartment all alone made me feel lonely...but I´ve already been back on the vino socialising again so things are back to normal (although work this morning isn´t too dandy).
I have a uni essay to write (in Spanish fml), a lot of laundry to do, a stack of dishes to wash and it´s still fucking raining, but apart from that, I will be doing more eating, more drinking, more "working" and my life in Madrid rolls on...
Thursday Night - Arrive in Edinburgh (after a horrendously slow boarding of the plane a la Spain) and get picked up by Mum. At home we proceed to drink a bottle of red wine and feast ourselves with food. So was not much different to my lifestyle in Spain.
Friday - Shopping. Again, something I´m quite keen on in España, the difference being this time that mumma is with me, aka...I wasn´t funding the expenses. Bought way too much stuff, and mostly all summer clothes, so the weather better pick up in Madrid soon! The rest of the day was filled with more eating (bread and Camembert - so again not really taking a break from the food in Spain) and Mum getting me to test a bed from one room to the other to see if "noises" can be heard. Yes, she wanted me to roll around and jump up and down to assess the slyness of having sex in it - don´t ask - all I can say is, it´s for particular guests that are coming, not for her and my father thank god.
Saturday - A cheeky morning virgin cocktail with a friend (so so Chelsea) in Cent O Tre on George Street with a lot of chat about how things are, facebook stalking and gossip. A big lunch then of lasagne and cheese to follow with some family friends. Saturday night was a chilled one with the padres and I had almost forgotten how amusing (and sometimes irritating) it can be to watch tv with my father. As we watched "Take Me Out" Dad decided to rate each girl. "Paha no one´s going to pick that whale Clarissa" and when she did get picked "I don´t get it. I don´t get it." Such a charming father.
Sunday - A glorious roast for lunch - yes I´m obese ok - and then back to Madrid. Was pretty sad coming back actually and arriving back at my wee apartment all alone made me feel lonely...but I´ve already been back on the vino socialising again so things are back to normal (although work this morning isn´t too dandy).
I have a uni essay to write (in Spanish fml), a lot of laundry to do, a stack of dishes to wash and it´s still fucking raining, but apart from that, I will be doing more eating, more drinking, more "working" and my life in Madrid rolls on...
Thursday 20 February 2014
DAY 145: Estoy harta de España
Yesterday I was helping out at an event for people who claimed they had "too much money". Our business was to advise them on what they could invest their money in or spend their money on. As I arrived at 7.30am at the office, there to help out with the setting up as per usual, Mabel came up to me and said "So Sarah, do you have a boyfriend? There´s a lot of good looking rich men coming and you know, you could do well here". Bingo Mabel - you wise wise owl. Luckily, as it was an event, I was dressed smartly and had tried making an effort with some sexy (yet murderous) red heeled boots to top it off. These boots seemed a bit of a stupid idea later on in the day, as I ended up with blisters after walking to and from to and from to and from the meeting room with clients. Anyway, to my disappointment, all these men were really a bit too old for me....and married, so my dreams of being spoilt rotten with Michael Kors, fancy restaurants and romantic getaways went out the window.
Apart from that, work has been pretty shit lately and I´m not enjoying myself as much as I was previously. I´m working with this girl Marta, who is lovely and all, don´t get me wrong, but she really is not the most interesting/logical/organised person to work with. My days are filled with checking bloody excel sheets against databases to make sure that all details of clients are correct and honestly, after doing about 2, I´m checking Facebook as a way to "interest" my life. It´s a shame because I liked Marta before, I´ve been out with her and she was very welcoming, but working with her is a whole different matter. This is why maybe its good not to "mix business with pleasure" - my social life and my life at work are two different stories.
I´ve also been ranting recently about Spain in general and how backwards I think the whole country is. Horrific timetables of businesses prove inefficient; the service industry cannot even compete with that of the UK (which only in comparison I have now noticed is much superior); men are sexist; and women are far from equal both socially and in the working world. There are a lot of other things that spring to mind, but I´ll save that for another day...
Living alone can be quite hard too. Yes, most of the time I like it, I can do what I want, have my own space, not care about washing up etc etc etc, but it does get lonely. It´s probably not the best idea that I spend my "lonely" time streaming episodes of 90210 instead of doing anything sociable or productive, but sometimes after work, I just get so tired (and fed up) that my wee bit of "relaxing time" turns into hours of tv, sleeping and eating. There´s a reason why I am getting so fat here! And socialising here, from my experience, consists mainly of drinking beer and nibbling on the free food they give you with it. Not that I´m complaining, I love my beer, but my belly really doesn´t and my professors back at uni most certainly wouldn´t either...
Anyway, fed up of all this, I have decided to go home this weekend, take a break from Spain and spend some time with the fam (and my dog...). Of course Mabel was fine with letting me off yet another day to go home early (she really is the most chillaxed boss) and my mum has been asking what I want in the fridge for when I get home (ahh Mummy you treat me well). Djibril (my dog) will be awaiting, and my Harry Styles cardboard cut-out from my 21st will be standing there beautifully. I´ll have the car and not be afraid to use it because of crazy Spanish drivers and my tv will be just a little bit bigger ;)..the only thing lacking is the beautiful Spanish sun - but I´ll be back in front of that next week (to "top up" my (very very fake) tan)!
Apart from that, work has been pretty shit lately and I´m not enjoying myself as much as I was previously. I´m working with this girl Marta, who is lovely and all, don´t get me wrong, but she really is not the most interesting/logical/organised person to work with. My days are filled with checking bloody excel sheets against databases to make sure that all details of clients are correct and honestly, after doing about 2, I´m checking Facebook as a way to "interest" my life. It´s a shame because I liked Marta before, I´ve been out with her and she was very welcoming, but working with her is a whole different matter. This is why maybe its good not to "mix business with pleasure" - my social life and my life at work are two different stories.
I´ve also been ranting recently about Spain in general and how backwards I think the whole country is. Horrific timetables of businesses prove inefficient; the service industry cannot even compete with that of the UK (which only in comparison I have now noticed is much superior); men are sexist; and women are far from equal both socially and in the working world. There are a lot of other things that spring to mind, but I´ll save that for another day...
Living alone can be quite hard too. Yes, most of the time I like it, I can do what I want, have my own space, not care about washing up etc etc etc, but it does get lonely. It´s probably not the best idea that I spend my "lonely" time streaming episodes of 90210 instead of doing anything sociable or productive, but sometimes after work, I just get so tired (and fed up) that my wee bit of "relaxing time" turns into hours of tv, sleeping and eating. There´s a reason why I am getting so fat here! And socialising here, from my experience, consists mainly of drinking beer and nibbling on the free food they give you with it. Not that I´m complaining, I love my beer, but my belly really doesn´t and my professors back at uni most certainly wouldn´t either...
Anyway, fed up of all this, I have decided to go home this weekend, take a break from Spain and spend some time with the fam (and my dog...). Of course Mabel was fine with letting me off yet another day to go home early (she really is the most chillaxed boss) and my mum has been asking what I want in the fridge for when I get home (ahh Mummy you treat me well). Djibril (my dog) will be awaiting, and my Harry Styles cardboard cut-out from my 21st will be standing there beautifully. I´ll have the car and not be afraid to use it because of crazy Spanish drivers and my tv will be just a little bit bigger ;)..the only thing lacking is the beautiful Spanish sun - but I´ll be back in front of that next week (to "top up" my (very very fake) tan)!
Friday 14 February 2014
DAY 139: Pedro
I had started to think that beautiful Pedro from when I first came to Madrid had forgotten me! I saw him when I first came and since then hardly ever. However, today as I was working on some boring excel with my ears completely blocked by blasting music from my headphones, Pedro appeared, beautiful beautiful Pedro, and naturally, I went all red. Either it´s the fact that he is just so handsome or my difficulty in understanding sexy Spanish accent, but literally my mind always fails me when I speak to him and he now thinks I´m a retard who still can´t speak Spanish after 5 months here. Anyway, being all charming (it is Valentine´s day after all ;) ), he invited me for dinner with him and his family. How lovely and very kind, but also, how awkward....let´s just say..things with his nephew, Alvaro, the fittie Hollister model from a while ago, did not end so well....*cough* asshole *cough*. After Pedro left, you could see all the other girls giggling and smiling and then they all came up to me and asked "who is that Sarah?"...yes beautiful, beautiful Pedro is still well and truly "smokin hawt".
So I did something I hadn´t done in a while yesterday...I slept in through work! I thought those days were past me now that I am a mature 21-year-old, but sadly no. I knew I shouldn´t have been going out on Wednesday night in the first place but it was Sanderson´s friend´s last night in Madrid so something had to take place. Fair to say, the night did not end up so smoothly though....my neighbour now literally hates me and was buzzing on my door all day yesterday (of which I never answered because I´m too scared), I got into an argument, got punched, failed to make it to the club, got a taxi home which I couldn´t pay for and called my friend back home crying my eyes out...total mess. It´s times like that I just think, wow I´m an idiot, and that it really is time to cut back on the alcohol consumption. Saying that, I am going out tonight BUT I aim to just drink some beers...(come on, not not going to drink at all..).
So apart from a cheeky wee day off yesterday work has been pretty dire this week. My life is filled with boring databases and excels at the moment and the highlight this week, as always, has been getting the left over food from events - fat pig here. I´ve tried to be healthy, I really have, and I managed it up until Wednesday, but when Thursday came and that hangover was bangin, salad just wasn´t going to suffice.
Thank God it´s Friday though, and I plan on being a little more chillaxed this weekend. Also I´ve been thinking about the fact that if I hadn´t extended my job until June, this would be my last day, which just seems crazy. I don´t want to leave - I love it here! Viva Madrid.
So I did something I hadn´t done in a while yesterday...I slept in through work! I thought those days were past me now that I am a mature 21-year-old, but sadly no. I knew I shouldn´t have been going out on Wednesday night in the first place but it was Sanderson´s friend´s last night in Madrid so something had to take place. Fair to say, the night did not end up so smoothly though....my neighbour now literally hates me and was buzzing on my door all day yesterday (of which I never answered because I´m too scared), I got into an argument, got punched, failed to make it to the club, got a taxi home which I couldn´t pay for and called my friend back home crying my eyes out...total mess. It´s times like that I just think, wow I´m an idiot, and that it really is time to cut back on the alcohol consumption. Saying that, I am going out tonight BUT I aim to just drink some beers...(come on, not not going to drink at all..).
So apart from a cheeky wee day off yesterday work has been pretty dire this week. My life is filled with boring databases and excels at the moment and the highlight this week, as always, has been getting the left over food from events - fat pig here. I´ve tried to be healthy, I really have, and I managed it up until Wednesday, but when Thursday came and that hangover was bangin, salad just wasn´t going to suffice.
Thank God it´s Friday though, and I plan on being a little more chillaxed this weekend. Also I´ve been thinking about the fact that if I hadn´t extended my job until June, this would be my last day, which just seems crazy. I don´t want to leave - I love it here! Viva Madrid.
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