Madrid, YoUrE CraZy!

Part 5: Madrid

We once again took an early morning train ride to a new Spanish city, and this time found our hostel right off the bat. We awkwardly deodorized, primped and changed in the hallways since our room wasn’t ready yet. All starving, we went on a quest for lunch and were incredibly disheartened to see that the TGIFridays across the street wasn’t open until a few hours later. We grudgingly walked on until we arrived at another American fast food beacon, Burger King. We shamelessly devoured double cheeseburgers and greasy fries and enjoyed it almost a little too much for being in Spain. Finally nourished we headed to the Reine Sofia museum which had a four story exhibit on all things Picasso. Boy did we see Picasso. In all honesty, I can’t see why some of that stuff is up on the walls of a museum, aka a pencil sketch of a horse that genuinely looked like a kindergartner drew it. And I mean, La Guernica? Come on, that’s a piece of crap. Haha, ok that’s a big huge fat lie, it was pretty incredible, but I think I just wasn’t in the mood for an art museum. Dana, Lauren, Liz and I instead got yelled at by museum employees for taking pictures, drinking water, talking too loud, and going too close to exhibits. We went as far as to have a ‘crying contest’ next to some famous works of Picasso’s to make people think we were genuinely moved by the work. Call us uncultured, but it was a pretty fun game, especially when Lauren tried so hard to squeeze out tears she produced the manliest grunt ever to be heard in the Reine Sofia! Us bored folks busted out of there soon after to tackle the more important issue of alcohol for the night. We splurged on cheap champagne and sangria for the night, getting overly excited at the sight of 6 mini champagne bottles that were absolutely perfect for our purposes. Motivated now by the Hagen Dazs we had spotted on the way over, we backtracked until we found it, spending a collective 34 euro on ice cream for four people. Worth it.

Once again we napped for a few hours, which actually helped a lot in the rejuvenating process. Ready to attack the night we monopolized the two showers for about an hour and decided to make it a completely American day by dining at Fridays. Another great decision actually. With fruity drinks and wonderfully fried food, we were ready to drink away the evening illegally in our hostel before the biggest discoteque in Spain! We played circle, which turned into never have I ever, and a little orange juice mishap caused me to have to switch outfits which ended up being a good thing. We went through 3 boxes of sangria, 2 bottles of Champagne and realized we needed to book it and take our mini bottles for the road. Decided we weren’t nearly drunk enough and after annoying them completely made friends with some locals via my broken Spanish and endless ‘MUY BONITAS!’ We took too many shots, and I got called guapo by a Spanish Gwen Stefani a la Tragic Kingdom. Taxi’d our way over to the club and boy was it bumping. I cut in line behind a Spanish girl named Maria who was very bitter about all the foreigners at her club (other than me she said). I agreed for a second then decided I needed to be closer and hopped up to where Dana and Liz had gotten. They were busy trying to convince an Irish man that he was in fact NOT Irish. He told them he had a scar from a knife fight at which I challenged him to a ‘scar off’ yielding my scar from climbing over a highway fence…I think I told him I got shot or something ridiculous like that. Totally believed me. The bouncers were NOT happy with all the cutting and got really rough with some girls near us, but somehow we managed to get inside, pay our 15 euro and bask in the glory of 7 stories of strobe lights and wild dancing. We stayed together for about 20 minutes before promising to meet back in front of the naked man poster on floor two at 5:30AM.

Dana, Liz and Emma (until she blacked out and disappeared) snuck into the VIP section where they scolded the richies for doing coke. They stole as many bottles as they could and ended up getting yelled at by the VIPs, oops! On the main floor, Coder got DOWN with some Spanish man and ended up attached at the mouth for most of the night. As soon as the well muscled ‘sailors’ got off stage, Lauren and I drunkenly climbed up there and danced our hearts out for a few minutes in full view of all seven stories of the club. We broke out some surprisingly cohesive choreography from Dirty Dancing and for once had enough sense to get down before we were kicked off. We moved over to a platform and Lauren totes danced with a boy with braces. I embarrassingly asked everyone to clear the platform so Lauren and I could have a last dance together around 5:30AM. They surprisingly obliged and we took that shit over, bending and snapping, popping and dropping, getting dirrty all over the place. It was a great end to the night…part one of the night that is.

Part two involves an extensive search for our three missing comrades through the entire club. I weaved through each floor in a semi sober haze, ending up with nothing. Lauren had managed to drop her camera while I was gone, resulting in a fatal lens error that left it bent and unusable. We need to start a support group for stories like ours, seriously. With no friends to be found, we took a taxi home and were surprised to come upon an empty room. “Wow they must be having FUN!” we thought as we collapsed in our beds. 10 minutes later, a very flustered Liz and Dana walked in, coatless and annoyed at getting lost in a taxi, for the second time in Spain. What was worse was there was no Emma. Liz took charge and screamed “WE MUST MOBILIZE!” which surprisingly got people up and moving. People besides me that is. I was worried, I swear…just really really tired. We heard a buzz as we were about to set off to find our girl and were never so happy to see Ms. Bassett stumbling through the doorway, trashed and gloating about using the metro. With the Emma situation solved, all that was left was the three missing coats problem. Dana and Liz were about to set off alone, but I drunkenly argued that I knew better Spanish and that I needed to go. All in terrible moods we somehow navigated the metro and finally cracked a smile when we heard a man on a saxophone playing the pink panther. Back at the club the gates were all closed down and it looked like our mission was hopeless. WRONG. We charged over to the side door where people were exiting, and weren’t given the time of day until I somehow spoke the clearest Spanish of my life, telling the man at the door that my sister and friends left their coats inside. He told us to come back tomorrow but I insisted we were leaving early and needed them, very very badly. Liz and Dana threw choruses of “Por Favor!!” at him and finally as I waved the coat check ticket in the air, he gave in and went to get our coats. Good thing too because we saw a man inside rifling through the pockets of coats that had been left behind. He came back with all three intact and we thanked him profusely and decided to reward ourselves with a taxi ride back rather than the metro.

We crashed for about an hour and realized we had to get up for our flight back to Marseille. Poor Emma was still completely trashed as we packed up and got ready to go. We somehow made our flight, traveled smoothly and made it back to Aix with enough time to enjoy the sunset and give Dana a full tour of the dessert cuisine of Southern France.