Spanish Guitar in the Moonlight

My arrival in Madrid was not too bad. The train pulled into Chamartin Station just before two in the afternoon on the 19th and I was still exhausted from the previous night – I don't think I'm ever going to get used to sleeping on night trains. I walked into the station with a friend I had met on the train, Eric, from Chicago, who was studying Spanish in Spain for a month. Having a fluent speaker along side as well as my own knowledge of the language made navigating the terminal much easier than in France. Unfortunately, he was not staying at the same hostel as I, and was headed back to the states the following morning. We had a late lunch and parted ways.

My next task was to book two trains to Valencia and Barcelona. Once again, the waiting lines were a nightmare. Nearly an hour and a half, just to book a ticket! On top of that, when my number was finally called, the man at the desk didn't speak English. Not that he should, I mean, I'M the one in Spain. But a bilingualism at a major train station is reasonable, isn't it? Thankfully, booking a train ticket doesn't require communicating much more information than days, locations and general times, so it wasn't too much of an issue. I walked out of the station with my two tickets and took the metro to my hostel. Thanks to my practice in Paris, I'm never going to have a problem with metro systems again! Even if I can't speak the language!

Cat's hostel, the cheapest one in the city, was awesome. In fact, I think I'm going to have a hard time finding a better place to stay than I have in Madrid. I walked up to see scaffolding all over the front of the building, however, the inside was another story. The building used to be a small, 18th century palace and was even on the national monument registry! It was beautiful!

Still exhausted, I sat down in the common room next to a guy on the couch who looked like he had just arrived as well. Turns out he hadn't, he'd just returned from the hospital. His name was Kinero and he had been mugged at four in the morning the night before. This came as a bit of a shock to me, because on the train to Irun (halfway between Paris and Madrid) I had met a couple who had their bikes stolen in Barcelona! I was beginning to feel unsafe in Spain. We sat around for a while and chatted with some other people that were staying in the hostel and eventually went to get food.

A small group of people were going to the “market” for dinner and cheap sounded good. It wasn't quite what I was expecting. I was strolling through the streets looking for some giant farmer's market. Instead, our group came upon a glass walled building. THIS was the market. THIS was MY kind of market! Inside were all kinds of vendors selling all variety of bits to eat for a euro or two. I had a five course meal for five euros that might have been the best thing(s) I've eaten.

We returned to the hostel to decide plans for the night. There were a couple of girls who had went with us to dinner who were leaving Spain tomorrow, so a night out was in order. Bars seemed a bit expensive, so we got creative. Elliot – a very...interesting...Parisian known from now on as Frenchie – came up with the wonderful idea of playing guitar and drinking in Sol Square! The idea couldn't have turned out better, I had a wonderful night scaring away the citizens with our awful music! We ended the night by going to a club around two, doing a round of karaoke and heading home. It doesn't get much better than that!