This trip is not going anywhere near as well as I was hoping it would.
Number one, this foot injury that's come out of nowhere has torpedoed pretty much every plan I had for my first week in Spain. I had wanted to go on hours-long hikes of the surrounding neighborhood to where I'm staying, just to see what I could find; that has so far proven impossible. I also have no idea how to go about finding a doctor, and my roommate works all day long on days that a doctor's office would be open. This also threatens to compromise my further plans of going to other cities and walking around.
Second of all, during this trip I was looking forward to meeting and hanging out with foreign women, with the secondary goal of getting better at speaking Spanish in the process. As it turns out, it's extremely intimidating to try and approach a woman when you can barely communicate with her; suddenly wit and charm become useless, and it's all about body language charisma, something that I sorely lack with strangers. So, that's been a bust thus far.
And about speaking Spanish... I still suck at it. I realize it's only been a week, but I don't feel even an inkling more proficient in it than I was before I got here. At best, I've maybe learned like 10 new words, and I couldn't even tell you what they are right now.
I am not a fan of the food here either. Nothing is filling to me, and everything is filled with copious quantities of vegetables, which I don't really like. The supermarkets are filled with strange foods, many of which don't look very appetizing.
I guess that's all. I just needed to vent somewhere, and people on Facebook don't want to see this depressing crap on their news feed. Maybe it'll get better soon.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
El Centro de Madrid
Things I learned during my all-day trip to downtown Madrid:
-Spanish people do NOT fuck around while driving. You know when someone does something on the road that you feel was a risky jerk-move? That's par for the course here. Everyone does that ALL THE TIME. The bus I was on literally pulled out onto the highway in a lane where a guy was barreling toward us at full speed and had to change lanes to avoid us.... and this happened TWICE, once during each trip. I couldn't believe it. An interesting side effect of this is that everyone is a very skilled, very precise driver. I consider myself in the top 1% of USA drivers, and I'm not sure I could hang over here.
-Spanish radio stations play mostly American music, of completely random genres. During the ride uptown, I heard some 70's disco song, followed by Celine Dion, followed by "We Don't Need No Education". On the trip back, I heard some kind of Beatles-like, 60's happy-happy song followed by "I'm a Creep" by Radiohead, followed by Ke$ha.
-I learned just how effective public transportation can be when done right. Once I was done with uptown, I had to force myself to figure out the subway system (why was I forced to? More on that in a minute), and once I did, I was back at the bus hub within 10 minutes and on my way back to the house 5 minutes after that. I couldn't believe how efficient the whole thing was. I wish something like that could be implemented in Charlotte, but I guess it's too spread out.
-It SUCKS walking long distances on concrete sidewalks when you can barely put any pressure on your foot. My foot was still in pain when I woke up this morning, but I didn't want to spend a second day stuck in the apartment so I tried to tough it out. I can't say it was a bad idea exactly, but man did I pay a high price for it. I was barely able to make it to my final destination (before I headed home). I literally cannot walk on it right now. I will probably be laid up for two more days because of this.
-I had a sense of this before today, but now it's confirmed. Everything is wayyyy more compact in Spain (Europe in general?). Buildings are closer together, streets are narrower, the space inside of buildings is sparser. Most of the businesses I've come across have been about the size of that newspaper shop in Carolina Place Mall (the one by the food court). This includes restaurants with tables to sit at. And forget about parking spots; they're ALL FULL. ALL THE TIME.
-The mall I randomly came across while wandering around uptown was pretty lame. It had four categories of store: Stores for women (including clothes, perfume, etc), restaurants, an eye-glasses store, and one book store. I was hoping to take an interesting picture inside, but there wasn't anything worth documenting.
That's all for now.
-Spanish people do NOT fuck around while driving. You know when someone does something on the road that you feel was a risky jerk-move? That's par for the course here. Everyone does that ALL THE TIME. The bus I was on literally pulled out onto the highway in a lane where a guy was barreling toward us at full speed and had to change lanes to avoid us.... and this happened TWICE, once during each trip. I couldn't believe it. An interesting side effect of this is that everyone is a very skilled, very precise driver. I consider myself in the top 1% of USA drivers, and I'm not sure I could hang over here.
-Spanish radio stations play mostly American music, of completely random genres. During the ride uptown, I heard some 70's disco song, followed by Celine Dion, followed by "We Don't Need No Education". On the trip back, I heard some kind of Beatles-like, 60's happy-happy song followed by "I'm a Creep" by Radiohead, followed by Ke$ha.
-I learned just how effective public transportation can be when done right. Once I was done with uptown, I had to force myself to figure out the subway system (why was I forced to? More on that in a minute), and once I did, I was back at the bus hub within 10 minutes and on my way back to the house 5 minutes after that. I couldn't believe how efficient the whole thing was. I wish something like that could be implemented in Charlotte, but I guess it's too spread out.
-It SUCKS walking long distances on concrete sidewalks when you can barely put any pressure on your foot. My foot was still in pain when I woke up this morning, but I didn't want to spend a second day stuck in the apartment so I tried to tough it out. I can't say it was a bad idea exactly, but man did I pay a high price for it. I was barely able to make it to my final destination (before I headed home). I literally cannot walk on it right now. I will probably be laid up for two more days because of this.
-I had a sense of this before today, but now it's confirmed. Everything is wayyyy more compact in Spain (Europe in general?). Buildings are closer together, streets are narrower, the space inside of buildings is sparser. Most of the businesses I've come across have been about the size of that newspaper shop in Carolina Place Mall (the one by the food court). This includes restaurants with tables to sit at. And forget about parking spots; they're ALL FULL. ALL THE TIME.
-The mall I randomly came across while wandering around uptown was pretty lame. It had four categories of store: Stores for women (including clothes, perfume, etc), restaurants, an eye-glasses store, and one book store. I was hoping to take an interesting picture inside, but there wasn't anything worth documenting.
That's all for now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)