HiBAiSHi

Once upon a time we all traveled together to Italy. Unfortunately, since everybody had a little trouble getting along, three separate groups were formed. Zach went to Barcelona on Thursday early. Austin, Mark, Preeyanka, and Monty (short for Montserrat) coincidentally enough ended up having the same flights to Barcelona and back from Madrid, so we went together. Again. Due to near mishaps and paranoid travelers, a decision was made to go to the airport four and a half hours early. It takes about an hour and a half to get there. Right. Anyway, I decided to stay up all night and ended up cooking for myself at 4 a.m. and didn’t even need to eat until 7 p.m. the next day.

I should mention that Ray and Zach had an issue with their computer science professor, affectionately known as Max due to students showing no respect whatsoever for any teacher at this “uni.” Essentially, he had given them an exam during reading week and let them know only three weeks before. Originally they planned to just skip the exam, but found out the weight was going to be 40% of their grade. This pretty much forced them to change their plans as the professor proved to be unreasonable. So, Zach had to fly back from Barcelona early and Ray had to cancel the Barcelona trip altogether and pay really expensive flights. Thus, they kept making the “Max face,” consisting of an awkward combination of gritting teeth and a protruding chin – with eyeballs going around the room and making a loud “uhhhh” sound that sounds close to Scooby Doo. Jinkies.

Anyway, with my Moroccan roommate Yassine, some of us set out to Barcelona. Fortunately he spoke Spanish, French, and Arabic and could translate for us most of the time – except in Barcelona, they actually speak Catalan. Annoying. We had to fly into Girona and after plenty of delays, we finally got to Barcelona at about 5:00 p.m., 11 hours after we set out. We went around La Rambla that night and vastly overpaid for one of the worst meals I’ve ever had, then went around and saw the shops and the street entertainers. One showed off his ventriloquism by making his Kermit the Frog puppet play the piano. Later we walked around the port and enjoyed a bucket of cotton candy while jazz music played as there was a concert for the Barcelona Regatta race. It’s weird hearing people sing so well in English then revert right back to speaking Catalan after applause.

We stayed in a hostel close to La Sagrada Familia, otherwise known as the most popular construction site in the world. There’s this place called Montjuic, loosely translated to “Mount Jew” that houses a fortress and the 1992 Olympic games which we trekked up to the next day. Pretty cool. Those Jews get everything. Unfortunately coming down the castle one of the cable cars shut down before it was even 1:30 p.m. and we had to walk quite a bit. But we finally found a subway stop and made it to the beach. I haven’t been there since I was a naked little boy (there’s photographic evidence). We finished the day with the Picasso museum. Despite being in his native city, there really wasn’t much there from his cubist phase except for Las Meninas, which we also saw later in Madrid. I think I’m beginning to understand more and more modern art. Maybe.

The next morning we left for Casablanca and the long ride to Tangier. Despite the fears from some that felt I was going to a third world country, I thought it was a fairly metropolitan city in constant construction like many developing cities in China, except Tangier is in an incredible location on a double peninsula with an amazing bay. So no pollution. We stayed with Yassine’s family and he showed us his room, or “studio” where he used to record stuff. We listened to his demo and other music. He told us that he had an opportunity to play for over 500,000 people but was unable to find a band as he usually plays most of the instruments by himself.

Ray and Zach then arrived at midnight right after their exam, and we went out to the Tangerine, a bar nearby. Seriously, Tangier is “Tanger” in French. And they can definitely grow oranges and orange-like substances. I don’t know why I never put this together. Anyway, there we randomly found a few people from Yassine’s high school. Two twins were also celebrating their birthday on the same day and due to a close relationship with the bartender, they ended up paying for our drinks.

We woke up and registered for classes. We’re good kids. After some terrible paella in Barcelona, we finally had the home-made huge pan style paella that only seems right, and we went out to the beach on the Atlantic side. There are no maps of the city of Tangier available because well, the government is afraid of bombs I think. But anyway, I’m pretty sure we went to the beach by Cap Spartal because that’s what I read from the easyJet inflight magazine. Can’t go wrong there. There was a lighthouse. But yeah, the beach was ridiculous because there was so much wind that every few minutes the sand particles would just rush at us like a sandstorm. But the weather in London makes any beach seem amazing. Later that night we went out to celebrate Ray’s birthday with his favorite food, hamburgers. Seriously. So we went to this place called Eric’s where they made their burgers with really sweet bread, an egg on top, and some cheese and grilled onions. Not bad. We went out to another bar and hung out for a bit before heading home.

For the last day in Tangier, we woke up early and all got haircuts for basically the first time since the summer. We had authentic Moroccan couscous for lunch, and then went out to see the Kasbah and shop at the Medina. Annoyingly, everybody kept saying “konichiwa” or “arrigato” as I walked by because Japanese media filters well to Africa apparently. Unfortunately, this did not help me negotiate. Even though so many of them were so hospitable. We walked further downtown and saw a lot of the sights that were used in the Bourne Ultimatum, including the café and the location of the rooftop chase scene (I haven’t seen it yet, but I made Tai download for me). Yassine told us that Paul Greengrass actually went to his high school and they had a talk about using Final Cut Pro. That’s one degree right there.

We went to Madrid the next day. Shortly after we arrived, we had to go on the metro to the city center and our hostel and due to it being so crowded, someone tried to steal my wallet out of my back pocket (didn’t think to put it anywhere safer since I just got out of the plane) and when I quickly spun around he elbowed me in the face and ran off of the train. Anyway, I told my little story to Kassity and she feels inside her bag and realizes that her wallet was actually stolen. Awful. So after we got to our hostel she immediately has to call and e-mail her parents about canceling all her stuff. We ate dinner at Museo de Jamon, which was pretty exciting until we realized it was just a chain restaurant.

At our hostel bar we met two girls from Villanova, one of whom dated our suspended “star” quarterback in middle school apparently, and somehow the conversation went to a guy named Joe Costello, who Ray knew from high school. Of course drunk Ray was a big fan of Joe Costello’s and kept on talking and talking about him, with intimate details about his hairy arms and how it seemed like how the hair would transfer if he touched someone. Naturally the girls asked us if he would be okay later. We walked around Madrid for a little and then went to this club that was free, including free drinks for girls.

Ray awoke from passing out on top of his sheets and left for Toledo the next morning to meet his friend Casey and we walked around Madrid. It was nice because there was a Spanish holiday and thousands of people were gathered for mass outdoors. We went walking out past the palace to a park and rowed boats and road the cable cars before we got back. Then we met a really nice Australian girl who was an au pair in Milan and told us stories about randoms spraining her knee from behind and hospitalizing her and her travels through Europe. We ate some bocadillos for dinner, loaded up on sangria, received some complimentary shooters, and then went back to our hostel where there was a John McEnroe look-alike DJ sporting a tennis racket so we decided to get Crazy in Love like Funk Soul brothers. We met up with some of Zach’s friends from high school and they went to some crazy five-story club called Teatro Kapital, but I ended up coming back and talking to this guy from East Carolina about his adventures in Interlaken, Switzerland doing the high roping courses and swinging from ropes while being thousands of feet away from the ground in the alps. Something for the future, perhaps.

Due to the late night (the Spanish really do spend time partying until 5am pretty regularly), we slowly woke up and went to the Museo Nacional del Prado and saw the Goya exhibits – who is pretty crazy in his own right – as well as the non-Picasso Las Meninas. Walking around the nice park I saw some Spanish wedding photographs taking place with bridesmaids clad in bright orange and noticed how the Spanish love to lisp their “c’s” and “z’s,” just because a king used to do it. Strange stuff. We went to the airport later and Ray came back extremely excited about spending 87 eurocents to go out the previous night and get free drinks through theft and the occasional homosexual who offered him shots. Maybe it was just the lisping though. It’s confusing overseas.