Central Madrid

May 26
I made it to Madrid fine. I´ve begun my classes. For "Spain Today" we´re going to see a bullfight tomorrow.  This weekend I´ll be out of Madrid starting Friday to travel with the whole group to places in Spain like the aqueduct and other things. It won´t cost much, I think, since everything is supposedly paid for. I might have to get some meals.  Things are much different here :) but I'm learning a lot.

May 31
The bull fight was supposedly the best one in the world this year; it ended a several week festival that occurs every summer. The king was there-- in a suit. Last week, I spent some time going to various places to eat at suppertime. One of them had a foosball table, with guys playing all the time. They were fast! Sometimes it´s hard to remember to not use cash, but one of them I remembered to put on credit card.

I've gotten back from our weekend trip to a few towns near Madrid. Segovia had a huge Roman aqueduct, and some really good food. In Avila, more of the streets were original, and it had a nicer feel to it. Avila was surrounded by a huge wall which we went up on.  After that we went to El Escorial, where a king had built a huge school/monastery/royal residence in the mountains. The Spanish kings since then are buried there in an amazing crypt.

My classes are going well and aren´t too much work, but sometimes it seems like a lot.  This week after class one day some people are going to the old capital at Toledo, and I'm probably going. This weekend, there is a trip to another city, Granada (180 euros). The rumor is that the optional weekend trips organized for us will all be within Spain, but it would be nice to travel to a few other places around Europe, too.

June 1
I´ve gotten back from a class trip to an old city near Madrid called Chinchon. It was a gift from a Spanish king to aristocrats, so it was a rich town. Madrid is big and I see new things every day! I saw metro walls today that looked like they were undergoing work, or had been, and wondered if they were from March 11th (train bombing). I´m working on a report about Pais Vasco (Vasco Country), a troublesome autonomous community (like a state) of Spain. ETA, the terrorist organization, is based there.

I´ve made plans to travel this weekend to Ireland and England. There is a place in England I can stay for 20 euros a night, which is really cheap. I´ve got tickets between England and Ireland, but need to make a phone call to (in Spanish) order tickets to England. We´ll see how that goes, maybe I´ll need to ask for help from the IES staff with that tomorrow.

Someone today told me the time difference is 7 hours. www.time.gov claims the time in Indiana is 13:08 (just after 1pm), while here it´s 20:08 (just after 8pm). So, to call at 5pm Indiana time, I would call at 5+7=12 midnight Madrid time.

June 7
I got back last night from England. I arrived Thursday night last week and in the morning I went to Belfast, N. Ireland. I saw a lot of old buildings and had some English/Irish food and heard a lot of their accents. At the end of the day I flew back to England.

Saturday I went to 221b Baker Street (¨Sherlock Holmes´ residence¨). I took the Underground to Harrod´s, a large department store in London. Then, I took the Underground to Picadilly Circus. From Picadilly (like New York´s "Times Square", but in London) I walked down through Trafalgar Square with Nelson´s Column and past the Ministry of Defense to the Houses of Parliament. I crossed the bridge to the London Eye (a huge Ferris wheel) and went home for a rest. In the morning I went to a Church of England. After the service, I went back to the Houses of Parliament.  From there, I flew back to Madrid.

Today, I was part of a group of students who did a presentation on Pais Vasco (Vasco Country). It turned out pretty interesting. This evening, I went to a 1.5 hour class on Flamenco. It was fun, but I don´t remember how to do it. I might be able to appreciate it more now, though, next time I see it. Tomorrow our "Spain Today" class is going to a theater in the evening.

June 9
The food here is different, but a lot of it is really good. Madrid claims to have some of the best seafood. Last night I had some swordfish, cheap, and really good. I live in an apartment on the 6th floor of an apartment building. It´s rented or owned by a retired lady who lives in one room and lets out 3 other rooms. One of the other rooms is empty, and one is occupied by another student from Purdue. There is a back balcony and a common eating area / living room, as well as a kitchen and 1.5 baths.

Spanish meals are at different times and tend to be different sizes and consist of different things. The bread is really good, and there is a cold tomato soup salad called Gazpacho (if that´s how it´s spelled) where you get a bowl of it and add chopped onions, chopped cucumber, chopped tomato, and chopped boiled egg, also cold. The meats can be really good, and Spaniards love to eat pig. One good dish is a thick (1 or 2 inches thick) pancake-like "tortilla de patatas" made from potatoes and eggs and I don´t know what else. It is sliced like a pie and is about the size of a dessert plate. It tastes like mashed potatoes, but has more texture because of the potato pieces in it, which are soft but slightly distinguishable as you eat it. Apparently they cook with a lot of Olive oil, but I don´t notice it usually.

Last night I went to a Flamenco style dance at the Spanish Theater near Sol (Puerta del Sol, "door of the sun", sol for short, is the center of Madrid.) Flamenco has a lot of arm motion and stamping of feet. It was a small theater, but looked fancy. Afterwards I went out with about 18 other Purdue students for a dinner of tapas (small dishes costing $3.60 (3 euros) each. It was on the same square as the theater and we ate outside. Then, a few of us went to Sol and got ice cream at 12:30 in the morning. McDonald´s was the only place open, so we went there, but it was still interesting. We met a Spaniard and him and 2 other students and I talked for 1.5 hrs.

Thursday at 10:30am-12:00noon and 12:30pm-2pm I have midterm exams. That´s about 3:30am - 7am Indiana time.

June 14
This past weekend I went to Valencia and Germany. Valencia is the capital of the autonomous community (like a state in the USA) of Valencia. It´s on the Mediterranean, and is 4 hours by bullet train. It´s pretty cheap to go there. It´s famous for paella, a seafood dish with rice. I walked around the city looking at old buildings and then headed to the beach on a bus. I had some ice cream near the beach before heading back. The city is an active commercial port. Saturday morning (around 10 hours after I left the city), it was hit with a hurricane.

I flew from Madrid on Saturday midday to Frankfurt, Germany, near southern middle Germany. In Frankfurt I took the metro downtown, and after a few random turns and a handful of city blocks, went into a neighborhood German bar/restaurant. Then, I flew from Frankfurt to Hanover, which is more northern. In Hanover, Germany, I took a 200km/hr train to Wolfsburg. Wolfsburg is on a canal that runs east and west in Germany. It used to be on/near the border between East Germany and West Germany. I stayed overnight and met some Vascos (Northern Spaniards). In the morning, I went to the VW Museum and then to the Autostadt. There were no factory tours because it was the weekend. Instead, I drove a VW Toureg (SUV, 6 cyl) around a course for about 1/2 hr.

Today after class I went to the water park near Madrid. It was fun and unique. It wasn´t crowded and there were a wide variety of slides and other things. Now, I´m trying to find a hostel (like a hotel, but smaller and cheaper) in Paris for this coming weekend, and to reserve a flight.

June 22
This past weekend I traveled to Paris, France. Friday morning, I went to the Arc de Triumph, and then walked downhill and crossed the river to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Saturday I went to the Louvre. I saw the Mona Lisa was there, along with a wide variety of other art. Early in the day, some artists were sitting near paintings with their own easels and art supplies, painting a copy, I suppose in order to learn. Sunday, I had a good French meal of salad with cheese and mushrooms, pepper steak, and chocolate mousse. Then I took a bus tour of the city. After that, it was time to head back to the airport. This weekend, I am going to Rome. I also have a paper due on Thursday this week.

June 30
This past weekend I was in Rome. It was hot! I arrived on Friday night and took an express train from the airport to the main train station, which was near my hotel. I watched some Eurocup soccer on TV and saw some CNN Eurpean version in English. Saturday morning I took the metro to the Coliseum. It was in a big park with a lot of old Roman and other buildings and fragments. I walked from that part to St. Peter´s Basilica in Vatican City -- across the river from the part of Rome I had been in. Sunday, I had some Italian pastries in the morning, and then I went back to Vatican City. There, I went to the Vatican Museums, including the Sistine Chapel. There were some really famous paintings there, and it´s better looking at the originals than at pictures. It was free because it was the last Sunday of the month. After that, I went to a restaurant near my hotel for an inexpensive but good dinner of Italian bread, salad, spaghetti, steak, and strawberries. Then, I went to Termini train station to find a place to read, but it was loud and warm everywhere! So, I took the train to the airport and had McDonald´s there -- the food was exactly the same, but it was kind of hard to order.

One of the things our group did recently in Madrid was go to an opera sung in Spanish. It was 3 hours long with breaks included, and it had 2 breaks. The 2nd break, we went across the street to an old restaurant for Croquetas, a fried thumb-size snack with a few little pieces of diced ham inside. Last night, our class went to an art opening in a building where some of the spaces were art galleries.

This weekend, I´m trying to get my flight changed from leaving Saturday and arriving Sunday, to leaving Friday and arriving Friday. The way the time differences work out, don´t be surprised if it´s 2 am and I´m wide awake playing computer games!

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