Are you guys ready for the epic-ness of the next few posts? 'Cause I don't even know if I'm ready. But let's begin...
So two Wednesdays ago it was my flatmate Emily's 21st birthday celebration, which was quite the shitshow [please accept my apologies for the seemingly unnecessary foul language, but there is no other existing word in the English language ridiculous enough to describe it], and my traveling buddy Gilli and I were up until the wee hours of the night imbibing very large quantities of alcohol with a very large group of friends - some old, some really old, and some nice new German ones [that was also the night I discovered the vodka shot with a slice of lemon. Possible future trouble. I'll keep you informed]. Long story short, I slept through my alarm the next morning and Gilli just happened to wake up 30 minutes before we had to leave for the airport. Mind you, neither of us had started packing or doing our obligatory household cleaning. We got our shit together like it was going out of style and by some grace of god we managed to get out of there in about 40 minutes. We took it as a good sign.
When we arrived in the airport in Madrid, our only instructions were, "Take the metro to the bus station. Just follow the signs." Well, there weren't any signs, and when we went to the information desk and asked the nice man behind the counter where the metro line to the bus station was, he looked at us like we were speaking Esperanto. Luckily, a guy our age who was on our flight happened to be standing behind us and helped us ask again in Spanish. Turns out he had to go to the same place as well. This kid pretty much saved our asses. Not only did he lead us exactly to where we needed to be, but he helped us buy the right bus tickets and was unnecessarily kind and talkative throughout the whole process. We seriously owed him, but he wanted to remain loyal to his girlfriend, so that was that and we parted ways.
We quite literally caught our bus as it was about to pull out of the station [thanks in part to our lack of information and in part to the consequent mis-information we received from incredibly unhelpful bus station personnel] and got a finger-wagging from the driver, but we made the 6 hour drive to Granada, where we found Kirsten's
piso and...Christine! We were informed of the plans for the night: to go out bar-hopping and dancing [by the way, people in Granada don't START clubbing until 4 in the morning. Ridiculous] and we not-so-reluctantly obliged. It was
muchos fun. Oh, how multi-lingual I am - aaaamazing!
Granada, a mia credere... (In my opinion...)
[this is a new section of the blog that will hopefully be a more efficient way of putting all my thoughts down without writing you the great Italian/American novel every post]:
|| Granada has the coolest and most truly artistic graffiti I've ever seen. People graffiti gorgeous illustrated poetry on the walls, for Christ's sake.
|| I'm fairly sure that most of the mohawk/mullet/rattail diaspora has left America, settled in Spain, and multiplied. Spaniards have the weirdest haircuts I've ever seen
|| tapas are amazing and the US should really jump on that bandwagon
|| cream cheese in a kebab?! who knew it made the best drunk food ever?
|| the [pre-Easter] Procession in Granada was one of the most intense things I've ever witnessed. This somber parade of people in what unfortunately look like black KKK outfits with extra-tall pointy things on their heads [I need to double-check this but I'm pretty sure the KKK stole the idea for their costumes from this tradition] paraded down Granada's main streets, with floats of Jesus and Mary that were so massive it took about 30 people to carry each of them. They were followed by a marching band which was mainly led by the percussion, the noise of which actually preceded the whole group by hundreds of feet in each direction; the solemn, foreboding drumbeats somehow managed to make our hearts beat just a little faster.
|| if you go to the Alhambra, make sure to look around in the estate right next to it: you will quite literally feel like you are in a Hans Christen Anderson fairytale, and you'll be waiting for handsome men in billowing tunics to ride by on white horses past the fountains and the mermaids swimming around the waterfalls and the castle and the peacocks and the swans...
|| Flamenco dancing is an intense art form, not for the fainthearted, and Flamenco dancers make some of the best faces ever [yes, this is a great generalization]
|| Paella is overrated and kind of sucks
All in all, my stay in Granada has been one of my favorite parts of this entire European trip - that's how wonderful it was. Kirsten was an amazing host and not only showed us everything we didn't know we wanted to see, but took us to delicious restaurants [read: perfectly grilled swordfish buttered to perfection and salad with the most amazing croutons known to man], made us a gourmet meal herself [chicken curry with strawberry/mango/lemon juice/black pepper salad - don't knock it 'til you try it], and as always, provided the most wonderful entertainment. We also got to meet her dad, Adolf, whose visit overlapped with ours for several days. He was just as nice as Kirsten is, and he spent way too much money buying us food and alcoholic beverages. Gotta love them Wirths. I sure do.
It was hard for Gilli and especially me to say good-bye to Christine and Kirsten, but we reluctantly parted ways, wiped our tears, and eagerly anticipated our adventures in Africa! [Yes, I know we were only in Morocco, but it sounds
sooo much cooler when you say
Africa. You know it's true.] If only we had known what African adventures awaited us...
...and with that awesome alliteration [
eh? eh? (that's me elbowing you so you'll notice my complex wit)] I leave you, dear reader, undoubtedly on the edge of your seat, until
la parte seconda of my story...
