Beer, Meat, Fast Cars, and Fire.

Okay, so after London, the next stop on our tour of Europe was Munich, Germany. My roommate Charlie and a few of his friends came with me, Steb, and Zac to attend a festival called Starkbierfest. Starkbierfest, which literally means Strong Beer Fest, commemorates the Monks of Munich who, during the Lent season of fasting, brewed an extra strong beer to help with their hunger. We would soon find out that Monks really know how to party.

Upon our arrival in Germany, we quickly found that Munich is a city designed for men. Our friend, The Godfather, had decided last-minute to book a flight there to meet up with us for the second weekend in a row. He met us at the Munich central train station and showed us to our hostel… right in the center of what seemed to be the red light district (reason number 1 that Munich is a city for men). After getting settled into our hostel, we headed out with the Godfather to grab some lunch. We walked down the main pedestrian area of Munich and found ourselves in a big beer hall. The smallest quantity of beer that you can order in these halls is a half liter. We went with the liter option (liters of beer: number 2 reason Munich is a city for men). To go with it, we got some traditional Bavarian sausages (the amount of meat consumed in Munich: number 3 reason that it is a man’s city). It was good food and good drink. We walked back to our hostel past all the German gibberish signs (worst language ever) and all the beautiful Gothic architecture to hang out for a little while before going on a tour of the major beer halls that night. We went with our tour group to a few beer halls before breaking off to go to the one that we had heard of: Hofbrauhaus. This place was huge… basically a gigantic open room with a bunch of tables in it where you sat down wherever you could, and not necessarily with your group of friends. We were lucky enough to snag a table together next to a couple of Spaniards and a few Germans who claimed to be the cousins of Jaromir Jagr (famous hockey player). A couple of beers and a roasted leg of pig later, things got a little hazy. All said, the Hofbrauhaus was an unbelievable time, and an experience that everyone should try if they have the chance.

The next day, we woke up and nursed our hangovers with some coffee while we tried to decide what to do. It also occurred to us at that point that we had no idea where the Godfather was, and he wasn’t answering his phone. Shortly thereafter, I got a call from a strange phone number. It was the Godfather, calling from the 4 star hotel he had stayed in the night before. Apparently, he disappeared at some point during our long night in the Hofbrauhaus and returned to his hostel only to engage in fisticuffs with the manager of said hostel. He was gently escorted out by something like 5 large German officers of the law, and elected to stay in a 4 star hotel that night rather than one of the three other hostels on the same street as his. He also woke up with a brand-new pair of Ray Bans, box and all… and only God knows how he got them. Our theory is that he stole the Ray Bans from the manager, and that’s how it all went down. But I digress. After finding him and getting ourselves together, we decided to go to the BMW factory and museum (fast cars: reason number 4 Munich is a city for men). It was really cool to see the origins of the company and some of the cool cars and motorcycles they’ve put out over the years. When we got back to the city, we continued to walk around to see some of the government buildings, a ton of Churches, and the Marienplatz main plaza with the famous Glockenspiel clock.

That night was Starkbierfest. In a word: unbelievable. We arrived to the Paulaner beer hall at about 8:00 PM. Apparently we were late. As the only Americans in the place (which was even bigger than Hofbrauhaus), we were astonished at the scene we walked into. Never in my life have I seen so many people so drunk. People were dancing, singing, jumping around on tables, sleeping on tables… it was really something to walk into. We grabbed our liters of Starkbier and began to consume. Now, not only does one beer translate to roughly four or so cans of beer, but the beers themselves were significantly stronger. A normal beer is about 3.5%-4% alcohol volume. Starkbier is more like 10%. So, after about two of these bad boys we were up on the tables singing and dancing along with all our new German friends. Most of the time Germans are thought of to be somewhat cold and very austere. That’s not the case during Starkbierfest. They were all friendly, hilarious, and loved talking about American culture. After singing “I Will Survive,” “Country Roads,” “Highway to Hell,” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You”, we made our way to the tram and headed back to the bar at our hostel for a nightcap. On the way, we stopped in one of the many casinos to play the slots for a couple minutes (all the casinos: reason number 4 Munich is a city for dudes).

The next day, we had a flight to catch, so we walked around Munich, had a great “American” breakfast (bacon and eggs), and took a walk through the famous English Gardens. Munich really was a beautiful city with great examples of Gothic architecture and great, welcoming people… I have to say that I was a little surprised by that.

Alright, I’m almost up to date with the blog. Last weekend, I went with a few friends to Valencia (about 4 and a half hours south of Barcelona) for a festival called Las Fallas. In a nutshell, Las Fallas is Valencia’s way of welcoming spring. Each “barrio” of Valencia spends the entire year constructing giant statues made out of materials like wood and paper machet. They’re really, really exquisite works of art, and each one honestly belongs in a museum. However, only one of them gets put in a museum. The rest are burned in the middle of the streets and plazas of Valencia. The raging infernos that result from burning these 60-foot giants, combined with the most incredible fireworks show you’ve ever seen and little kids throwing around M-80s like candy on Halloween, is what constitutes the welcoming of spring to Los Valencianos.

Now that I’ve laid down the groundwork, I’ll explain a little bit about the way we experienced Las Fallas. Zac, Steve, and I, along with some friends from class, went with a group called Stoke Travel. Stoke is a travel company for students that takes people on tours such as Las Fallas, surfing in Morocco, and snowboarding in Andorra. It’s run by a bunch of drunk Australians, who really remind me of an Australian version of the cast of Jackass. For the Las Fallas trip, Stoke doesn’t get a hostel… we stayed in tents at a campsite about a block from the beach. There were bathrooms, showers, and they cooked us breakfast and barbeque for dinner, so it wasn’t like we were roughing it. Oh, and it was all you can drink beer and sangria for 5 euro a day. So… yeah. That was fun.

Our bus got in on Friday night at about 8, and we left for the city to see the festivities at about 11:30. So, in that three hour time span, we settled in and started taking advantage of the drink deals. By the time we got on the bus to go to Valencia, everyone had taken a considerable number of beers to the face and we were all chanting USA on the way into town. When the bus got in, the guys from Stoke surprised everyone with a free liter of sangria each to take in the show. It was like, “hey guys, now that you’re all good and drunk, have this free liter of sangria!” (In an Aussie accent). So, we started walking into the city, which was like a war zone with all the fireworks and M-80’s going off all over the place, and the constant fog of smoke. We forced our way through the crowds of drunken Valencianos to get to the main city square, where the biggest Falla was going to happen. The statue was right in the center of the square, and was literally like 60 feet tall. The plaza was filled with thousands of people, and there was a squad of firefighters taking the necessary precautions to make sure that nothing went wrong. This consisted simply of putting big sheets over the trees in the plaza, which I think would actually only encourage the flames… but anyway. As the firefighters were dousing the statue with gasoline, we watched an INSANE fireworks show, and saw the smoke of other fires rising up through the air. When it came time for the main show to go down, all the lights in the plaza went off and smoke started filling the square. Then we started to see the flames, which quickly grew to a blaze. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, and I’m sure I’ll never see anything like it again. I still can’t believe that they actually allow that to happen in the center of the city in a plaza FILLED with people. It would NEVER fly in the USA.

The next day, we woke up and had a good breakfast from the Aussies and headed in to town to see Valencia by day. We didn’t get a good idea of it the night before, but it is actually a very nice town. Not too big, not too small. Very pretty architecture with narrow, maze like streets and lots of flowers. We had some traditional Valencian paella, walked around, and headed back to camp. We took a brief nap during a rainstorm in our tents (kinda cool), then woke up for the barbeque. That night we just chilled out, drank some beer, and ate some burgers and dogs. It was a really good time to just be relaxed (not to mention the Aussies were just hilarious).

Well, that’s pretty much it. Next week is our spring break… I promise that I’ll write a good post right after. But class just ended (this came at ya from Mediterranean Oceanography), so I gotta run. Vito, you know what I expect.

Carvin the Alps and the Crew Hits London

So I'm officially the worst blogger ever. I always say I'm gonna make a post soon, and then never do. I guess it's just easy to get distracted around here (not that I've ever had trouble getting distracted anywhere). But here I am, finally sitting down to write a post.

Where do I begin? Last I wrote, I was in Sitges for Carnaval. It's been an action-packed month since then, with a ton of travelling. The last weekend of February, Steb, Zac and I went to Interlaken, Switzerland. It's a small town nestled in the Swiss Alps, right in between two crystal-clear blue lakes. In terms of physical beauty, I've never seen a place like Switzerland. Everywhere you looked was simply breathtaking. That said, we did have a little trouble getting there. Our original flight to Zurich was canceled due to a strike of air-traffic controllers in France. With nobody keeping an eye on the skies in France, you can't fly an airplane over the entire country. And apparently, you can't fly around it, either. Two of the things I hate the most in life (labor unions and the French) conspired against me to try and ruin my weekend. But we didn't let that happen. On Friday, we walked around the city to grab some lunch and take in the sights. We walked around for a while before heading back to our hostel, Balmer's Herberge, to take a nap (we were exhausted from our re-scheduled 6AM flight). That night, we had some dinner and a few beers before turning in early to rest up for the next day. On Saturday, we headed up the mountains for a day on the slopes. I snowboarded while Steve and Zac skied. This being the first time Zac had ever attempted skiing, it was a pretty hilarious day (although he did win the most improved and best attitude awards). Like I said before, I've never seen anything as beautiful in my life as I did that day. From the top of the Swiss Alps, everything just looks unbelievable. Six hours or so on the slopes, though, will make a guy tired. We went back to the hostel, and again, we took a nap (this one well deserved). That night, we ate dinner at Hooters. Having buffalo wings for the first time in two months was, possibly, one of the best parts of the weekend. The only problem was that, when you factored in the exchange rate, our meal ran us about $90. Switzerland is crazy expensive. After dinner, we went to the club on the ground floor of our hostel and had a blast with the locals and some other Americans we had met. The next day we tried to get up early to go paragliding, but some nasty winds came in and we couldn't get in the air... it was a major disappointment. On the whole though, we had a great time in Switzerland, and I'll never forget the experience of snowboarding in the Swiss Alps.

We got back to Barcelona, went to class for the week, and ducked out on Thursday night to go to London. I LOVED London, for a number of reasons. 1: My family was there. 2: My friend The Godfather studies there. 3: Our other friend Zack came in for the weekend. 4: The speak English. 5. The Royal Bayswater Hotel (Most deceiving name ever. Not an actual hotel. Not in any way royal. Not located by a bay, or any body of water for that matter. A pure dump. But, our phat crew managed to turn it into a raging party and it was awesome all the same). We came into London with 7 people... Zac, Steb and I, plus four of our girl friends who are studying in Barcelona and go to IU. London is a truly awesome city... I loved everything about it. The people were nice, the city was beautiful, and everything had a really distinct feel to it like it was royal. They really take that monarchy stuff seriously... everything in London is so regal. Really interesting. We walked around on Friday, and I did some sightseeing with the fam. It was great to see my sisters and my mom and my brother in law after two months of not being able to talk to them whenever I want. After seeing Big Ben, Parliament, the London Eye, and Abbey Road, my family and I headed back to their hotel to relax before dinner. After a great steak (they don't really have our kind of steak in Spain... it was fantastic to have a real stake), I headed back to the Royal Bayswater too meet up with the "Crew" and get things moving on the night out in London Town. Our pregaming skills were really on display here, as we crammed out 15 people into our 8-person hostel bunk room and bumped 90s music and "I'm On a Boat" as loud as we could and sang every word. The Godfather took us to one of his local favorites, and we had a great time hanging out around Picadilly Circus. The next day we did more sightseeing, stopping by Princess Diana's mansion and a place called Camden Market for some cheap food and good people watching. We then went to the Cabinet War Rooms... This is where Churchill and the Brits laid out all their plans for WWII. It's a bunker right in the middle of London that has 6 feet of steel re-enforced concrete overhead to protect from the German bombs during the Blitz of London. It was really cool to see all the recent history and the place where so many huge decisions were made that affected history. We saw Churchill's secretary's to-do list from D-Day as well as the meeting minutes from the day the Allies won the war in Europe... very cool stuff. We then sat in on a choral performance in St. Paul's Cathedral and saw Shakespeare's theater before getting some dinner and heading back to the old Bayswater for round two. Now of course, we pregamed harder than most people find acceptable, and hopped on the Tube to get to Picadilly, where we went to a bar called O'Neal's. We slammed Jaeger bombs (cause we're awesome like that), and when Empire State of Mind came over the speakers, we took over the whole place with our Americanness. After that, it's a blur.

The next morning, we got up and checked out of the Royal Bayswater and got what turned out to be the most expensive breakfast any of us had ever eaten. The bill itself wasn't that big, but the horribly slow service led to us missing our flight. I mean, we were there on time, but a certain low-cost airline called RyanAir has a strange way of doing things. After we ran through security (nobody even asked me for ID the whole time... kinda scary) and ran to the absolute furthest gate in the airport, the people working at the gate told us that we couldn't get on the plane. You see, we were missing a particular stamp on our boarding pass... one that we were never told we needed, even when we checked in at the front desk. Long story short, the employees of RyanAir were far and away the rudest people I've ever met, and we had to buy 150 pound tickets from EasyJet the next morning in order to get back to Barcelona in time for class. So we were out the dough from two flights, had nowhere to stay, nothing to do, and all our luggage with us. So what did we do? We went back into London, got some dinner, and saw Alice in Wonderland in 3-D. After that, we defended our nation's pride against some dickhead Brit, got on a train to the airport for the second time that day, and tried to snag a few z's on the cold, hard ground of London Gatwick. A successful trip.

Here I'm gonna do two things: first I'm gonna throw a quick shout-out to the fam, who visited me that next week in Barcelona. It was great to have you guys here and show you around the city. The dinners were good, the drinks better, and the company fantastic. I'm also gonna break this post off because it is getting just stupid long. And the next one will be too. So... sorry about that.

Montserrat, Super Bowl, Carnaval, and Late Night Grubbin'

Sup Cyberspace?

I know... it's been a while. But I'm back, and you can stop worrying. It's been a busy three weeks, full of... stuff. I guess I'll throw it back to a couple Saturdays ago, the sixth of February. My Spanish class and I won a scavenger hunt around the city of Barcelona in the first few days of class (Dothage finished second... as usual), so we won a free field trip to a place called Montserrat. Montserrat translates to "Jagged Mountain", which is pretty much what it was. It was about a 45 minute drive from the city, and we hiked to the top of the mountain and visited a Monastery there. The view from the top of the mountain was pretty epic, and it made for an outstanding Facebook profile picture, as you can see.

The next night was the Super Bowl. We went to an Irish Bar called Ryan's Pub to watch the game. The downstairs of the place was like a dungeon packed with Americans, Brits, and Spaniards all there in hopes to see the Colts drop it to the Saints... suffice it to say that nobody was disappointed. Probably one of my favorite moments here was the singing of the National Anthem at the start of the game. All the drunk Spaniards and Brits shut up for a couple minutes and let us soak it in. And boy, did we. I belted that tune as loud as my lungs would let me. I took a video of it on my camera, but it isn't uploading properly so that will have to come later. It was hard to see the TV through all the cigarette smoke down there, but it ended up being a great place to watch the game and argue with Brits over why American football is better than soccer. On the bus ride home, we met some people from Finland who were decked out in black and gold singing "When the Saints Go Marching In." Pretty hilarious. On the whole, a pretty solid weekend.

Not much went on that week, with the exception of one pretty crazy night out at a club. The next Saturday (the 13th) started festivities for Carnaval. There was a parade in the Poble Sec area of Barcelona, and despite the pouring rain and, at times, hail, the people of Barcelona put on a very good show. We ended up hanging out at our buddy Taylor's apartment for the night and had a great time there. But this was a mere teaser for what was to come. Tuesday night was the last night of Carnaval. We celebrated this in a small town called Sitges, 30 minutes south of Barcelona by train. Sitges also happens to be the most popular gay tourist destination in all of Barcelona... ZK felt right at home in his cop outfit. The place was nuts. LOTS of drag queens, but on the whole, just a bunch of people looking to have a good time. Lots of singing, dancing, and drinking in the street. I dressed as an Indian, and Doth got a mask and wore it backwards. Our host brother called him "El hombre de las dos caras..." The man of two faces. The picture at the top is Steb's costume, with me in the mirror in the background. It was a pretty ridiculous night, capped off by what was essentially a rave on the beach.

This last weekend, a bunch of girls we know from IU came to visit, and it was a friend of our's birthday. This made for a pretty rowdy Thursday and Friday, which led to a Saturday indoors. Sunday was actually a day of work for a change, with two essays due Monday, a quiz Tuesday, and a midterm Wednesday. It's all going to be worth it, though, when we go to Interlaken, Switzerland on Thursday. It will be our first trip outside Spain so far, and I couldn't be more excited to get started travelling. Next weekend we head to London to visit the most interesting man in the world, then Munich the weekend after that, Valencia after that, and then Spring Break, which we have yet to plan... we should probably get on that.

One last note: the late night food options back in America are one thing that I miss dearly. After a long night of clubs, we have pretty much one option... Maxipa. I know, the name doesn't necessarily conjure up images of good food, but trust me... it's good. It's a 24 hour bakery, and I do love the food. But any time I'm walking (staggering) home with a quiche or a croissant in my hands, I constantly think of how badly I wish it were a cheesy gordita crunch. Don't take it for granted, fellas.

I'm also posting a video of the parade from Carnaval For some reason it won't let me post the video from the beach afterward, but I'll get it up here at some point. I expect a couple comments on here to keep me posted on what's going down back home. Vito... tell me something about yourself. And again, sorry for the three weeks in between posts... I'll do better next time.

Take care homies,

Lodge OUT.

Lost Phones and Cultural Enlightenment

Sounds like some crazy stuff is going down back in B Town. It's been a while since I've gotten my blog on, but there's not that much to update on from overseas. I guess the most ridiculous story from the past two weeks has to do with me allegedly pretending to be from Spain and that I didn't know any English while talking to some American girl named Hannah at a club. When I woke up in the morning, Dothage had a text from my phone, which Hannah had somehow obtained. Either she stole it, or I gave it to her; either option is equally possible. Anyway, I called her up (in English) and asked if I could get my phone back. She agreed, but when I called her to get it, she didn't answer... for four days. Maybe she was just pissed to find out that I was actually American, or maybe she's just crazy. Anyway, ZK and I are at a club one night, and we thought it was hilarious to go up to groups of girls and ask them if they like music (his idea). We go up to a random group and ask them how they feel about music, and it turns out that these girls are Hannah's roommates. They were also of the thinking that Hannah was kind of crazy and, in the end, one of her roommates returned my phone to me the next day, 4 days after it had disappeared. I can only imagine that between the whole only speaking Spanish thing and the whole "do you like music?" thing, these girls have to think that I'm clinically insane.

That's not all we did last weekend, though. We also went to a place called Bar Marselles. It's the oldest bar in Barcelona, and one that serves absinthe. Some of the people that used to frequent Bar Marselles included Earnest Hemingway, Antoni Gaudi, Salvador Dali, and Pablo Picasso... which would explain a lot about cubism and the moderniste architecture movement. The absinthe tasted like liquified black licorice, which I found nasty, but Dothage loved. Also, it doesn't actually do anything and, contrary to what it seems like in Euro Trip, there is no talking green fairy. This was a cool spot, but my favorite part of last weekend could probably have been heavily influenced by the things that went on in Bar Marselles. I am talking about one of Gaudi's masterpieces, Parc Guell. Antoni Gaudi was an architect who was famous for the moderniste movement of architecture, wherein everything he designed looked like it came from a fairy tale or a hallucination. It was widely believed that Gaudi took a lot of drugs when designing buildings and parks, and one look at Google images will make you see why. The architecture at Parc Guell was unbelievable. But the thing that was best about it was the very top. Parc Guell is situated at the back end of Barcelona, on a mountain overlooking the city to the Mediterranean. At the very top of the park is a large stone cross that you can climb to and look out over the city. It was, without a doubt, the coolest place I've ever been. The view of the entire city was breathtaking. As soon as I can get an adapter to put my memory card in my comp, I'll put up pictures.

This weekend, our program had a study trip for all the students to a town called Tarrogonna, which was the ancient Roman capital of the Hispanic provinces. At one point in time, it was the second largest city in the world, behind only Rome itself. Now, it's pretty much a sleepy suburb of Barcelona. The weekend was really interesting, and pretty fun as well. We were each with our own Spanish class, so I wasn't with Dothage or ZK really until the evenings, but I have a solid Spanish class so it was fun. We saw a lot of medieval Gothic Cathedrals (awesome), some castles, some ancient Roman walls, an ancient amphitheater, a huge monastery, took a tour of the Torres Vineyards, etc. etc. It was a very informative and interesting weekend. It's just amazing that there are things still standing here that were built literally thousands of years ago. The history here is just incredible. So much has happened on this land over the years, it's hard to even imagine. Really puts into perspective how young America is (don't interpret that as a bad thing... USA is still, and forever will be, the greatest country on Earth. I tried to start a USA chant in the bar the other night, but it didn't catch on. I miss the frat.).

Hope all is well at school. Heard ATO got the boot, hopefully nothing bad happens to us. Vito, I'm looking forward to whatever ridiculous story you respond to this post with. Miss all you guys, and Dothage says "fuck all you hoes, get a grip".

Long live Drew Brees.

The Madness Continues

Vito, I'm glad to hear that things are going well at the house. I knew you wouldn't disappoint. I think we'd be doing you proud over here, too. Where do I begin?

Our classes haven't really fully started yet, but we've had some intensive Spanish classes this week, so my Spanish has gotten a lot better. I'm starting to adjust to living here, getting a little bit more on their schedule (still getting used to that) and learning how things go here. I think I discovered the reason that America is the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, too. We do everything fast and efficiency is the most important thing to us. Here, they do things just to do them. Take moving walkways, for instance: we use them to walk faster, whereas they simply stand there and ride. It's a way more relaxed culture. Even Becker would seem like he was in a rush here all the time.

I've seen a lot more of the city in the last week. The old town is unbelievable. The Cathedral and Barri Gotic are really cool, and all the architecture all over the city is so different than in America. La Rambla is the most interesting street in the world. There are a ton of street performers doing some pretty weird things. Living statues, invisible men, break dancers... it's crazy (and sketchy as all hell at night). We also went to a hedge maze and got way lost there. Yesterday, we went to Parc Montjuic, where there is a lot of stuff from the '92 Olympics and a badass old castle with a ton of cannons and stuff. The food is a little weird sometimes, but then again so is frat food. And there are no preservatives or anything, so it is all fresher and healthier than Mick's meatloaf. On the whole, the food is really good.

Since we've only had Spanish classes this week, we went out a lot. The money situation here is the biggest adjustment (besides their sleep schedule). Everything is expensive in Euros, which makes it even more expensive in dollars. Going out until six in the morning, when drinks cost like 7-8 euro, can get pricey. But we've found some ways around it. The fist is El Gato Negro. It's a shot bar that serves like 500 different shots. They're crazy as hell... all flaming or have some kind of prop involved, or something (just ask ZK what the Monica Lewinski is). All the shots are 2 Euro, which makes it a good place to get bombed on a budget. The other way to save dough is to go to the grocery store and buy a 2 Euro bottle of wine to drink on the Metro. Since you can't drink out of a wine bottle on the Metro (but you can drink it out of anything else), we resorted to buying big water bottles and pouring the wine in there. Do we look homeless when we're passing bottles around behind a dumpster before we go into a bar? Of course we do. But we're Americans, so nobody says anything.

Last night, we went to the FC Barcelona - Sevilla FC futbol match. It was un-freaking-believable. Camp Nou, Barca's stadium, is the largest in Europe, and like 4th largest in the world or something. It holds 99,000 people seated. Like I said, unbelievable. Barca won 4-0, the place was the loudest place I've ever been (except for the UC when the Hawks knocked the Canucks out of the playoffs last year on Patrick Kane's hat trick). They're crazy about Barca here... "mes que un club" (more than a club). It is everywhere you go. Barca is literally like the best team in the world, too. They won every league they play in last year - 6 trophies. It's like winning the grand slam in tennis or golf, except there are 6 trophies instead of 4. Anyway, I'm posting a video from right after Barca scored their first goal. ZK lost his mind in excitement, tripped over the seats in front of us, and faceplanted in the next row. As if all the Spaniards there didn't already hate us drunk American college students watching their team as if we know what's up. Thanks a lot, ZK.

Peace out homies, keep up livin the good life in the greatest bid week of all time.

PS - The best thing about living here is that nobody even knows who Peyton Manning is.

Spanish Rap

I've been wondering what the best Spanish rap is, and I think I've got my answer. Violadores del Verso... the Verse Violators. Check out some of their stuff on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBF0EY9RZ1o&NR=1&feature=fvwp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uYOlj51dgQ

Bienvenidos a Barcelona

Que tal amigos? So it's our third day here in Barca, and the last three days have been unreal. The trip began on Swiss International Airlines flight 9. There were like six IU kids on the flight, which had free booze (yes, free booze), on demand movies in your seat (check out Zombieland, it's hilarious), FREE TETRIS (I was Trissin' hard), and some dece meals. This got the party started early, about 30,000 feet above the Atlantic. After about an hour or so, though, it was just cramped and we realized we had seven hours left, which sucked. We got into Zurich late, and almost missed our flight to Barcelona, but they held it for us and we got in without any problems.

So far in Barca, we've been getting settled in pretty much. Dothboy Fresh and I live in a homestay with our senor, Jaume Reguant. He's a cool guy... cooks twice a day for us and does our laundry twice a week. It's pretty hard so far to find our way around the city, so we've been taking a lot of cabs, which is a real good way to lose all your loot. Fortunately, we know how to get to classes, and a lot of good bars and stuff are within walking distance of our apartment.

Now to get down to business. What have we been doing at night? The first night we got here, we were told by all the other IU kids that are here to meet up with them at Murphy's Irish Pub. Doth and I googled it, and no such place exists in Barcelona. So after about twenty minutes of looking for this place online and not being able to talk to anyone cause we had no phones, we decided to just get in a cab and hope the driver knew it. He knew the place we were talking about, but it is NOT called Murphy's. It's called the George Ryan, and for a little while we had no idea if we were in the right bar or if we were just two Americans looking to get beaten up and robbed. All the other yanks were in the back, and we found them and had a great night. This old Spanish guy kept on coming up to us, absolutely obliterated, and like touching the girls' faces and singing to them in Spanish. Huge time creeper. I had been wondering for a long time what the Spanish beer is, like their equivalent to Budweiser, and I got my answer on Thursday. It's San Miguel, and if the most interesting man in the world knew about it, he'd never touch a bottle of Dos Equis again. A lot of people had class in the morning, so we just went home when the bar closed at like 2 or 3 or something. I don't really know, I have no concept of time over the last few days.

Thursday at Murphy's was a cute little preview of what last night would be. Last night was epic. We first went out to dinner at a little Mexican place around the corner from our apartment. Good food, good margaritas. This is where the night got interesting. We thought it wouldn't take that long, so I told ZK to meet us at the bar we were going to half an hour after we left for dinner (his senora cooked for him so he didn't eat with us). After we ate, we walked to the bar. It's called La Bolsa, which is Spanish for Stock Exchange. There are stock tickers above the bar, and they display the prices of drinks. The prices change based on demand, so if I ordered five shots of vodka, the price of vodka would go up. So you buy whatever is cheapest at the time, which leads to drinking a lot of different types of alcohol and getting really drunk for relatively cheap. Long story short, there was a lot of singing and dancing at La Bolsa, where they really like to play 80's music and show reruns of Walker Texas Ranger on TV. The Spanish bartenders were crazy hot... one of them looked exactly like Sloane from Entourage. So we hung out by the bar and hit on them in broken Spanish all night. Tipping isn't customary here, and we gave them a 1 euro tip at the end of the night, and they gave us like ten free shots. They loved us. Sloane told me she had two kids (at least I think that's what she told me), to which I replied "lo no creo, eres demasiado bonita para ser madre". This means "I don't believe that, you're too beautiful to be a mother." My Spanish must have been working in high gear, cause she then turned around and showed us her tramp stamp, and then I called her my novia, or sweetheart.

After the bar closed at like three, we went to this club called Razzmatazz. It was completely insane. Five floors of pure grindfest, fist pumping, and bass. I can't even really tell you what happened there, I don't remember. I somehow ended up in a cab home by myself, which is like the one thing they tell you not to do, go anywhere alone at night. Whatever. When the cab pulled up, somehow Dothage and our roommate Charlie were just strolling up to the door with some hot grub... que delicioso. We mealed, snoozed, went to orientation, snoozed again, and that brings me here. Sorry for the novel of a blog post, just a lot of stuff to talk about. The next ones will be shorter. Adios por ahora, amigos.