Misadventures in Milan: What do you mean, “wrong airport”?

Austria trip, day 1: just a little bit crazy. And by “a little bit crazy” I mean dashing through airports like you’re being chased by rabid bears, then wandering around lost and homeless in a deserted corner of a completely foreign country at about 1:30 am, for starters.

Our itinerary was simple enough: *inhale* in three days fly from Sevilla to Milan (Italy) to Vienna (Austria) then take a train to Salzburg, another to Linz, then fly to England and then back to Sevilla. …What could possibly go wrong? Rewind to the beginning:

Meet the characters
There were 8 of us on the Austria trip:

David: Me. You already know me. The guy who takes buses the wrong way and occasionally has a hard time riding a bike.

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Ben: This trip’s fearless organizer. Ben’s German pronunciation is… really good. Yeah. Ben is friendly and has a penchant for suddenly vanishing and reappearing again, like Casper the friendly ghost. Ben loves Nutella.

Cameron: The fearless leader. Cameron isn’t afraid to strike up a Spanish conversation with random strangers, even if that random stranger speaks neither English nor Spanish. A convincing debater; almost persuaded us to believe that everyone speaks Dutch in Austria.

Bald Pizza and the Attack of the Churros

It’s time for you to meet some of my CC-CS buddies. Otherwise this will turn into one of those “me and my one friend and my other friend went to see my one friend. No, not that one, the other one”-type stories, which only make sense with some sort of accompanying tree-diagram-type character list. These guys all make an appearance in this post, and they’ll probably show up again later since at least a few of them are going to Austria and Paris with me in a few weeks. They’re good folks.

The characters:

Laura: The first night in Seville, Laura was our fearless leader on our timid little journey out of our hotel. Laura likes Príncipes, the little tubes of cookies they sell all over the place here (kind of like the Spanish equivalent of Oreos). Laura does not like tailgaters. Or the fact that 90% of all Spaniards walk slower than a sloth in Slo-Mo on the sidewalks here. This results in her tailgating slow Spanish walkers. Oh, the ironía.

Midnight: Not the best time to take a bus in completely the wrong direction

I am getting better at this not-being-lost-in-a-foreign-country thing. I abandoned my map weeks ago and almost always know which was is north now. In fact, we have to rewind  a whole 4 weeks to my first experience with Sevilla’s bus system before we get to any lost-in-Spain stories. But man, was I  lost. Supermegalost.

Wednesday four weeks ago I ventured out of Sevilla all on my lonesome to visit a family I’d met back at the convention in Madrid for a Bible study. They live about 15 minutes out of Sevilla in a suburb called… I can’t remember right now, but the bus stop is Los Irlandeses. I took a bus to another bus to Los Irlandeses no problem. Then I stood around looking lost until I happened to run into Manolo, the man of the house, who was out for a walk. He led me through a corridor and down a path to his house. All the houses are connected to those on either side, the little neighborhood forming a triangle that encloses a small courtyard.

Stepping into that courtyard is among the most amazing of my experiences in Spain thus far.

Classes, and Dashing Toward Them

This little list below has been my daily routine for the past 3 weeks. Except for when I have an evening class. In that case, my daily routine goes out the window and is replaced by a healthy amount of frantic dashing around, since I’m really not great at remembering that things like classes still exist after 3:00 pm. (For more on that scroll doooown.)

View from the bridge I cross every day.

The routine:

• Wake up at 7:20 am (midnight and a half back home)
• Squint at the wall until 8:00

Journey to Sevilla: Chasing trains and other awkward moments

So I kind of left you guys hanging in Madrid and went off gallivanting around the countryside the past few weeks. Time to catch up. In the last two weeks I’ve gone running (well, more like frantically speed walking) after a train, gotten very good at getting lost in Seville, toured the Roman’s first non-Roman settlement, and had some amazing swordfish in Portugal.

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My Last Night in Madrid
Antonio took me to Madrid for my last day and a half before I left for Seville. I stayed at the Espinar’s house. It was really fun being with their kids, Lea, 18, and Nata, 20. Nata is short for Nathaniel. Nata’s name isn’t Nathaniel, it’s Vicente. But, inconveniently, Vicente’s dad is also Vicente, so therefore Vicente is Nata. I think I’m missing a step there, because the logic more sense when he explained it to me. Also, here in Spain nata is Spanish for cream. It took all of my powers of concentration to not call Nata “Crema,” the Mexican-Spanish word for cream that is much easier to remember and happens to be the name of absolutely no one.

What Spain’s like

Nothing particularly action-y happens in this post. But I thought I’d better write down what this area of Spain has been like before I leave. Because I know it won’t take me long to forget, and also because everyone keeps asking me what Spain’s like. 🙂

The land:The terrain reminds me of Arizona, but milder, at least in this Northern region. What struck me when I looked out the plane window the first day was all the different colors of the land, and the flat-flat-flat-SURPRISE-it’s-a-mountain contrast. It’s like a lumpy quilt. Dull yellow barley plains fade into red hills spotted with neat rows of olive trees. The hills suddenly jut up into dusty, tree-fringed plateaus. Stitched together it forms a patchwork of pale tans, gray, yellows, and rich Arizona red. Greenery is fascinating, a combination of boring ash trees, cool tropical stuff, some things I’ve never seen before, and even pines.

Rural neighborhoods and towns: There’s not much for green lawns, not in August at least. Yards are red brown dirt, sometimes with scrubby brown grass. Houses look suited for the dry and heat. The roofs are adobe. Walls are either red-brown brick or tan/white stucco, no siding.

Nice to meet you again and again (Also, wind storms)

I’ve been in Spain for a little over a week now. Everything sounds a little less like “holacomotellamasmellamojuanestasbienparecequeoestesmuyconfundidooduermasdepieconlosojosabiertos” and a little more like “¡Hola! ¿Como te llamas? Me llamo Juan. ¿Estás bien? Parece que o estés muy confundido o duermas de pie con los ojos abiertos.” (“Hi! How are you? I’m John. … Are you ok? You look either very extremely confused, or you’ve fallen asleep standing up with your eyes open. It’s kinda creepy.”) Our little convention finished up Tuesday. It was great! I’ve learned a lot and learned I have a lot to learn.

An irrelevant but pretty Spanish sunset over the skyline of Madrid. (Click to embiggen, by the way)

So far I’ve gotten to meet about 100 different people from all kinds of places just here on the grounds! If you’re even anywhere near Madrid (I’m about an hour and a half away) many of the Spaniards you meet aren’t simply Spaniards. They’re Portugueseiards or Ukraineiards who’ve lived in Spain for such and such number of years. (Maybe they don’t call each other Portugueseiards. That actually probably sounds kind of offensive. Don’t call them that.)

On top of that I’ve met a good number of people from… everywhere. A group of us went to play fútbol –the kind you play with your feet—and this little guy named Juan Somethingoranother joined our game toward the end. He asked where we’re all from. “Well,” said one from our group, “He’s from New Zealand, they’re from Portugal, he’s Norwegian, he’s from the Phillipeans, they’re from England, he’s from Ecuador, they’re from Spain, they’re from Australia, he’s from the U.S.… and I’m from Ireland.” Juan Somebody stared: “Oh. …Um, I’m from Spain.”

(There was also a horse just hanging out by the soccer field, listening to this whole conversation. That was cool.)

Spain:The Adventure Begins!

A view of the planes in Spain. From a plane. In Spain.

Here’s what I did today*:

∙ Got up
∙ Got dressed
∙ Ate breakfast
∙ Went to SPAIN!

*Today being a very loose term encompassing both Tuesday and Wednesday, because my internal clock is so hopelessly screwed up that it’s all been one really long day with a small dark patch in between. For the last two days I’ve had almost absolutely no idea what time it is. This is because my Dad bought me a new watch and set it for Spanish military time. I’m bad at Military time, and I’m bad at Spanish time, and I’m also bad at this watch. Usually it just says I completed Lap 5 in 4:26. Very helpful, that.

I was very proactive about packing for Spain. …Haha, not. 😛 Mom and I agreed we’d be done packing by 2:00 pm on Monday. We missed that deadline and had to set a backup. For 2:00 am. Missed that one too. Last minute realizations included, “Oh! I have 2 sets of clothes!” “Oh, all my dress pants are extraordinarily long!” “The backpack is completely caked with mud!” (That’s what I get for dragging it around an Iowan cornfield. Who knew dirt could be so dirty.)

Late nights are a great cure for perfectionism though. And a good cure for logic in general. At midnight if all your dress pants are too long you decide you’ll just hem them. At 1:00 am you decide you’ll just put them in the washer and hope they shrink a lot. At 3:00 am you just decide you’ll grow taller. And then you go to bed. After a hearty 3 and a half hours of sleep, we zipped off to the Minneapolis airport. I said my goodbyes to Mom and she… didn’t leave. She paced even with me up and down the security line like an anxious dog pacing the shore after a boat pushes off. Except she’s less hairy and was hollering last minute advice over confused stranger’s heads.