3 May 2013 · Comment
Madrid pictures!
Hey! Haha, I am not going to catch up on posting pictures before my French class ends today. It turns out it’s hard to keep up with life when you don’t have internet at home! So I’m posting these without explanation like a crumbum and I’ll caption them tomorrow on the train to Tuscany. I know I should really just keep these half-finished posts private like any reasonable person would and publish them when they’re done, but it’s hard to keep all the half-finished posts straight and then sometimes I delete them accidentally so this is easier. So whatever, here’s a bunch of pictures!
Hello! I am on the way from Annecy to Florence. Annecy was just real great and I knew it was going to be ridiculous to go to French language school for just a week, but I feel like I really did get better! I think it was one of those things where you just have to do something no matter how dumb or you’ll never get started and it will be one more item on the list of reasons why you lead a life of naught but regret. Like earlier this semester, I kept driving up to visit Michael in Dallas and every time I went, I told myself I’d finally go to this Indian restaurant that was in a Sikh temple, but I kept finding reasons why I shouldn’t, like that I should go together with Michael for the first time, or it was too close to closing and I didn’t want it to be awkward. But finally I was just like, no, I’m gonna go even if it’s closing in 15 minutes because otherwise I’ll never go and it turned out to be great! Well, they ran out of pumpkin curry right as I got there which was a travesty, but then it was easier to get myself back there with Michael well before closing time the next week! So like, that was a super wordy way of saying that I like the “At least I tried” approach to avoiding leading a life of regret.
Anyway, this is a picture of my hostel in Madrid! It was called Cat’s Hostel and it was in a refurbished historical building with a cool courtyard fountain.
A building coinslot! Cha-ching!
Okay, so while we’re on the subject of leading a life of regret, have you ever met a person who when they find out that you went to the same place, they act like whatever they did there was THE perfect thing to do and anything else was just wrong? Like for example, I met this guy in Japan who had also gone to the sumo tournament, but he stayed until the day’s events ended in the evening and I had to leave in the afternoon to catch my train, so he was like “OH MAN, the evening is the BEST PART. If you didn’t go to the EVENING it’s like you didn’t even go at all!” It’s like, well, the tournament is over now, so I can’t go back and see an evening competition, all I can do at this point is feel bad and regret my decisions, so thaaaaanks! But then I asked him why the evening was so much better and he said it was because the famous sumo wrestlers came then, but I don’t know any famous sumo wrestlers and neither did he so would I even have enjoyed it more?? Maybe a little but probably not as much as he made it sound like! I think if you genuinely feel like the person you’re talking to missed out on a great experience, you could phrase it much more positively, like “if you get a chance to go back, I would really recommend you check out the fossilized toenail museum” or something. It’s not like I need any help feeling guilty about my decisions! I don’t mean to brag, but I’m kind of amazing at making myself feel guilty already okay.
A huge cathedral! So stackular.
The train station! I took about a bazillion pictures of it on account of it being so pretty.
The inside of the train station! That cupola-shaped structure is part of a delicious-smelling Indian restaurant that I really wanted to try but was way too expensive for my hoboing self.
Turtle power! The train station had a huge pond filled to the brim with turtles and it was pretty cute. Maybe the turtles weren’t too happy about it, but they seemed as happy as turtles can seem. Not like when my parents and Michael and I saw the sea lions all stacked up in piles of blubber at Fisherman’s Wharf last summer and they kept yelling at each other and biting each other’s faces whenever one of them moved.
More hostel!
Annnnnd, the last of the hostel pictures! It was real neat but the bedroom didn’t have any ventilation so the stench of backpacker feet was just overwhelming. And perhaps more troubling was how I stopped noticing it after a few days and then I got worried that I was starting to smell like backpacker feet because of it! Or that the inside of my skull was filled with stench particles to the point where I couldn’t even perceive new stench particles. Ok I gotta stop thinking like that or I’ll throw up. And then the stench of my throw up will make the guy sitting next to me throw up and then the whole train will start erupting in an endless cycle of throw up! Haha ok that would be pretty funny but I’m still gonna stop.
Another awesome Spanish phrase! To add to the collection started by “llorando como una magdalena,” which means crying really hard but literally means crying like a muffin! Also I learned in class that when French people like, drop something on their foot and shout “AYE!” it sounds like they’re shouting the French word for garlic! So that’s pretty neat. Also a girl from class taught us what Russian people shout sometimes when they drop something on their foot and it’s hilarious but not at all appropriate for a family-friendly blog. Strengthening international relations, yeah!
The inside of a different cathedral!
A tree with some neat lighting on it, I don’t know.
Layers of flakey paint!
Ummm, a random door.
And the rest of these are from around or inside the train station! These are some light poles that look like giant flowers that I photographed because I am an artiste, man.
And some people walking on a huge brick ramp. It’s about like, the isolation of humanity in the modern era, okay. Yeah.
Another picture of the inside of the train station! Not pictured: giant turtle stack.
And some kind of neat blurry stuff out of one of the train station windows! And that’s Madrid! I met some really great ladies on the night train from France to Madrid and we got together for lunch and museums one day but I forgot to take any pictures of them like a dingus!! Oh, I think I learned a French expression that applies here! Je suis nulle! It means I’m useless and I think I will be able to remember it pretty easily since it’s so often applicable! Whoa this whole paragraph has been punctuated by exclamation points, weird. Ok I’m gonna get to work on rustling up some lunch. Later!
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