Oktoberfest

This past weekend I went to Oktoberfest. To say that Oktoberfest is eventful is an understatement. This weekend was also "Italian weekend" aka Lauren and her girl friends should be very careful of the super aggressive italian men. The trip started off a little rough. My flight was at 3:30 pm on Thursday but due to the France air strike all of the flights were either being delayed or canceled. After waiting for about 2 hours, I finally boarded the plane and then we sat on the plane for another hour before finally taking off. Lufthansa was a great airline though and I luckily was given an emergency exit seat so I was able to sleep the entire time. I met up with all of my friends at The Wombat, the hostel we were staying at for the weekend. We then went to Der Pschorr for dinner where we had made a reservation for about 15 people.


On Friday we woke up around 10 a.m. since we had made a table reservation back in April for a table in the Hippodrom tent. We went to our table at 12 and were informed that we had a 300 euro voucher to spend however we wanted. Thus, craziness began. Each tent has brewed its own type of beer so they all have different tastes (and are also all much stronger than normal beer). We had a great time ordering all sorts of platters to split for lunch and made friends with all the germans around us. About every 20 minutes the older men sitting next to us would start singing and cheers our glasses. In the afternoon we decided to explore the outdoors and went on some of the roller coasters. Why roller coasters and drinking are at one venue, I do not know, but I was determined to ride roller coasters no matter what. I went on the huge Ferris wheel, the log flume, and a roller coaster that has left my arms covered in bruises because it was throwing us around so much. The picture below is the view of Oktoberfest and all the tents from the Ferris wheel.

On Saturday we woke up at 6 a.m. to get showered and get to the tents. It was a mad house. There were thousands of people scrambling to try to get into a tent and to get a table. If you do not have a table, you can't get beer. The tents each fit about 5,000 but they are completely full by 9 a.m. and trust me, people are not planning on leaving anytime before 2 p.m. We luckily found a table in Hofbrau house, which is the main Oktoberfest tent and probably the rowdiest. We stayed there all day and hung out with all the other Duke kids that were there. Everyone was standing on the benches and dancing and singing along to Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline", Bruce Channel's "Hey Baby", and some german song that I knew the tune to by the end.

View of the Hofbrau tent

Discotecas

This past weekend was my first full weekend in Madrid. It also happened to be the "Welcome International Students" weekend for all of the discotecas here. The clubs here are insane. I was speechless. They have dancers doing crazy performances and they have singers doing renditions of popular songs, such as Lady Gaga's Bad Romance (that is what the picture above is of). One of the clubs has 7 floors in total so the options are endless. You can be at the Karaoke bar on level 4, the hookah bar with couches on level 7, or on the dance floor (complete with dancing poles) on level 1. That club turned off all the lights and had dancers in black body suits covered with glow sticks (see below). Another thing about the club scene here is that the clubs do not open/start going until about 1:30 a.m. and they close at 6 a.m. when the metro reopens. I honestly do not know how the spaniards do it. One night of dancing for 4 hours and I'm pooped. Luckily there is a 24 hour churros place 3 minutes from one of the clubs :) 

Real Madrid game

On Wednesday night, several students from my program and I went to Estadio Santiago Bernabeu to go see a champions league game between Real Madrid and Ajax (they are from Holland). We all put on some form of white clothing to support the team and went to our seats....they were probably the 3rd from the tippy top of the stadium but hey that's life on a budget. We could still see everything clearly and it turned out to be a pretty fun game. There was a crazy irish man one row in front of us who took his shirt off and was swinging it around screaming and blowing a horn. Ajax must have hit 3 shots off of our goal post. In the end Real Madrid ended up winning 2-0. One of the goals was off of a corner kick. I can't get over the foot skills these players have- especially Cristiano Ronaldo. Hopefully I will make it to another game sometime soon. It was definitely an experience.

Conchita

My spanish madre, Conchita, is something else. One of my favorite phrases that she says is "WAH!" She will say it for almost anything she dislikes, for example:
-I say I might get a phone with a company called "Orange"...WAH
-the news said they are closing a mine and people are losing jobs...WAH
-Amy Winehouse came on the screen...WAH
-people died in a car crash over the weekend...WAH
-I say I have a lot of homework...WAH
Almost everytime she says it my roommate and I start chuckling. She also likes to ask us where we are going and then will tell us if we need to hold our bolsas (purses) close.  Every night during dinner the tv is either playing some reality dating show that is ridiculous or the news. I think she has a secret obsession for the dating shows or maybe she just enjoys mocking the people's outfits. Last night we found out that her ringtone for her cell phone is Yellow Submarine. She does not know english. I love it.

Welcome to Spain!

I arrived at my homestay on August 29th at about 9 a.m. My roommate and I met our homestay madre, Conchita, an adorable grandmother who is full of energy and does not speak a word of english. We then proceeded to sleep for the majority of the day until she came into our room yelling "ALMUERZO! YA!" telling us its time for lunch. These first 2 weeks in Spain have been awesome.  Instead of jumping right into classes, the Duke program sends us on 2 trips- one to Galicia (region in the north) and one to Andalucia (region in the South). In all of the locations we have tour guides that speak only spanish and travel with us.

We were in Galicia from September 1-5. We went to Santiago de Compostela and A Coruna. Above is a picture of me at Plaza Mayor in A Coruna. In Santiago I went into the cathedral and we were allowed to climb up to the roof and walk around which we pretty neat. From there we went to San Andres de Teixido where we could see the Atlantic Ocean from the cliffs. Then we spent the weekend in A Coruna, a gorgeous beach town.  The professors went back to Madrid for the weekend so we were free to do whatever we wanted. One thing that definitely stood out on the beach is that european women don't seem to own bathing suit tops...I don't know how I would feel about that happening in Stone Harbor.

On the following Tuesday, we left for Andalucia and stayed there until September 12. We started off in Granada where we visited La Alhambra which was absolutely insane. The gardens were beautifully constructed, always with some sort of fountain and every color flower you could imagine. Every room had intricate designs on the walls- I can't even imagine how they created this so many years ago. We climbed to the highest tower and were able to see all of Granada from there. Wednesday night we got on a bus and headed for Sevilla. One of the things we did in Sevilla was visit a Flamenco museum where we were given a 1 hour flamenco lesson. I think dancing just isn't really my thing. I'm going to blame it on my genes, but it was still a great time. Next, we went to Los Reales Alcazares which is a royal palace in Sevilla. It was very similar to La Alhambra with its intricate designs and sculptures in every room. Some of the rooms had tapestries that were made in the 1500s that had to be about 50 feet wide.  On Friday we visited the Cathedral of Seville. It is the largest gothic cathedral in the world and the 3rd largest church in the world. Holy moly is right. At the end of our guided 2 hour tour throughout the cathedral we climbed the Giralda, which is the bell tower in the cathedral. It was about 35 flights of stairs high but it was all ramps- quite the workout. From there you have a great view of Sevilla and can see the roof of the cathedral which was cool as well. It's a good thing I'm not afraid of heights. Finally, on Saturday morning I hopped on a train at 8 a.m. and headed to Cadiz, a famous Spanish beach town. Cadiz has a great mix of old and new city aspects. It still has huge city walls and lots of plazas. It is currently the most ancient city that is still inhabited in all of Western Europe. Almost everyone from my program chose to go to Cadiz for the weekend so we stayed on the beach until about 6 p.m. We were even lucky enough to somehow come on a weekend when they were having an air show so I got to see lots of cool planes doing some crazy tricks!

In front of La Alhambra