1.evening/night in Madrid

Hey again :)

Well, I ARRIVED TO MADRID in the evening of 15.May :) :) And since then, I´ve been ECSTATIC! :) Que magnifico estar en Madrid de nuevo! :)
Well, from the airport then.. I saw a bunch of German girls about 10 times. At the boarding gate in Frankfurt, at the plane, at the luggage hall in Madrid, in front of the subway information booth, at the subway ticket automats, and finally when I had just sat in the subway train, they arrived down the escalator :) Funny. I expected that we´d probably bump into each other again in the center, but until now, no sign of them. Strange..

If you´re ever in Madrid, consider buying the tourist abono. You can use all methods of public transport without any limits - subway, bus, train. Well, without limits in terms of how many times you go. Of course you have city limits :) Usually, you´re enough with zone A which covers most of the useful area of the city ;) However, if you have an extra day, you might want to get a 1-day abono for zone T - this means you can travel everywhere in the city, and ALSO get a free ticket to the nearby tourist city Toledo. Actually, you can go there as many times during the day as you like, remembering the unlimited trip count :)

I arrived to Aluche to meet with my dear Polish hosts (Aneta, Tomek, Marcin), and Emilie was also there! If pure joy & happiness could feed Africa, they´d still moan from the hearty meal...
Fast unpacking, and off we went with Marcin to the center. And who do we meet 1 minute after getting off the bus??!!?? ROMAN, the Estonian Erasmus student!!! It was even weirder because just on the bus, I had told Marcin that I also know an Estonian here, from my home town, and I even showed him from the bus window the place where he lives approximately :) And what are the odds of running into this same guy in a city with a couple of million of people?????

Still ecstatic from Madrid :) All the familiar streets, houses, people, the loud talking everywhere...

Every Thursday we used to have a meeting point in a bar called La Gramola in the center. Well, this Thursday it was rather empty - maybe 5 people there before us :) Many reasons actually. First of all, most of the Erasmus were on their trip to Ibiza this weekend, also it was quite early (around 23.00, the time when people finish their dinner usually around here..). Nevertheless, we enjoyed our FREE BEER (with the Erasmus Student Network card I still have from the exchange semester) and met another French guy from my good old times here.

After meeting some more exchange students in front of the Opera building, some more happy hugs & Spanish kisses (they´re like French kisses, except without the tongue, and on both cheeks, not on the lips :), after visiting La Gramola again (with more people now), some more beers, we continued to an interesting place - a club called La Pacha.
The Erasmus students here have not been wasting time - for every nightclub, there´s somebody in the group who knows somebody working in the club, so that the student bunch is on the enter-for-free(-but-pay-a-lot-for-drinks-anyway) lists everywhere. Entrada gratis, hombre! :) La pacha, where we arrived this time, was big. Big as a club you´d imagine. However, we were like the first people there, because it was again very early, about 3 :) (the local tradition is that you eat around 22-23, then start thinking whether you take some beers/sangria with friends at home or at some pub/bar around midnight, then the pubs close around 3, and the people move either home or (in the students´ case) to clubs, which get lively some time after 3 o´clock and close around 6-7 :) Anyway, we didn´t stay in La Pacha too long - the music was danceable, but not quite my taste. Red Cat in Mainz was better, but yes - the people in La Pacha rocked at least :) Go Erasmus!! :P

And we met some other interesting...ahem...girls on the street when going to the bus stop to go home. About 30-40 years old - can´t tell, due to their exhausting profession which involves lots of nightlife action.. At first they behaved humanly, asking for a cigarette, but after getting it from Marcin, they got slightly wilder and started feeling us up from all private parts. So, looking at their faces (and our student wallets), we decided without hesitation that now was the time to wish them good night and go home. They, behind our backs, of course said that it was because we were too jealous that some girls were touching our boyfriends :) :)
Talking about homosexuals.. Yep, they are too used with all sorts of gay action around here, one has to watch out not to step into the wrong club. If you wish, you can find something for all tastes here - macho-gays, boy-lady-gays, men dressed as women (haven´t seen the opposite, though), and probably surgically adjusted specimens too... A bit too spicy for our conservative northern taste, spoilt by the beauty of the Eastern European girls ;)
Or still - where are all the clubs for sexy lesbians who occasionally go bi (for example, when they meet irresistable Eastern European guys)??!! :) :)

OK, with this nice imaginary club in my mind now, I finish the long post, and hope to share some memories again soon ;)