It’s official. I miss Baltimore, which let me tell you, is really weird. I’ve always missed Carmas and their amazing cookies, and I have started to associate any set of marble stairs I come across as Gilman’s. I think I’ve started to get separation anxiety. It also doesn’t help that Hopkins has all of a sudden become super fun. Penguins, zip lining, Ke$ha!? Okay, Hopkins, thanks for doing all this when I leave. But of course, the only thing that keeps me going when I see all these cool events is the fact that I am also having my own different set of adventures. And somehow I think it’s almost cooler to have met up with sixteen Hopkins students in a cave bar in Madrid then at the Brody Café.
This past weekend was somehow “everyone abroad from Hopkins head to Madrid” weekend. I got there planning to meet up with a few girls in my sorority and have a mini-meet-up, but it turned out so many people planned to be there this weekend. I think it’s because the Hopkins in Madrid program ends next weekend so everyone was getting in their last visit before they (so jealous!) head back to America. The first night we were there we headed to Gran Vía and went ice-skating, my first ice-skating experience of the year! That night was also the twenty-first birthday of one of the girls in the program so we all went out to dinner, popping some champagne in the streets afterwards to celebrate. Then we ended up at a cave bar that has “fish bowls” that puts RA’s to shame. It was then that I realized how surreal this whole experience was, because in this little corner of the bar, at the end of November, in Madrid there were sixteen Hopkins students. It was almost like we were at home.
The next two days were “explore Madrid” days. On our first day, we were walking down Gran Vía when we stumbled upon a huge parade of people with signs. It turns out it was a giant marching protest for some kind of education reform. We then spent the rest of our first day in the older part of the city, eating churros and chocolate, seeing all the major plazas, statues, palaces, parks and statues. It was actually as my friend and I were walking by the Palacio Real de Madrid that a girl detached herself from a tour group in front of us and shouted our names. We were stunned to say the least, but it was another one of our sorority sisters who was visiting Madrid for the weekend with her family. We ended up meeting up with her again later on in the day as we were walking away from Plaza Mayor! Besides that we also ran into other Hopkins kids that we knew were in Madrid in front of the Don Quixote statue. I really didn’t think Madrid was small enough for that, but apparently it was. Our second day was spent exploring the new part of Madrid, the bull fighting arena, different parks, monuments and statues again.
I have been looking forward to Spanish tapas in Spain ever since I went to La Tasca in the Inner Harbor my freshmen year. Somehow, though, Madrid was determined to thwart me in all areas of food. The place we went to for breakfast? No food besides chocolate. The place we went to for lunch? Somehow managed to order the two worst dishes on the menu. The tapas place we went to for dinner? Didn’t even have real tapas and my friend and I both ended up with a plate of sliced tomatoes with a large pile of goat cheese on it. This delicacy for a whole €12! Then when my friend asked for coffee we got this response, “We don’t have coffee, tea, or dessert.” So even though this day of food adventures was a huge fail, we did end up getting delicious tapas the next night at a giant world tapas market. It looks like a mall but it’s made up of all these different tapas stations and you go up to them, say what you want and then they go back and make it right then for you.
Saturday night, all the Hopkins kids went out to what is called the best club in Madrid, Kapital. It’s seven stories and packed with a line out the door. My friend and I stayed until 5:30am. The music and atmosphere was pretty amazing. Mostly there was a DJ who played but throughout the night this man would come out on the stage, whip out this violin and start playing the electric violin to accompany the DJ. Then these dancers would come out looking like they belong at a Mardi Gras parade and balloons and glitter would start falling from the ceiling. It was a pretty crazy club and an all around crazy weekend. It’s weekends like these that make me realize I might not be able to go back to Brody just yet…