Last weekend was a weekend of thinning our bucket lists as an attempt to devour as many Madridian cultural sites as possible before take-off on December 21. The countdown is at 15 days now (OMG!) and every spare moment has a purpose: deluging my mind with the sights and sounds of my temporary home (shoutout, Carrie Underwood). Instead of writing a monotone post about everything I saw in Madrid over the weekend, I want change it up this week and recount a story that could essentially sum up the difficulties of living in a foreign country and, more importantly, in a foreign country with a language barrier.
Now, I do not have a patient temperament by any means. In fact, some may go so far as to call me “intolerant.” Being “blessed” with these qualities has sometimes exacerbated frustrating situations which are disconcerting but not the end of the world. The ordeal I went through this past Thursday, however, could really be called the end of the world.
I will begin with a brief background. I had been working on an internship application FOR MONTHS that was due on December 1. For days I had been proofreading writing samples, tweaking a cover letter and finishing the application form. The final step was a processing fee of $25. Finally the hard part was over, and even if I didn’t get the internship, finishing the application was a feat in and of itself.
Now I just had to procure some ca$h money.
Twenty-five American dollars. It seems inconsequential and mundane. Oh no. Never again will I view twenty-five dollars in the same way. On my way to school that morning, in search of a friendly, American financier, I stopped by a branch of a Citibank and asked to exchange some euros for $25. They only had denominations of twenty, so I took $40 and decided to secure change elsewhere. I mean, how hard can it be to get your hands on a $5 bill?
When I got to school, I headed directly to the finance office at SLU-Madrid to see if I could exchange some bills, you know, from Amurican to Amurican. Of course the woman working in the finance office barely spoke English, so we spoke to each other in broken Spanglish. She finally understood what I wanted and immediately began to ruffle through the cash box. “Sorry, we don’t have any American bills here.” Really? No American bills? At an American university located in Madrid? My mistake. How silly of me to think that a sister campus of St. Louis University would have American dollar bills.
They ushered me toward the BBVA, a Spanish bank directly up the street from school. Ok, I’m going to one of the largest banks in Spain that specializes in international business. I’m sure they will have dollar bills. Feeling content, I strutted towards the bank and began to wait in line. When I finally reached the teller twenty minutes later, I whipped out my bills, bills, bills and asked, once again, for change for my American dollars. The woman told me that no bank in Spain carries American money. Sassily, I replied, “Really? Because I just got these at the Citibank.” She shrugged her shoulders and told me to journey to Sol to a “cambio” center where they carry all different types of world currency. I began to cry and yell. This continued for several minutes until I walked out of the bank, tears and mascara streaming down my face. I almost slapped the gypsy that asked for money on my way out.
Begrudgingly, I hopped on the Metro and proceeded to ride for about 30 minutes until the smoky airs of Sol greeted me. I knew I had arrived. I don’t think I have ever been to Sol before noon. I wish I could say it was tamer, but it’s still flanked with freaks in Spongebob and Smurf suits and Mariachi bands. I jetted towards the “cambio” center and asked the sweater-vested man behind the counter if I could pleaseee just have a $5 bill. I told him he could even keep the $20 bill as a token of my thanks if I could just have $5 freaking dollars to send exact change to the intern program. In so many words, he said that he was unauthorized to give me change unless the aforementioned bills were withdrawn from that station in particular so that, while yes he did have American single dollar bills behind the glass, he was unable to distribute them to me. I could have punched that glass and ripped up that smug sweater-vest. I started bawling, round two, and screaming like a toddler. Sorry I’m not sorry. He told me I could try the Western Union just up the street. It was like a game of Where’s Waldo, except even heinous horizontal stripes would have been better than this labyrinth of European confusion.
The route to the Western Union was a straight shot up prostitute lane, which I mentioned in-depth in a previous blog post. Tears flowed while I simultaneously screamed into my Blackberry, leaving anger-ridden voice notes to friends and family expressing my discontent with the Spanish banking system and, of course, soap-boxing about the reasons America is superior. A flair for the dramatic? Perhaps.
On the way to the Western Union circa 11:45 a.m., I saw more a$$ cheeks than I would have liked, and then an old man touched my shoulder in a creepy-caressing manner. I reached my peak of irritability, screaming at him and then screaming at the woman behind the counter of Western Union who only had denominations of twenty or higher.
The succession of events that followed: more crying, remembering I had $10 American single dollar bills in my apartment (birthday money from my grandpa), hailing a cab, attempting to pay the taxi driver with a $100 euro bill, him refusing to accept it and telling me to go to the bank across the street, crying to the bank teller who thinks I got robbed, telling him otherwise and that I’ve just had a “bad morning,” throwing cash at the cab driver, running upstairs to my apartment (okay, taking the elevator), grabbing the green, buying an envelope for 5 cents at the tobacco store and returning to school.
In summary, just bring a freaking checkbook to Europe.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Wake Forest chapter.