My French Connections: The City That Doesn't Know It's a City

I feel like I've cheated study abroad. Half the joys of travel is getting lost in a new city with little knowledge of the language left to your own devices. Everywhere I've been everyone was able to communicate in either English or French, especially in Oslo; EVERYONE there spoke English. In Madrid even all the club promoters on the street spoke English. I also never once got lost thanks to French cell phone plans. My 5 gigabytes can be used all over Europe during 35 days every year, so no matter where I went I always had Google Maps to tell me how to get back to my hostel or where to meet my friends to go clubbing. (French cell plans are pretty great because I get unlimited talk and text, that 5 gig data deal, and I can call the US all included in my thirty euros per month. That's $33.60 at the current exchange rate.) However, do I feel like this really detracted at all from my study abroad experience? Not one bit.

Monday night I got back from a weekend in Madrid. Before leaving I knew absolutely about Madrid or Spain in general except for it's a former dictatorship, they speak Spanish, everything starts and ends late, and I wanted the paella, tapas, and sangria. On the flight over I was blown away by how beautiful, tropical looking, and small everything was. Madrid is the capital city but it didn't feel like a city. No matter where in the city I was it felt like a moderately small town. I went to visit Ricky, who I met in the Paris-Beauvais airport on the way to Venice. It was my first time traveling and staying in a hostel completely alone so I'm grateful he was able to show me around.

One of my friends from ESSEC is actually from Madrid, a student at IE, and was home after his exchange. What's more, three more of my ESSEC friends were also there for weekend. I got to hang out with them and Manuel, the Madrileño, showed us around the historical part of the city.

I stayed at OK Hostel which I'd highly recommend to anyone traveling to Madrid. The whole place was very clean and the staff was cool, for lack of a better word. Every night a tapas chef came in and cooked a three course meal that came with unlimited Tinto de Verano (a sweet red wine drink similar to sangria) and beer for ten euros. I took advantage of that on two of my four nights and it was actually really good.

The stereotype of Spain is that everything is late. This is 100% true. The hostel said dinner started at 9. People would sit down at 9 but the first course usually wasn't ready until 10. Then before going out I'd meet my friends at midnight to hang out and drink a little wine before heading to the club, We wouldn't get to the first bar until about 1:30 and finally we'd arrive at the club between 2:30 and 3. This all sounds unreasonably late, but we were usually among the first to show up to the club. We'd usually leave between 5:30 and 6. I thought it'd be hard to make it to 6 am but when everything else starts so late it's surprisingly easy. That being said, my mornings were at 1 pm or later the whole weekend.

I'm back in Cergy now. My aunt, Dad's youngest sister, gets in tomorrow and is staying in Paris through Sunday. When she leaves I have a solid two weeks to work on (read: start) my thesis and application to the Masters of International Business program before meeting up with my family in London. This will be my final blog post. I hope you've enjoyed reading about my international experience at least half as much as I've the experience itself. Of course, pictures from my last side trip are below.

From left to right Elisa from Italy, Gonzalo from Chile, Manuel from Spain, and Andrea from Ecuador

The Royal Palace which was designed after and to be bigger than Versailles...and Manuel's head

An ancient Egyptian temple that was gifted to Spain on display in the park next to the palace

My friend and my significant other: The friend is Ricky who I blogged about meeting on the flight to Venice. The significant other is that gorgeous plate of paella.

This was all the ham hanging up at the same place where the paella picture was taken. It was at a tapas bar called El Tigre. I'm certain this is what heaven looks like.