Nearing the End (part 1): How Strange

I know it's been a long time since I've blogged, well since I've posted, I have 2 or 3 other blogs in the works at the moment from all my other adventures but it's just one of those blogging-about-one's-strange-life kind of days. The last week or month really has just been a series of crazy, strange things, but what else is new. Leaving is always the most bittersweet part of my life, but as a person who just can't sit still it's a fairly frequent heartache. One of the many things traveling and living abroad has taught me is that there are so many people out there who can change your life or make an impact, even if only for an instant. I have met so many amazing, weird, crazy, scary, and interesting people this year and there is a good chance I will never seem many of them again, but who knows... life is kinda funny like that sometimes, you never who you'll see in the strangest of places and at the weirdest of times. There's so much on my mind right now and I just don't know how to get it all out at once. I'll try and rewind a little and explain the recent strangeness of my life.

This semester seems to be a lot more hazardous than last semester for some reason, maybe it's because there's been so much rain or maybe because there's more Americans and foreigners than last semester or maybe it's just that bad luck has just found Granada this semester, perhaps because my roommates like to try and summon the spirits every once in awhile.. who knows. So, in the past month about 6 or 7 phones have gone missing.. they were either stolen, lost on transit, drunkenly left somewhere in a bar or club, or accidentally dropped into the river due to concussion haziness (that actually is what happened to Hiccup's), most of our laptop chargers have also ceased working, perhaps because of the voltage difference or perhaps because of all the traveling abuse, we are now down to 1 charger for 3 macbooks although Juanito is suppose to be getting a new one soon which he ordered over spanish ebay? We'll see how that goes. Juanito is also the only one in our house with a nice, fancy, functioning phone, 2 of us have text-and-call brick phones and Hiccup still is phoneless, it's starting to seem like it might be time to go back to North America for all of us.

Also, for the first time in my life I filed a witness report in a police station and above all that it was in spanish. Don't freak out too much before I explain.. So there has been a recent, well not really recent, but recently exposed incident with a neighbourhood creep approaching and sexually harassing many of the exchange students here. It's not quite as bad as it sounds although some of the girls here were kinda shaken up by it. I actually met the guy back in september when I was still naive and adjusting to the life style here, it was actually the first or second weekend I had actually been in Granada and he approached me on the street on a saturday night while I was drunkenly walking home and asked me what time it was, I told him and then he proceeded to ask me where I was from and where I was going. We talked for a bit, introduced ourselves, he told me his name was Juan Carlos or something and then asked me if I wanted a ride home on his vespa, well I was still a decent walk from home and not knowing any better I just said sure, why not? (When in Spain right?..) Well he dropped me home and then said he had to go meet some friends but would come back another time, I was like yea, sure, whatever, he didn't even get my phone number or anything. And then when he was leaving he did the double cheek kiss, as is custom here, but then tried to like hug me and pull me into him and kiss me but I was like dude, I don't even know you, wth? He pretended to be kind of offended since we were now "friends" but eventually left to meet his friends. He did actually return the following night, which definitely surprised me but he did say he would come back? It was kinda late, I was pretty freaking tired, my roomie wasn't home so being home alone with him was a little weird, he tried kissing me again and I let it go a little further, what can I say, I had just gotten to Spain and there was a decently attractive spaniard in my house. Eventually he left, again without my number or anything and said it was nice to see me and hoped it would happen again. Again I was like, yea sure, whatever. But over the next month he would randomly show up at my house, usually around midnight or later and knock on my window or on my door and ask to come in, sometime's he would try and talk his way in even when I told him to go away and if I didn't know it was him since I couldn't see through the front door, he would step inside as soon as I opened the door. In retrospect it kind of was creepy and could be considered sexual harassment but eventually I got so pissed off that I yelled at him to go away and eventually forced him to leave and he 'apologized' for bothering me and I never saw him again after that, except for a couple times on the street in the neighbourhood where he tried to talk to me or hug me and I just brushed him off.

So, this semester around the end of april there was a bunch of girls who were being approached and kind of harassed by some guy in the neighbourhood, well guess who. The only reason this whole thing exploded was because my friend Steph posted about her experience on fb and in one of the study abroad program walls and then had several other girls comment on it saying that the same thing had happened to them, it also happened to one of my roommates and several other girls that we knew. At first there was no proof that it was the same guy but one night my roommates and I, plus some other friends were all in a bar in the neighbourhood and he was there and we all freaked out and then realized who this guy was. Shortly after everyone sprung into action, all the directors of study abroad programs were notified, my campus put out a warning post, and a bunch of us were asked to go down to the Police Station to file witness reports. We still have no idea how long this guy has been creeping on exchange girls and we have no idea how many girls he harassed last semester who left in december without saying anything, I mean, I thought I was the only one until one girl from last semester and at least half a dozen more from this semester came forward about it too.

So that wednesday after the news had been spread, I went with 2 other girls and one of the ISA directors to the police station, it wasn't just any police station it was wayyy over on the other side of town which apparently deals with these kind of affairs specifically, hence why only 4 of us went at a time -you can only fit 4 in a taxi- we got there and I immediately felt like I was either in a hospital or an insane asylum, it was all white, modernized, with marbled floors, grey and white high ceilings, and there was a chill in the air even though it was like 25 degrees outside. The only people around were 3 or 4 police near the entrance desk and the rest was silence except for the faint sounds of beyonce playing over the sound system aha. We waited around in a little side room until one of the policemen came to get us, we walked past the security desk through a black door, down a hallway of black walls and white floors till we came to a door that lead to the hallway where all the offices were, shortly after sitting down on a bench outside of there, 2 policemen and 2 men; one in handcuffs, walked out making a fair bit of ruckus, slightly startling. After that I was really starting to feel like I was in an insane asylum or something.. A few minutes later an investigator guy walked out and asked which one of us spoke the most spanish, which was me, so I went in to talk with him while one of the girls went in with the ISA director for translation help and eventually the third girl came into the same room I was in to talk with a woman at the desk diagonal from the investigator I was with. We were there for what seemed like forever, in reality we were there for like 2.5 hours but that's a pretty long time to be in a cold, white walled police station trying to dictate a witness report in spanish.

So, that happened. Don't know what's come of it since then but the police told us that anyone who saw him after that should just call the police straight away as they now have grounds for arresting him. There's been lots of craziness this semester, I don't even know where to start. For those of you who don't know, since my last blog was for St Patricks day and the one before that was from..january or february? (I really will finish those blogs sometime soon) I moved in with 3 crazy americans (Hiccup, Lorena, and Juanito) at the beginning of march because the roommates at my last apartment were driving me NUTS (but that's a whole 'nother story that will be explained in another blog.) Also because I moved last minute, I didn't get my deposit back on the last house but ohwell, I couldn't live in that old apartment any longer and I got a last minute chance to move out before I paid March rent so I jumped on it. Living with them has been an awesome experience for the most part, we were all friends last semester and make up about a 3rd of the small group of those who remained from last semester. We've had so many crazy, drunk, ridiculous nights it would take a novel to write about them all. I love my roomies, but sometimes they can be difficult and insensitive..

But that's pretty normal, no matter how good of friends you are, there are always some roomie problems. We had some normal ones like cleaning schedules and things like that but what really pissed me off was that in April, Juanito went back to New York for his sister's wedding and came back with a large suitcase full of everything-peanut you could imagine. I know Americans miss peanut butter while they're here because it is harder to find and if you can find it, it is expensive but since he lives in a house with someone who is deathly allergic, I thought it was little insensitive to bring back peanut butter, peanut granola bars, thai peanut sauce, a large box which has bags of cashews, almonds, and peanuts, and reeses pieces cups.. I don't think I missed anything.. so, as you might be able to imagine I was a little stressed and paranoid having that many peanut things in the house, which have remained in the house til present day. Maybe it's just me, but that seems A LITTLE insensitive, and whenever I would try to talk to them about it, at first trying to be kind of joking about them killing me, they acted pretty nonchalant and told me not to worry because they'd be careful and it would all be fine..yeah sure, I've watched them be "careful" on multiple occasions, especially when friends are here, I watched our friend Morgan drop peanuts all over our couch and blankets, fun times.. but I'm not dead so, rant over.

Moving on, I guess I'll share another random story about paths crossing... So Courtney, my best friend from UBC, was here visiting me for two weeks which was awesome! (yes there will be another blog all about that too.) Anyways, it was our last night together and we were in Málaga because she had a ridiculously early morning flight from there the next morning, so we got into Málaga around 10pm and went to check-in at our hostel. When we got there Courtney wanted to pay for the hostel with a creditcard but they said they didn't accept creditcard for charges less than 25 euros, so she went to find an ATM machine and I just chilled by the check-in desk at the hostel with all our stuff. While I was waiting, another traveller showed up to check-in, he was having problems speaking spanish to the reception desk people (and by having problems I mean he didn't really know much spanish at all but the people at the front desk spoke english anyways) so I was kinda helping him out till the guy at reception told us he spoke a bit of english (could have spoken up a little sooner but whatever), so anyways, we got talking and he's an australian but had been working as a journalist in London for the last year but had just up and quit his job and decided to come traveling around Europe for a couple months. So, I invited him out with Courtney and I for dinner/drinks once we were all checked-in and whatnot. We all went out for drinks, Courtney and I got food, he was really tired and ended up leaving after a drink but we decided to keep drinking. Around 1:30am we headed back to the hostel but neither of us wanted to end the night so we got as far as the entrance to the hostel before we turned around and headed for another bar, shortly after we were another sangria deep and decided that it was maybe time to head back to the hostel, it was around 2:30pm, the bar was closing and Courtney had to be up at like 5am. I had no idea how much I was feeling that alcohol until I got into bed and then realized the room was spinning aha. Anyways, around 5am I got up to help Courtney get her stuff to the taxi then passed back out till about 9 30am. Was suppose to meet Aussie for breakfast around then plus had to be checked out by 10:30 anyways, before heading down to breakfast I had a nice/weird talk with a 40-something year old Columbian woman who was in my room, she was telling me about learning to belly dance and other random things.

So met up with Aussie for breakfast and then we headed to the beach were we spent the remainder of the morning, it was nice and sunny for awhile but then started clouding over around 12, which actually wasn't so bad because it stopped it from being ridiculously hot. The Aussie went into the water a couple times even though it was Freezing, I decided to just stay and lie in the sun, it wasn't quite warm enough for a nice swim. We lazed around on the beach for awhile, there may have been some kissing, and then around quarter to 1 we headed back into town to find some lunch, we found a kool little cafe a little further from the centre of town and got some delicious fish and tinto de veranos, after that we just wandered the city for awhile, I can now say I have basically seen all of Málaga, and eventually headed back to the hostel so he could change and I could use their internet even though I wasn't technically a guest anymore, such a rebel I know. Anyways, after that we wandered back into the city and decided to go see a movie since there was movie theatre in the big mall-plaza thing across from the bus station, I didn't really have a certain time that I needed to be back in Granada so I was just kinda going with the flow. We saw this really strange American movie that was dubbed in Spanish, there was some parts I had to kind of explain to the Aussie because his Spanish wasn't great but it was a really interesting movie and experience over all. We went for dinner after that and then I dragged myself back onto a bus back to Granada.

The rest of that weekend was pretty chill, kind of just rested and recovered from all the traveling, spent a lot of time alone which was a nice (and needed) break. Also found out some really interesting gossip which I will share further down in this blog. Monday afternoon the Aussie showed up in Granada, he had told me over the weekend that he was thinking about coming to Granada but I didn't know he was coming for sure until monday morning when he told me he had bought a bus ticket. He showed up mid-afternoon, I met him at the bus station then came back to my place so he could drop his stuff and whatever, I had class at 5pm-6:30pm so he just wandered around the neighbourhood during that time and then met me at the school when I was done. We came back to the apartment and he met all my roomies, yada yada yada, and then we went to an intercambio (language exchange) at one of my fav restaurants near by with a bunch of friends. It was fun, we were all drinking and talking multiple languages and eating and whatnot, there was definitely a fair amount of flirting going on as well aha. We were thinking about hitting up another bar but all ended up being a bit too tipsy/tired to move so we just came back to the apartment. Now here is where the story gets kind of strange, we walked into my apartment to find my 3 roommates having a séance in the middle of the living room, yup, that's right, an actual séance; a ring of salt on the floor, candles all over the apartment, a bowl of olives and 3 small candles in the middle of the circle and all that shit. I honestly wasn't that surprised since my roomies are weird as can be and every day with them is something different, unfortunately the Aussie was kind of weirded out, even though I had warned him before hand that they were really crazy, but to be fair, it was a new level of weird, even for them. We hung around silently in the living room for awhile as they fell into a meditative state, Juanito suggested asking the spiriti a question but no one said anything, apparently earlier they asked the spirit to respond if it was there and a couple seconds after Juanito's Google Voice call thing started ringing which scared the shit out of them aha guess it's a technological ghost, oh Toby (that's the name of the ghost btw). Shortly after that I decided to head to bed and then heard them chanting a few minutes later which was pretty interesting. Aussie definitely seemed kinda freaked out about it, but who could blame him. I'm just used to my roomies doing all kinds of weird things, like I said, never a dull moment with those 3.

The next morning I had class at 10am and the Aussie was suppose to meet me after it at 11:30am in the school courtyard but never showed up. I waited around for awhile but no sign of him, eventually went back to my apartment and found all of his stuff was gone, it seemed pretty weird and random, I had no idea what was going on. My one roomie was kind of sketched out about it, which is fair, but nothing was missing so it wasn't like he had robbed us and then quickly left or anything. But I still had no idea why he had suddenly picked up and left without saying a word or anything. I actually didn't hear from him until the next day, as it turned out, he had been sorting out his backpack and realized that his passports (Aussie and British?) and some money had been stolen somewhere on his travels before coming to Granada, freaked out (rightly so) and headed for Malaga since that was where the closest British Consulate was. Poor guy, losing your passport while traveling is just about the worst thing that can happen to you. He got an emergency passport and is now back in UK though.

Another really strange development that week was when I found out some really interesting gossip about one of the people in our friend group (this is gossip I briefly mentioned earlier). So as it turns out, Taco is a kleptomaniac..yup. Two of our friends (K and F) that she hung with all the time (mostly because the rest of us kind of stopped hanging out with this semester, she's That friend in our group..anyways..) had realized that Taco had been stealing money from K (about 200 euros in total) and then had caught her red-handed digging through K's roommate's friend's bag, we came to a crossroads trying to decide what to do about the situation. A couple months earlier I had also caught her wearing one of my t-shirts which is super weird since she's a bit bigger than I am so it looked to tight on her and what not. So anyways, we knew she was stealing but we weren't really sure why, but she never seemed to have financial issues during the year so we figured that probably wasn't the reason and figured that she had to be a klepto. I mean, it's one thing to steal money from people because you're really broke and too ashamed or whatever to ask people for it but it's a whole different thing to just be stealing..well because you want to/can.

So the question was, what should we do about it? Well, at this point I had barely seen or talked to her in a month or so, so the option of just ignoring her all together seemed fine to me but F and K (well mostly just F) wanted to do an intervention on her because she is a friend..well 'friend' of ours, I do use that term quite lightly, and Steph and K wanted to use a more aggressive, accusatory approach.. in the end we just left the decision up to F, and a couple days later F and K did end up talking to her, in a calm, non-accusatory way, and she admitted to Everything. Apparently she's had this problem since she was 12 and no one has ever said anything but instead starting ignoring and de-friending her, I'm not too sure on all the finer details since I heard the story second-hand but by the sounds of it, she was kinda happy that they had said something to her and then she proceeded to send out an apology message on facebook to everyone she had apparently taken things from (some people at that point didn't even know they had anything missing), I'm not too sure if she did actually pay back some or all the money, I eventually got my shit back from her which turned out to be 3 or 4 articles of clothing, only 1 of which I actually knew was missing, so that was interesting. In her message to everyone she had apologized, asking for forgiveness and said she hoped she could still be our friend but that if we didn't want to, she understood and blah blah blah. I just replied to her saying that there was only like 3 weeks left for most of us in Granada and so there wasn't any point holding a grudge or whatever, I just wanted to get my stuff back. Because by that point I had a lot of other, more important things to worry about than being mad at some crazy girl.

So, there's a small recap on some of the strangeness that's happened in my last few weeks in Granada, there's still many more stories to come, but most of them are a little less random and strange.


20/05/13

Drink, Drank, Drunk in Ireland

Thursday night I hopped onto a 2am bus to Madrid, I ended up sitting beside a weird 40-something spanish guy and of course the people sitting behind me happened to be a mother and her like 5 month old baby.  Luckily I managed to pass out for the majority of the ride although the baby did start crying around 5am when we made a pitstop. Around 7:30am we got the Madrid airport and then I just hung around in the airport for a couple hours in Starbucks since my flight wasn't until 10:45am and I needed to charge my phone. I swear Starbucks is the only place in spanish airports (and spain in general) where you can find electrical plugs besides in the bathrooms, it's so annoying. Landed in Dublin around 12:30 and then waited around in the airport for my friend Mara who was flying in from Barcelona around the same time, we eventually found each other and then headed into downtown Dublin. We hung out there for like an hour, it's such a gorgeous city, there was people EVERYWHERE and of course a ton of decorations and whatnot, we stopped in a pizza shop because Mara was starving and we wanted to ask for directions to the bus station, the pizza was pretty good although we had 1 piece left which neither of us wanted so we ended up just wrapping it up and taking it with us. Before leaving we asked the guy at the counter how to get the bus station, he gave us some directions then another guy started saying there was a faster way to get there then just said he would show us, Irish people are so nice! Definitely a nice change from all the grumpy spaniards. We found the station and caught a bus to Galway, a city about 2.5-3 hours away by the west coast, there was 2 old men sitting close to us on the bus going on and on in very thick Irish accents about all kinds of nonsense, it was definitely very entertaining to listen to. We were suppose to be meeting 3 other friends either in Dublin or Galway, none of our phones were getting much service so we couldn't really get in touch with each other but luckily when Mara and I got to our hostel in Galway the other 3 girls were already there. 

We all got ready and went out into the city, our hostel was pretty much in the downtown area which was awesome and convenient, not that Galway is that big anyway. We headed over to the main street for some bar hopping, and just took turns buying rounds, omg the Guinness in Ireland is soo much better than it is in north america/spain. We went to some pretty cool places, some with traditional décor, some with live music, altho pretty much nowhere was serving food which kinda sucked so we ended up getting italian food for dinner, so random right. The pasta was good but a little pricey, my friend found a little pearl in her pasta with mussels, which was random and kool! We hit up another bar then just went home because we were exhausted from traveling and we wanted to get up early to do some sight seeing the next day. 

In our hostel room there was the 5 of us, this american couple who were annoying as hell and this older guy who looked like humpty dumpty plus a couple random girls we never met. We all went to bed around 2:30 although I couldnt sleep because the couple were on the bed in front of mine and they were watcing the Big Lebowski so the light from their laptop was in my face and they kept laughing and whatever. Kind of obnoxious. For awhile I just gave up and watched it with them for a bit but i eventually wanted to sleep so I asked my friend toss me my ipod. Then there was also humpty dumpty sleeping below me, he was snoring and moving around and sneezing and coughing and whatever else, was an interesting night. Next morning we got up early and went on the tour to the Cliffs of Moher, it was gorgeous, the weather was mostly sunny with some clouds, we stopped at a few historical and cultural sites along the coast of Ireland, drove along lots of tiny roads which our very Irish bus driver/tour guide described as 'tight as a fish's ass' ahaha before stopping in this cute little town of Doolin for lunch, the fish and chips there were amazing! We got to the cliffs around mid afternoon, the sun was shining and the view was spectacular, we walked along the cliffs for awhile, taking lots of pictures and resting on cliff sides here and there. It was a whole day trip pretty much, we left around 11:30am and didn't get back till about 7pm because after the cliffs we stopped at one more site of an old castle and then drove the long way back to Galway along the cliffs. When we got back though we had to run around like crazy people trying to shower/get ready back at the hostel because there was a pub crawl our hostel was running which started around 8/8:30, it was quite a sight. 

Thankfully the couple had checked out and there was a new guy in our room, he's around our age from the USA, super tall and lanky, he was an odd ball but a pretty kool guy all the same. We felt kinda bad for him since it was just him and the 5 of us in the room when we got back and we were all running around this tiny room trying to get ready. It was actually hilarious, 5 girls fighting for the one mirror and one straightener in the room while he stood awkwardly by his bed, the poor guy. As we were leaving we noticed that there appeared someone's stuff on my bed and that there was now stuff in one of the drawers under the bed, we didn't know if humpty dumpty had checked out but it didn't look like it. So either someone had just left their stuff on my bed or I was short a bed for the night due to over booking? We asked the guy at the front desk about before we left but it said that everything was fine. hmm. Finally, we made it out to the first pub of the pub crawl, met up with some other UBC-ers that Mara knew which was awesome, and then met up with two guys from granada as well. We went to a bunch of kool pubs, we got a free drink at all of them as part of the deal, one had live traditional irish music, one had a crepe place outside, one had a live band doing awesome covers, and one even had a stag/stagette party at it, which was hilarious! They were all in ridiculous costumes and whatnot. We met some kool people from all over europe in our pub crawl group, saw lots of hilariously drunk irish people, and may have gotten some free beer here and there too aha. 

Lots of shots and beers later we ended up a club as the last stop on the crawl, we got another drink when we got there and then danced lots, the tall lanky american guy was too funny, his dancing was so bad and so entertaining at the same time ahaha probably the worst dancer I have ever seen, definitely made my night. At the bar I met a guy, tall, dark haired and Irish of course, he bought me a drink we talked for awhile longer and then I went back to find my friends. We ran into each other again a bit later, talked for a little while, then I danced more with my friends, then ran into him again and went back to bar, he bought me another drink and we talked some more, he was gunna buy me another one but by then I was definitely drunk enough so I said no, then he asked if I wanted to get out of there with him and I said yes, so went and found my friends and told them I was leaving...before you think anything too horrible of me, as you may recall there was possibly someone occupying my hostel bed which had been in the back of my mind the whole night so I actually kinda needed somewhere to stay because as it turns out they had overbooked the room and there was a girl in my bed so I would have had no where to sleep had I gone back to the hostel plus I got 22 euros back from the hostel management. Woot. Anyways, so we left the club and caught a cab to his place, he's from Galway and lived about 5mins outside of the centre, he lives with his family since he's doing his masters at Galway uni but his parents and sister were gone for the weekend so it was only him and his brother who were home for the weekend. 

Got up at like 8:30ish because I had to get back to the hostel to meet the girls since our check out time was 10am and Irish guy had to go into town to meet friends before work or whatever. Got back to the hostel, felt like death and couldn't get back into the hostel room because apparently the door code had changed, luckily Mads heard me trying to get in and opened the door. It was only like 10 to 9 but there was a girl in my bed so instead of going back to sleep I just ended up in the hostel kitchen area double fisting coffee and water, I was so freaking hungover, I actually still may have been drunk aha the only thing I had eaten the day before was a crepe and lunch at like 3pm on the cliff tour trip, definitely a bad idea to drink on such an empty stomach. There was this older irish guy and this quiet Argentinean girl sitting near me in the kitchen and we all started talking, I was pretty dead but the irish dude was so chatty I kinda got sucked into it, he definitely was missing a few marbles but he was really nice and he actually got me the coffee so can't complain. The rest of the girls started showing up around 9/9:30 and our guy friends showed up around 10 so we got our stuff together, checked out, got breaky and then headed into the main square to watch the parade. It was pretty awesome parade, so many cute kids in costumes, floats, cultural clubs, and lots of irish dancing which was kool. After the parade we ran around grabbing food and doing other last minute errands, I was finally started to get over the hangover and then we caught a bus back to Dublin just after 2, 

We got there around 4:30pm then had to find a way to contact my friend who were staying with in Dublin. Eventually we found this odd little cafe/restaurant/club place and finally got in contact with him  using the sketchy wifi, we were gunna meet him around 5:30 by Trinity college, we were suppose to meet 2 other girls from granada there too but we had barely any contact with them so we had no idea where they were since they didnt seem to be at the meeting spot when we got there. We got there more like 5:45 since it took us a little while to find Trinity college but luckily when we got there we found my friends although there was no sign of the 2 girls anywhere. We waited around for a couple minutes then decided we should just head for the apartment, and try contacting them again from there. While walking though we actually saw them across the street at an intersection purely by chance which was insane !!! Thank god tho,  who knows how long it would have taken us to find them otherwise. Luck of the Irish or something eh. 

So we got to the apartment and there was like 15-20 guys there already drinking, we threw all our stuff into some of the bedrooms then met a bunch of them (one of them was from Toronto and studied at UofT go figure) and started drinking some beer, a bit later they did another beer run so we pitched in, we drank there for awhile, at some point a few of us were hotboxing in one of the bedrooms then we drank so more..4 or 5 or 6 beers later we all headed out to find a bar/club to go to. Unfortunately sometime during the house party 2 girls had left their stuff somewhere in the living room and ended up having some money missing, we have no idea who it was or how it could have happened since there was always part of our group in the living room but there was neighbours and random friends and whoever coming in and out of the house all night..anyways the ended up freaking out and leaving for the airport around 11:30pm, it was really unfortunate, I felt terrible. When they headed for the airport Mads went with them since she had a lot of studying and assignments to work on so then it was just Aless, Kiki, Mara, and I left with the guys. 

We ended up at this club which was kinda empty at first but it was only 5 euros to get into because one of the guys we were with knew some of the people working there, so we figured why not? We didnt know at the time but the guys we were with definitely had a bit of money to throw around because we went into the club and like 10mins later we were led into one of the little side room areas with black leather couches and little round tables and soon after 8 buckets of alcohol showed up, by then there was like 30 or so of us in the small back room. Soon enough everyone was pretty gone, dancing around, going from the room back to the bar/dance floor for awhile but eventually always ending up back in the private room. I flirted with a guy from uganada and a guy from Ireland and a few others, aless drank way too much so one of the guys from the apartment took her home, eventually I started chugging water to try and sober up a bit since we all had early morning flights. Kiki and I went to leave around 3am, Mara and this nigerian guy Ed ended up leaving with us, we finally got all our shit and went out to the street and then Mara and Ed disappeared. Luckily we ran into a couple of the guys from the apartment cuz we didnt really know where we were going, we ended up at this grocery place called SPAR because we were all drunk and starving, there was like a thousand people in there so took awhile aha everything was so chaotic and messy ohman, there was one guy just outside of SPAR that had gotten beaten up and had a really bloody face and shortly after that the police showed up. There was like 2 gajillion ppl in the streets, somehow eventually we got back to the apartment, everyone was in the living room half passed out because the main bedroom with all the mattresses was being occupied by 2 of their friends having sex so me and one of the guys, Andrew went out and got pizza down around the corner which was amazingly delicious. Eventually the guys yelled at the two in the bedroom enough till they stopped so we could go in grab our shit because we had to leave for the airport and the guys wanted to go to bed. It was like 4:45 when we left the apartment, we had to leave so early since aless and kiki's flight was at 6:30am, mine wasnt till 9am but everyone besides the 3 of us and Mara were already at the airport so I didnt wanna stay at the apartment by myself all those guys. It took awhile to hail a cab because it was still super busy in the streets, these 2 girls tried to steal our cab but I bitched them out since the other 2 had to catch their flight.

We all got to the airport and split up cuz we were in different terminals, I just chilled around for awhile and eventually took a bit of a nap around 7:30-8:15 in this dark room with comfy round, red chairs where they were playing these weird 60 second movies. I got to my gate around 8:30 when the boarding was starting and was looking for the 2 granada girls who were also on my flight but ended up spotting kiki and aless first because aless was wearing her bright green top and I was like wtf?! Of course they missed their flight, they had passed out somewhere in the airport at a restaurant and decided to take a 15min nap, slept through all their alarms and missed their boarding time..epic fail (it costed them 300 euros each for the new flight.) So the 5 of us flew back together after that disaster, we got into malaga around 1:45pm, got to the bus station a bit after 2, got food and then caught the 3pm bus home, I slept the majority of the plane ride but I was studying on the bus back because I had a midterm at 5pm, so ridiculous. We literally got back into Granada at 4:45pm, caught a cab and I got to campus right at 5pm, booked it into my class and wrote my midterm ahaha I think it went ok.. I dont really know though since I was so dead...yup so there is the tale of my St. Paddy's day. 

Hello, Old Friend

Wednesday I had the entire day to myself to do whatever I wanted. It was a decently warm day but it was pretty cloudy too, ahwell, I wasn’t really expecting there to be much sun at this time of year. Firenze is a different place when you’re on your own, I definitely kind of liked it better being there on my own and not being attached to a schedule or other people. I began my walk, over to the Duomo, across the piazza, and down the winding streets on the other side. I first came across one of the main piazzas where the merry-go-round was and had flashbacks of DHS guys running over and pretending to ride it, as well as, the group of us trying to use the old school public telephones to try and call our parents to tell them we had arrived in there safe and sound. I stopped in there to take a few photos, and then continued on my way. Eventually I arrived at the Piazza della Signoria where the tall clock tower is along with the copies of famous statues like David and other famous ones depicting stories of Roman gods/heroes, another very familiar place full of memories, although some memories not so pleasant…on one of my trips there we had gotten lost and got to the group meeting spot like 15 minutes late and chewed out by one of our teachers…oops. From there I followed down the side street with all the statues of famous philosophers and writers like Dante and Petraca who I had studied in some of my Italian history classes during 2^nd year uni. After taking so many Italian and art history classes being back in Florence had even more beauty and significance to me, it was beautiful.

Beyond that little side road of all the philosophers is the river, this area of the river is probably one of my favourite places in the world. I reached the river and turned to the right to see my old friend, the Ponte Vecchio (in English ‘Old Bridge’) the famous Firenze bridge; colourful, lined with little jewelry shops, and crowded as always. But more important to me was the bridge beyond that. Walking down the pathway along the river towards the bridges, I felt like I was coming back to…maybe not home, but some place very familiar and comforting. That place was so full of good memories from both my previous trips there and I was just filled with this complete feeling of happiness. I walked down that old familiar cobblestone pathway along the river till I came to my bridge. I guess I should actually call it Our bridge, it was me and my 3 best friends from high school’s favourite place in Firenze. We shared some great moments there during my first trip to Firenze (which was also my first trip to Europe), it was almost sad returning there without them. I sat there on the bridge for a little while then continued on my way across it to explore more of other side of the river. I know we had gone onto that side of the river during our last tour but only to see the one big museum thing at Piazza Pitti and not much else.

After wandering down some of the main streets on the far side of the river, some familiar, some new, I stopped for some lunch at a little trattoria. There was only an Asian family and a couple people at the bar in there so it was pretty quiet. I ordered some pasta, spaghetti Bolognese, which was pretty good and then, continued on my wander. Of course I came across Piazza Pitti, it’s hard to miss, it’s a pretty big piazza that olds one of the big art museums in Firenze, we did a tour of it last time and it lasted like a hundred hours so I figured I probably didn’t want to do that again, it was one of those museums that you could only exit after you had gone through the whole museum which was very long and multiple stories. It was a pretty cool building from the outside so I took a moment to look over it again but then continued on my walk, I was walking down a little side street off the piazza and funny enough I ran into one of the American girls from the night before. She was off to class but said we should hang out later if I had the time, I said sure, she had given me her fb info the night before and whatnot. Small city though eh, you’d think the chances of me seeing one of those 3 American girls again would be pretty slim, but there you have it.

I continued on my walk, aimlessly wandering around, going down random side streets here and there and I some how ended up at the one of the main university campuses. I had passed a couple of the other smaller campuses during my wander but they had been smaller and were blended pretty well into the city, this however was a big park area that led to a couple of massive campus buildings, one of being the main arts faculty building, the façade was under construction, of course. There really isn’t much past the university on that side of Firenze so I turned myself around and started wandering back towards the centre of the city, I stopped for some delicious pizza on the way. They really do make pizza the best in Italy, I don’t know why north America hasn’t figured it out yet. The real secret is the dough, most places use focaccia bread as the base of the pizza –best bread in the entire world– and the toppings are always so fresh, plus Italian cheese is amazing.

I wandered back to the river and this time walked across Ponte Vecchio and down the street beyond it back towards the city centre. I walked only 50ft down the street before I came across another very familiar site, the Queen Victoria restaurant. It had been one of the spots me and my besties had stopped at quite a few times on our trip there. The paninis there had been really good, but even better than those was the gelato, so of course I stopped there to get some gelato. It was delicious, I had eaten that much gelato in Rome so I was definitely going to be eating as much of it Firenze as possible, that is where gelato is originally from after all.

I wandered further into the city, passing the old market place where I had bought a very European scarf on my first trip there, I stopped for a few minutes to wander through it again but this time I just looked at the pretty scarves, jackets, purses, and funny little souvenir items. This trip isn’t a touristy trip, it’s more of a “me” trip and so I’m spending as little money as possible on trivial things like shopping/souvenirs. Material things mean less to me these days, I’m learning to remove my attachment to material things and live for the experiences, and food; good food is definitely an okay thing to spend my money on in Europe. Aha. I eventually found myself back at the Duomo, I considered going up the Duomo tower where you can see an amazing view of the city but it was still pretty cloudy and I had already been walking for hours so going up a few hundred stairs didn’t seem that appealing. Instead I headed over to the train station to buy my ticket to Bologna for the following day. Yeah, my trip was planned pretty last minute but in Italy you can do that, especially at this time of year since it’s definitely not peak tourist season.

 After that I just headed back to the hostel to rest my feet, I also still needed to book a hostel and whatnot for Bologna and figure out where I was going after Bologna, I was thinking about doing a little trip to Verona before heading to Milan to catch my train to Germany, which I also hadn’t booked tickets for at that point. You may be thinking I’m ridiculous for leaving all these things so last minute, well I wouldn’t have left the Bologna hostel so late except for the fact that I hadn’t been planning on staying in a hostel, I had made an account on CouchSurfing (CS) before leaving on my big trip and I had found someone who said they would most likely be able to host me in Bologna, unfortunately the night I arrived in Firenze they had sent me a msg saying they actually wouldn’t be able to host me so, I sent out an emergency CS msg but I hadn’t gotten any appealing offers by the time I had gotten back to the hostel on my second day in Firenze and decided it was just safer to book a hostel, unfortunately since it was so last minute there was really one 1 or 2 options for hostels, the cheapest one being some place called the tourist centre of Bologna or something like that, it didn’t really have much of a description but it was the cheapest so I booked it but only for 1 night because it was still kinda expensive.

I just chilled around the hostel after that, it was starting to rain again and it was getting colder since the sun had gone down, eventually the Aussies and everyone else started showing up again at the hostel, quite a few people had checked out that morning so we had some new people in the hostel, didn’t really meet any of them though besides a new Asian guy who was quite friendly and spoke pretty good English, all the other Asians seemed to kind of keep to themselves, not sure if they spoke much English or not. There were also 2 new Bangladesh guys who showed up later in the afternoon but soon disappeared and only reappeared later that night high as hell as kites and then disappeared into the living room area.

For some reason it was a quiet night in the hostel, no one really seemed to be around or doing anything, so it was just Nat, Mike, and I chilling around in the kitchen. We talked for along time, made dinner, drank some wine, and jammed to more random Aussie and North American music, at some point I remembered that I had a deck of cards with me so I pulled those out and we played cards for a long time. Eventually we all got kind of bored of cards, plus we were all starting to get pretty tipsy so concentrating was becoming more difficult, so we wandered out onto one of the balconies outside of the room Nat was staying in. It had turned into a clear night and you could actually see some stars which was so nice. While we were standing out there we could hear voices coming from the floor above, which was another hostel, and of course the voices were Aussie, you seriously run into them Everywhere in Europe. We stayed out there for a little while, Mike partially wanted to go out there so he could smoke although we weren’t really supposed to use the balcony for that. Ahwell. After that we all just crashed which was probably a good thing since I had to check out at 10am the next morning.

Nat and I both got up early Thursday morning, Nat because she wanted to get a bunch of sight-seeing done that day and me because I had to check out. We said bye to Mike and then to each other, she actually left a bit before I did. I got all my stuff packed up, handed in my key, and then headed out.