The ballet, the circus, and the Prado. And cupcakes. A lot of cupcakes.

Living in a foreign country and going to school in a foreign language is stressful. One night you might be given nothing but brussels sprouts and bacon for dinner; one morning you might have to inexplicably switch commuter trains and accidentally leave your folder (filled with homework and notes) on the seat next to you; one afternoon you might be informed by your sociology professor that you have to conduct a 14-page interview with not one, not two, but THREE illegal immigrants.

But thankfully, there is a remedy for such ills. The remedy is cupcakes from Happy Day Bakery.

ALL OF THE CUPCAKES

Yes, that house was edible

For just €2 (or €1,70 if you have a Madrid Cultura y Arte card...yeaaaah, discounts!) you can drown your sorrows in a carrot cupcake with dulce de leche frosting or a heaping slice of raspberry cheesecake. Needless to say, I've been here more times than I care to disclose on here...

Happy Day is in the neighborhood of Malasaña, which I have fallen in love with. It's filled with bookstores, vintage shops, record stores, and cute cafés. It's also the only part in town where I don't look so odd wearing cut off Levi 501s and moccasins instead of diaper-like harem pants and sky-high wedges.

Justin would fit right in in Malasaña too--there's a Spanish comic book shop!

Right down the block from Happy Day is my favorite coffee shop, Lolina Vintage Cafe. It has free wifi and cute vintage furniture, and the likes of Elvis, Buddy Holly, and the Shangri-Las are always playing over the soundsystem. They also make DELICIOUS tostas and brownies with ice cream :)

Fanta Limón is the most delicious ever. Also, check out that rad wallpaper!

They keep all the doors open all the time so it's always sunny and breezy

Tosta with sobrasada (sausage + tomato), brie, honey, and herbs

In addition to stuffing my face, I also get around to some cultural activities. A couple weeks ago I went to see the the Cuban National Ballet's production of Swan Lake (El lago de los cisnes). It was directed by Alicia Alonso, an extremely famous ballerina who is now 90 years old. You should skim her Wikipedia page (which I linked in her name) because she's had a really remarkable life. I know my ballet enthusiast mom and aunt are jealous I got to see such a legend in the flesh!

The video above is Alonso herself dancing the role of Swan in 1958. The choreography I saw for the pas de deux was almost identical, including the 2034839 fuettes.

 I also went to the circus! I had absolutely no idea what to expect, as it was an impulse decision, but I hoped it wasn't full of abused tigers and creepy clowns. Thankfully, there were neither of these things--just incredibly talented acrobats! Photography wasn't allowed, so I had to sneak shots when the music was loud enough to drown out the sound of my shutter.

Looks easy, right?

Later that weekend I went to the Museo Prado. I have a museum pass that lets me into all state-owned museums fo' free. I spent two and a half hours wandering around the galleries. I got to see one of my favorite works of art (and the subject of my study abroad application essay), The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch.

Where's Waldo?

It's a MASSIVE oil-on-wood triptych (7 x 12 feet), and definitely the most horrifying/captivating thing you've ever seen in your life. I took advantage of my height (or lack thereof) and stood right in front of each panel for at least ten minutes, taking the time to notice all the tiny, bizarre details.

La entrada Jerónimo

Statue of Diego Velázquez

I've really been enjoying just wandering around Madrid. I have a monthly metro pass that gives me unlimited rides, so it's easy to wander to wherever I'd like. I've never been a dependent person, but in high school I was definitely that girl who would never go to the bathroom alone. In college, I didn't work up the courage to eat alone until spring semester sophomore year. At home, sometimes I go shopping alone, but before I got to Madrid, I'd never eaten a meal (outside of my house) alone.

But since being here, I've learned to genuinely enjoy alone time. I can walk at my own pace through museums and read every single placard if I want to without worrying about getting separated from a group or slowing down a friend. While walking down the street, I can wander in and out of every other store on the block, and I can pick the tiny window table at the café for prime people-watching. And if I need to ask the shop clerk if they have those shoes in a size 37, I can't plead with my friend to ask for me because the clerk looks bitchy--I have to be confident in my language skills.

And the best part is that if I get a cupcake from Happy Days two days in a row, no one is there to judge me--well, now the secret's out...

Free champagne, homemade paella, and Picasso.

I realized I haven't really been posting about anything other than the trips I take, so here's the slightly less exciting stuff I've been up to since arriving in Madrid.

October 7th was Vogue Fashion's Night Out in Madrid, held in the swanky barrio of Salamanca (not to be confused with the actual city of Salamanca). All the stores along the main drag in Salamanca had DJs and bars, in an attempt to get people drunk so they would be highly overpriced clothing. My girlfriends and I got dressed up and headed out to dance in jewelry stores, keep an eye out for models and celebs, and score free champagne.

Sweet graphic design, bro.

Champagne in L'Occitane. If you don't speak French, that rhymes nicely

In a shoe store where the cheapest pair cost a minimum of €300

I tried to be fashionable but my host mom made me wear a cardigan...

DJ in the jewelry store

That following weekend, I had my first chocolate con churros--at 3:30 am, no less. There are a couple chocolaterías that are open 24 hours a day, because there are three traditional times to get chocolate con churros: for breakfast, for a late afternoon snack, and at the wee hours of the morning when you're sick of clubbing and just want some damn food.

From San Ginés Chocolateria

 You might be flinching at the amount of sugar in this "meal"...and it's certainly rich, but it's nothing like American hot chocolate or American (read: Disneyland) churros. The churros aren't sweetened, so even though they're very fatty, you can eat much a lot more than you could the cinnamon sugar-coated Mexican type...which is highly dangerous. And the hot chocolate is not to be confused with hot cocoa. It's sweetened, but not too much, and is incredibly thick--like you're eating melted semisweet chocolate. So it was pretty much heaven in a cup, but so rich, I couldn't finish--and if I don't finish eating something fatty and chocolatey and delicious, you know it's an intense food.

That same weekend, Pepa (one of the monitoras) invited the whole Vassar-Wesleyan group to her family's mountain house for an afternoon of swimming and paella-eating. I've known Pepa for two years because she was the Spanish Language Fellow at Vassar my freshman year, and I took a conversation class with her. Anyway, the mountain house is in a town called Robledo about 1 hour away from Madrid. I couldn't take pictures because the winding roads had my wildly carsick, but the sierras (mountains) of Madrid look so much like the mountains of Santa Barbara, it was insane. Oak trees, chaparral, everything. Every time we got to a viewpoint, I kept expecting to see the Pacific Ocean--but instead, I just saw the sprawling grey blur of Madrid.

Sammi, me, Danielle, Lucy, Kelsey, & Kat

[photo cred: Kat]

Pepa, master paella chef

The first paella I ever ate was made for me by Pepa at Vassar. She apologized profusely for it, saying she wasn't used to making it on a stove and with such a small pan. I had no idea how else you would make it...and now, two years later, I got to see Pepa in action making real Spanish paella--in a pan the size of a toboggan, perched on top of its own special grill. She didn't use a recipe or measuring cups, just threw everything into the pan, but it turned out perfectly.

Chunks of mystery meat...mm!

Get in my bellllllly

The best part of the afternoon was when Pepa's brother?cousin?friend? broke out his guitar and started playing beautiful classic Spanish music. It was late afternoon and a perfect 80 degrees and the sun coming in through the trees made everything look golden.

Pepa singing along

The next day I went to the Reina Sofia museum with some friends solely to see Picasso's Guernica.

Super rad external elevators

 Photography isn't allowed inside the museum, so I don't have any photos of the painting, but that's what Google Image Search is for, right?

The second I walked into the room where Guernica is housed, I got chills and tears came to my eyes. It’s so incredibly huge and so incredibly powerful. No photo can do justice to the raw emotion Picasso put into every brushstroke. That’s what’s so different about seeing paintings in real life—the brush stroke is what really speaks about the artist’s thought process, the artist’s mental state. Some parts of the painting are thin, bare, as if Picasso was painting as rashly as possible. In others the paint drips down from lines, and in others you can see ghostly sketches that weren’t painted over thoroughly enough. And curiously enough, the horse in the center is the only figure that’s contoured; it’s also the most re-worked figure, as the first version of the painting had its head upside down, grotesquely contorted.

All that emotional art analysis made us hungry, so we grabbed tapas at Estado Puro, a restaurant famous for its innovative take on classic tapas dishes. We drank the best sangria I've ever had and grubbed on eggplant with honey-sherry sauce, mussels with a delicious mystery cayenne sauce, ham croquetas, and fried potatoes topped with chives and roe.

Eating the fruit slices at the end is the best part of sangria

The roe-topped potatoes

My daily life here is infinitely more exciting than my life in Santa Barbara or Poughkeepsie. I love living in a city--although at times it can be stressful and overwhelming, there is always something to do. Parks, cafes, museums, afternoons in the countryside...there's a high possibility I might never go back to the states...!

Chiiicoos, bienvenidos a Segovia

Quick explanation of the title: the program director, Michael (or as we call him, Miguel), is a ridiculous, ridiculous man. He means well but is mostly useless and also has gorilla arms, which is weird. Sometimes he wears purple pants and tells us to say "gracias" a thousand times to everyone we interact with, though actually Madrileños find that to be excessive and insincere. But mostly he just sends us four million emails a day (not an exaggeration) and tries to get our attention when we're in a group by putting four fingers up to his face and whispering, "Chiiicooosss...chiiicooss..." It's 100% ineffective because I inevitably start laughing. Miguel also selected all the trips we go on this semester, which are all to cities that are kind-of-famous-but-not-really...ie, we're not going to Granada, Barcelona, or Sevilla. My host mom says the program is stealing my money.

Anyway, the most recent money-stealing expedition was to Segovia, which was kind of exactly like Toledo, except it had a cooler castle and no marzipan-making nuns. Also, there were much fewer bathrooms, which resulted in me having to unceremoniously sprint down a hill and into a ditch to berate myself for having drank a cup of tea, 16 oz of water, and a medium-sized Dunkin Donuts iced coffee (yeaaah, they have that here) before arriving in Segovia.

Kat ever so kindly took pictures of me as I sprinted off into the wilderness

So I guess you could say the trip did not get off to the best of starts...also because we had to tour YET ANOTHER CHURCH. I swear, if I have to see another giant and horrifically bloody statue of Jesus on the cross... I mean, I appreciate the architecture. I really do. But every church/cathedral we go to, we hear EXACTLY the same stuff. I could pretty much give a tour by now. "This church is in the shape of a latin cross. It was built over the course of a few centuries and has both baroque and gothic architecture. There is some marble. There is some gold. There is the nave. There is the transept. There are some arches. There is an altarpiece. BLAH BLAH BLAH."

Speaking of altarpieces...
(Iglesia de la Vera Cruz)

Thankfully, things got a little more interesting when we hopped back on the bus and drove to the famous Roman aqueduct. Constructed in the 1st century AD using no mortar--just perfectly shaped bricks stacked on top of each other--it's the best-preserved Roman aqueduct in Europe today.

It's really hard to photograph something so massive...

Remus & Romulus statue

Streets of Toledo Segovia

Holy Toledo!

(Please forgive me for what is definitely my most cheesy blogpost title yet...)

Our second excursión (guess THAT cognate!) of the semester was to the city of Toledo, about 70 km (45 miles) south of Madrid. Settled during the Bronze Age, it is known as a "three-cultures" crossroad, as it had large Christian, Muslim, and Jewish populations. It was also the home of one of my favorite artists, El Greco.

We were supposed to leave Madrid at 9 AM, but in typical VWM Program fashion, one of the kids in the group arrived at least 30 minutes late. Upside: I had time to get an iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts (yep, they have those here...). Downside: I woke up 30 min earlier than I needed to...and on this trip so far, sleep has been a highly precious commodity. Thankfully, the drive to Toledo went quickly, though not exactly pleasantly, since the tour guide spoke over the loudspeakers literally the entire time, repeating each sentence at least twice: "Vamos por la autopista. La autopista es financiado por el gobierno, y es gratis. Es gratis porque es financiado por el gobierno. Vamos por la autopista, que es gratis porque es financiado por el gobierno." ("We're taking the freeway. The freeway is financed by the government, and is free. It's free because it's financed by the government. We're taking the freeway, which is free because it's financed by the government.") Although we may speak it hesitantly, everyone in the group understands Spanish perfectly well. All of our tours so far have been in Spanish, and it was frustrating to have this woman think we weren't proficient in the language. But on the upside, she looked excatly like Anjelica Huston, which was more amusing than her repetition was irritating.

Our first stop in Toledo was to a hill with a spectacular view of the city--the exact vantage point from which El Greco painted this in 1597 (currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC--I wrote an essay on it last semester):

El Greco manipulated the landscape to include all Toledo's landmarks

The actual view...I love how it still looks ancient, nothing modern in sight

Aaaaand a little tilt-shift action

We started our tour in the Christian area, spending over an hour in the cathedral, which was my favorite we've visited so far. It was a beautiful mix of Gothic and Baroque architecture and ornamentation.

From the outside

I love the vaulted ceilings and Gothic arches

An illuminated Bible, all drawn by hand

One of the few portrayals of a smiling Mary

Demon ornamentation

My favorite part of the Cathedral; hard to photograph, but it's a series of reliefs/statues leading up to a skylight

Incredibly detailed reliefs of Bible stories

The most celebrated work of Baroque ornamentation in Spain

Paintings by El Greco in the Cathedral museum

After the Cathedral tour, we had a free half our to explore a bit. I bought my first item of Spanish leather--a bracelet--and we found a convent that's famous for its marzapana (marzipan). The convent is closed, and you order the confections from a tiny white-washed room fitted with a sort of grated lazy susan. You tell the nun on the other side what you want and place your money on the lazy susan. The nun then nun spins the lazy susan around, takes the money, places the box of marzipan on the lazy susan, and spins it back around for you to take.

Om nom nom

Allllll of the bracelets
(photo stolen from Kat)

Kat & me

Exploring the street is hard when you have to flatten yourself against the wall every 3 min to let a car pass

Orange marzipan the director bought for us

On our way to the Muslim area, we stopped at the church of Santo Tomé to see El Greco's most famous painting, El Entierro del Conde de Orgaz. It's painted directly onto a wall in the church, so if you want to see it, you have to go to Toledo.

There were security guards everywhere so I couldn't take pictures, but I was extremely excited to see the painting, since I studied it in my art history class last semester. There's really nothing like seeing a work of art in real life...even though Vassar has a giiiiant screen and state-of-the-art HD projector, the painting was a thousand times more stunning en vivo.

Photo stolen from Wikipedia

 

La Mezquita de Cristo de la Luz (Mosque of the Light of Christ)

Since the bus had to be back by 8 PM, we had a gourmet lunch instead of dinner (every excursion includes a "gastronomical learning experience"...aka food at a 4 star restaurant. ME GUSTA). I felt highly out of place at the restaurant since I was wearing denim cutoffs and Converse, and I didn't like the food as much as the restaurant in Santiago, but it was still a very fun couple hours.

Of course, Michael (program director) ordered bottles of champagne

Danielle, a very serious Nelson, and Sami

Me & Kat...we're pretty much always together

After lunch we went to la judería, the Jewish quarter, to visit two synagogues. Since the restaurant is at the bottom of a hill and the Jewish quarter at the top, we took a series of five or six outdoor escalators, pretty much meant to cater to lazy tourists. It was weird to see something so modern in a city so old. Unfortunately, synagogues aren't as elaborately decorated as cathedrals (at least, the two we visited weren't), so all of the pictures I took were quite boring.

The last thing we did before we left was walk across an old Roman bridge.

Danielle & me on ze bridge
(photo stolen from Kat)

And bam! Another city, another bracelet on my wrist (can't remember if I wrote about this earlier, but I'm buying a bracelet from every city I visit). It was a beautiful day, not too hot and not too long, and we arrived back in Madrid at around 7:30 pm--just enough time for a siesta and dinner at Vips (a diner chain) before heading out para ir de juerga--to party!