Amigos, Prostitutes, and Euro trunks

Since my last post not a lot of interesting things have happened to me, but here are a couple:

· I made friends with some Spaniards

· Prostitutes on Montera

· I went to Santander and bought the coolest swim trunks I have ever seen in my life

When I last wrote you my friends, I failed to mention the five Spaniards that I met in Granada at a bar that are coincidentally from Madrid (Madrilenos). They were the friendliest guys I have ever met and soon realized why. I was with about seven American girls. Regardless they knew I was cooler than all of the other girls and told me they would take me out in Madrid to show me good places and of course introduce me to Spanish girls. There is no way I would ever say no to that because honestly, Spanish girls are the only reason I came here (just kidding, but seriously they are gorgeous). So last week a couple of them called me up and we went to a botellon. I had no idea what that was, but I was going to go anyway. A botellon ended up being a big park in Madrid where a bunch of young people sitting around in the grass drinking and eating is socially acceptable, despite being illegal. When we first got there I was with Franco and Manu and we were wondering around looking for their friends, we did this for about 15 minutes. Manu suggested to Franco that we call their friends; Franco of course didn’t know the number.

We kept wandering around and after another short 15 minutes we found them sitting in the grass with about 7 bottles of wine, rum, whisky, beer, and a bunch of delicious treats. I am embarrassed to say that is the first thing to catch my eye, and then I saw the girls. I couldn’t count them all because I was too busy kissing all of them (In Spain, the common greeting is a kiss on each cheek between males and females or two females). After about the seventh one I realized how great the Spanish culture is.

I stayed there until about 2 in the morning and even though the party was still as grand as ever, I had to wake up for class the next day. This is where the prostitutes come into the story. To get to my house there is a street I have to walk on called Montera. It is known for it being the street of the whores. During the day (the only time I had walked down it before) it’s not that bad, maybe ten or twelve prostitutes leaning against the buildings just minding their own business. Turns out at night it’s a little different. They are out in full force to say the least. As soon as I turned onto the street I started hearing things like, well, just some nasty things. After I saw one of them start to walk towards me, I just started running. You can make fun of me for being scared, but I don’t care. You would have done the same thing if you saw something like this coming towards you.

This weekend I went to Santander which is on the northern coast of Spain and stayed at this hotel (it was a real dump). It was beautiful and the weather was no higher than the 70’s during the day with a cool breeze. It was the first time since I have gotten to Spain that I haven’t woken up in a pool of my own sweat (yeah no A/C here). We arrived on Friday and I did the normal thing that I do when I get to a new city, walk around aimlessly trying to get lost just so I can see as much of the city as possible. Four and half hours later I ended up back at the hotel and after some wine on the beach and went to sleep to be well rested for our excursion the next day. On the itinerary, one of the stops said lunch on the beach. I thought oh how nice, but I probably won’t have time to swim considering the wait 30 minutes after you eat before you swim rule. So I left my suit at the hotel.

We went to a really old town that was founded by the Romans and I was about ten euro away from buying a Zebra skin. We then went to the beach and I learned that we had like three and a half hours. In case you haven’t done the math, that is more than enough time to eat, wait thirty minutes, and then go swimming. Oh wait, I left my suit. This would have been quite the dilemma if there hadn’t of been a store right on the beach with the greatest selection of euro trunks I had ever seen. I quickly found the most ridiculous pair I had ever seen and was saddened to see that they were a size small. So I found the second most ridiculous pair of trunks and saw they were a triple x-large. I tried them on and they fit. (I guess I am considered gravely obese over here) Then I got really sunburned.

Couples making out in the metro: 11 (mind you that again, I was gone the entire weekend)

Yours truly and my favorite,

Tony Kroschewsky