What just happened in the last 6 weeks? Spain happened.

I wrote this a couple of days ago when I was waiting in the airport, but just now got the chance to post it.


What I think about the last six weeks

I am sitting in the airport right waiting for my flight to Berlin, Germany to visit some family friends for a couple of weeks, and am absolutely flabbergasted with myself. I have just spent 6 weeks doing everything I could to immerse myself into a culture, language, and way of life and the thought of coming back to the United States in a couple of weeks where I am not learning something new just about every second or where doing something so simple such as ordering a pincho de tortilla is a prolific challenge, has me on the verge of tears. I need at least a year longer here. Every moment of this experience has been a challenge for me. I came from College Station, a small college town in rural Texas, where I was living in house in a calm neighborhood with my best friend to living in the largest city in Spain literally a 2 minute walk from the very center of Madrid with a middle aged woman who barely spoke any English. It was quite a shock.

Even though I had barely slept in the days before I had arrived, the excitement of my new way of life kept me awake for about the entire first week I was here. I would lie down in my bed and the thought of there being an entire city outside my window that I had never seen would make my heart race and keep me from falling asleep. I am going to blame my Aunt Deborah for that one. A few days before I left I had dinner with her and my Uncle Steve and when we were saying our goodbyes she gave me the best advice anyone could have given me, “Hit the ground running.” I had never thought of it that way, but it sunk in and from the second I landed to right now I never stopped.

I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel to have seen what I have seen and experienced what I have experienced. I learned so much about this place and fell in love with it. I couldn’t have met nicer people (even a few Americans) or learned more about myself here. I guess when you put yourself in a foreign country in a huge city where you don’t know anyone or the language, and you walk everywhere seeing everything you can there is a lot of time to think about things. As many of you may know I was supposed to be in Guadalajara, Mexico this summer and never had any desire to come to Spain or even Europe. I feel like a complete idiot for that and consider myself extremely lucky to have this opportunity fall into my lap.

I was immersed into a large international city with thousands of immigrants that speak all kinds of languages and live all kinds of different ways. There are Chinese people who run every single convenience store in Madrid and try to sell you beer on the streets after 11 o’clock at night, Africans who are trying to sell purses, belts, bootlegged DVDs, and cheap sunglasses, and the list could go on. I had never seen so many people just trying to survive by taking one day at a time and digging through the trash to find something to eat. It really opened my eyes and let me gain a new experience when I was able to see the struggles that people face every day and makes me feel extremely privileged. Walking on the street every day seeing beggars on their knees, women selling their bodies, and alcoholics passed out on the sidewalk with a bottle of liqour in their hand did something to me and it will be strange to not have the constant reminder of how lucky most of us are.

Despite the thousands of requests to keep the blog going for the rest of my life, it just probably won’t happen. I want to thank everyone for reading my blog, commenting on it, and keeping in touch with me while I have been abroad. I might put one up in a couple weeks about my trip in Germany.

Yours truly and my favorite,

Tony Kroschewsky

Barcelona continued...

If you haven't read Part I, you might want to.

WARNING: DUE TO FINALS, PACKING, AND THE LACK OF AIR CONDITIONING; THIS POST IS RATHER MUNDANE.

We woke up around 8am by chance because for some reason my alarm didn’t go off. It was Friday morning and we had an entire day ahead of us of seeing the city of Barcelona. After breakfast at 9 we all boarded the two buses and set out for our great adventure of seeing all of the sights in one day. The first stop we had was the Sagrada Familia. A Catholic church designed by Antonio Guadi, the famous architect of Catalonia, who has produced the most interesting work I have ever encountered. His architecture is purely original and he uses natural occurrences in his works, and you can see it if you look at the curves and distinction of them. He started the church in 1882 and it’s estimated to be finished in 2026, but realistically in 2050. He dedicated his life to the designing and construction of the church and to his religion, Catholicism. After touring the exterior of the church we headed to a famous park he designed in Barcelona, Parque Guell. This is by far the most beautiful park I have ever been to and was again, amazed by his architecture.

Lunch time. We headed to the beach area where there are a lot of well priced restaurants with delicious seafood and needless to say, I ate well. We then went to one of the best view points in Barcelona where the 1992 Olympic stadium is and then toured the gothic quarter which contains buildings from the Roman times. After so many sights in one day, we were exhauste., I went to the hotel to take a 30 minute nap before I was going to meet up with a Spanish friend who I had met in Madrid that lives in Barcelona. She took me up to Mount Tibidabo. The mountain overlooked Barcelona and the bar we were at had an amazing view of the city at night. Despite the 9 euro drink, the place was great. My poor amiga had to work at 7 am so around 2am she dropped me off at the hotel where I was cordially greeted by some USD students who were about to go out to a club. “Sure, I’ll go.” We went to the worst club I have ever been to, and 15 euro and a really sticky floor later we left the club to venture out to seek the best that Barcelona nightlife had to offer. We found Opium. After getting really high… just kidding. (It’s a club.) Almost as good as the night club we went to Wednesday in Madrid. We got home around 6 am and I woke up again around 8am to catch the bus to Monserrat. Monserrat is a beautiful mountain outside of Barcelona where the Virgin Mary appeared to shepards. The air was cool and crisp, the view was truly outstanding and this definitely stood out as one of my favorite places on my trip to Barcelona.

After we got back to the city I went to the Picasso musuem. Jealous? You should be. I looked at Picasso paintings, drawings, and sculptures all afternoon.

That night we had a little botellon on the beach half because of all of the money spent the night before and half because of the broken shoe of a person who will remain nameless. On the way home on Sunday we stopped off at a Cava producer to take a tour and sip some Cava. (Spanish champagne) T’was delish and the ride home wasn’t half as bad as the way there. I have less than two days left in Madrid, and it has been an incredible experience to say the least.

Look for a new post wrapping up my thoughts on the entire trip in a couple of days.

Pictures of Barcelona

Pictures of Madrid (look for the one of me and the Senora)

Pictures of Modern Art in the Reina Sofia (There are a few Picasso's, Dali's, and some other really interesting stuff in here)

Couples making out in the metro: 82

Yours truly and my favorite,

Tony Kroschewsky

La Discoteca and my trip to Barcelona PART I

My deepest apologies for the length of time in between posts, I know many of you were finding yourselves destitute without a new post in over a week. I would like to say that I just didn’t have time, but in all reality nothing very interesting or new happened before I went to Barcelona for the weekend. Maybe it’s because I adjusted to my environment and running from prostitutes is simply a daily occurrence.

There will be two parts to this blog due to the recent plethora of what I like to call “blogworthy” occurrences. (Look for the next one in a day or two)

Due to the large amounts of complaints sent to my website designer and personal assistant, there will be bullet points from now on.

· La Discoteca

· The best bus ride of my life

Wednesday night before I left for Barcelona I was cordially invited by some gracious and enjoyable University of San Diego students to attend a premiere nightclub in Madrid (David Beckham used to frequent the place). Now I know what you are thinking, and yes, I know it’s against my policy to be around Americans, but these ones are nice and like to have fun so I went. We met at a certain Metro stop that was supposedly very close to the club. Being the first to arrive I decided to look for it to make things a little easier for when everyone else got there. In the process I met an immigrant from Ecuador who was trying to help me find it and he politely told me that if I am in Spain studying Spanish, I need to start studying something else. Whatever. I never found the club, but I found my friends and after we wandered around for a few more minutes we took a 20 minute cab ride to the club. At that point I declared that I am through with Google Maps and am currently trying MapQuest, but I would really like to find something with a little more to offer. We got out of the cab to see a few large men in suits guarding the door, and a Ferrari and a Lamborghini right outside; needless to say I didn’t think we would get in. We were lucky, had a lot of fun, and only got a couple of hours of sleep before class.

We departed for Barcelona on a charter bus full of people from my program at 1:30pm, and didn’t arrive until 11:30pm. Do I really need to say more? Okay, I will elaborate. The first hour was great, a little conversation, a little nap, and next thing I know we were stopping for lunch. Lunch was fantastic, everyone got burgers and I ate the delicious lunch my Señora packed for me. (Two sandwiches with jamon iberico and queso manchego, a peach, a whole package of cookies, and a juice box) After we got back on the bus is when things started to get a little sour. The “cool kids” behind me decided it would be a good idea to buy a bottle of whisky and then even a better idea to finish it in thirty minutes. Then a poor girl on our bus became deathly ill and vomited for the next nine hours.

To her credit, she made it in the bag every single time. Because of the girl’s sickness we made a stop every thirty minutes to an hour, this thus enabled the “cool kids” behind me to restock up on their alcohol supply. They became louder and more obnoxious by the second. This didn’t bode well for my plan of sleeping on the bus. By the time we arrived, checked in, and ate it was 1:30 am. I decided to call it a night to save up my energy for the next two days and nights of seeing the entire city of Barcelona and not really sleeping.

To be continued…

Here are the pictures from Barcelona.

Couples making out in the metro: 77

Yours truly and my favorite,

Tony Kroschewsky

Sorry to say that I have been very busy and have not had time to compose a new piece about my experiences. I am leaving for Barcelona in the morning and will be back on Sunday night, I can promise you there will be a new semi-interesting post by Monday at the very latest.

Here are some new pictures from around Madrid.

Couples making out in the metro: 64

Yours truly and my favorite,

Tony Kroschewsky

Two weeks left and some other semi-interesting things

Well, I got my mid-terms back and I made B’s on both of them. You know what that means? I will drink a bottle of red wine the night before every major exam for the rest of my academic career.

· This blog isn’t that long

· So I am not going to give bullet points

· If you have a problem with this

· Please send all complaints to ddwiggins88@gmail.com

It’s so hard to believe that another week has gone by and I only have two left, nevertheless I still have TWO WEEKS left and plan on making the most out of them. The first three weeks I was here I saw so many places, buildings, castles, prostitutes etc (most of them you can find in previous posts). These last three weeks I have decided to do things a little different. I have seen the sites, I love the sites and I have learned so much from them, but on Monday I started seeing something 100 times better. I started seeing the people.

As I have previously mentioned in earlier blogs I started the easiest job in the world on Monday (which is saying a lot looking at my previous work history: lifeguard, crossing guard, and an economics tutor where nobody even shows up for help). I go eat lunch and dinner for free with Spanish college students and speak English to them. That’s it. My first meal was rather… awkward. Why? Nobody told the students in the program that there would be people like me to speak English with them at meals. I sat with these girls who had no idea why I was speaking English with them, and didn’t want to speak English because they just spent 5 hours in a classroom learning it and were sick of it.

Things finally got better at Dinner when I met some guys who maybe didn’t care about speaking English, but cared about the other American girls I came with and wanted to use me to get to them. After dinner and some good conversation I kept hanging out with the Spanish guys because they were nice… and so I could use them to get to the Spanish girls. My plan has been more successful than theirs. Since then I have just picked the group of people that are the most fascinated with the fact that I am American and have hung out with them.They are the nicest and most genuine people I have ever met, (besides myself) and I think that I might want to bring one or two home with me to replace some of my friends in Texas. (Dustin Dwiggins and Sidney Moore, sorry but you are on the bottom of the list. Better luck next year.)

Thursday night there was a party at a karaoke bar with the program. I told myself that there would only be one song that I would sing: Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue by Toby Keith (also known as the boot in your ass song) in honor of the 4^th of July (That’s American Independence Day). Fortunately they didn’t have it, but the coordinator of the program did find it necessary to get on stage and sing every song with whoever was singing (whether they were from the program or not). I would like to go into more details about the craziness of this woman right now, but instead I am starting a new Blog solely based on the things she does and says that makes everyone else feel embarrassed for her.

Last weekend I went to El Rastro (the biggest flea market in Europe) to get some screaming deals on cheaply made merchandise, stolen goods, and old cassettes. If you have ever had anything stolen in Madrid, please tell me because I am going back this Sunday and I can look for it.

Later that day I went to a Bullfight where I saw four bulls fall at the hands of the matadors and one matador fall at the horns of a bull. Yeah, that’s right one of the bulls got a little revenge for himself and all of his friends. The matador was hit by the bull and then driven into the ground for a good twenty seconds before the other torreros were there to distract the bull. I didn’t think the guy was going to be able to get up or even be alive, but he proved me wrong. He was helped to his feet, brushed himself off, reached for his red cape, and went back at it. His pants were torn so everyone could see his undies, he had a substantial amount of blood coming out if his leg, and he wasn’t wearing shoes (the bull literally knocked him out of his shoes), but he was still going to kill that bull… and he did.

Couples making out in the metro: 47

Yours truly and my favorite,

Tony Kroschewsky