ROWDY

These past two weeks have been a bit of an uphill struggle. After my spontaneous trip back home, I spent most of my first week back moping around in a post-Marina depression. This state of dreaming was not helped by seeing everyone back at home going to Marina concerts in Liverpool and Manchester, nor by all the Varsity statuses and tweets that made me miss Leeds a little bit (IF YOU CAN’T SPELL UNI, GO TO MET – if we can beat Met at rugby, what is the actual point in them?) However, the arrival of my whopping Erasmus Grant and my Student Finance ON THE SAME DAY certainly helped to soften the blow of returning to Madrid – thank you, Great British taxpayers, for this truly beautiful gift.

To help ease my Marina pain, I needed a different celebrity to temporarily stalk. On Tuesday night, Pablo, Leon and I went to the recording of a late-night Spanish talk show called El Hormiguero. The celebrity guest of the night was Mika, who is massive around Europe despite creeping out of the limelight back at home. The TV show itself was very bizarre and the main event was a recreation of the video for Mika’s new single, including dozens of hairy bikers, cheerleaders, dancers, welders (?!), fireworks and confetti. After the show, Mika signed autographs for those who waited behind and, although no photographs with him were allowed at the insistence of his manager, he told me we could get a photo if I just didn’t explicitly ask for it. He must have recognised me.

On Wednesday, we took another trip to Orange Café, which is quickly becoming our go-to Wednesday night place in spite of any 8.30am lectures we are supposed to have. Jesse Marco, who is apparently the DJ from the film Project X, played a set and it was pretty mental. Sadly, I can remember the taxi home, which involved me screaming at my Spanish flatmates Pablo and Adrian for talking to me in English, much to the amusement of the taxi driver. The memory of shouting ‘THIS IS MY YEAR ABROAD IN SPAIN, NOT YOUR YEAR ABROAD IN ENGLAND’ in broken Spanish just won’t leave my head.

On the Saturday, in the true Erasmus tradition of saying yes to everything, Angela, Magda, Katy and her boyfriend Chris, Leon and I headed to a theme park whose name translates into English as ‘Theme Park’. We arrived as soon as it opened and stayed all day and night until it closed at 9pm, going on every ride several times. Magda and Katy much preferred the water rides to the rollercoasters, so we ended up on the small log flume, the big log flume and the rapids a whopping ten times. The rest of us were feeling a bit more adventurous and took on the bigger rides until we were suitably nauseous. After weeks of seriously craving curry of any kind, once we left I demanded we order an Indian takeaway at Angela’s flat. I’d have to say my reunion with curry was even more emotional and rewarding than my reunion with chicken breast back in England the week before. It was well worth the wait.

On Sunday, karma refused to reward me for being an all-round brilliant person and I failed to get myself a Glastonbury ticket. I could write a whole new blog on how ridiculous the ticketing system is, or how Glasto ‘veterans’ like myself (I’ve been once) should somehow receive priority over all the commoners on my Facebook newsfeed who somehow think they are worthy of Worthy Farm, but that might give the impression that I’m actually bothered that I’m not going. And besides, nothing, I repeat, NOTHING, could ever beat Glastonbury 2011 anyway, so what’s the point?

After watching the Clásico game between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona over tapas and cerveza in a typically Spanish bar on Sunday night, it was time to face the reality of actually studying. This week’s lectures and classes were definitely the hardest so far. Although our new family law and constitutional law lecturers have so far seemed very accommodating for Erasmus students, the same can’t be said for our criminal law lecturer. When we turned up for class on Tuesday, she greeted us with a surprise test. A similar thing had happened the week before, but I managed to avoid it and spoke to her afterwards to explain I wasn’t quite confident enough for these fun little tests just yet. This time, however, she demanded that Katy, Magda and I hand in our sheets – which were literally blank apart from the few words we had actually understood when she had read out the question. It’s easy to find yourself feeling homesick when it feels like you’re never going to be able to survive the year, and I’ve been getting annoyed at myself recently as my Spanish isn’t improving as miraculously as I expected it to. Maybe it’s just time to grow some huevos (eggs, slang for ‘balls’) and make the most of my brief time here.

I escaped my flat early on Saturday morning to make the most of the day, heading to el Parque de Retiro, which is now possibly my favourite place in Madrid. The ‘Bubble Man’ in the park set my day off to a brilliant start and I had a generally great day exploring my new city, something I regret not doing sooner.

Later that night saw the arrival of Katie Rowley, AKA Catalina Rowdy, AKA one of my ‘Sal Pals’ from the Salamanca summer school in July. Angela, Leon and I met Katie and her amigas in Malasaña for a quick mojito before her friends decided to call it a night. It didn’t take much to persuade Ms. Rowdy to stay out, so we headed back to our flat to drink as much as we could and then head out to a club somewhere. We didn’t leave the flat until 4am and once we finally arrived in the centre, we had difficulty finding a club that stayed open long enough to warrant spending 10€+ to get in. Instead, we wandered around Sol aimlessly, yet having a bizarrely brilliant time. Possibly my favourite day and night in Madrid so far.

The next day, we got up bright and early to head to the Rastro market, which takes place every Sunday in La Latina. The Rastro is always jam-packed full of people and is a pickpocketing hotspot. It was all going so well until Amelia, one of Katie’s friends, noticed her purse had been taken from her bag in a matter of seconds. We decided it was best to escape the mayhem of the market so we headed for some fancy tapas.

So, although a few bumps along the way, these past few weeks have ended on a high, and I’m really enjoying my time in Madrid. As Ronan might have once said, ‘La vida es un rollercoaster’. As it turns out, the Spanish translation of rollercoaster is ‘montaña Rusa’, which means Russian mountain. Think about that. I hope you’re taking notes, there’s a test next week.