My time here in Fez is winding down, only ELEVEN days left. These last few weeks have been some of the most busy and wonderful of my three months here. We went out to dinner in the Ville Nouvelle last Wednesday as a celebration for both Carolyn’s 19th birthday (I know...she makes me feel like I should be drinking prune juice and watching the Wheel of Fortune) and Eric’s bon voyage back to the states. It was definitely a shock back to the reality of the limited time we have here, but it was a wonderful night!
Dane and Eric
Sasha and Bruce with their sushi feast
Me after putting a pea-sized amount of wasabi in my mouth...
All the ladies!
Fast forward through an Arabic test and presentation and I was on a flight to Madrid for the weekend! We stepped off the subway into Sol to be serenaded by gorgeous Spanish music and fell in love instantly. People were dancing, couples were holding hands in the street (and more than that, but I’ll keep it PG) we were surrounded by beautiful Spanish architecture and the smells of ham and cheese and croissants and beer (all things I don’t get enough of in Fez) Let’s just say that at that moment I knew a weekend would not be sufficient time for Madrid and I to become acquainted to my satisfaction.
It turns out that Sol was not the subway stop we were supposed to exit at so we spent about an hour taking both incorrect and correct turns through the streets of Madrid to find our hostel, but who were we to complain?! I even tried to take a picture with Amberine of us making sad faces but we were incapable of wiping the smiles off our faces for long enough to snap one.
Madrid has a thriving nightlife. And when I say thriving I mean people from ages 16-75 fill the streets with singing and dancing and laughing at every hour. It is perfectly legal and quite popular to sell and buy cans of beer out on the street as you’re walking from café to pub to bar to club. The subway shuts down at 1:30 in the morning and doesn’t open again until 6 in the morning so most people decide that the most rational, level-headed, reasonable thing to do is just stay out until 6...every night. So we did. Our first stop was a pub called Le Tigre, it had a very social, active atmosphere; with the purchase of a drink they served you free tapas: sliced baguette with prosciutto ham and sharp white cheddar cheese, spicy potato croquettes also with ham and cheese inside them, and breakfast potatoes with hot sauce...DELICIOUS!!!! From there we went to a place called Tupperware...don’t ask where they got the name because I have no idea. Then to a dance club called Pacha where they served champagne in glowing glasses and if you could actually hear the person next to you talking that meant you had to be in the bathroom.
The next day was filled with shopping and art; Madrid has amazing art museums- the Thyssen, the Prado and the Reina Sofia. That night we stumbled upon a great little restaurant where we got bread and olive oil, a starter, a main course, wine and desert for 9 Euros, a pretty good price and a heartily welcomed discovery for college kids on a budget in Europe. We finally finished eating dinner at about 1:15AM and decided to head back to the hostel for a slightly earlier bedtime than the night before. We almost missed the last subway back to our neighborhood, but managed to catch it just in time. Spain has a glorious subway system, by the way. One Euro and you can go ANYWHERE. Having caught the last train, we found ourselves in a practically empty subway station at the end and decided to have some fun...obviously a success, haha!
The next morning Amberine and I went for a walk through the neighborhood in which our hostel was located. We found chocolate croissants, colorful graffiti and cool sculptures...
...we also found ourselves in quite a crunch to catch our flight back to Fez...if you know me fairly well, you’re probably thinking, uh oh. Yes, uh oh indeed. We got back to the hostel to find the rest of our group already gone and a note for us telling us to get our asses (sorry to any children who may have stumbled upon this) to the airport, so we did. We jumped on one subway, transferred to another line which ended up taking us in the opposite direction so we got off, jumped on another, and another, the oncoming panic mode must have sent my brain into overdrive because I began asking for help in some absurd mix of the Spanish I remembered from high school, the Italian I retained from my first two years of college and the Arabic I’ve been studying here. We figured out where to go and how to get there fairly quickly but seeing it on a map and finding it in person are quite different things it turns out! We eventually made it onto the last subway line to the airport. We had already resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to miss the plane and had started considering our next steps. We were still two stops away from the airport itself when we looked at the clock and saw it was 1:05, the time the gate was supposed to close for our flight and we still had to make it through goodness knows how many terminals and gates and security checks to make it there. But it turns out that under pressure, Amberine and I make a pretty solid team and never give up. So we ran. And ran. And ran. We ran through security, ran to the visa stamping station, ran to the passport check and ran to our gate to find it was the ONE flight that had not departed on time. We got in line. Found seats on the plane. Fastened our seat belts and took a breath...And that was our Madrid Miracle. Ma'shah Allah!
Adios, Ciao, Ma Salaama, Buenas Noches, Arrivederci, ليلة سعيدة
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