Now´s the time when my blogtitle loses its authenticity

I arrived in Madrid yesterday, hazy from staying up all night and relieved that I could get around with my 6 years of classroom spanish that seem to amount to very little when in an actual spanish speaking country. My plane trip from Tel Aviv-Athens-Madrid is a blur as I slept through all of it and only woke up to stupidly shove the airplane food into my mouth before passing out again. I do remember, however, that the the airport in Athens was beautiful and surrounded by mountains so I look forward to going back. All I know is that people smirked when I told them I was taking Olympic Airlines, but I had two flights with empty seats next to me to stretch into and they were no different from any other flight that I´ve taken in my 22 years of flying. So ya, viva la olympic airlines.

The hostel in Madrid is remarkably trendy for its lower than average price and I was amazed to see leather couches, flatscreen TVs and crisp clean sheets-- ammenities that make this place Europe and not the Middle East. The facilities are overflowing with all types of students from all over the world and you could probably detail each one of their social circles by just observing the group dynamics for no more than five minutes. My first step was to take a shower, and when I entered the shower of my 10 bed all female dorm room, I was excited to see the variety of shampoos, conditioners, body washes, and lotions that I had to choose from. I´ve been getting very sick of my stolen-from-hotels supplies that are running low and it was as if I was showering in a CVS shampoo aisle. Still, I left my pathetic little travel-size bottles in the shower to spread the love should someone want to experiment with my shampoos because that´s what traveling´s all about.

I decided to just stay motivated and have an afternoon of siteseeing (despite my weariness) and just go to sleep early. I started roaming around the city, ate a kebab for lunch, and then stumbled upon El Museo del Sofia Reina-- Spain´s prominent modern art museum that houses important works of Picasso, Dali, Miro, Gris, Tanguy, and many other artists that have defined a unique school of twentieth century cubic art. I was amazed to find how grim Spanish art was and how much of it related back to the violence during the Spanish Civil War. It´s funny, you learn about all of this stuff in Spanish class, but none of it sticks. It only comes back when you´re seeing it on your own with fresh eyes.

Guernica was unlike anything I had expected. I´ve seen it so many times in art books, postcards and Spanish class textbooks, but when I entered that room and saw that it nearly took up the entire wall, I was blown away. I could´ve stayed in that room all day looking at the different sections of it, and it looked like the guards sitting equidistant on either sides of the painting were added strategically for effect in demonstrating the painting´s magnitude.

The museum was beautifully designed and each room had some kind of video addition that either put you in a room with an artist or contextualized the themes of the art-- many had historical footage of Franco, Hitler or waving troops. I fell asleep for nearly 15 minutes in one of the dark rooms with a movie and that gave me the energy to last for the rest of the day-- mainly though just from the the adrenaline I got from realizing that I had fallen asleep for 15 minutes in a museum. By the time I got out of the museum it was 730 (I had spent nearly 4 hours in there)and I stopped at a cafe for coffee and churros before heading back to the hostel. It was a successful first day of being tired in Madrid.