Safe in Santander

I have arrived safely in Santander. I’ve been almost as cold as I was in Sweden and the skies have been almost as grey. It rains off and on all day, it even hailed my first night here.

TRAVEL TO SANTANDER

Around 12:00PM I took a forty-minute train ride from Lund in Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark to catch a flight to Madrid. The Copenhagen airport is really bizarre. Security was a huge pain. I didn’t have to take my shoes off, but I did get a full body frisk (way more intrusive than any I’ve had in the US or GB) when my belt set off the metal detector. When my luggage came out of the X-ray machine I received a lecture about how deodorant isn’t liquid and therefore doesn’t belong in with my liquids and told that I had too many liquids than allowed. I was still let through with all of them, and had to take a proper size plastic bag for my liquids.After getting redressed I went on a mission to find a sandwich for lunch. I had no idea that this would be a challenge in an international airport. The terminal was more of a mall than a terminal.It was lined with hundreds of clothing, electronic, and fragrance stores. To get to the gates it was impossible to avoid them. I found my gate before eating, only to find that it was roped off. I went back out to the shops and found a pizza place- that of course was out of pizza. I had to settle for a really bad plate of Chinese (you could chew the grains of salt that hadn’t dissolved). As soon as I paid I found the sandwiches, too late. I went back to the gate when I was done eating (one hour before my flight) and it was still roped off. I went back to the food area and sat people watching for a while. There was a really sweet baby refusing to eat anything her mother gave her. Finally with 15 minutes to go, I walked back to the gate- still locked. I just stood waiting and when boarding started they let us through to the gate.

On my flight I sat next to the most obnoxious and rude European-American on earth. He started off telling me that he was an American citizen who could take it no longer and had to get back to Europe. I sympathized at first, noting the racial discrimination and profiling he probably went through as a Spanish speaker in California. But then he went on to tell me about how is landlord screwed him, he had to pay extra to bring back his luggage (which was overweight and consisted of 5 bags) to Europe, and how he couldn’t smoke in restaurants. My sympathy was quickly dissolving as he told me that all American’s feel entitled (including me) and that we are the root of all evil. I knew he was a total jerk when he told me about how he sold his stock option for two million dollars and made over $150,000 a year (boohoo) and had to pay so many taxes (Tommy, Grandma, and Grandpa- picture Ed but skinnier and European). I eventually gave up being polite and tried to read my book- he wasn’t having that. He started in on the War, which we sort of held the same views on, on his were 924739247 times more extreme. When he was all talked out (2 hours in to our 3 hour flight) I got to read in peace.

I flew Spanair to Madrid. It was a pretty bare-bones airline, even the seats felt cheaper than usual. You had to pay for everything on the flight, including water. I was glad I had filled up my bottle before getting on board. At the end they gave everyone a free lemon-bar cookie thing.

When I landed in Madrid I first found an ATM to get some cash. Then I set out looking for my luggage- harder than you’d imagine. I couldn’t even find my way out of the gate area. A guy from my flight recognized me and flagged me down. I followed him down to baggage carousals.We were apparently in the wrong “arrivals lounge” however, and could not find the right carousal. Before I knew it I had walked out of the secure are and into the taxi/shuttle area.Whoops! I had to ask a woman in information where to find my bags. When I got them, I then set out to try to call my hotel which had a free shuttle service. I couldn’t figure out how to work any of the pay phones (all the directions were in Spanish) and couldn’t find someone who could understand my terrible Spanish to help me. The machine ended up eating all my loose change before I got through to anyone. I found some guys (really weird band members from all over the world) who spoke English and they let me use their cell phone to call the hotel. I caught the shuttle and made it to Hotel Osuna around 8:00PM.

The shuttle ride to the hotel was very interesting. An older man, in his mid-sixties, picked me up. He was listening to a Nelly Furtado rap song and then to the really obnoxious “I kissed a girl and I liked it” song. He sang along to them as I was tossed around in the back seat.

At the hotel, the woman at the front desk spoke English. She gave me my room key and I bought 24 hour access to the wireless internet for 12 Euros. I then lugged my suitcases to a different building to my room.

My room was pretty nice. It had a marble bathroom and two twin beds with really pretty linens.The mattresses were hard as rocks and the room was kind of cold, though. I had a TV with less than ten channels, one of which was CNN in English. I watched the news until it began repeating itself and messed around on the internet for several hours. I went to bed and woke up wired around 5:00AM. I did some more internet and TV watching. “Knocked Up” came on but it was dubbed in Spanish so I couldn’t really understand what they were saying. At 8:00 I went to the lobby to catch the shuttle to the airport.

There were two older couples in the shuttle with me. One couple was Italian and I was able to speak a little Spanish to the woman. The other couple was from the US and bickered the whole way to the airport. The woman really wanted her husband to leave the shuttle driver a good tip (which isn’t really customary in Spain). Then she became convinced that we were at a different airport than she had arrived in (it’s a HUGE airport). I was the last one out of the shuttle and had to communicate that I needed to go to arrivals and not departures. I managed to do this fairly easily much to the driver’s dismay. He was willing to take me to arrivals though clearly thought I was crazy for doing so.

I got to the arrivals lounge at 9:00 but the group’s flight didn’t arrive until 9:45. While I waited I read “Marley and Me” and tried to scout out Greta. Greta said she would be on the left and would look “really American”. I never spotted her but I eventually saw Carly walk out of the gates. It took a while for the rest of the group to come through and we still hadn’t found Greta.Eventually Greta arrived; her credit card had been blocked in the hotel which held her up. When the whole group gathered Greta stayed with the luggage and we all grabbed a snack. I got a cheese baguette. Nate chose the ham and cheese. Mine was really good; Nate kept choking on his because it was so crumbly. Our bus was late in arriving to the airport so we waited nearly an hour in the lobby.

When we finally got on the bus it was large enough for each of us to have our own row. As we left the city I began to notice that the bus was really rocking a lot. I took half a Dramamine hoping not to get drowsy. I still got really nauseous and eventually caved and took the other half. I had to lie down for a while to let the medicine kick in and prayed I wouldn’t get sick. I dosed off for a little while only to be jolted awake by a sudden stopping of the bus. By this time the Dramamine had taken effect and I was okay sitting up and looking out the windows. The landscape was very similar to what I had seen in Reno. Snow capped mountains and large plains between. As we drove further from Madrid the snow line got lower and lower. We went through one section of really tall hills lined with hundreds of wind turbines for power generation. We stopped for lunch at a little bar on the side of the road that was experiencing a power outage. I had another baguette, this time ham and cheese. The bread was so hard it cut the roof of my mouth.

When we got back on the bus almost everyone was awake and ready to chat. We talked about how much the landscape looked like Hogwarts. Then Steven started making fun of me for knowing so much about Harry Potter, so I was sure to bring up HP whenever possible. The snow began falling really hard; a snow plow even appeared in the other side of the road. We went through a tunnel and were shocked to find on the other end that there was no snow on the ground. We had gone from an area of 4-6 inches to nothing. The snow had changed to rain. As we pulled in to Santander, the rain let up.

We got off the bus at a Maritime school building where all of our families were waiting to greet us. It was kind of chaotic as the Senoras came up and called out names. Some of them knew us by our pictures from the applications we submitted. I was whisked away by an older woman and her grown son.

They talked about me, thought I don’t know what they said, on our way back to the house. We went in to a building, up an elevator, and in to an apartment. The apartment is nothing like I had pictured. I had in my mind an old row house with lace all over the place and a bed room on the second floor with an adjoining bathroom. Wrong! This apartment is smaller than the one I had in Raleigh. It consists of my bedroom, my senoras bedroom, a kitchen, and a salon. My bedroom is pretty nice; I have a desk and a wardrobe. I don’t have much storage space though; many of the drawers and the closet are filled with things already. I unpacked my clothes and then watched TV with Julia until eating dinner. For dinner I was served rice, an egg, and two hot dogs. It was the most bizarre meal I have ever eaten. I am not fond of any of those three food items so it was a bit of a struggle to get it all down. After dinner I watched some more TV. At 9:30 I could not stay awake any longer. I was freezing and kept falling asleep in my chair. I went to bed and fell asleep really quickly. Unfortunately we live on a really busy street so I was awakened several times by noises below.

SUNDAY

I somehow slept until 9:00 on Sunday morning. I wasn’t really sure what to do so I got up and went to the bathroom, hoping Julia would see me and get breakfast ready. It worked. She made me toast with peach jam. We then went out to walk the ancient dog, Timon.

Timon walks really slowly, especially in the rain. This was both a blessing and a curse. It gave me plenty of time to look around but also provided time for many awkward silences. Julia showed me some key landmarks to look for when I am coming home.

After coming in from the walk I decided to take a shower. I asked Julia if there was anything special, assuming there would be. She got up and went about telling me how to work the shower.No hot water was coming out so she went into the kitchen and started messing with the hot water heater switch. It didn’t seem to be working well. Then we went back to the bathroom where she ran the water until it was “hot”. I say “hot” because it was more like a tepid lukewarm temperature. It was the kind of pool water I would reframe from swimming in. None the less I climbed into the tub, sat down (there’s no shower curtain), and started taking my cold shower.Just as I thought, “damn this cold water sucks”, the “hot” water ran out. I was sitting in FREEZING cold water that took my breath away. I held my breath, rinsed off, and got out of the tub as quickly as possible. I dried off and ran back to my room to get dressed. Julia poked her head out to ask if the water was hot, I said “un poco frio!” to which she responded by going back to the water heater and messing some more.

I took a long time getting dressed since the towels here are HUGE and warm. I then sat down at my desk to write in my journal. Julia came in to my room and encouraged me (strongly) to go walk around the city. I finished up what I was writing and then set out for a stroll. I had no idea where I was going, but I did have a shopping list that I hoped to put a dent in. I wandered around the downtown in the rain for a couple hours. Almost everything was closed since it was Sunday. I did find a pretty cool street market in one of the tunnels in the city. I don’t much care for crowds and small spaces (especially when I stand out as much as I do here) so I only made one pass through and didn’t see much of the merchandise. On my way home I found my new favorite café, Vega, which has free wireless internet. The only downfall of this place is that it is extremely loud and I sort of have to yell into my microphone when I make calls on Skype. The coffee and food is really good and very reasonably priced.

I went home for lunch/siesta around 2:30. Julia had a vegetable soup and fried cheese with ham in the middle waiting for me. Lunch was a huge improvement over my past two meals which brightened my spirits a bit. Julia went to lay down for siesta as soon as she served me so I ate in silence.

At 3:30 I left the house to meet the rest of my study abroad group in the Maritime Museum.When we met up, we all swapped stories about our awkward first day and night in the home stays. It’s very interesting to hear how different each family is.

Our tour of the Museum was done by a Spanish woman who tried her best to get us to understand what she had to tell us. Part of the issue I had was that the museum was filled with screaming children and large halls that echoed. I was also pretty tired so it was hard to pay attention to Spanish for an extended period of time. I caught two or three of the explanations and compared notes with the others to confirm what we thought we had heard. I think it would be interesting to go back at the end of the program and see how much more/what I understand differently.

After the museum tour we all walked over to a Taberna (tavern) for sangria and snacks. The sangria here is awesome, much fruitier than anything I’ve had in the States. We were also given a weird garlic broth drink to warm up, calamari, cheese, bread, sausage, and a shot of some cream liquor. Everyone was talking and getting along really well. It was the first time I had gotten to be with the whole group for an extended period of time to just sit and talk. Everyone seems to get along really well which is a nice change from my Guatemala trip. When the wine was gone (several hours later) we were given our cell phones and told to head out. Some people called home and told their families they wouldn’t be home for dinner. I couldn’t get in touch with Julia so I had to go home to eat. For dinner I had left over ham and cheese balls. I then went back out to meet the group at a bar called The Loft. We were the only ones in the bar and we were pretty loud (16 American’s tend to get that way). The bar owner was really nice and spoke really slowly for us so we could understand him. He told us about the economic situation in Spain and about his businesses. Around 1:30 I walked home with the kids from my part of town to sleep.