Forgot About Drey?: octubre 2011

What up West Side!

As a 20 year old college student, what can I say to define the magnitude of weight that visiting a place like Oktoberfes carries in the lives of myself and my peers. I would say that it is looked at as the best place to drink beer with buds, 2nd only to finding and attending the secret arena in Beerfest, but that would undoubtedly(indubiously) go over a few people's heads. All I know is a lot of what if conversations and imaginings occurred prior to the weekend of September 21st and every single one of them were proven to be naive, infantile attempts at creating a representation of this amazing festival.

With the dramatic intro aside, Oktoberfest began a little sketchily. What we thought was a hotel at the time of booking, ended up being no more than you're slightly above average hostel. They had private rooms sure, but this was a hostel-and a hostel right next to Oktoberfest. With great location came Alcatraz levels of security, not the lackidasial level of hotel security you imagined there would be when you decided you were going to split a 1 person bedroom between 4 people. What's wrong with the floor after a long day at Oktoberfest right? Let's just say they were prepared for shackers and had the necessary precautions to make shaking very difficult. Due to our possessing only one key, getting into the building-let alone the room-proved to be much more of a challenge than we imagined with security levels at an all time high at the door. I'll spare you all the details but we ended up jumping out a couple windows, landing on a couple roofs, and climbing up a fire escape. Sketch, but hey we got in and the plan worked perfectly, so no regrets.

The first night was pretty calm, but the next day was everything but. We started our day off with a couple steins of beer and a game of snappa at the houfbrough tent at around 9 in the morning. It was a Thursday so the place was nearly empty when the game began but slowly filled up towards the end and I'm proud to say we had most of the people watching and even a couple taking pictures of our game. Not so happy to say that despite a respectable amount of points and a great throw to table ratio, a couple catches went array for Sean and I and we lost 7 to 5.

Let me describe these tents. THEY ARE HUGE. All are at least as big as a football field and some definitely bigger. Inside they are just filled with tables to eat and drink at. Most of them are reserved on the weekends and afternoons during the week but if you get there early enough you can grab one that isn't reserved and it's yours until you leave. They're like beach front property, limited and in high demand.

After the game it was a unanimous decision that we should move to the tent known to house the young german crowd, Stottenhammel, (definitely not correct spelling). Well luckily right when we arrived we found a table in the BEST location right in the middle of the crowd, so not only were we getting beer the fastest (which comes in HUGE steins, probably 3 or 4 beers in one, and tastes delicious) but we owned the place. We only took up half the table so anyone that we deemed worth talking to we invited to our spot. We were waving people in and shoeing others out. It was the closest I have ever been and probably ever will be to being a bouncer. After shooing away like 4 sets of 16 year old girls who insisted they weren't to young to be hanging out with us, we started playing card games and joining in the music, chants, and feasting that goes on at Oktoberfest. We eventually ended up hanging out with some local german girls and their friends and traveled around the festival taking in the exhibits, rides, and games. It really is just one huge carnival. For me, I've been on rides and seen Carnivals so my favorite part was by far the tents.

So the next day we went straight to the tents and got a table in the Haughbrow tent which is known to be the American/Australian tent. This place was ridiculous. It was utter chaos. As you entered it sounded like you were entering The Coliseum right before a gladiator match. Just a loud roar the entire time. Every now and again people would stand on their table with their beer at least near full and start chugging. Everyone would stop whatever they were doing and start cheering the person on as he or she chugged. If you finished the cheers only got greater....but if you failed they were heartless. The whole tent would just erupt in BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS!!!!!! Some people would even throw things. It really got crazy. Even for girls! I saw a girl put on a GREAT attempt, perhaps better than I could have done. She was seconds from finishing but just couldn't do it. They were relentless, they didn't cut her any slack. We sat next to some German guys in their lederhosen in the beer garden and they were teaching us all the german chants from vulgar to sincere. A huge crowd favorite oddly enough is 7 nation army by the white stripes.... who knew. They also showed me a tobacco that you take by the nose. Never doing that again. Anyway, we spent the better part of the day at that tent and I have TONS of stories but I have more to write and they're way better in person anyway. For our third day we had to check out of the hostel because we signed up for one night of camping in tents. The third day was spent going to tents we hadn't checked out trying new beers and just hanging out. We eventually met up with some "SB locs" (some santa barbara locals) who we discovered were staying at the same tent ground as us and they guided us to our new home. Our last night was spent on a huge camp ground that had all you can drink beer and sangria as well as a pretty good dinner. It was full of college students from all over the world and was one of the greatest nights slash mornings of partying I've been a part of. Met lots of people that I will probably never see again but that is half the fun.

Awhile ago I had to make the decision to go to Ibiza (spain's neighboring party island) or Oktoberfest. They were both going off around the same time and costed similar amounts and I could only afford one. In the end I obviously chose Oktoberfest, and I'm extremely happy with my decision. It was an amazing mix of exploring a new culture and partying. That weekend is in my "best weekends of my life list" (undoubtedly in the top 3) and unless I am an extremely lucky person will probably not be topped soon.

Check out the pictures, but just know they can't even tell the half of it.

P.S. Last two weeks in Barce will be up soon. I'm slowly but surely making it towards the present.

Our Prison Cell Hostel

Oktoberfest, one of the main walkways

Outside one of the smaller tents

Just your everyday run of the mill carnival art

Ledderhosen

you have no idea...

how nuts

These tents were.

Some of the many vagabonds that graced our table....

Sean, his beer, and his phone...

We found David.

Straight to the point.

What sleeping on the floor for three nights does to you...

BRAWS!

Ok so I know I took forever to do another post but after this I'm going to ATTEMPT to blog every Sunday now that I'm officially adjusted so I don't have to shift through tons of pictures to create a correct chronological blog.

Ok so before I talk about Barcelona and how awesome it is I'm going to jump back to London for a quick bit because when a mother requests some details you have to give it to her and I left this story out of the last post. At one point while we were on the tube, the exit was I think Westminster Abbey, there were these hugeeeee escalators that were as steep as they were long. Sean, Mike, and I were walking off of one just to see another just as big and as were walking towards the escalator we heard a scream from a girl, something like "Grandpa", or "Papay!", just being repeated with yells for help. I look up and I see this man, definitely in his 60's if not older, literally tumbling down the escalator going up while his grandkids are just stuck near the top watching. His fall was a never-ending fall because as he was falling the escalator kept moving up. I never thought about it before but escalators are pretty freaking dangerous things. I instantly run to go stop this guys fall and just see him crack his head so unbelievably hard that it made me stop in my tracks and crinch. I got my composure and kept going but all I can do is stop his fall. He must have weighed 200 Ibs and his body was deadweight. I'm pretty sure he was knocked out cold with a concussion. Muscle man Sean came up behind me with another random guy and we lifted him up. I won't go into too much detail but by this point things had gotten pretty graphic, and when we reached the top I sprinted up two escalators and got someone to call an ambulance after convincing him I wasn't just a babbling idiot American and that someone was actually bleeding from some serious head trauma due to their freaking death trap escalators. Eventually the ambulance came and we later saw him walking out with a bandaged head so I'm pretty sure he's ok. There you go mother, that is how me and the pals saved a grandpa.

Now Barcelona: this place is crazy. The first week was spent pretty much going out every other night meeting people in our program. It was syllabus week so any college student reading this understands the festivities that go on in said week and I can say with the utmost conviction that Spain's syllabus week is like your normal one with an adrenaline needle to the heart. I went out until 5 or 6 am for probably 3/4th's of the week. That's how they do it in spain, pregame late and end early. It was fun, but I'll never do it again. Pretty delirious by the end of it. Anyway the most notable places I would say are DOW JONES ( a bar whose drink prices vary based on the demand for the drinks at any given point, and if you get lucky you are close to the bar when the market crashes), Ovella Negra, and Cyranos. So far Ovella Negra and Cryanos were my favorite because they crowd is a good mix of tourist and local, especially Cyranos. (Although I'm not sure how long that will last; a bar that lets you pour your own drink and give you a mixer/chaser for 3 euro doesn't stay low key among college students for very long). As for the clubs, I mean, they are everything you've heard about and more. On the beach or in the city, they are packed with people and everybody's going wild. We checked out all the usual ones. For the family members that were scared by my facebook post, Opium is a club. I'm not updating facebook from some den somewhere in underground Spain. So far my favorite has been Razzmatazz on dubstep night and Apollo's. Apollo's is like a more rock oriented club that does live shows and play's rock remixes and mashes. It was a good change of pace for me especially because I'm not the biggest fan of electric music. There was a lot of locals there and every now and again when your feeling brave enough it's fun to try your luck speaking spanish for the night. I could go on for hours about the nightlife because there is so much of it but I'll stop there.

I almost forgot our apartment! While being a little bit out of the way it is awesome. It is near districte de gracia and is in the upper part of the city making us very close to lots of the sightseeing but pretty far from the beach and most of the clubs. It's really big and has wifi and a nice kitchen as well as a great living area with a huge window opening up to a city view. Just check out the pictures.

In the second week classes REALLY began and it was time to get to it. I got moved up a Spanish level which was a major plus. The level I'm in right now is the perfect amount of gratifying and challenging. I'm getting about 7-8 hours a week of Spanish in my classes mixed with Rosetta Stone so my progress is coming along pretty well. Were learning the preterit and past tenses this next week and once I grasp that I think I'll be well on my way to being a much better Spanish speaker and writer. Right now I can easily get by living, it's probably been that way since the second week. However, I think I'm a much better speaker than writer probably due to Rosetta Stone. Anywho Spanish is probably my favorite class, followed by International Finance which is all about exchange rates, how they are set, and their significance in an internationally linked world economy. Last class, Strategic Decisions in Buisness and Marketing, is a dumbed down version of 10a and 100b which is probably the most boring class ever. This is not helped by the fact that my teacher can barely speak English. Every now and again she says "fuck" when she means "fact" and that garners some laughter but I really dislike this class mainly because I've kinda already taken it. My Spanish teachers are very interesting. They are really young and everyday give us something cool to do in Barcelona. I wish they were allowed to go out with us because I'm sure they are a blast.

With the second week came the sight seeing, beginning of course with the beach. For being man made (Barcelona created its beaches for the olympics) it's pretty beautiful. It's extremely hot right now here and just cooling off so our first couple weeks we spent A LOT of time at the beach. It was a crash course on beaches in Europe to say the least. They are awesome, the water is great and well yeah everyone is topless. I think the second weekend here we went to Sitges which was the nicest beach I've been too yet. However, it's quite the interesting crowd. I think it most be Spain's retirement home, because I have never seen so many older people in my life. After Sitges we went to this vineyard which supplies some ridiculous amount of champagne and cava to all of Europe and abroad. It was huge and family owned. We got a tour of the 3.5 kilometers of underground wine storage as well as the outside growing areas which consist of maybe a fourth of their vineyards. After the tour we added some cava to our own collection at the gift shop haha.

Back to Barcelona, the city itself is a kind of art. All the architecture, from apartments to actual modernist buildings built by Gaudi (an architect hailed as god here) are just extremely beautiful. Every building is art. When you walk the streets right off of the ramblas (the main street of Barcelona where there is pretty much every kind of street performer and vender you could think of) you get these alleys that are really quaint. Just exploring you can find little pockets of Spain like Placa de Sol where you drink some beers and have some tapas and just hang out.

As for some specific places and things I've done this far: tons of parks all of which have been touched by Guadi's artistic hand. We also checked out a parc that is known for its waterfalls and it's hedge maze. Quite a silly time. I haven't hit up Parc Guell yet but I will next week and when I do you'll see tons of pictures. I've gone to La Pedera and all of his modernist apartment blocks. The modernist style looks like something out of Alice and Wonderland. I like it a lot. It's very fantastical, it's hard to imagine the type of mind that he had to think some of these designs up.

I got a haircut here, boy was that an experience. I can hardly tell people what I want done in English let alone in Spanish. Basically the first two weeks were just adjusting to Spanish life finding markets like the Mercat de Boqueria which is an amazing fresh fruit and fish market among other things. The best word I could use to describe it is colorful. By the second week we had found some good places to eat locally and the best bars to watch the Barce Games for cheap. Speaking of FC Barcelona games we went to the AC MILAN VS. Barce. It was the first game of the champions league and it was the single most epic sporting event I have ever been to. I'm not very knowledgable about futbol, but it so interwoven into the culture here that I've started to follow it and it is pretty remarkable the camaraderie that it creates. We were in nosebleeds but at center field ( I call it the fifa view) and it was still so much fun. The stadium is a monster and the view of the city at dusk behind it is just as breathtaking. It was a great game despite ending in a tie of 2-2.

More recently, Mike's parents came and visited. They took Mike and I out to an amazing sea food dinner. On the way out we ran into this little street festival complete with decorations and a 1940's theatre act backed by live music and overacting. During fall every district in Barcelona has a week where they celebrate their area and have street festivals. I'm guessing we ran into one of these. Yesterday we went to the Picasso museum which for a museum was pretty interesting. He had QUITE the range of styles. Ranging from peasant depiction to the most abstract things I have ever seen. I think I liked his blue phase the most. Afterwards we again ran into another festival for the Barcelonetta district, this one was a little crazier. They had trick pilots flying planes all over the district and the beach doing flips making words and drawings in the sky. At least a couple times I thought we were going to witness a crash and burn, but alas, they are professionals.

In a couple days I'll write about Oktoberfest but for now I'm all written out. Adios mis amigos.