I Swear I am Not Exaggerating (Madrid)

I spent the weekend in quite possibly the sketchiest hostel in all of Madrid. Some of you may be thinking, I know Laura, I am sure it wasn’t as bad as she says it was. If you were thinking this, you would be wrong, oh so wrong. It should have been a sign when our cab driver had neither heard of the place or the street before. Well, really, the first sign should have been that we were staying at a place called Berlin Hostel when we were in Madrid. Anyways, after being dropped off a ways away from our hostel and just wandering around until we found it, we knew we were in for it. The hostel was on a hole-in-the-wall street, with out even a light-up sign (even the trashy places have these). Once again, you may be thinking, Oh, how quaint. Once again, you would be wrong. So, we had to walk away from the sign to even get to the hostel door where we had to be buzzed up. Upon stepping into the stairway, I knew we were in for a treat, and not the sweet kind, this was the kind that you put in your mouth and spit out and then find the nearest bottle of bleach to disinfect your mouth. We nervously walked up the steps and would have passed the hostel if there had not been someone standing at the door. My eyes wandered up from the guy standing at the door and I saw, I kid you not, a piece of old, stale, chewed bread on top of the hostel door. I walked in chuckling, said that we had reservations and asked him a few questions (Was there a curfew?, Did they have a map of Madrid?, etc). The answer to all of my questions was no. How can you run a hostel without of a map of the city? The “hostel” was basically two apartments with walls knocked out. The “common room” was a room with 2 decrepit couches covered in a haze of smoke. I wandered past the 8 other rooms in the place to the bathrooms to discover that in one the faucet wasn’t attached and that in the other the toilet was not completely attached to the ground so gross toilet water was seeping from the bottom. We had 2 separate rooms and we split up and got settled into our rooms. Our room had a window in it with a curtain over it. I know what you are thinking, A window, that’s nice. It would have been nice, if that window didn’t look into the room next door.

We dropped off our bags and quickly fled the disgusting place we would call home for the next two nights, heading off to the Prado. For those of you that don’t know, the Prado is a very large art museum that houses the most famous Spanish Painters. In order to get the student discount, I was carded and asked how old I was. I felt like I was in the U.S. when I was able to say, “21, as of yesterday” (so maybe it wasn’t the same kind of carding as most newly 21 year olds in the U.S. get…). It was really amazing to see all the paintings that I have studied in my Spanish classes throughout the years in their massive size, the originals right there in front of me. After finishing up at the Prado, we stopped to get some snacks and then went to stop back at our hostel. When we arrived, we were greeted with another surprise, part of my group couldn’t get into their room, their key didn’t work. There was of course, no staff member to be found, and when we tried calling their “emergency numbers” no one picked up. We resigned ourselves to the fact that the 5 of us would have to push 3 beds together and sleep like that for the night, then demand our money back in the morning and flee, never to be seen there again. If we hadn’t been making so many jokes about the situation, it could have been pretty bad. After waiting a little longer, we left a note behind explaining the situation and went out to dinner. When we came back at night, we were surprised to see staff in the common room, smoking away. We were a little sad, hoping we would have a good reason to demand our money back the following morning, but now it looked like we would be staying the entire weekend. Later that night, as we were examining our tiny little lock, one of my friends was debating putting a chair in front of the door (believe it or not, they were more freaked out than I was). As he was moving the chair around, one of the owners actually barged into our room, yelling at us for making too much noise (mind you, she was in the room next door smoking and noisily watching T.V. with her friends). We went to bed laughing about what a crazy day it had been.

In the morning, I headed with a friend to the Royal Palace, where we were amazed by the lavish decorations; I would not mind living there. We then wandered around Plaza Mayor (basically just a huge courtyard) until I met up with my friend from home, Ryan (Ryan, if you are reading this, I am sorry but I have to brag a little about you). I met up with him amidst a protest that was going on and we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening wandering around, with Ryan showing me the main points of interest in Madrid. I was amazed at how well he knew the city; it seemed wherever we went he knew where we were headed. I had an excellent afternoon and evening with an excellent friend, getting caught up on everything that had happened since I had last seen him in August and even following our tradition and going to a Starbucks to sit and talk. Unfortunately, it was a bit full and we were forced to sit on the ground outside, I am surprised people didn’t start throwing money at as. Ryan left me at my ever-so-pleasant hostel that evening, commenting on how sketchy it looked just from the outside.

The following morning my group and I got up (despite the fact that there was no electricity in the hostel the entire morning), joyfully checked out of our hostel, and headed to Reina Sofia, another big art museum in Madrid known for its Picasso collection. We must have looked like quite the group, dirty (we all had the feeling that if we dared to shower at the hostel we might be dirtier than when we entered) trekking across Madrid with our bags. We finally got to the Reina Sofia (thanks to my excellent navigational skills) and were waiting in an impossibly long line due to the fact that the museum is free on Sundays, when some nice man told us we wouldn’t be able to get in at that entrance with our bags and pointed us to a different one. Surprisingly, this line took 5 minutes in comparison to the 30-minute line, plus we were able to stash all our gear. We got to see the main pieces, but the museum was so packed that it was hard to really appreciate all the art. We left Reina Sofia and continued trekking across Madrid to the Bus Station like the poor college students that we are--preferring to walk the 35-45 minute walk with all our bags than pay for a cab.

It was a crazy but great weekend and as we boarded the bus, we all agreed on one thing, at least wherever we stayed from here on out could not be any worse…hopefully.