As my mom drove me to the air port she gave me her usual lecture on being carefull, doing what’s right, and being respectful, oh and of course not listening to everything that my dad tells me, (she had a point on that last one). My dad is well known to not know when to give it a rest, to put it nicely. But I was happy all the same; it always made me happy to revisit Spain. To see my cousins and uncle, to try and just say “Hola!!” to my almost completely deaf grand parents who are already in their 90’s, and of course to see my dad and little brother.
After about 8 hours on a bowing 777, two movies, and around 10 games of chess. I finally got to Madrid. When I got there, I could tell right away that I was in Spain. I didn’t have to wait in the long ass immigration line. I just flashed my Spanish passport answered a few questions, and entered as a Spanish citizen. But not every thing was as easy as that, after waiting for about half an hour for my luggage I realized they managed to forget it in London “one of my connecting flights to Madrid”. So I filled out a report and gave them my dads address and phone number and got the hell out of there. After that whole ordeal, I found my way out the main exit to find my self looking in to a sea of people waving and greeting, saying things like “Hola!!, Como estas, y pora que” amongst other Spanish words. And way in the back I saw my dad waving his hand and calling me over to him. As I walked closer to him I could tell he had aged a little more from previous year and still had his ponytail that now went a little past his shoulders. He was still in great shape for his age he had just turned 53, actually he seemed to be doing a little better that last year. Since he had just quit smoking, cold turkey after over 35 years of continuous smoking. His main reason for quitting was that 2 of his friends had died that year from cancer and they were both younger than he was. That, and I wouldn’t quit nagging him about it last year. My dad’s a few inches shorter than I am but still tall compared to your average Spaniard. He had your typical beer belly, from going to bars all the time which is completely normal and very common in all of Europe. He was starting to get a tan from all the summer heat which was going to get a lot worse as the summer progressed. If one kept up with world news they would know what I’m talking about.
After the big hugs, hello’s and long trip story. We took off home to the north side of Madrid, where me dad lives; he lives in a medium sized apartment on the east side of Madrid. With my grandparents, *********, and *********, and of course my great aunt **********, my grand parents are getting very old and don’t have many years left in them. They are not able to do much on their own anymore and barely ever even go out side, they haven’t left that neighborhood in over 10 years. My dad and ********* do what they can to help out, and my aunt ******* is starting to get pretty old herself, she’s already in her 70’s.
Before I left to Spain I had planned a trip to visit my best friend Carlos he had spent his senior year in Hamburg in Germany as a foreign exchange student. We have known each other ever since elementary school, and had gone through middle school and most of high school together. I really wanted to hang out with him again, in high school we’d always find the weirdest things to do, I don’t know how but we’d always find some thing cool to do. And this time I had a feeling we were going to go a little crazy.
After spending a few days with my dad and grand parents, I found a train schedule and took off for Germany, I didn’t feel bad for leaving my dad because I know that I would only be gone for a few weeks and that I was spending almost my whole entire summer in Spain, I would have plenty of time to do things with him when I got back. One of the first trains I took was called el Talgo one of the older bullet trains, but still it went pretty damn fast, the ride did seem to take for ever though. It toke about 13 hours in total to get all the way to Hamburg. My first train stopped in Paris, were I had to find a subway schedule to get to the Nord train station which was on the other side of the city. I had a few hours to spare before my next train left so I toke the subway to the middle of Paris and walked around for an hour or two. The streets of Paris were very interesting and very nice. After having a few drinks in one or two bars. I toke the subway to the Nord train station, and took off for Hamburg. After changing trains a few times and watching the scenery for what seemed like forever, I finally got their, and I hopped off the train and looked around for my friend, but knowing Carlos I wasn’t surprised that he wasn’t their waiting for me. So after waiting for a little while and looking around, I tried to give him a call on my cell phone, but of course with my luck I couldn’t get that to work. After trying that for ten minutes I ended up buying a calling card, and giving him a call on that. When I finally got a hold of him, I had to bitch him out for not picking me up. And after I got that out of my system he told me what train I needed to catch to get over to his house, where he was staying with his host mother and sister. When I finally made it to his house I met his host mother and sister, man was his host sister hot as hell. To bad that she had to take off with her friends, I would have loved to have gotten to know her a little better.
The first few days I was there we talked and went to some pretty cool parties we even had one at his host parent’s house. I met a lot of Carlos’s friends the ones that he had made during the school year, they were pretty cool and a lot of them spoke English too. That’s one thing that’s very common in Germany; most people speak at least 2 languages at the bare. On our third day we left to go see this really cool concert a few hours out side of Hamburg. We left with two of Carlos’s good friends, Fijt and Tief. Real cool guys. On our way there we hit a bit of traffic on the Autobahn. So we decided to start getting messed up before even getting there. We saw this 18 wheeler with a flat bed moving real slow next to us, so me and Carlos decided to hop out with a few drinks and just chill on top of the flat bed for a little while. People driving by gave us looks like “what the hell are you doing?”, but we didn’t care. When the traffic started to pick up we hopped off and got back in the car.
When finally getting there, we still had to find away of getting in to the concert area, because we weren’t smart enough to buy the tickets before hand. So after walking around for a little while we found a gap in the fence where we snuck in and went back to the entrance and told them that we had lost our bands and that we needed new ones. They bought it, and gave us each a “new one”. We walked over to where the rest of Carlos’s friends were and set up our tents. Me and Carlos shared a tent for the four days that we were their. The festival was Awesome they had bands playing all day long on two different stages, and at night you could go to the clubs that were set up. You pretty much spend the whole time in a drunken, stoned state. We went to go see the bands that we didn’t want to miss, like Radio Head, Good Chariot, Estopa, and some cool German bands that Carlos told me about. The only thing that I had trouble with was talking to people. But I ended up meeting some cool people and ended up hooking up with some cute German girl and we didn’t do much talking if you know what I mean. After the concert was over and we picked up all our stuff, we headed back to Carlos’s house in Hamburg, where I found a train schedule back to Spain. We said our good buy’s and I took off the next day.
Carlos got one of his friends to give me a ride to the train station. I got their and found out that the train that I wanted to take from Paris to Madrid was full. So I wasn’t sure what to do, so I decided to figure it out latter when I got to Paris. Well that was easier said than done; on the way there one of my trains was late to one of its stops, so of course I missed my connecting train. And I had to find another way back to Paris. After talking to a few people and getting on certain trains that I had no idea were the hell were headed. I think that at one point I ended up in the Netherlands for a short while. I ended up finding a train that was going to Paris. I hopped on that one and tried to get some sleep. I had already been traveling for 5 hours and was tired as hell. I got what sleep I could and gave my dad a call I explained my situation and he said he would figure some thing out. An hour or so latter he called me back and told me he had found me a flight from Paris to Madrid for a good price. So when I finally got getting to Paris I had to make my way to the airport and check in. I found the subway train to the airport and waited around for my flight. As I got back I realized that my vacation had barely even started, and that I still had another month and a half of traveling with my dad. But that’s another story all together.
