Madrid to Prague 9/8/2008

Today was pretty simple. We woke up and checked out. We went to an airport. We boarded a plane. We flew to Prague. We got off the plane. We went to the pension. While checking in we ran in to a bunch of our friends. Most of us are already here but a few more groups will be arriving in the next day. We all went out to eat together near in Old Town and shared stories about our travels. It is real nice to see everyone and we are all real excited about the semester.

Madrid 9/7/2008

When we woke up this morning we found out we were still in Madrid. So, we tried to make the most of it.

First, we went to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, which is a modern art museum. The art was pretty cool, but the main reason we went was to see the addition done by Jean Nouvel. He added some elevators on one side and a new modern wing on the opposite side. There’s large covered courtyard surrounded by temporary exhibit space, offices, and the library. The temporary exhibit had all digital media that was my favorite exhibit.

After this museum we went to the Caixa Forum. This is a building designed by Herzog and de Meuron. It was a power station built in 1899 that was converted into an art gallery. They raised the roof several stories and extended the façade with perforated metal. The entire structure was also raised off the ground to let the plaza in front of the building spill underneath it so that you enter the building beneath its center. The exhibit inside was on images and videos of Charlie Chaplin (some real old dude with a moustache who was real quiet). The building was one of my favorites that I have seen so far, and we walked all around it.

After the Caixa Forum we walked to this big old park. It was nice to stroll around for a while. There were trees and grasses and lakes and paths. We took a nap for a while. When we woke up we heard a distant rumbling and followed it until we found several drum circles. We watched them for a while. Some were better than others.

It was getting late so we walked back to the hostel. The meal we had the first night we were in Madrid was so good we decided to go back and get the exact same thing again. Turns out it was good AGAIN!! We got some desert and some beers and hit the hay.

We head back to Prague tomorrow. We are sad that our vacation is over and that we will have to do real schoolwork sometime soon, but we are looking forward to exploring Prague and seeing our friends.

Madrid 9/6/2008

Apparently, the machine eating robot from Paris migrated to Madrid sometime during the past week. This migration led to poor sleep and thus a poopy attitude on the part of John W. this morning. Naturally, my poopy attitude disappeared completely after an hour or so of SHOPPING with Kelly!!!!!

After like 4 and one third hours of awesome shopping we walked around Madrid and saw some things. We went to Plaza de Mayor and Plaza del Sol. We ate some lunch. Then, in the afternoon we went to Plaza de Las Ventas for a bullfight.

Here’s how it works:

1. First there’s some horns band that plays a short song and a whole parade of all the players involved that marches out. There’s these dudes dressed like old conquistadors and some armored horses and their helpers and of course the matadors. Turns out there are several matadors, five or so minor matadors and three featured matadors that are the ones that go one on one with the bull.

2. Everyone but the matadors leaves the ring and they release a bull into the ring. The matadors are spaced out around the edge of the ring next to a small opening that they can fit through but the bull cannot. They pop out of their openings one at a time and taunt the bull so that the bull runs back and forth across the ring several times and gets tired out.

3. Some horns sound and two guys on armored-horseback come out with long spears. The bull will eventually charge the horse from a close range (the horse has blinders on and does not see this coming). The horse is protected by soft armor so nothing but a blunt force hits it. While the bull is pushing into the horse, the rider stabs the bull on the back of its neck until it is distracted by matadors which have ventured farther from their doors by this point.

4. More horns are sounded and the horses leave. A few of the featured matadors come out and make the bull charge towards their ‘pink and yellow cape-thingies’ (a technical term). Meanwhile other matadors will run up to the bull while it is distracted and stab two barbed sticks into its upper back. This happens three times, and if all three attempts are successful, the bull will have 6 sticks dangling from its back.

5. The final stage is with one matador and his red cape and sword. He goes out to the ring and salutes the crowd and leaves his hat on the ground. The bull will charge at his cape and narrowly miss hitting the matador. The crowd gets into it if he is good, especially if he doesn’t move when the bull passes and keeps the cape in front of the bull. He holds the cape out by draping it over a thin sword that he carries with him. Finally, when the bull is just a few feet in front of him and has his head lowered to charge, the matador will stab the bull at the top of his neck.

If the matador is good, the bull will die immediately. If not, the bull will continue running around and the matador will use a hook to get the sword out of the bull’s neck and stab him again. The bull, once slain, will be dragged out of the ring by three donkeys and the blood will be shoveled and carried out as well. Steps 2-5 are repeated until each of the three featured matadors has killed two bulls (somewhere between 5-8 bulls; the calculator function is broken on this computer).

As you can tell, this is an extremely gruesome event. It was very unsettling and made me cringe the first few times. It was extremely bloody, and was very painful to watch if the matador was not good. By the end, I was almost numb to the killing and it did not affect me the way the first few bulls did. Overall, it was a very interesting experience. I don’t know if I would go again, but I would definitely recommend it if you have never seen it before.

After the bull fight we had a cheap dinner and went to a bar before going to bed.

Valencia to Madrid 9/5/2008

Our room in the hostel last night had 14 beds, 12 of which were occupied by the loudest snorers on planet earth. Anyway, we got up and checked out of the hostel. We had bought tickets the day before for an IMAX show about the Swiss Alps, namely an ascent of the Eiger. So we walked back to Center for Arts and Sciences after leaving our stuff in the hostel.

The building with the theatre inside is my favorite at the CfAS (pronounced kuh-fahs). It is basically a giant eye. There are pictures of it in my previous post and you will notice that the eyelid is open around the eyeball making an open area to walk around outside. Today when we went, the eyelid was closed making the outdoor space more secluded. The theatre is inside the eyeball. The film was pretty cool; some very pretty scenery that we may get to see later in this trip. After the film, we took some more pictures of the CfAS then picked our stuff up from the hostel and caught the train to Madrid.

We got to Madrid after dark. We walked to the hostel and checked in. We are in a large room again with like 69 bunk beds, but our hostel seems pretty AOK. There is a neat closed in courtyard that all the rooms surround.

After checking in, we found a place to eat. A guy at the hostel recommended Tapas del Mundo. Kelly and I split a platter for two of a bunch of Spanish food that was way good. We found some churros with chocolate for desert which was yummy.

Downstairs in our hostel is a bar where all the college age kids meet up before going out till 5am. We went down there for a little bit and had a few beers. They had a DJ that it seemed like everyone was trying to ignore until he played “Space Jam” by Quad City DJs, when everyone immediately started dancing and singing along. (Space Jam was a song that reached peak popularity in America 11 years ago among the age group of 8-12 year olds.) Both confused and amused Kelly and I went to bed.

Barcelona to Valencia 9/4/2008

Today we left Barcelona, (bummer), en route to Valencia, (neat). We took a train. We checked in to our hostel which was a much farther walk from the train station than Kelly would have liked. We were in a large room with several bunk beds and we shared it with lots of people, including one girl from Georgia (the state) who was studying abroad in Valencia. We left the hostel and found a neat bridge and walked through a long park in the middle of the city.

Pretty much the only reason we went to Valencia, other than to break up the train ride to Madrid, was to see the Center for Arts and Sciences. It is a campus of five buildings designed by Santiago Caltrava (see Barthelona 9/1/2008). The five buildings are an opera house, an IMAX theatre, a science museum, an aquarium/SeaWorld type building, and an arboretum/parking deck. As with all his buildingds, Calatrava is able to do some amazing things with the help of some pretty extreme engineering.

We walked around outside for a while and took pictures and tried to decide which buildings we wanted to see most. We ended up buying tickets to go in the science museum that evening, and to see an IMAX show the next morning. The museum was pretty neat. A lot of the exhibits were aimed toward children and because of my superior intellect and maturity, it was hard for me to enjoy. But there was a totally cool one about comic books. It had all kinds of cool heroes like Spiderman, Wolverine, Daredevil, and I even got a picture of me with the HULK! Totally rad! In contrast, I did find the other exhibits to be much more mundane and juvenile.

After checking out the museum, we hung out outside taking pictures until sunset. We then walked back and got a cheap dinner and indulged in some ice cream before heading to bed early for the evening.

Barcelona 9/3/2008

We slept a little late today and then walked around aimlessly toward the water. We ended up at the entrance to the zoo, home of Snowflake the albino gorilla, but we decided to walk around some more instead. There was a nice park that we strolled through for a while and then we headed toward the water. Frank O. Gehry (best architect EVER) designed a sculpture that looked like a giant goldfish overlooking a public beach. We hadn’t originally planned to stay at the beach, but it was really hot and sunny and the water looked like it would be fun. At least that’s what I told Kelly. I really wanted to go to see all the BOOBIES!!!!! So, we ran back to the hostel and changed clothes and brought our towels. Of course when we arrived, clouds had rolled in and it was hardly sunny anymore. We tried to get in the water once, but neither of us made it past our knees because it was so cold.

So, after becoming even more tan and more beautiful than we already were to begin with (hard to believe, but true), we left the beach. Next we went to the Contemporary Art Museum designed by Richard Meier. The art in the museum was disappointing, but the building itself was pretty cool. We have studied several examples of Richard Meier buildings throughout our schooling, so it was neat to finally see one in person. Outside of the museum, there were at least 69,000 skateboarders in the plazas on both sides. There was also a large group of Spanish high/middle schoolers that were freestyle rapping to that new “hip & hop” music that the young people listen to these days. It was amusing.

It was our last night in Barcelona so we decided to go back to Tapa Tapa because we enjoyed it so much the first night. We got different food and it was very good again. Also, Win had gotten a recipe for sangria when he had been there a year ago, yet lost it afterwards because he’s a big idiot. So, we traded an ink pen for a copy of the recipe to give to him.

Barthelona 9/2/2008

We started the day by heading to Sagrada Familia. This is one of the most popular things to see in Barcelona and it’s architecture!!! The night before was like Christmas Eve for Kelly and me and we woke up at 4:30AM because we were so freaking excited.

Sagrada Familia is also by Antoni Gaudi. Construction began in 1882, and it still isn’t finished yet. Gaudi became the architect and created this really ornate and detailed design heavily influenced by Christian symbolism, geometry, and nature. Then he died. Eighty years later it’s still being built. I relate the design to a ‘tall tale’ because Gaudi died in 1926 and all of his drawings were lost in 1940, so since then the design has been passed down from generation to generation through word of mouth.

There were a whole bunch of people all around it. The four towers that you see on the façade are part of a total of 18 towers that will be built, two that are almost twice as tall as the existing towers. We walked around the interior perimeter of the church because the rest was filled with scaffolding. It was interesting looking around at the modern construction equipment all around, yet the project began 125 years ago.

After Sagrada Familia, we went to Parc Guell, which is a big park that has great views of the city. There were lots of people all over, and we walked around a while. There is a sculpture of a multicolored lizard (Drac) which 69,000 people absolutely had to have their picture taken with so that back home everyone would believe them when they said they went to Barcelona.

We took a little nap before heading back to Barcelona Pavilion to sketch like good architecture students are supposed to do. While we were there, several VW concept cars were being photographed with the Pavilion in the background. So in a few months when you see a VW ad in a magazine, look closely at the background and you’ll probably see an extremely attractive male nonchalantly grabbing his crotch. We ate a cheap dinner to save room for our pitcher of sangria before calling it a night.