The Spanish Way of Life: Church, Tapas, and Indecent Exposure

After a 30 hour flight, I arrived in Madrid tired and smelly but excited. I was greeted at the airport by Rafa, my Spanish amigo. Within five minutes of being in the country, we were at a local Churreria buying churros for breakfast. This is how I want every adventure to begin: with doughnuts and chocolate.

I am super lucky to be living with the best Spanish family in the world while I am in Madrid. Rafa, Carola, and their four kids have been so amazing and welcoming. They made me feel like part of the family immediately. After our churros breakfast, I even went with them to Sunday mass. The best part about Spanish church - aside from scoring some brownie points with the big guy upstairs, and more importantly, my Nanna - is that after mass, they go and have a few beers and some tapas. This is a great initiative to make church more appealing. After lunch, they also took me for a walking tour of Madrid and we had some more beer and tapas. So basically, it was a full day of eating and drinking - my two favourite things. I could really get used to this Spanish way of life.

Rafa and Jorge

One downside to Madrid life is the fear of being pickpocketed - and as you all know, I have been emotionally and psychologically scarred since my mugging on the booze cruise in Cambodia. Madrid's pickpockets are notorious for preying on tourists on the metro and in crowded areas. However, I have developed a threefold strategy to avoid being targeted. Firstly, I try and look Spanish. I do this by putting my hair up in a bun and embracing the stubble (hard to imagine, I know). Secondly, I try and look like I'm tough, so I bought a Men's Health magazine in español which I pretend to read on the metro. I make sure the cover with the naked werewolf from True Blood faces out so people will think I'm tough by association. Thirdly, when I'm going out I wear really tight jeans where even I have trouble getting my wallet out of my pocket. Ain't nobody getting into my pants. 

On the subject of pants, I went on a pub crawl on Friday night and things got a bit cray. On the first hour of the crawl, there was unlimited sangria, so naturally the rest of the night is fuzzy. I was happy for the night to remain a mystery, unfortunately a photo has surfaced of me mooning the camera. I mean, it's not a bad enough photo to get me fired from the Cronulla Sharks, but still. I usually don't even like taking my shirt off at the beach but here's me with my ass hanging out on the streets of Madrid. Spain has changed me.

Here's the censored / more offensive version

That very night, I was determined to adapt to the Spanish social timetable, as they tend to go out late and party till much later. The metro starts at 6am so my mission was to stay out until then. I succeeded in that regard, but as soon as I got on the train I chucked a Ross Gellar and slept through my stop. When I woke up the train was going in the opposite direction towards where I had just come from. It was a hot mess express. Perhaps I'm not so good at being Spanish after all.

Of course, I'm not here to party - I'm here to learn. I can hear your scoffs from here, but I've actually been taking four hours of Spanish lessons a day. The first morning of class was a bit stressful as I was forced to sit a Spanish test to determine my level. I had to answer 80 multiple choice questions and sit an oral exam even though the only two words I knew were 'amigo' and 'paella.' In the immortal words of Bridget Jones, "oh bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger." So I answered the 80 questions to the best of my ability, and I think I did alright - everyone knows the correct answer is usually C, anyway. But when I got to my oral exam, the teacher spoke some rapid-fire Spanish, saw the fear in my eyes,  consequently drew a big red X over my test and classified me as a beginner. Um, yeah, I could've told you that.

I'm slowly learning the language and I now understand things like colours, numbers and household furniture. However, I'm finding it really hard to pronounce certain words properly and not sound so Strayan all the time. Whenever I try to roll my R's I end up sounding like a defective lawnmower running over a possum. I just can't do it. It has also been brought to my attention that the squiggly little line above an ñ actually makes a whole lot of difference. Apparently, if you pronounce an ñ the same as you would a normal n, it can radically change the sentence. For example, "how old are you?" can be misheard as "how many anuses do you have?" It feels a bit like this language is setting me up for acute social embarasment. Luckily, my Spanish family are there to steer me away from such faux pas.

In my time away from class, I've been able to do a a bit of sightseeing. Today I took a trip to Toledo, a UNESCO World Heritage site 70km south of Madrid. Toledo is a really pretty, old town with lots of  ornate churches, synagogues and mosques. My only complaint is that the town consists of an intricate network of narrow cobblestone streets, but these really big cars chug through it anyway and cramp it's style. As well as causing congestion, the cars look really stupid, like Austin Powers doing that three-point-turn in Dr Evil's lair.

Bloody Toledo Drivers

The Top of Toledo

In conclusion, when in a new country, don't ask people how many anuses they have, and don't expose yours in public.

A Stopover in the Gong

Welcome back, dear reader, to the corner of the Internet where I visit exotic locations and talk about all the weird shit I see. When I last left you, I was in Japan, marvelling at their bathroom innovations, picking octopus out of my vegetarian salad rolls, and exposing my genitals at traditional hot springs.

They say that all good things come to an end but I say that’s bullshit. All good things can just be postponed for a little while before you come back to them later. Think of it like my mother snoring in front of the TV - just because she’s dozed off doesn’t mean she’s finished watching Young and the Restless re-runs and I can have the remote. So after Japan, I postponed my world-tour and came home to Wollongong for a brief intermission.

My extended stopover in Wollongong offered up a variety of delights, including a wedding, a few birthday parties (one ending in police intervention), a Heffernan invasion on a cruise ship, multiple viewings of Frozen, and a 30 day food cleanse that only lasted 30 hours. Stay classy Wollongong, I love you.

And now I’m off again. First I’m heading to Spain, where I will be doing a 4 week Spanish language course in Madrid. Then I’ll be revisiting the Netherlands and London, hitting up Scotland for the Commonwealth Games (competing in diving and equestrian), sailing around Greece, and ending the European leg with Turkey… a turkey leg, if you will. Then I’m going to swing through the US and take a bite out of the Big Apple before ending things with a bit of Californication.  

The number one question people have been asking me is how the hell I can afford to do this. The short answer is: illegal activities. The long answer is: I can’t tell you over the Internet or I will be incriminating myself in illegal activities.

Now, with that policy of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ in place, I bid you adios.

But first, let me take a pre-departure selfie.