See ya USA!

I arrived in Spain yesterday after a fairly smooth journey! I’m pretty beat though!

I left for Spain from Omaha around 1:15 in the afternoon—making my connection for my international flight in Chicago. From there, I went to Warsaw. Yes. Warsaw! I even have my passport stamped there and everything. By my standards, you haven’t visited a place until you’ve set foot on its soil. However, I did get my passport stamped—so I think that “counts” as my having visited Poland!

            The flight to Warsaw was pretty good as far as international flights go—meaning I was actually able to sleep. I was sitting next to a Polish man who didn’t speak any English though. It was hard because I knew he was trying to communicate with me—using Polish and some gestures—but I just couldn’t understand him. It made me uncomfortable to not be able to say even the basic courtesies.

            Once in Warsaw, I went to the gate for my flight to Madrid. While waiting, the gentleman sitting next to me noticed that I was American and struck up a conversation. It turned out that we had both been on the same flight from Chicago! He was heading to a conference to give a presentation. Then, he was going to go back to the States for a several days and come back for another conference in Prague!

            Once I reached Madrid, it was like a sort of second homecoming. I got my luggage (which thankfully got to Madrid. I checked my baggage with American Airlines and then flew through Polish LOT and was terrified that it wouldn’t make it!), and made my way to the metro. Taking a taxi from the airport to the city is about 30 or 40 euro so I decided to take the metro because it was lots cheaper and I actually know how to navigate it. Even as exhausted as I was, I was still tickled pink when I got on the metro and a wave of familiarity rolled over me. Two years ago, I would take the metro to my apartment almost everyday. Hearing the words “Atención. Estación en curva. Al salir, tengan cuidado a no introducir el pie entre coche y andén” (the Spanish equivalent to “Mind the Gap”) just brought back so many memories of the last time I was in Madrid.

            I successfully navigated the metro to my stop at Metropolitano. However, leaving the metro was another matter. I had printed out some instructions from GoogleMaps for how to get from the metro stop to the Colegio Mayor Mendel. The Colegio is the place where our orientation is taking place. It apparently is a private all boys dormitory. I don’t have any idea why we have orientation there, but I’ll refer to it as the Colegio in the rest of my posts.

While the directions seemed straightforward, they were not particularly helpful. They said that the Colegio would be just to my right once I got on the correct street. Unfortunately, it was right up a hill and then on the right. After wandering lost around the neighborhood for a bit, I had to lug my big bag all the way up the hill! Thankfully, I only had one bag--unlike most of the other Fulbrighters!