I Don't Know Why You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

Ladies and gentlemen, I did it! Nine months of euros and awkward incidents, Netflix unblockers and carb loading, I survived the year abroad. I can't say it was easy, the brie eating contests and several electrical malfunctions I encountered were numerable and often. the inner monologues of distress were spilled to my mother via Skype several times and with numerous changes occurring back on our lovely British soil, the space between myself and home could feel three times as large. But I came into this whole situation a little bit like Grumpy Cat. "NO, DON'T NEED THIS YEAR ABROAD MALARKEY I'LL HATE IT AND JUST SPEND ALL MY TIME CRYING INTO THE RHONE RIVER OKAY BYE" was the general approach to the idea of spending nearly a year of my life away from friends, family and fish and chips. But of course, my mother was right when she said I'd love it. I revelled in the Alsatian spaetzle, Place Kleber and scamming the Strasbourg tram system! I adored my diet of Milka, Retiro Park and the jingle jangle music on the Cercanias Trains in Madrid! 
It's true, I missed home. I missed how my dad makes tea (not in a microwave, thank God), my friend's Jalfrezi recipe, and the way there is only one way to pronounce hummus. But I did carpe the everloving hell out of the diem (and mainly noctum, thank you Le Rafiot and Trabi). So I'm rather pleased to announce I went out with a bang. A good old knees up, cake, good friends, party hats and successfully sitting every exam needed. So without further ado, I present a list of things I learnt in Europe in nine months. Or "Just a list of ways I grew up", if you like.

I LEARNT GERMAN
Yes, to some degree it was basic, fairly useless and I could only use one tense completely correctly, but if you ever find yourself in Berlin needing to sail a boat, buy a waistcoat or ask for train times, I am your mädchen. 

I LEARNT HOW TO FIND A HOUSE
Do we all remember that time? That excruciating fortnight of dingy hostels, sleepless nights and trips to dodgy Strasbourgoise neighbourhoods? And then the light at the end of the tunnel? The one fluorescent light of my poky studio apartment with no working bathroom door and only a kettle and toaster? If that isn't the beginnings of a good autobiography later in life, I do not know what is.

I LEARNT HOW TO DO ADULT LIKE THINGS AND THE LIKE
I set up a bank account! I set up an electricity account! I paid my own bills! I fixed a broken toilet! I chose salad over Nutella! (okay that last one only once) but I was a fully functional human actual grown up and I am still marvelling in it. And my phone calls in foreign languages. So much maturity! 

I WAS ALRIGHT AT LEARNING FRENCH AND SPANISH
"Alright still" as Lily Allen would say. It was a slow process, but after that time I dreamt in French and blurted out a fluent Spanish apology to a quite clearly British teenager in Stansted Airport, I would go as far as saying I was "alright" at being multilingual. 

I WENT PLACES I DIDN'T THINK I EVER IN MY LIFE WOULD
Mussels in Brussels, lunch in Luxembourg, pain au chocolat in Paris, I actually angled myself into five different countries on my year abroad. Some visits were fleeting, and others were repeated - hello, Germany and your delicious chicken and cheap food. But whoever goes "Ah, I'm just going to drive casually through Luxembourg today!" NOT ME BUT IT HAPPENED ANYWAY.

I ACTUALLY MADE FRIENDS
"Oh good!" I hear you cry "I was worried!" You all proclaim! But fear not my concerned readers, I actually had human interaction that didn't end badly. Several times, in fact. Ah my good old chummies, proving that even with weird anecdotes and weird music taste, I can still have friends. Thanks pallies!

And last but not least...

I ENJOYED IT
How sentimental of me, I almost don't recognise myself. People of Hay Festival might like to listen to the acoustic track that got played on repeat in every tent whilst reading this. People of Spain may blast Adrenalina and if you're in StrazzyB, just play something recorded about sixteen years ago for an authentic soundtrack. Was it hard? Oh yes. Would I do it again? SI CLARO. BIEN SUR. HELL YES. Just don't tell my mum she was right all along.

Losing Friends and Alienating Shop Assistants

The path of the year abroad never did run smooth, something I discovered three nights ago whilst being the model student I am and trying to email a lecturer. The internet cut out. This has happened on a few occasions in Spain, for about 15 minutes, I’m met with a Vodafone message in Spanish on my screen, then a little wiggle of the router later, I’m up and running again. This time however was different. Two and a half hours later, in a fit of frustration I went to bed. It’ll be fixed in the morning. Wrong.
I rang my landlord in the morning, who instructed me to call Vodafone. After several attempts, they weren’t about to let me speak to them, and I am ashamed to admit…I raised my voice. “I DON’T THINK YOU UNDERSTAND, THIS IS IMPORTANT AND I AM A STUDENT WITH WORK TO COMPLETE”. Still no luck. Maybe it’s because I shouted at poor Luisa the Vodafone worker in broken Spanglish, but that’s beside the point. Well actually, no that is the point. I like to think I’m a fairly intelligent person. I can speak quite easily in Spanish and French and go on with my day like it’s no big deal. But when I get flustered, in a shop, café, or down the phone to Vodafone España, I suddenly become a bit Manuel from Fawlty Towers. My accent takes a cross-continental trip from Spanish to Norwegian, I forget how to pronounce my own name and before you can say “Que?” I’m out the door, face redder than a bullfighter’s flag. It is true, I am not graceful when leaving either, muttering to myself about how silly I have just been, and having to call my mum to recover from whatever ridiculous statement I have just attempted to make to various retail workers.
But of course, it’s not all awkward encounters and a growing list of shops I can’t visit because I’ve embarrassed myself in them already, I actually do get it right sometimes. One café in particular where the old man behind the bar refers to me as “cariño” – Honey – and gives me extra biscuits with my coffee. Maybe he pities me, but ignorance is bliss, so I’m happy to accept. I feel like I have improved somewhat too. I’m dropping “hasta luego” like it’s nobody’s business and if you need someone to order you a plate of potatoes, cariño, I’m your girl. There is one other way in which I out myself as being an Erasmus student. Shall we play a guessing game? If you guessed “pasty skin, blonde hair and wearing dresses” you’re the winner! I’ve been heckled a good few times, and the odd looks of “why isn’t she wearing a puffa coat and Uggs?” has been shot my way. But you see, friends, I leave this siesta loving nation in exactly four weeks. So I have come to a conclusion. My pins deserve to see the light of day. No matter how chalky white and bruised they are (told you before I was clumsy), my lesson to you all is this. Life is too short to hide your legs from the sun. Just wear suncream, because Aftersun smells funny. Maybe this alienates me from the Spanish community too, but hey, I look good with a bit of a tan, so I shall carry on my clumsy, awkward journey into España, one terribly structured sentence at a time.

Sort of Mediterranean Homesick Blues

With the end of the Strasbourg Sunday Slump, you'd be forgiven to think that homesickness is a thing of the past for the lonesome European traveller, such as myself. However I have bad news. I'm not immune to the sickness of home, pining for a homecooked meal, a fully stocked fridge and shopkeepers that understand what I mean when I say "hi, do you sell houmous?"
But that isn't the way it goes, and as I sit here eating the last of my rationed McVitie's digestives, drinking tea that I had to make in the microwave - oh the audacity - and having a fight with the IP unblocker trying to catch up on Gogglebox, the slump sets back in. So, with the massive differences between France and Spain, how does this particular sophisticated, witty and modest(?) student deal with the inevitable bout of homesickness?
As we should all be aware by now, I really REALLY like shopping. I shop a lot. I buy clothes and make-up A LOT. This is starting to sound like the beginning of the film Confessions of a Shopaholic, but for me, nothing is nicer than a new lippy, or strolling through Madrid with a Starbucks and getting mightily sidetracked by Bershka (they only have one in the UK mum, you must understand!). It's just a nice bit of retail therapy. But when I realise there's things I actually have to buy, like food and books and the odd postcard - or seven - it's time to reel in the splurges of new dresses and eyeliners and think of something new. Which I found, bizarrely in the last place I thought I would.
Strasbourg had several Irish Pubs and Bars. One was two doors down from my apartment, and our other local was a two minute walk. Here in Alcalá, there's one run by my favourite people on the planet, George and his wife, who's name none of us remember. Free popcorn and crisps on demand, €2 drinks, karaoke nights (yes, I have performed numerous times and regret none, I have many more tunes to grace the stage with) and the most keen and enthusiastic Erasmus coordinator with the best memory for names I have ever met. Don't even get me started on the weekend I spent in the most glaringly obvious Irish pub in the centre of Madrid, where when trying to find it, my thought process was: "hmm, it's down this street, I'll have to keep a look out for the na...OH WAIT, could it possibly be the place with the person-sized Irish flags and Guinness sign? That place called O'Neill's?" It was. Which is where I got very passionate about rugby, even learning what a conversion was. Get me.
Which is why I think the best thing for a Spanish Slump, or any slump really, is an Irish Bar. And in a place like O'Neill's, you might just learn a little something, to be sure.

Lessons in La Vida Loca

As I look in a mirror and realise that I am officially too old to wear glittery eyeshadow and I realise it’s less than three months until I am 21 years old (19th of May, mark your calendars!), it dawns on me that I have grown up. Those of you who read my Strasbourg blog may be familiar with a similar post in which I transcended into adulthood after a telephone call with the electricity company, but after it soon became clear that Spain and France are massively different, I thought it was time to reflect on a month’s worth of learning la vida Española. So without further ado, 15.5 things Spain has taught me in a month.
1. The postal system is shambolic.
2. If you’re the pasty, almost translucent blonde wandering around, you will be gawked at.
3. Nobody can pronounce your name. It’s best to just be “Esperanza” for the next four months.
4. Madrid is tied with London for best city ever.
5. Coffee from McDonald’s is not a bad idea.
6. Your proxy for unblocking Netflix won’t work.
7. You are the only person laughing at the funny Spanglish t-shirts
8. You’re also the only one laughing that the washing detergent is called “colon”
9. Trying to find hummus in Spain is like trying to reach the end of a rainbow.
10. Heineken, despite being horribly vile and disgusting, is the cheapest drink ever and should be celebrated.
11. You will not be ID'd to get entry into small clubs with sticky floors and coats everywhere.
12. If you're poor, skip dinner and go to The Irish Bar, they have complimentary snacks.
13. The above lesson is incredibly irresponsible and you shouldn't do it. Shouldn't.
14. Karaoke is popular and you will hear Born to be Wild more times than you will talk to your mother.
15. Supermarket shopping is incredibly cheap
  15.5. You will have an actual, functioning kitchen. Be grateful.

I'm sure in the following months, I'll learn even more things about this crazy place. But if there's at least one lesson that you should learn from Pt 1 of Hope's Lessons in Live, La Vida Loca and L...iving(?) it's that you should seize the day, forget the rules, order a bucket of beer between pals, some tapas and try and avoid the people dressed as Disney characters in the centre of Madrid.

Hola, que tal?

Guess who?
It's only me, typing this from my new Spanish digs, where it is 12 degrees. Yes, I've seen Facebook, it's snowing at home.
As you may be aware, or should be, because it's "hilarious and riveting"*, my other blog was dedicated to the old StrazzyB, and there wasn't even the slightest scent of Sangria, so I have started anew! And by "anew" I mean a week after I arrived because I have only just recovered from the soul destroying journey that was from Strazzy to Madderz (yes, that's what we're calling Madrid). Oh, you haven't heard? I haven't told you of the horrific 48 hour journey via Paris, Barcelona and then Madrid? Ah yes, the one that almost had me wheeled through a bag scanner in Barcelona, be asked several times by a strange man in Paris if he could "feel the camera around your neck" and be photographed about six times by various people between Montpellier and Madrid thinking I looked like I'd COME FROM TIBET.
By the time I reached Alcalá, I was fully expecting people to carry my bags for me, and for the most part they did, but it was the tactless "gentleman" in Alcalá station, iPad at the ready to take a photo of me wheeling my suitcase, holding a gilet and pillow and carrying a camping rucksack with a duvet attached (yes, I managed to strap it to my rucksack!) who got a glare so powerful that I felt like at any point everything was about to go a bit Carrie and his iPad would explode. But still, I made it in one piece and setting up my room to feel like home, posters on the wall, the clothes I bought and didn't need hung up in my wardrobe, that I eventually collapsed onto my bed and counted my lucky stars that there was tapas waiting for me nearby. 
Classes haven't begun for me just yet, but the Spanish system has obviously taken notes from the French bureaucracy and has come away learning "yes, we mustn't do that, let's make things ten times easier."
Gracias, Spain. 

*review given by me, to me.