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.
