01/09 - 03/09 or: how one small decision can get you lots of new friends

Entering Monday fully recovered, I hung kinda loose and didn't really know what to do. So I ordered a SIM card for my phone, not the one I actually wanted, but in the end it probably suits my needs even better. The booking didn't work because they only accepted spanish credit cards .. never heard of that before.

I had lunch with a friend again at the Museo de Jamón. There, you basically stand at a bar, with huge hunks of finest spanish ham hanging from the ceiling. I'd recommend getting a bocadillo de jamón, a ham sandwich. It's also just 1€, the beer to go with it is 70cts. Considering the Museo is right next to the Puerta del Sol, that's really good pricing. Normally you just get ripped off in Tourist areas. Also striking: mostly spanish people eat there. 

At night, I met up with Roman. Roman and I study together in Munich and have lots of mutual friends, yet we have to , go to Madrid in order to actually meet each other. However, he wouldn't be the last person that I'd meet that I should have known before I got here. We went for some beers with a couple other Erasmus students, then checked out a party, which was decent. 

Tuesday, 6:30am. 2 hours of sleep, then alarm. Why so early? We actually had to show up at university for the "welcome event", where we'd get all the necessary information about our stay here, free time activities, opening a bank account, the list is endless. Speaking of bank accounts: our university has a bank on campus -- not too sure what to think of that. Afterwards, we got guided around the campus. While this was supposed to give us orientation on there, I was totally confused. Going in circles does not really foster a good sense of orientation. 

The last part of the tour was picking up the student ID. That would have been easy, but apparently my first name at the university is "Nitsch", the last one is "Dominik" .. yeah, right. Thanks for that. 

At this point I thought, alright, time to go home. To do what? Good question. Halfway to the train, I turned, figured that I might aswell pick up another ID card (we need this one for activities). Good thing I did, because during that waiting time I met incredibly many people with whom I got along very, very well. On the way back I ran into a bunch of americans (khaki shorts, of course), so the train ride was sweet too.

At night, we went to a place called "El Tigre". It is mainly known for 6€-0,75l Mojitos which come with a huge pile of tapas -- qualitatively not the best, but decent. Too bad I had just had dinner, but I guess another dinner won't hurt. After all, I need to gain weight. The day ended at 1:30am, surprisingly early for my standards. 

Wednesday I figured it's time to get a monthly metro ticket. So I got up early (of course) and tried finding the tobacco shop who sells them. Well, it wasn't that easy, it nearly took me one hour. When I finally got there, the queue was ridiculously long, and I was told to be back at 4:30 when they reopen. We had a picknick scheduled for that time though, but I thought it cannot hurt to get it anyway. Being there at 4:15, there were 33 people waiting in front of me. Now, if every person just takes 3 minutes, that 1.5 hours right there. If it's 10 minutes per person .. you do the math. No metro ticket for me. The picknick in the Retiro park was pretty nice though, I enjoyed the company of a group of people that I'm still spending lots of time with (as of one week after). 

And what do you do at night? Explore the nightlife. On today's menu: Gabana club, with free admission and open bar. Wait what? That's right. The worst-case scenario is to drink for free, then leave. Awful. We checked it out, it was nice, although quite fancy and probably reallyyyyy expensive on weekends. But for Wednesdays, it's a good option. I'll keep that in mind. 

Walking back from the club, I came across this beauty (sadly not a girl): 

the bad quality does not have anything to do with the open bar

In Madrid, you can walk back from basically anywhere, everything in the center is kinda close. It's a very different, interesting way of exploring a city. People keep telling me that Madrid is dangerous .. I highly doubt it. As of right now, I'm pretty damn sure that going to the gym is more dangerous than walking home at night.