Hello Everyone! Welcome back to my blog post #3 where I tell you more about my experience studying abroad in Madrid, Spain as a Puerto Rican undergraduate student at Pitt. If you have not read the first two blog posts I highly encourage you to read them! In this post, I will be recording my experiences on my first full week at my internship at a wine company, my nightlife in Madrid, an afternoon at El Prado Museum, watching Real Madrid play the Champions League Final in a household full of Madrileños, and going on a day trip to Cuenca.
The first thing I want to point out is my professional experience so far. The wine company that I am currently working in assigned me a very draining schedule. The schedule that I have is a full-time job, that is, Monday to Friday from 9 am to 2 pm and then from 3 pm to 6 pm. Getting used to the new eating schedule has been hard. The first few days I starved from breakfast to lunch, since we typically eat lunch at noon while the Madrileños at 2 pm. The same happened when I eat dinner, we typically eat dinner at around 7 pm, while Madrileños eat at 9 pm, it’s crazy! Secondly, adapting to this work ethic and maintaining and managing a strict schedule, is something fairly draining as well. Since I have had some professional experience in the past and I know how to manage time and prioritize what needs to be done and when it needs to be done, I did the same thing for this job. The college student routine and the internship I had in Puerto Rico last summer helped me a lot in setting a clear base on how I will manage this job. The first few days, while I adapted to public transportation, I woke up earlier did my lunch, packed it, and made sure to leave the house with extra time in case I got lost in the metros of Madrid. I made sure to get enough sleep to get me through the day the following workday. Later on in the week I got so used to the metro that I did not need to use the map again, slowly I am adapting and becoming part of the Spanish culture.
I was excited that it was Friday and I went on a nightlife adventure with my friends around Madrid. We went to a place around the Sol station and it was 10:30 pm and the inside and outside of the station were extravagantly full of people. We couldn’t find a place to sit and eat and enjoy our night. We qued in a restaurant for 30 minutes and finally got a spot for our big group. We enjoyed the street dancers’ show, the music, and the people around getting excited for the game the next day signing Real Madrid fanatic songs. It was still full of people when we left at about 1 am from the restaurant; every spot was still taken. Madrileños like to party!
Saturday came, and I was excited to explore Madrid once again! I wanted to go to a museum so I hopped on a bus and told one of my friends to meet me at Museo del Prado. There I saw magnificent sculptures, paintings, and other archaic pieces of the royal collection. I explored amazing pieces from different artists like Goya, Rafael, Bermejo, Fra Angelico, Rubens, Van Dyck, Tiepolo, and many more! Later that night I watched the UCL Final with my host family and their other close relatives. When Madrid scored not only you could hear the people in the house screaming “GOL”, but if you took an ear outside the window, you could hear screams and car horns blasting and people in their balconies celebrating, then after you could hear everyone singing the “HALA MADRID” song from the fanatics. It was incredible, there were thousands of people around the Santiago Bernabeu stadium to watch the game and celebrate as one. Streets got closed, and policemen were limited because the sport of soccer is something that everyone in Madrid loves as being part of their culture and being the best team in Europe.
The day of Cuenca came! I woke up sleepy but thrilled to dive into what Cuenca was hiding from us. We first went to the meetup point at Metro Moncloa and then we had the 2-hour bus ride to Cuenca. Our first part of the day was exploring the Júcar River in a canyon on the outskirts of Cuenca. The water was really cold and we got to do cliff jumping and slide in natural waterslides! After the canyon, we went to the Old Town of Cuenca where you could see the Casas Colgantes or in English, The Hanging Houses. These houses are built on the edge of the cliff, with balconies and structures that protrude above the void, giving the impression of being suspended in the air. Apart from that, we got to see more of the architecture and the old building style used back in the 15th century. Cuenca has a cliff-like city style where the town is a cliff that just keeps going up. every part of the walk was impressive, the views were stupendous and it’s something that you can’t see anywhere else.
I hope you enjoyed reading this third blog post and I look forward to having you as the reader of my adventures every week. Stay tuned in for when I go next weekend to Valencia!
Gracias y hasta luego!