Last week, I embarked on a
free trip to
Madrid paid for by the NYU
Stern School of Business--filled with sex, drugs, y jamon con queso.
Got to the
airport the requisite 2 hours before departure, and checked in-- the plane didn't leave until 7 hours later, thanks to the industriousness of government-owned
Iberia airlines. I got my wallet stolen on the plane (this was the first sign of a doomed trip) with a few hundred in cash, credit cards, drivers liscence, and a Starbucks
frequent coffee card (and I had 10 holes punched in it and was about to get a free one).
The
wallet did not bother me too much. But I will personally
fuck up-with-a-blunt-stick the person who takes my coffee.
Proceed to the
Hotel Chamartín, and singlehandedly double the entire Asian population of
Madrid. Sleep. Go out, and consume massive amounts of
red bull vodkas. Fast forward through 4 days of exactly the same thing, basically being
touristy, being hit on by only the strange
spanish guys, going to museums.
I went with some ibankers to a suspicious establishment called '
Stripers' (with the 'i' in the sign in the shape of a
naked woman), which was rather sketchy in itself. All I can say is that most of them had teeth.
A friend gets his drink
spiked with
date rape drugs at a gay bar, we get into a fight with the bouncers at
Kapital, and I get offered a job in research at
high yield bonds at
DLJ because of my ability to hold my liquor and
bullshit with the boys. (I found out that actual skill and
education gets you next to nowhere on the job market). I lose my handspring
visor and stagger around like a
doddery old fool for a few days, until I adjust to life without information.
My attempt to lose weight was foiled by jamón, y más jamón. I got an internship, and can now drink without
throwing up. I know what its like to be a filthy
American tourist. I have refined my
ass-kicking skills.
Got stopped at
customs for my
Davidoff cigars--
narrowly avoided a multiple-orifice
strip search.
I was
amazed by the preservation of
history and
architecture in Madrid-- Coming from cities like
New York which has an impressive obsession to build rebuild and 'improve', and
Taipei which has mostly risen in the past 50 years, the very concept of
antiquity is rather
foreign to me.
One afternoon I got away from the
Sternies and wandered out to the
hills of
Toledo by myself. I got out of my
car on the side of a
cobblestoned road and walked through the countryside(because that's the only word I can find to describe it) among the
olive trees. It reminds me of
Tuscany but much
cooler and
greyer. It was cool and
rainy. More subtle, less
pretentious.
All of the
drinking and
stripers were then canceled out by this moment in
Castilla.
I hope that
bastard with my wallet is
enjoying his free coffee.