(Originally published May 11, 2007)
(Pictured: The bullfighting stadium. Let's play "Where's Brent?" I'm there look hard!)So Barcelona was just a mess from beginning to end. Slim and I really didn´t plan anything too well, and like I said we ended up staying in three different places in three nights. Our last night, we stayed in this stinky ass hostel that for lack of a better description smelled like feet and had a quality assortment of pubic hairs on the sheets. Very nice! So that night we just sat around in our room drinking beers shooting the shit with some girl from Bulgaria who was pretty cool. Then we decided in our infinite sober wisdom to hit the town. We tried forever to find a couple of these clubs that we thought we knew where they were, but in reality we didn´t. So... I went and bought what I thought was a meatlovers pizza. As I´m eating it, I remark to Slim that this meat tastes kind of funny. Even though he was intoxicated that boy still knows his pizza and instantly recognized it as anchovies. Although it was disgusting I did the honourable thing and ate those god damn fish like it was going out of style.
Tuesday morning we got a train from Barcelona to Madrid. It took us the better part of the day to get there. When we arrived we were pleasantly surpirsed to see what was literally a converted 18th century palace serving as the hostel. Top amenities and a sick bar to go with it were definately a step-up over the pubic fair at the last place. That night, I made a revelation on the hostel´s computers........ it enabled me to download and play on the PokerStars software. Not good. So I just drank in the hostel bar and played poker that night. Just like the old days!
Wednesday morning we decided to get back on the tourist bandwagon and see what Madrid had to offer. We went and walked around and checked out a couple of famous Plazas (or so the guidebooks say) as well as the Gran Via, which is a famous shopping street. Nothing too exciting, but we were gonna be in Madrid for five days and had to kill some time. Going in to Spain, we had heard all about these "siestas" they take which are afternoon naps/breaks where everything just shuts down for like four hours. Barcelona was SO tourist driven so I guess this wasn´t really the norm but in Madrid it was a whole new ball game. the place turns in to a ghost town from like noon till 4 pm. So, in an effort to blend in I promptly returned to my room to have a siesta after a hard day of touristing. That night I went to check out a local pub and by the time I came back everyone had left for the bars/clubs. I tried to go to sleep at like 12:30 (very early by my standards) but this fat guy in my room was snoring like nothing I had ever heard before. Finally after I get to sleep Slim saunters in at like 4 am just absolutely shittered and proceeds to wake me and proclaim that he´s drunk and can´t sleep on the top bunk cause he has the spins. I tell him where to go and try to go back asleep to no avail. He for some reason just stands at the edge of the bed for like fifteen minutes before deciding that I wasn´t going to move and then crashes his way into bed.
Thursday morning we hooked up with a dude named Anthony from British Columbia, who like me, was a carpenter. The three of us went and checked out the Museo Del Prado (another boring art museum) and the Palacio Real, which is a famous palace that has gotta be the size of like thirty-nine city blocks. It´s possibly the second most ballin´ pad of all time right behind Uncle Phil´s sick crib on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. That night a group of seven of us decided to head over to the famous Plaza de la Ventas to check out the bullfights. You wanna talk about craziness on a whole new level! Holy shit. This stadium was the second biggest bullfighting stadium in the world and it was packed to the rafters with crazy Spaniards cheering on these Matadors sticking swords into the necks of the bulls. I really didn´t get it, I mean how is it a sport if the same team wins every time. Anyways it was just one of those things you gotta see to believe. After the bullfights, we headed back to the hostel and rounded up some more troops to head out to the clubs. About fifteen of us bar-hopped for a bit before a small group of us branched off. It was during this time that we were walking down the street and two transsexuals started cat-calling me and trying to grab me and were generally being quite sexually suggestive towards me. I wanted to take them up on their offer but none of the other guys would let me!... In reality, I was scared and ran away and everyone was laughing their ass off at me. Another night in the life of Brent.
Friday I set out on my own to the Cultura Urbana Festival. It´s a huge annual hip-hop festival in Madrid that was expected to draw over 40,000 people in two days. The first day (which I attended) was headlined by Redman and Beenie Man, while the second day was supposed to feature Nas (cancelled last minute) and Ja Rule. The bill was rounded out by a shitload of other Spanish and international Urban acts. The concert was off-the-hook and let me just say that those Spanish folks love thier hip-hop. The thing I really couldn´t get over though was the abundance of various forms of mullets. I mean the fucking things were everywhere in every possible style that you can think of. It was simply ridiculous. If I had to put a number on it, I would say between 30-38% of males between the ages of 15-25 are rocking mullets in the greater Madrid area. Unreal to say the least. Don´t even get me going on the velcro shoes. Mother of God!
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