Fiestas en Madrid!

Between 1 Euro bottles of wine to partying until 7am on the weekends, it's a wonder the Spanish are as intelligent and vibrant as they are! What a blast though. Don't party with madrileños unless you have the energy of a god. 

In all fairness, the schedule is a tad bit different here than in the States. People avoid getting up before 10:30/11am and breakfast is eaten then (brunch for us from the US, no?) while lunch isn't until 2pm at the earliest; dinner is 8 to 10pm ish depending obviously on when you get hungry.

Between lunch and dinner, from 2 to 5pm, everyone takes a siesta, literally a "nap" but some people choose to just partake in relaxing activities. I tried that the first few days, then realized that if I was gonna party with these guys, actual sleep would be necessary. 

Whereas in the US we head out to parties at around 11pm ish and head home by 2/3am, here they don't leave the dorms until well past midnight (12:30 at the earliest, but closer to 1am usually) and they don't come home until well into the next day. 

See, it's essentially compulsory because the metro system, which is what everyone uses to get around in Madrid, runs from 6am to 1:30am so once you're out in the city, you're committed until 6am. There is no other choice, unless you want to pay through the teeth for a taxi. The metro ride to get back to our dorm in Leganés takes roughly an hour so right around 7am we get back.

The 24th, was my first time heading out to party with everyone. Our university was hosting a welcome party for all the international students--and gauging by the orientation ceremony there are roughly 350 of us!--at a club called Mondino. 

We arrived at the club around 1am, got inside by 2am after chatting up some Belgian students and a German in line (thank goodness they all knew English--I confess my German and Flemish are not existent) and cashed in one of our two free drink cards by 3am. The bar was incredibly packed so getting our rum and Cokes took an insanely long amount of time. 

But then it was off to dance the night away! (And most of the morning). Our group is a great one; everyone had a blast dancing to mostly English pop songs--we're talking Katy Perry, David Guetta etc--and some seriously cool techno and house music. We did that until 5:30am. By then, the club was closing (yes we literally shut the joint down) and it was a little past 6am by the time we fought our way through the coat check line. 

7am found us back at the dorms and some of us, including myself, decided to stay up half an hour to wait for breakfast. We were starving! We'd eaten dinner at 8pm the previous day so it had been nearly 12 hours since we'd last had food. 

I have no idea how these guys do this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. Oh the stamina! :)~