The New Year in Madrid

My travels did not slow down after Katherine’s mom and brother left Spain, as on the same day they left several more friends arrived. We had a visit from Kate (our friend from Oregon) and her friends, coming to Madrid for New Year’s Eve.

For reasons that seem unclear, but perhaps because Spanish people really like to party and really like to practice, we went to “Practice” New Year’s Eve in downtown Madrid. Let me say though, this was no small event, but instead completely full of people as early as 10pm. It occurred the day before and we were to celebrate with a ball drop at midnight. Unfortunately, the ball dropped 2 minutes before midnight; I guess it is a good thing Spain has a practice run.

Kate, Becky, Keely, myself, and Bryson in Sol in Madrid.

For the real New Year’s Eve we celebrated with Kate and her friends as well as Katherine’s roommates, Natia and Alvaro. We had a Spanish style dinner party, starting at 10pm, and watched the New Year celebration on the television. Another strange Spanish tradition is eating grapes at midnight. Not just one grape, and not casually. Instead, you eat one grape every five seconds during the chimes of the midnight hour, a total of 12 grapes in 60 seconds. Oh, and these are seeded grapes. Needless to say, we were lucky to make it out without the need of the Heimlich maneuver. After recovering from the grape incident we all set out to the streets of Madrid and enjoyed a night out on New Year’s Eve in one of the most fun cities in the world, almost as good as London and the UK!

The New Year's Eve Party in Katherine's apartment.

Kate and her friends left a couple days after New Year’s Eve and Katherine and I finally had a chance to relax, Katherine especially, after several days of entertaining visitors. On the 2^nd of January there was a very, very important American College Football game I had to watch, the Oregon Ducks in the Rose Bowl facing Wisconsin. The game started at 11:30pm in Spain, and Katherine and I made it just in time to an Irish pub in the center of the city that was showing the game. There we watched with other fans from Oregon, many former students, as the Ducks won in exciting fashion. I had such a great time watching the Ducks win the Rose Bowl that I could have been mugged on the walk home and still had one of the best nights since I have been in Europe. There was certainly something strange about watching the Duck game so far from home, but a once in a lifetime experience to watch it in Spain, surrounded by great Duck fans and very confused Spanish people.

 

Go Ducks! Katherine and I with our new Duck friends in Madrid.

After the excitement of the Rose Bowl Katherine and I took a day trip to El Escorial, the royal monastery of Spain. This is historically the residence of the King of Spain, and many of the Spanish royals are buried at El Escorial. However, the strangest part of El Escorial was not the royal burial grounds at the Monastery, but instead the center of town a short walk away.

El Escorial from a distance

Sunset from El Escorial.

El Escorial

In the center of town Katherine and I walked into what was a life-sized nativity scene… unlike any I have ever seen before.

Fake sheep figures at El Escorial.

More "nativity" scenes.

Life size does not do justice to the number of statues around the city, at every corner we were confronted with a strange human-like statue – much like the beginning of a horror movie.

 

Yes, that is a statue cow giving birth with the help of a statue old woman.

Another statue, pretty impressive.

This is when it began to look like a scary movie.

Luckily we were able to make it out safe and back to Madrid. We had to get to sleep early, because we were leaving the next morning for three days in Porto, Portugal.