Overseas Briefing

The Saturday night of my first full weekend in Madrid, there was a huge festival in the center of the city called “La Noche en Blanco.” In the week leading up to this big night, I could not walk down any main street without seeing an advertisement for the event, yet no one seemed to know what it was; or at least no one could describe it to me. The festival sounded cool, but I had already made plans to meet up with my friends to go out to a bar and then a club. Like I said, it was my first weekend in Madrid, and I was trying to make the most of my new legal drinking status. Plus, I figured since no one really knew what “La Noche en Blanco” was, I would not be missing out on much.

I left my apartment on Saturday night with plenty of time to arrive punctually at my friend’s house where a group of Middlebury students were meeting. My apartment is right off one of the main streets in Madrid, and when I turned the corner from my street onto this main road, I walked right into the festival.

The whole road was blocked off to automobile traffic, and there were people everywhere. It felt like Times Square on New Year’s Eve, except the people in Madrid were not standing around waiting for a ball to drop, they were taking in all that the festival had to offer.

The first thing I saw was a huge seesaw in the middle of the street with ten people on either side going 15 feet up in the air at the highest point. Right next to this was an equally oversized tire-swing that ten other people were enjoying. I continued wandering around and found myself in front of a jazz band performing for 1,000 people or more.

What I saw was only about one-tenth of the whole festival, but I heard about some incredible other aspects of it, including a huge clothing exchange, art exhibitions and giant slides. I was amazed by everything I saw, but my general dislike for crowds and realization that I was now an hour late to my friend’s house forced me to get on the metro and start the next part of my night.

Not long after I arrived at my friend’s house, we left to meet up with some Spanish friend of a friend of someone at Middlebury. Drinks at the bar lead to dancing at a club and the night quickly turned to day. We left the club at 6 a.m. and I took the metro home, exhausted and dying to get into my bed.

I should have known from the moment some old guy on the metro grabbed my butt at 6:30 a.m. that things were heading downhill. I left the metro station walking briskly towards my apartment, climbed the three flights of stairs, and turned the key to my door, only to find that my roommate had bolted our door and I could not get back inside. I banged on the door and rang the bell for half an hour trying to wake up my roommate to let me in, but in her deep sleep she never woke up. My phone had died and I did not want to go back out on the streets, so I sat down outside my door fighting back tears of exhaustion, and waited.

I drifted in and out of sleep until 10 a.m. when I tried again to wake up my roommate. She kept sleeping like a log, but in my noisy efforts to wake her up, I ended up waking up my neighbor, a 23-year-old Spanish girl. I explained the situation to her and she invited me into her apartment where I stayed for an hour talking to her about Spain and Spanish life. At 11:00 my roommate finally woke up and let me back into my apartment, so that I could finally sleep.

This crazy night that I had in my first week in Spain pretty much sums up my experience here so far. No, my life here is not one continuous party, but every day presents a new challenge and a new adventure. Things do not always go smoothly or according to plan, but many of my misfortunes have actually turned into positive experiences. Sometimes things are hard, especially since I am still easily identifiable as a foreigner and my poor language skills present a significant barrier, but each day I am noticing my improvement, and I never know when my mishaps will help me to stumble on something great or give me the chance to make a new friend.