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tinywarlordI was going to do the Granada write-up first because I went there before Cádiz, but this one is shorter and I am tired.
Carnival! A lot of the students in the program, or in other programs, or who were in Spain for whatever reason at all, went to Cádiz on Saturday night. The arrangement was to leave Sevilla at 8:30, get there around an hour fifteen later, then leave Cádiz starting at 3:30. I was iffy. But I was also curious. Never been to Carnival, never been to Cádiz... And to be fair, I would like to just say at the beginning of this that I am glad that I went to see what it was like, but I would not particularly care to go again, at least not the way that I did. No regrets! But like hell I'm not going to complain about this here.
"Just tell people you need to get to La Muralla, they'll know that's here." No. No, they don't.
So we get dropped off at La Muralla, this big wall with decorations on it, and told that go through it to the Cathedral--that's where everything is. I end up in a group with a bunch of girls I mostly only know in passing and three people I shall call Americano, Americana, and Austria. Austria wasn't part of the study abroad program we are with--in fact, no one seems particularly certain what he was doing in Sevilla or if he was 23 or 24. I'm going to assume it was an ESL issue compounded by the pregaming AAA had obviously been engaging in on the bus, not him intentionally being creepily vague. Whatever, though, Carnival! I was kind of annoyed I hadn't bought anything myself because man it's boring being the only sober one. Our little group goes under the wall and walks for a bit before we hit the crowd.
I wish I had been able to get better pictures of this crowd. This really doesn't show it at all.
It was more like a mosh pit, really.
A really big mosh pit filled with alcoholic Smurfs and authentic Hippies, wink wink nudge nudge. So really, not that far off from what I expected! There was even your classic dirty old man who kept trying to grind on us. There was also a Cookie Monster who gave out real cookies. ♥ And a lot of men selling sausages, and I don't mean that as a double entendre, but I did almost get shoved into their grill.
I'm going to skip ahead past people getting lost and losing keys and blah blah blah. Here is a picture of the kinds of decorations that were up:
There were also clown faces and streamers and stuff.
Instead I would like to point something out. Do you see this ground?
This one!
There is confetti on it. And a piece of gum. That is a nice, relatively clean and pretty darn festive piece of ground! I took that picture at around 11. I know this because by midnight it was hard to find a place to stand that wasn't coated in urine.
That is why we decided to go to the beach.
el mar atlantico
When I say "we decided to go to the beach", I mean that one of the other girls had been to Cádiz before, but not for a year or so and not at night. But she knew the beach was nearby and she was right. It was a couple of blocks away. What she didn't know, and what apparently no one we tried to get directions from knew, was how to get down to it. And that would have been pretty okay! It wasn't so crowded out by the beach, so the girls who had gotten lost were calming down and I had finally managed to score something free to drink because I am cheap and would apparently rather wait for the last couple shots of grape vodka and the cup of beer one of the girls had to buy to use the toilet in the bar than pay for something myself.
Regardless, the point is that I was enjoying myself. It was fun! We were going to the beach! And two of the other girls were pleasantly drunk and the others were sober but glad to have something kind of like a mission and AAA wasn't... Well, okay, Americano/a were pretty freaking wasted by this point because he kept insisting that he was "from Wisconsin" and she that her head was "totally clear, you guys" before repeatedly screaming the f-bomb about cars parking on the sidewalk (In Spain!! Where we have of course only seen cars parked in neat rows in designated paid parking lots!!! And where I did not see a woman drive into a metal fence in the park today!!!!!). Austria was doing rather better, at least, and as he could still walk while they draped on him was actually pretty darn helpful. The very public urination probably should have been a tip-off that this was not going to last much longer, but...
As may have been obvious, we did not ever find the way to get down to the beach. We got sent by several people the wrong way around the coast and eventually just gave up and decided to walk back towards La Muralla together. Well, mostly together. While it was being discussed if we should try once more or just go, the two girls who had gotten lost earlier got fed up and left. That would have been fine if either of them spoke enough Spanish to actually ask directions, but I'm just going to leave that there since I don't know the details of their adventure and they did eventually find the place. The real problem was with Americano/a who were now being egged on by Austria to wander off and who I had spent the last 45 minutes to an hour herding around from point to point while the other girls either tried to figure out where we were going or were just too annoyed with them to bother. Americano did not jump over the wall into the Atlantic, although he did urinate into it and did make one or two valiant attempts. He was actually easier to handle than Americana, however, who oh my god every ugly American stereotype please stop yelling them. orz;;
They turned around with us willingly, they walked back along the coast with us willingly, they followed us into The Street-so named because it was honest to god a river of piss, all the dicks, I saw so many dicks, three of us were stupid enough to wear new shoes and one girl got her flats soaked through--... oh wait, no, where the hell are they. We're standing at the edge of the mosh pit on the other side of The Street, looking around for them, and one of the girls gets a call saying they are lost by "the fairy trees". Okay okay, fine, back through The Street, there are these big trees outside that they were running around in earlier...
It was actually a very lovely little park!
...And where the hell are they. What they hell, guys, that literally took us three minutes or less. You wanted us to come find you. We looked. We called. Walked around calling "Americana!" "Americano!" "Austria!" Except with real names instead of "Americana/o". We really did call "Austria", though. And "Guapa/o", because there had been a phase that night when that was what they were insisting on being called.
Nope. No one? Should we ask someone? You mean like one of these couples busily ignoring us?
So we left them text messages and went back into the crowd. What can you do?
I'll skim over the rest of this trip, but suffice it to say 2/5 girls still in our group were not
oh I forgot about the old guy earlier
suffice it to say that 1/5 girls still in our group were not fondled. The highlight of my night was definitely hitting a guy, although having the bottle thrown by the lewd pirate go over my head should probably be a close second. I'd say it's a tossup between that and the schadenfreude of the repeated texts and calls from Americana asking where we were and, more importantly, where they were. Eventually there was just a text announcing that they were going to stay in Cádiz instead of catching the bus we were scheduled to go on. Her roommate was the girl who dropped her keys but one of the others let her stay the night. Americano's roommate was less lucky. I don't know if he lost his keys too or just didn't bring them for whatever reason, but apparently he waited at the bus stop for the next couple busses, then just slept outside in the 0'C weather. >_>
They did eventually make it home on a 7:15 bus. I assume Austria made it to wherever he's staying and has not been eaten by Cádiz. I need to hose off my shoes and buy new laces, but there. That's my Carnival story. Thank you and goodnight. :)
Carnival! A lot of the students in the program, or in other programs, or who were in Spain for whatever reason at all, went to Cádiz on Saturday night. The arrangement was to leave Sevilla at 8:30, get there around an hour fifteen later, then leave Cádiz starting at 3:30. I was iffy. But I was also curious. Never been to Carnival, never been to Cádiz... And to be fair, I would like to just say at the beginning of this that I am glad that I went to see what it was like, but I would not particularly care to go again, at least not the way that I did. No regrets! But like hell I'm not going to complain about this here.
"Just tell people you need to get to La Muralla, they'll know that's here." No. No, they don't.
So we get dropped off at La Muralla, this big wall with decorations on it, and told that go through it to the Cathedral--that's where everything is. I end up in a group with a bunch of girls I mostly only know in passing and three people I shall call Americano, Americana, and Austria. Austria wasn't part of the study abroad program we are with--in fact, no one seems particularly certain what he was doing in Sevilla or if he was 23 or 24. I'm going to assume it was an ESL issue compounded by the pregaming AAA had obviously been engaging in on the bus, not him intentionally being creepily vague. Whatever, though, Carnival! I was kind of annoyed I hadn't bought anything myself because man it's boring being the only sober one. Our little group goes under the wall and walks for a bit before we hit the crowd.
I wish I had been able to get better pictures of this crowd. This really doesn't show it at all.
It was more like a mosh pit, really.
A really big mosh pit filled with alcoholic Smurfs and authentic Hippies, wink wink nudge nudge. So really, not that far off from what I expected! There was even your classic dirty old man who kept trying to grind on us. There was also a Cookie Monster who gave out real cookies. ♥ And a lot of men selling sausages, and I don't mean that as a double entendre, but I did almost get shoved into their grill.
I'm going to skip ahead past people getting lost and losing keys and blah blah blah. Here is a picture of the kinds of decorations that were up:
There were also clown faces and streamers and stuff.
Instead I would like to point something out. Do you see this ground?
This one!
There is confetti on it. And a piece of gum. That is a nice, relatively clean and pretty darn festive piece of ground! I took that picture at around 11. I know this because by midnight it was hard to find a place to stand that wasn't coated in urine.
That is why we decided to go to the beach.
el mar atlantico
When I say "we decided to go to the beach", I mean that one of the other girls had been to Cádiz before, but not for a year or so and not at night. But she knew the beach was nearby and she was right. It was a couple of blocks away. What she didn't know, and what apparently no one we tried to get directions from knew, was how to get down to it. And that would have been pretty okay! It wasn't so crowded out by the beach, so the girls who had gotten lost were calming down and I had finally managed to score something free to drink because I am cheap and would apparently rather wait for the last couple shots of grape vodka and the cup of beer one of the girls had to buy to use the toilet in the bar than pay for something myself.
Regardless, the point is that I was enjoying myself. It was fun! We were going to the beach! And two of the other girls were pleasantly drunk and the others were sober but glad to have something kind of like a mission and AAA wasn't... Well, okay, Americano/a were pretty freaking wasted by this point because he kept insisting that he was "from Wisconsin" and she that her head was "totally clear, you guys" before repeatedly screaming the f-bomb about cars parking on the sidewalk (In Spain!! Where we have of course only seen cars parked in neat rows in designated paid parking lots!!! And where I did not see a woman drive into a metal fence in the park today!!!!!). Austria was doing rather better, at least, and as he could still walk while they draped on him was actually pretty darn helpful. The very public urination probably should have been a tip-off that this was not going to last much longer, but...
As may have been obvious, we did not ever find the way to get down to the beach. We got sent by several people the wrong way around the coast and eventually just gave up and decided to walk back towards La Muralla together. Well, mostly together. While it was being discussed if we should try once more or just go, the two girls who had gotten lost earlier got fed up and left. That would have been fine if either of them spoke enough Spanish to actually ask directions, but I'm just going to leave that there since I don't know the details of their adventure and they did eventually find the place. The real problem was with Americano/a who were now being egged on by Austria to wander off and who I had spent the last 45 minutes to an hour herding around from point to point while the other girls either tried to figure out where we were going or were just too annoyed with them to bother. Americano did not jump over the wall into the Atlantic, although he did urinate into it and did make one or two valiant attempts. He was actually easier to handle than Americana, however, who oh my god every ugly American stereotype please stop yelling them. orz;;
They turned around with us willingly, they walked back along the coast with us willingly, they followed us into The Street-so named because it was honest to god a river of piss, all the dicks, I saw so many dicks, three of us were stupid enough to wear new shoes and one girl got her flats soaked through--... oh wait, no, where the hell are they. We're standing at the edge of the mosh pit on the other side of The Street, looking around for them, and one of the girls gets a call saying they are lost by "the fairy trees". Okay okay, fine, back through The Street, there are these big trees outside that they were running around in earlier...
It was actually a very lovely little park!
...And where the hell are they. What they hell, guys, that literally took us three minutes or less. You wanted us to come find you. We looked. We called. Walked around calling "Americana!" "Americano!" "Austria!" Except with real names instead of "Americana/o". We really did call "Austria", though. And "Guapa/o", because there had been a phase that night when that was what they were insisting on being called.
Nope. No one? Should we ask someone? You mean like one of these couples busily ignoring us?
So we left them text messages and went back into the crowd. What can you do?
I'll skim over the rest of this trip, but suffice it to say 2/5 girls still in our group were not
oh I forgot about the old guy earlier
suffice it to say that 1/5 girls still in our group were not fondled. The highlight of my night was definitely hitting a guy, although having the bottle thrown by the lewd pirate go over my head should probably be a close second. I'd say it's a tossup between that and the schadenfreude of the repeated texts and calls from Americana asking where we were and, more importantly, where they were. Eventually there was just a text announcing that they were going to stay in Cádiz instead of catching the bus we were scheduled to go on. Her roommate was the girl who dropped her keys but one of the others let her stay the night. Americano's roommate was less lucky. I don't know if he lost his keys too or just didn't bring them for whatever reason, but apparently he waited at the bus stop for the next couple busses, then just slept outside in the 0'C weather. >_>
They did eventually make it home on a 7:15 bus. I assume Austria made it to wherever he's staying and has not been eaten by Cádiz. I need to hose off my shoes and buy new laces, but there. That's my Carnival story. Thank you and goodnight. :)
