The first leg of our voyage - from London to Madrid

Hello everyone, from sunny Madrid. Sorry to make you jealous, but the weather is amazing here! Strong sun with plenty of shade and a nice breeze to ventilate, hahaha. It´s important to think about hygiene, guys. Anyway, it´s nice sitting around in the sun being peaceful here. A stark contrast to our mission to get here. We awoke at 2am on Wednesday morning after both having troubled nights trying to sleep with butterflies in our stomachs. We taxi-ed into town, a very friendly taxi driver chatted to us along the way about where we were going, but to be honest we were both so tired and nervous we didn´t want to talk. We did anyway however, so as not to appear rude. That´s true English behaviour. We both got cash out at Natwest but the schizophrenic machine decided to let me type in my pin then completely and utterly break down, not giving my card back! The screen went black and Windows appeared. Typical. I´m sad to say, as a mac-user, despite my horrifying loss, I found time to snort at the fact the ATMs used nervous-breakdown Windows. After I´d finished snorting, I started to panic. I hadn´t even left Oxford, let alone England, and my card had already been lost. I had a grand´s worth of moolah on that card, and there it was, just beyond reach in the jaws of the ATM. I was furious. However, we had to make sure we got the plane, or the entire trip would be jeapordised. As soon as I got to the airport I used my iPod touch in a genuinely useful way and hijacked Gatwick airport internet to find useful contact numbers for Natwest, and cancelled my card. So I´m now using my emergency credit card, the parents are paying it off as the expenses rack up, and I´ll pay it off when I get home.

You know they say that whenever something stupid happens something smart happens somewhere to balance it out? OK, maybe that´s a bank advert, but I´m sure someone says that sort of thing about good and bad things. The GOOD arrived in the form of Seb, a friend from school. In a beautiful stroke of fate, Seb got onto the coach to Gatwick right behind us, and, unbelievably, was booked onto exactly the same flight that we were - Easyjet from London to Madrid. He even came part of the way on our Metro ride in Madrid, before heading out to his organic farm placement just outside of the city. It was really nice to see Seb, as neither of us have seen him in quite a while. We also got to laugh at an incredibly racist man claiming to be an Ex-Pat in the boarding lounge together - he decided to spout a torrent of vile anti-Muslim comments at a poor unsuspecting man sitting in the seat next to him (clearly a one-way conversation). We watched and cringed, and laughed. I really couldn´t believe someone would vex himself up so much like that, with so much self-conviction when he was clearly an idiot, at 7am in the morning.


Luckily, after our flight (during which we all slept), we got the hang of the Metro fairly quickly, and got to our hostel to flop down and chill out. We even managed a good day of sight-seeing afterwards (see Mojo´s post). I loved wandering around the streets getting to know the neighbourhood, and loved the art gallery. One of my favourite artists there was Daniel Rozin. Google Sachiko Kodama and Ferrofluid, perhaps, for the magnetic liquid stuff, or try this video (I can´t watch it, no flash on this computer). Also check out Theo Jansen´s crazy Strandbeests, and Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen´s "Listening Post" here.


Love,



Meg