La capital de España bajo la vista de dos finlandeses

My friend Juha came from Finland to see me and wanted to try what it's like to travel without tour guides and tourist buses. So I took some time off from my university classes and we jumped on a bus and headed to the capital of Spain.



Madrid struck us with the same astonishment I got the last time I was there. Madrid is situated in over 600 meters from the sea level like most of the central Spain. Is that what gives this city the feel of an anthill..?



In the museum of modern art of Reina Sofia we ran into a work colleague of Juha. After 3 hours of sleep it was confusing to look at the abstract paintings made of lines and circles. Nonetheless we had some laughs figuring out the meaning of some famous works.




Madrid is a city of millions of people but the center is easily crossed by foot. The liveliness of the city feels everywhere (but wait till you see the streets by night!). In May Madrid already starts to warm up and you can feel this especially in the evening. It's much warmer than in coastal Valencia. We walked so that our feet hurt, and then kept on walking (a word of warning: do not wear pumas on a three day sightseeing trip!)
Too bad we didn't get a chance to do any shopping! Well, next time..








We had blue skies and burning sun and the Retiro park was full of people.



The original plan was to see the important local Valencia-Barcelona game. However, when they began asking over one hundred euros for the tickets we thought it was maybe better to save money and just go to watch Real Madrid kick Santander's ass. Outside the stadium, a crooked old man sold us some left over tickets but once inside we sneaked lower on better seats. This is what football is all about!







Maybe the thing that made this trip so memorable was that we met so many new people and saw many truly friendly Erasmus parties (Big shoutout to Moritz and Johannes!). The nightlife madrileño is not famous for nothing. It's really normal to party till six o'clock (we went to sleep at 6 and 7.30 am). At first it feels crazy but I can tell you that every morning people continue their lives as normal. Somehow they have just learned to manage without sleep.






And finally... I don't have the words to thank enough our hostess, Caroline, who gave us a place to stay and showed us around the town. Fue un viaje inolvidable. Hope to hear from you again and you know who to call when you come to Finland some day :)