Last Stop: Barcelona

(Prague - Astronomical Clock)


We arrived today to Barcelona and left Prague and Elwood behind. Barcelona is our final destination, and although I´m certainly excited to be here, it´s a bit sad knowing the tour ends soon as we return to Chicago on Thursday. Such is life I suppose. I´ve already begun mentally planning my next trip back to Europe rather far in advance unfortunately as it´s going to be a bit of time before I can accumulate enough vacation days to take a solid Eurotrip. The next Euro tour will certainly include some of the destinations we´ve had on this trip and will be in the summer to see some greener versions of Prague and maybe Munich too. Who knows, maybe I´ll consider taking the trip with a sexy young coed. That position needs to be filled soon if I am going to beat Scott and Kmac (October 2010, save the date), so I think all interested females (sorry no dudes) should send in some apps. I´d suggest getting it in early as that could certainly work in your favor. Standard business style resume should do just fine, and include relevant wife attributes.

I´d like to start this post by saying my mother has informed me that I ¨should stop picking on [her] on this goofy website,¨ and shockingly she may be on to something as I´ve probably been giving her way too many shoutouts and she´s gotten all cocky about it back at home. All jokes aside I have a great mother even if my Notre Dame acceptance letter remains on the side of my parents´fridge to this day. I wish this was a joke.

So lets go back to our final night in Prague. As we said, we had a great Bromantic lunch on the place I scouted out a couple days before, searched for souvenirs, took pics, and walked around the little market/concert/fair thing in the town square. It was pretty cool. After returning to the hostel we were faced with a dilema, our old buddy Chase told us as potential repeat customers we could do the barcrawl again for half price or we could remain not nearly as cool as he is. Barcrawl it was.

Last night in Prague. Barcrawl. It was going to be a good night. Elwood was again appointed RD. This may seem unfair, but as he had zero interest in taking shots, and we had a 90 minute window at the bagel shop again for free wine, beer, and shots, there was no logic to Elwood not being in charge of our actions. It worked out fine the first time so we assumed we´d be batting 1.000 after the evening. Unfortunately, in our excitement we must have forgotten Elwood was Elwood, and he would not be responsible enough for our liking, but we´ll get to that later.

Anyway, the 90 minute window at the bagel shop is always a blast. We decided we´d step our game up from last time, and we did. We had to get our moneys worth like we did last time. I think we may have done the math wrong though (no calculator on site) as we drank twice as much as last time despite paying half the price. Math is hard, it happens.

Sitting at our table was a boy named Joakim from Argentina. Dooley asked him about something he had experienced in his days in Argentina. He wanted to know if it seemed universally true that Argentine men are rather aggressive with women in the bar/club scene. Joakim told us indeed this happens, but it´s not a universal theme as those guys are generally just kind of jerks. I don´t know how bad those guys must be, but I´d say real bad if Joakim was a good guy because he was creeping out girls left and right with this awkwardness and machista tendencies. It was a fun thing to watch as we quickly met a girl named Alana from the Chicago area as well. (We then found out that not only was she from the south suburbs as well, she went to Nazareth. Ridiculously small world.) Upon meeting us though, Joakim Noah gave her the old hand kiss. Strike 1. He then insisted she sit down next to him and made multiple requests. Pathetic strike 2. Then when he went to the bathroom she sat down next to me in the seat he had just vacated. Upon his return, Joakim knew he´d been Kenny Powers´d and gave up. Don´t feel sorry for him, we later saw him making out with some chick at a club. I doubt she had a choice.

We were all having a good time, loads of Australians as always including our buddy Meg from Munich. Laughter, shots, stories, shots, comparing culture, shots, etc. I had to give it to her, Alana could pound shots, and I had no desire to keep pace with her on them. My god was it sexy.

As all bar crawls do, we headed to one bar then another. I finally revealed to Alana that my name was Tim Maier and not Mike Dooley. It was Dools idea, and it was a good one. She forgot our names after the first time, and Mike pulled the switch on her second time asking. (I can´t pretend to be upset as I forget names the first time quite regularly. In fact I called her friend Cali (real name = Jen) all night because she was from California. I told her I call all my friends from California that. She bought it. I love lying about stupid crap.) When I told her my name was actually Tim, she proceeded to tell me how uncool that was and that she was pretty mad at us. Yea right, she was loving it. Treat them mean, keep them keen. It´s science.

Well we switched bars again, and the girl leading our portion of the group went the wrong way. It was her first (and I hope last) day. Dools and I had been holding our need to use the restrooms, and upon hearing we had a decent walk still ahead of us after her snafu, we were at our breaking point. We figured, a quick bathroom break and some help from our RD lagging behind, with our XC backgrounds, no worries. Wrong. RD (Elwood) dropped the ball. He didn´t help at all, and upon returning to the street we thought we saw the group ahead so we started jogging. Crap, not the barcrawl, but we didn´t panic yet.

We then saw a pretty hopping place down the street so obviously we headed there. Upon entering the building though, we realized we´d just walked into a Czech wedding. It was a bit awkward and we were just slightly underdressed. I had a strong desire to chalk up our losses, make a best man speech and settle in for an open bar and cake, but Dools convinced me this was a poor choice in the long run .

We wandered the streets a bit more before heading to the club we were told would be the final destination. Slowly the group started coming, but neither Elwood nor Alana showed up and Joakim was harrassing women, so we hit the dance floor. When I´ve had a few drinks, and I´m liking the song, I won´t lie, I´m meant to be on the dance floor. I´m not saying I´m a great dancer by any means, but I have fun, and my dad taught me an important thing when I was a teenager, which was that if you´re going to step out on the dance floor you have to just go for it. You can´t be that guy half assing it because he´s too cool or too self conscious. So we danced like nobody was watching and all that crap for a bit before heading out.

After a quick stop at KFC (it´s right by our hostel and open 24 hours, it´s just too convenient) we were back at the hostel and none to excited with Mr Danny. Was our disappointment with him a bit irrational and misplaced? No. He was the RD. Way to go Dan, thanks for ruining the entire trip for Dools and I. Upon seeing us, Elwood simply saying ¨O hey guys. What´s up?¨ didn´t exactly help his cause.

That´s about it for that night, and this has got to be about it for this night. Although most of our hostel went out to the bars/clubs together tonight, Dools and I decided that we were just too tired and we like our system of staying in the first night in a new city. We´ll be ready to do more exploring tomorrow and maybe join the hostel crew or some of Dooley´s Knox friends for drinks tomorrow night instead.

Also of note is that we stopped into a little pub while wandering around trying to find our hostel. We each had very reasonably priced (2.50 Euros) and excellent sandwiches. I got the chorizo guijelo and it may likely not be the last one I have while here.

Sorry, no blackouts.