A Room for 12

“Megan,” I whispered at 7:30am to the bed below me, “I hate Madrid.”

AWHOOOOOGA

“What?” she whispered back, careful not to wake the homeless man beside her.

“I,” I waited for the alarm to sound again.

AWHOOOOOGA

“HATE,”

AWHOOOOOGA

“Madrid,” I finally finished.

AWHOOOOOGA

“Me too,” she responded as we laughed at our lives.

When I reserved our spots in a 12-bed, co-ed room, I imagined it would be a slightly more scandalous version of summer camp.  We could change our clothes in the bathroom and as long as they didn’t mind my risqué pajamas (sweatpants and a t-shirt), we would make a great cabin.  No big deal.

The first night of camp every cabin always makes a Cabin Covenant, addressing anticipated problems that might occur during the week.  Unfortunately, we forgot to make our Cabin Covenant in Madrid.  At camp, a typical Cabin Covenant looks something like this (complete with pink crayon and yellow construction paper):

     :) Have a good attitude

     :) Try everything once

     :) Respect each other

     :) Respect others’ belongings

     :) HAVE FUN!!!

If we had made a Madrid Cabin Covenant, it would have needed to look more like this:

     Alarm clocks must be turned off immediately and definitely not 30 minutes later

     Do not turn the overhead lights on when you come back at 2:00am

     Excuse yourself from the room for all bodily noises

     Shower when you start smelling bad

     Do not hang your underwear all over the room

So a hostel isn’t really like camp.  That, of course, is no reason to hate a city.  Lucky for you, I'll soon be posting about some of our other Spain experiences (including three hours with the policia) so that maybe you'll understand our temporary hatred of Madrid.