Mazie

Today (as in Saturday February 28th, when I began this post) the program was so kind as to take us on a day trip to the Dali Museum and the medieval town of Besalú. Natalie and I left the house at 8:28 and metro-ed to Plaza Espana to meet the bus at 9:00. It was a two hour ride to Figueres (the birth and death place of Dalí and where his museum is), but that was fine with me because I had plenty of time to talk to people and sleep. We got there at 11 and were able to recognize Dali’s Theatere-Museum instantly after stepping off the bus. It was this giant pink building with big yellow decorations (I don’t know how else to describe it) stuck to every wall and ginormous eggs crowning the edge of the roof. There were divers with baguettes on their heads and fake Oscar trophies added to the mix. If it sounds bizarre and a little crazy (and more than a little hard to describe), that’s because it was!

We met our tour guide a few minutes later- she was great and it was really helpful to have someone to explain the significance and double meaning behind everything (trust, everything Dali did had like five layers of meaning behind it). She showed us some notable paintings including the bread basket and a bunch inspired by his wife Gala, a few crazy optical illusions (there was one that you could only see if you looked through your phone camera!), and some wacky but really cool gallery rooms. It’s called a theatre-museum because it was originally a theatre, but Dali kept that sentiment alive by making the space so much more than a museum. It’s sculptures, displays, and hidden meaning with museum elements showered in. Every room is a theatrical experience: ordinary objects and ideas juxtaposed together, bathtubs and boats hanging from the ceiling, and faces made out of furniture that can only be seen from a particular angle.

We learned a lot about Dali himself and even got to walk on top of him (he requested to be buried under the museum!). Although most people can agree he was un poco loco, he was a good kind of loco. He never failed to make life interesting and to make anything that interested him an obsessive part of his life. He lived in the space between dream and reality, and our guide explained that his wife was so important to him because she was able to ground him. After she died he lost his ability to create and spent the last years of his life living in the house attached to his museum and reveling at his popularity as he watched the crowds lining up to go inside. He was a great, but never known for being particularly humble. I also found it funny that the famous melting clocks piece, The Persistence of Memory, is not even at this museum but at the MOMA in New York, and is scarcely bigger than a postcard.

Quite sadly we didn’t get any time to explore after the tour ended. We got right back on the bus for another 30 minute ride to Besalú. Everyone was confused when the bus pulled into this tired looking town off the side of the road, but its medieval charm became apparent after we left the abandoned parking lot and walked into the heart of the city. We had two hours to have lunch and explore on our own (I don’t understand why they never give us more time in these towns- with two hours you always spend the majority of it at lunch). Natalie, Ellie, Kieran, and I ate together at an Italian restaurant. I had a cheese pizza which has been my go-to meal out in Spain (I didn’t realize how much I would miss pizza… meaning I must eat a lot of it at home. Honestly I didn’t expect to miss it at all!). After lunch we strolled through town and across the medieval bridge on which I commented ill-intentioned invaders had probably been killed hundreds of years ago. We walked down to the water and met an adorable duck family and wandered into a few cute shops. I may have found a few cute gifts! We walked past this frozen yogurt place as we were leaving and somehow were just magnetically pulled towards it- it looked so delicious there was no way we could not go! There were two remarkable things about this yogurt shop: It really was frozen yogurt, not ice cream by a different name. It was basically like we were eating a fruit and yogurt bowl! That was the other thing- they had so many toppings including fruit, fruit sauces, chocolate, chocolate sauces, and everything in-between, and you could add as many as you wanted for no extra cost! Made my day.

We were speed walking back to the bus because, thanks to getting sidetracked by literally everything, we were running quite late. Due to our inhuman speed, we almost didn’t realize that we zipped by our trip leaders and a bunch of other students finishing up their lunch! It was already past the time we were supposed to leave and they were leisurely enjoying their dessert- honestly a perfect reminder of how time works in Spain (and great proof that we needed more time to explore because all that group did was eat lunch). We got to join them in leisurely enjoying our dessert, and then shopping even more while we waited for them to be ready!

It was quite a fun day and one of my favorite- maybe my favorite?- day trips so far. It’s so nice of our program to plan these excursions because I’m fairly confident I never would have visited the Dalí Museum if it wasn’t for today!

Museums were free today! Hashtag first Sunday of the month :)

Picasso Museum First stop! I read every single plaque and description in the entire museum.

Museu Etnológic I de Cultures del Mon Very classic museum style. Lots of cool art from around the world.

Museu d’Història de Catalunya My favorite of the four. There was so much to do and interact with and such cool displays.

Museu d’Història de Barcelona Honestly I don’t know if this one should even count. I spent most of the time I was there trying to call US Bank.

I started to write this whole fleshed-out post for my Montserrat adventure today but then I was suddenly talking about the public transportation system in Barcelona for like five paragraphs and it just didn’t feel right, so I decided to start over. I’ll tell you more about public transportation and why I don’t trust buses later :) Basically I had such a great time at Montserrat today and am thrilled I get to go back with the program in April. I knew I wanted to do something adventurous and fun today, but had not thought about what that would be until 2:00am this morning (Chat helped me plan and figure out logistics as my brainpower was falling fast), so I am proud that I woke up on time, stuck with it, and made it happen, because I can imagine an alternate reality where I didn’t and that would be very sad.

Although I didn’t see the Basilica or the Stairway to Heaven- the two main reasons people visit the mountain-, I saw so, so much more. I hiked from the town at the base of the mountain all the way to the highest point on the mountain (which I think might also be the highest point in Barcelona, or at least it appeared so from up there). There were definitely a few other hikers who did the same thing, but honestly I think most people who visit barely hike. The typical structure of a day in Montserrat might look something like this: arrive at Monistrol de Montserrat, the town at the base of the mountain, and take the gondola or funicular up to the Basílica. Explore the Basílica, grab lunch at the cafeteria nearby, and soak in the views and maybe take a quick hike around before buying ANOTHER 11 Euro ticket to take the gondola or funicular back down. I’m not hating on this itinerary at all, but for me personally, I was much more interested in exploring the mountain itself and getting lost amongst its nature and trails. That was why I committed to using my own two feet as my only form of transportation for the entire time I was up there. If it was going to be an epic adventure, it had to be 100% powered by me.

My itinerary ended up looking like this: Walk and keep walking. In more detail… I got off the metro at Monistrol de Montserrat and spent 10 minutes photographing this amazing mountain from behind the fence of the train station as I slowly remembered that places other than gigantic chaotic cities also exist in the world. I don’t know how many times I repeated some combination of “This is so beautiful. OMG It’s so beautiful here. I love this. I have to go hiking more often” as I walked through town and to the start of the trail, but it was a lot. There were three other groups of hikers that started at almost the same time as me, but I overtook them all hehe. They gave you no gentle introduction to the path- it was an immediate straight shot up. I climbed SO. MANY. STAIRS. Its not even funny, but the scenery was absolutely breathtaking (in the literal way, not the cliche way). It only got better after I arrived to the Basílica- the hike from there to Sant Jordí, the highest point on the mountain, was by far the most beautiful. And to think that 99% of tourists miss that! I will say that this section somehow had even more stairs than the initial ascent, but that does make sense if you’re hiking to the top of the mountain. Honestly it was more of a stair master session than a hike. But SO WORTH IT when you pop out at the top and are faced with a contender for one of the three most pretty things you have ever seen in your entire life. I could have sat up there forever just looking out over the landscape, but the wind was going absolutely insane and making it freezing cold.

I did meet someone at the top after trading phones to take pictures of each other, and we ended up hiking most of the way back down together. He’s studying abroad in France and randomly decided to come on this hike just like I did after seeing the mountains out of the airplane window. We saw a mountain goat family- another thing that you only get the chance to see if you hike up to the top- and hiked up to a bunch of little outlooks along the way. It was perfect timing- I got the solo, self-directed adventure I’d been craving and then just as I was starting to feel like it might be nice to have someone to hike with, I had someone to hike with!

I spent almost two hours hiking down from the mountain as the sun was beginning to set because I couldn’t find the way back to the Monastery and then, once I finally did, the descent seemed to have increased in length since that morning. By the end I was running down the (very rocky and treacherous) path with basically no light left to see where I was stepping. I managed to avoid any evil rocks or camouflaged snakes (my two main worries), and if you were to ask me how many times I almost sprained my ankle falling over a rock, I would answer at least 52. After my serene day in the mountains I was instantly stressed about the metro again once I got back into town. I didn’t technically have anywhere to be by a certain time (I had told Cristina that there was no way I was going to make it on time for dinner), but the metros out here only come every 30 minutes, so missing the next one would’ve been a huge bummer. I made it with plenty of time and transferred to my middle metro and my last metro without a hitch (but still with lots of stress), and was home by 9:30 for dinner!

So yeah basically it was a great day and if you were ever thinking about hiking Montserrat, DO IT! The hike will be way more fun and enriching than simply seeing the Monastery, and those views will haunt you in a good way for days and months and years.

More pictures to come later. I am just really tired and must go to sleep because we have to get up early tomorrow :)

This is the (hilarious) story of why my debit card is currently locked in an ATM machine in Slovakia:

So it was Sunday, day #4 of our trip (I’ll post about the middle days later), and my friends and I had just hopped off our four hour bus from Prague and began exploring Bratislava, Slovakia. We had 3.5 hours to explore the city- Bratislava is super cool, but the real reason we ended our trip there was because flights were way cheaper than trying to fly out of Prague. About 20 minutes after we left the bus I spotted the most adorable souvenir shop ever. There was this one souvenir that I was dead set on getting for a certain someone and hadn’t bought yet, so I demanded that we look in this shop. Lo and behold, the inside was just as cute as the outside and they had exactly the souvenir I wanted. I went up to the nice lady at the counter to buy it and she informs me that they only accept cash. So I informed her that they had made a terrible mistake because I didn’t have any cash, thank you very much, and I would be getting that souvenir whether she liked it or not. Then, out loud this time, I thanked her and calmly set my souvenir back on the shelf.

A quick google maps inquiry told me there was an ATM 480 feet away, around the corner. It was one of the stand-alone machines. That was fitting because I was standing alone on this cold and rainy Sunday (that becomes important later), in front of the machine, my jacket and backpack slowly filling up with water. Determined to be as quick as possible so my clothes wouldn’t be soggy for the rest of the day, I fed my card into the machine and typed in that I needed 70 Euros in cash. An error flashed on the screen: insufficient funds. Right, I remembered that there were currently only $2 in my checking account, so I pulled out my phone to transfer money from my savings account to remedy that issue. I heard a small noise: ah, the machine had spit my card out for me to grab. Perfect, I would take it in one second, right after I finished this transfer on my phone. I hit “complete” on my phone and reached out to grab my card, only to see the ATM actively sucking it in. My heart dropped as I read the new message on the screen: “Your card has been retained. Contact your bank for more information”. Like it was sending me a big fat L and wanted to make sure I noticed, the words flashed on the screen for a few seconds before being replaced by the Tatra Banka home screen. Defeat in its most aggravating form (we don’t need to talk about the five minutes I spent banging on the machine and begging it to just give me my card back. Me, on my knees pleading with an ATM machine on some random street corner in Slovakia? No, never).

What that silly ATM didn’t realize was that 4am on a Sunday (Minnesota time) is not the best time to try and reach your bank… So instead I headed over to the fancy steakhouse next door, to get out of the rain for a moment just as much as to try and get help. As soon as I stepped in there I realized that if I wanted shelter from the rain, I was going to have to drop fifty bucks on a fancy steak. Nevertheless, the guy working was doing his best to convince me that would be a great idea (he didn’t speak much English so all I heard as I was trying to explain how my debit card had been eaten by the metal money monster next door was “Steak? Steak… Steak!”). Eventually I gave up and walked back outside into the rain. I needed to vent to someone who understood banks and maybe had some sort of ATM opener tool laying around, so I searched Google Maps my old pal for the nearest bank and found one right across the street inside a Marriott hotel. Beautiful. 30 seconds later I was inside the Marriott, dutifully following signs to this bank (it was wishful thinking to assume they’d even be open on a Sunday, but Google Maps had said they offered 24 hour service! It’s like it was too good to be true). And of course it was: I’d directed myself to another ATM. At this point I woke everyone in that hotel up with my groan of frustration and headed back to the entrance. Before I left, I decided to ask the receptionist if she was familiar with the sly box of death across the street or knew of any actual banks nearby that were open on Sundays. The answer was no and no, although she was very nice about it.

I stepped back outside, not knowing what to do and still not wanting to accept that my debit card of 7 years was lost forever, even though I knew exactly where it was. I didn’t think ChatGPT would be of much help, but I decided to complain to it anyways. It came up with a few random phone numbers that I hadn’t tried calling yet and were supposedly 24/7 lines. Pacing back and forth in front of the hotel I dialed the first one and heard a muffled voice on the other end. A lady with a very thick accent was mumbling something I couldn’t understand. I had to ask her to repeat herself an embarrassing number of times, but we made it work and I was able to explain my situation. She told me she was going to fill out some paperwork to file my card as missing and would need some information from me. It wasn’t until she asked for my social security number that I got suspicious and decided to hang up. I’m guessing she was just following the script, doing her job, but I wasn’t about to take any chances and get anything else stolen. Before I hung up, she transferred me to this other lady with US Bank (why she was awake and taking calls at 4am I have no idea) who spoke loudly and clearly and somehow seemed more trustworthy. She sent texts and emails to verify my identity and read off long legal statements from US Bank, so I’m pretty sure she was legit. She asked me a bunch more questions and froze and reported my card as well. Unfortunately rip this woman because the call dropped as I was trying to transfer her to my air pods and I didn’t have her number to call back :(.

While I was otherwise occupied, my friends had to gone to a nearby McDonald’s for lunch (the second McDonald’s visit of our trip, actually. But again, don’t worry, Mazie T abstained). Out of people to call and realizing that we needed to get a move on if we wanted to see anything more of Bratislava aside from a souvenir shop, an ATM, and a McDonald’s, I walked their way and caught them up on the debit card situation. When I told them that the saddest part was not being able to buy my souvenir, my friend Gracie pulled out a 20 Euro bill and handed it to me. Slightly annoyed that I didn’t ask earlier but mostly grateful and excited, I ran back over to the store and located the shelf of glimmering, perfect souvenirs. “Shoot”, I thought to myself. I was 4 Euro short of being able to buy the larger version, but thankfully they had two of the smaller version left. Just to memorialize what could’ve been, I picked up the prettiest larger one and took a picture. I think the universe is telling me to stop hesitating or something, because as I went to set it back on the shelf, this lady- the only other person in the entire store- walks up behind me and snatches both of the smaller version off the shelf. She buys them both on the spot. Of course she’s the kind of lady to carry a bunch of cash around.

I could’ve screamed. Instead I asked the checkout lady if they have any more of the smaller version. She said no. I was about to ask if they had any damaged or unlucky ones that she’d be willing to sell to me for a discount, but she wasn’t done talking: “Oh, but you could check out our other store just down the block- they have a larger selection. It’s straight down the block, around the corner and to the right! Less than a two minute walk!”. I almost didn’t want to ask because I was afraid the answer would kill me, but the question came tumbling out my mouth, probably a bit more accusatory than I wad intending: “And, by chance, do they take credit card there?”.

I don’t think I need to tell you what her response was. The important thing is that I was able to buy my souvenir- and the size and color I wanted at that!- and thanks to my dad, a new debit card is on the way. I can’t wait to be reunited with my sea turtles again!

When you reuse essay questions you wrote last year for the same job application and they ask you to share more about the story which you don’t even remember writing about during the interview…

I’m obsessed and it’s not good aka it’s really good 🫣

Doors in Prague 🤩

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Proud mama moment right here. And by that I mean proud mama of myself I guess? We had 8,000 steps before 8:00am this day!

This is a post entirely dedicated to the newest member of my stuffed animal clan, my precious handmade bunny from the Budapest market. New grand total of the number of stuffed animals keeping me company in Europe= 2. I bought him on Friday, with two full days of travel still ahead of us, and our bond grew and grew the more I toted him around in my already stuffed backpack or, more commonly, my arms :)

I want to give an extra shoutout to the #Bunnyinabag photo and the selfies when I was carrying him around in my jacket because my hands got too cold.

Budapest pictures!!! I was going to dedicate just one blog post to all of my pictures from the trip but then I suddenly had like five million just from Budapest soooo…

Highlights include (going somewhat in order): The Dohány Street Synogauge, some very beautiful rainy streets, the Central Market Hall and the AMAZING Lángos I got there, me holding up the moon (of course) in my flattering pink jacket, beautiful views from and of the Fisherman’s Bastion, some cool statues, a lot of locks, the Városliget Castle at night, and my Nutella Chimney Cake.