new year, strange times

I step out of the door of our apartment with a yawn. The three of us walk down the street and it seems as if she'd been right, the city felt a bit dead. A metro ride later and we find ourselves in what seems to be an older district. I see kids playing in the streets, people walking around, Christmas decorations in the streets. We find the "fancy" restaurant that we will be spending our new years; seems pretty boring. It's a nice place place but there aren't too many people there. We each get a glass of champagne, find our table, eat a little bit and wait for our other friends to arrive. I did enjoy the open bar however; before midnight, I had two gin and tonics, a caipirinha (not even close to as good as Brazilians), a glass of champagne and a glass of wine. When the others arrive, we all sit down and eat. Then before we know it, it's midnight. Almost missing it (there was no countdown), we give each other hugs, kisses, and handshakes. My mind is on Brazil. I feel a bit out of place; this seems a bit too chique for me. It's too quiet but I suppose that I'll just make the best of it. Because the open bar closes at 12:30, I procede to take three shots of whiskey with my father while all the time sipping on my third gin and tonic. At around 1:00a.m., the party starts to die a bit (not that it was to lively to begin with...). Once again, I find myself board at a party. I'm playing with the little girl because she's the only one that seems to want to party hardy. We pop ballons and toss them in the air. Around two in the morning, Dan, Christin's nephew, decides that he's going to take off to a party. So him, Christin, my father and I go on to see if there's anything else going on. "Well that was kind of lame" I think to myself, "Maybe this kid knows of something better, he does have friends here after all..."

A slightly blurry subway ride later, we emerge from the underground on a harbor. I see two buildings towering above me, the Mediterranean in the back ground, the beach on my right, a mall on my left, and in front of me, probably around 10,000 people dancing. A smile comes to my face, "Finally". My energy comes back with a bang and I'm ready to see the sun rise seven hours from now. We sit on the edge to see what exactly is going on. While my father leaves to get beer, I see that there's actually multiple DJs with large groups of people in front of each. Then, if that's not enough, the building next to them is lined with clubs. We go down to find my father and he hands me a half liter of beer. I have never seen a cup of beer so big! We walk around from DJ to DJ, checking them all out, seeing what's good. I can see that Dan's getting anxious; he doesn't want to walk around looking at the people, he wants to BE the people. I agree. "You want to go get a shot in one of the clubs?", "Let's do it!". Club one: shot of tequila each, not to much happening other-wise. We leave with the excuse that we need another shot. Club 2: tequila round two, club is a little better, we stay and dance for a song. Club 3: Whiskey for some change but the club sucks so we leave. We decide to take a break and go outside for a bit. Dancing all over the place, my vision gets fuzzy, but I'm lovin it! In the chaos, we go for our third tequila and start our "adventures" of the night. Our first mission was to find illicit substances. Kind of fun just going person to person asking as if you wanted a cigarette. It must of been around five in the morning when I found myself on the beech with Dan. We play in the sand and water and decide, time for mission part two: water. Dancing from club to club, it's one of the most simplistic yet fun adventures I've had in a while. The state of constantly forgetting what you want and being distracted by everything you come in contact with can make for some interesting times.

I don't remember the details of the rest of the night but I do know that we made it home about an hour after the sun had risin. I do remember however seeing a family walking when we were entering our apartment. It didn't really mean anything to me right then and there (for obvious reasons) but the next day, it made me acknowledge that parties here don't start until two in the morning, for the entire family, and end when the sun rises. Something I had been told yet didn't really believe until now.


A small clip of the party we were at at the harbor:

recap

It’s Monday, January the 3rd, 4:46p.m. We’re currently in a city called Cerbere, France. Hmm, actually, I don’t think I’d really call this a city, more like an international train-yard. I see a few houses but there aren’t suiting the landscape at all. It looks like it could be a beautiful Mediterranean paradise but for some strange reason, it looks like a dump. I walked outside of the train station for a minute, only to see more train tracks, broken down apartments, and it was almost completely deserted. I don’t understand how some parts of a country can be so wonderful and other parts, well, aren’t… So, why am I here? Now there’s a story… I believe that I left off on Christmas Day last time. Heh, seems like an eternity ago…

The majority of my day after Christmas, I did close to nothing. Sore and tired from the previous days’ adventure left me wanting to stay inside and play video games. That night however, I found out that my dad had a decent camera and lens package so on the 27th, I went on a bit of a photo shoot. I walked Montreux for around six hours, taking pictures of everything:










On the 28th, I had a deja vu of Christmas; waking up at 6a.m. to be on a train by 7a.m. This time was a little different though. After the hour long morning train, instead of buying a ski pass, we bought boat passes. We took a little ferry from Lausanne to Evian. When we arrived, we walked the town a little bit and ended up at his friends house. We had a delicious lunch with this couple and their four kids. Afterwards, we went to see a photography expo on animals. Although some photos were interesting, overall I thought it was boring show; many of the pictures I felt lacked creativity and feeling. It was nice going out in the town though, it was also nice going out with people my age interested in the same kind of things. Only problem was the language; not as fluent as I wish I could be. We took the boat back, followed by the train, the walk, and pretty much called it a night.

Thursday, Dec, 30, started off much the same. 6am: wake up, 7am: train, then, with the wonderful choice in transportation there is in Europe, we decided to go by plane. Off to Barcelona, Spain we went. Arriving at the airport, we waited for our third companion to show, Cristina. she was another friend of my fathers’ and we would be spending the next few days including New Years with her and her family. When she arrived from Palma, we first got on a bus to leave the airport to go to the city. Once dropped off, we took a cab to an apartment. We were pretty much renting out a flat in downtown Barcelona. We dropped off our stuff and then continued on to buy the next few days’ necessities. Once our grocery shopping was done, we cooked a little dinner and because as I came to understand it, it was siesta time, we just hung out until around 10pm. Then, about to fall asleep, she tells us it’s time to go and party a little. We take a metro downtown, walk around gawking at the tourist attractions and meet up with her sister, nephew, and nice. We walked around a little more finally coming to a wine bar where we spent the night sipping champagne and getting to know our new friends. Going to sleep at around three in the morning, I had no idea what to expect for New Years.
I woke up a little late on the 31st; the bed I was sleeping in was super comfy. We didn’t do too much during the day; a few errands, went to a few cafes, not to exciting. Then like the day before, around nine I start getting tired. Cristina has been telling us that new years here isn’t that special and people don’t really do anything for it here but that we’d go out to some fancy place and spend it there with some friends and her sister. I felt a little disappointed yet not fully trusting her lack of enthusiasm. Once again, at around ten, we took off to the streets…