The Longest Day Yet

After my immune system was ravished by a Diplo concert on Thursday, I stayed in Friday night in order to prepare for a highly anticipated excursion on Saturday. We took an hour train and a 15 minute cable car to Monserrat, a monastery nestled into the edge of a mountain. The hike was presumed to be very lackadaisical with perhaps some great views scattered here and there. We were so unbelievably wrong. Our crew of 20 quickly fragmented and I found myself setting the pace for a group of 7 girls. The set-up had all the makings of a terrible horror movie. The hike brought us up the steep, eroded face of the cliff, through a forest that resonated with the feel of a certain J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy, and finally up a gravely incline. My masculinity occasionally felt threatened, so I stayed in front and frequently exclaimed facts I learned from the Discovery channel in order to establish some sort of intellectual dominance. After an hour, we found ourselves close to our destination. No one was quite sure what we were hiking to, but it had a large point on the map and that was all the motivation we needed. We finally arrived to find a dilapidated chapel. Everyone muttered "Is that it?" as they keeled over in exhaustion. Slightly defeated we meandered past the chapel and discovered perhaps the greatest view I have ever seen in my young life. We sat, speechless peering out over the seemingly endless landscape. The diverse stretches of harsh terrain culminated in snow capped mountains on what may well have been the other side of the world. This moment of serenity was swiftly cut short when we realized we were in danger of missing the last train home. We hustled back down the trail, ignoring any feelings of dizziness that the altitude so crudely delivered.

We made the train in time and everyone passed out almost immediately. Except me. I was in a four seater with three army buddies who were swapping stories of their time in the shit. It gave me a whole new insight to the life of a soldier. For once in my life I fell silent in a roundtable discussion. These guys were talking about their nights on patrol and their barrack shenanigans, I clearly could not interject with any of my pampered college life stories. It was humbling.

The evening continued in a routine fashion. No time to nap, I ate and showered with haste and ventured over to the other residencia to begin the night. I was under the impression we would be trying out a new bar, however, at 1:30am I found myself heading straight for a club called Catwalk. I entered, took a couple laps around and was not surprised to be disappointed once again. The scene was the same convoluted mess that has so often ruined my social motivation. The rooster flask, my trusty companion, kept me away from the bar just long enough to find two girls who were also tired of the locale. We opted to go next door to the casino where we were instantly denied access to the card tables in the basement. We did not let this subdue our spirits, however, and spent the next hour ignorantly pressing the flashing buttons of the Spanish slot machines. Whereas American slot machines have such themes as Wheel of Fortune and the Price is Right, the Spanish apparently got their hands on every machine that the US declined. Specifically, the Stargate Atlantis machine garnered much of my attention on the night. We finished playing and I dropped the girls off at the train station. The walk home was a straight line. However, this straight line was littered with transvestite prostitutes. Their cat calls reverberated off of the ancient walls of Sardenya Street and I could not help but laugh the entire way back. I arrived to find my door wide open. I entered, expecting to see my roommate innocently passed out in his bed. I was met, instead, by a whole different scene. I slyly shuffled my way back out the door. I was now in sexile. I went down to the common room and played ping pong with a sprightly man named Pablo for 30 minutes. I returned to find my room still occupied. I fell asleep in the stairwell for a bit until I finally was able to enter and lay atop my rock hard bed.