When my younger brother, Richie, told me he'd be spending a semester of college studying in Madrid, I sat him down and posed a serious question: When could I visit? My own erstwhile semester abroad was one of those quintessential turning points where horizons are broadened, identities are shaped, Nutella is eaten. I was young, free, and boarding with Mr. and Mrs. Knud Schmidt of Copenhagen, Denmark. Scandinavia seemed like the perfect place for student exchange, not because I had any idea where it was on a map, but because my friend Hal went the semester before and said the girls there were the "foxiest."

Fifteen years later, I longed to catch up with Richie at this critical juncture in his life. I would spend one reckless week in Spain, showing an amateur how it's really done. What follows are the often enlightening, always disturbing, heavily edited excerpts from my travel journals, then and now.

SEMESTER ABROAD, COPENHAGEN, 20 YEARS OF AGE
This is gonna be the most intense semester. Last night, me, Keith, Sari, Cathy, Erik Daner, Jeff, Tim, Denise, Cathy, Bjorn, Bjorn's friend whose name I'm spacing out, and this chick Megan from my Danish Literature class (cute+smart=probably has boyfriend) stayed out all night (4:30 a.m.) drinking Tuborg at this pub only the Danish students know about and then today, me, Tim, Bill, Cathy, and Denise went to the Hamlet castle and took a train to The Louisiana which is definitely the coolest museum I've ever seen and tonight we're all going back to that jazz club we went to last Thursday where everyone was all boho wearing gloves with cut-out finger holes and smoking and everything. I am sooooooo stoked! My Eurail pass came in the mail today! When I opened the envelope it was like this huge metaphor of me having the "whole world in my hands."

WEEK ABROAD, MADRID, 35 YEARS OF AGE
I cannot see out of my right eye. I'm on the bed in our hotel room with a gauze pad the size of a pancake on my ojo. Megan and I landed a few hours ago, and when Richie met us at the airport, he had an elaborate itinerary planned--a tapas lunch, a tour of the Prado, the old city, the new city, the middle-aged city, sangria, paella, pinatas, cucarachas, the whole tour de force or however you say it in Spanish. The one thing he didn't plan for was that my cornea would have a brush with some shrubbery a few hours before takeoff. I was trying to get Chloe's tennis ball out of a bush in the backyard before dropping her off at the dogsitters. Ten hours later, I stumbled off the plane in Madrid wearing these mirrored, Eric Estrada-esque sunglasses I bought at the airport. I think Richie figured I was trying to be cool, as opposed to trying to conceal the gruesome, swollen mass that used to be my eye. I hated to disappoint him since we haven't hung out since that camping trip last summer, but when I removed my Chips apparatus, it was clear he'd have to revise our itinerary. First, he needed to find me an opthamologist. Then we'd rage all night.

I just realized I haven't checked out our mini-bar.

Mini-bar sucks. 3 on a scale of 1-10, from what I could tell from my good eye. Plus everything in there has this weird orange tint, which I keep forgetting is just from the horrible orange drops the Spanish doctor squirted into my eye this afternoon. Richie managed to get me to a clinic, and as I tried to tell the doctor--who didn't speak English--what happened, I realized I have zero retention of all the Spanish I ever took in school. All I remember are these useless sayings we had to memorize in ninth grade. En boca cerrada no entran moscas ("Flies don't enter a closed mouth."). Perros que ladran no muerden ("Barking dogs don't bite."). Luckily, Richie was able to relay my condition in rapid-fire Espanol. He said, "Mi hermano Daniel bababababababababababababababa." Likely translation:"My brother Dan is trying to recapture his youth by crashing my junior semester abroad. I am sure that even you, a Spanish opthamologist, can appreciate the irony of rushing him in for medical attention as soon as he arrives."

"Tell him I keep getting this crud in it," I told Richie. "It's like pus or something."

"Mi hermano tiene...uh, poos," Richie translated. Guess he's not so fluent after all.

"Si senor,poos" the doctor replied, much to the delight of wife and brother alike. I've been here less than a day and already I've earned the nickname "Senor Poos."

Besides the horrible orange eye drops that have tinted my vision, the Spanish opthamologist gave me a box of tea. If Richie has his translation straight, I am not supposed to drink the tea. I am supposed to rinse my eyes with the tea, every four to six hours. Which reminds me. It's 9pm. Tea time. Richie and Megan went out for tapas a little while ago, but I was sound asleep. Megan woke me up before they left. She said, "Adios, Senor Poos." Richie cracked up.

Let them have their little laugh. Tonight, I'll rinse with Spanish eye-tea and go to bed. But tomorrow, I'll be livin' la vida loca!

I wonder if we get free HBO in this hotel.

next