Madrid was a delightful surprise. We had gone for the wedding of our friend Elena and her finance Jesse. Elena had been in law school with Camille and I and Camille was a bridesmaid. We got to Madrid and immediately went to a lunch that was going on with the bridesmaids and their plus ones. Everyone was chatty and loud and we immediately felt excited to be there. I went back to the Airbnb to get settled while Camille went to get her nails done with the bridesmaids and then we headed to dinner. The dinner was so much fun. We talked for hours and ate for hours and then ate and talked some more– we got there at 7 and left at 1am. Camille and I talked a lot about Mormonism, people were curious, as much about the religion as about the two of us. I think people were shocked we were so normal. At one point I talked to Eve and her partner Gido for an hour. Eve grew up Mormon and they listened as I answered all of Gido’s questions and rebuttals. It was intense but was all respectful– by the end I felt like I was friends with both of them. They told me I needed to find Peter, one of the groomsmen, the next day as he was fascinated by Mormonism and he would want to talk to me.

We woke up the next morning at 1pm, got ready for the wedding and were at the hotel at 5pm. They all took pictures, I helped the bridesmaids with little things, talked for a long time to Dane, a husband of one of the bridesmaids who was a professor at BYU law about religion and law school. The ceremony was beautiful and then we went to cocktail hour where everyone chatted some more. There I met Peter and chatted with him about our shared interests which was got more similar as we talked. There I learned that he was working in finance in NYC, hated it, was married, and was obsessed with Mormonism and literature. We had dinner which was delicious and also incredibly sweet. It was such an honor to see how loved Elena and Jesse were by their respective friends and families. Both of their parents had one parent who was Spanish and one who was American so they had a lot in common– everything was in English and Spanish. Camille and I somehow got sat at the table with Jesse’s aunts and uncles and it was a riot– they were the nicest people in the world. At about 10pm the dance party started. Peter and tried to talk about Mormonism but in the end just exchanged numbers and said we would meet up the next day. I partied hard for someone who was totally sober. Not to brag but I was later described as the “life of the party” and it was “incredible that I wasn’t drunk.” I love dance parties! And I rarely really let myself enjoy them. We danced until 3am and then I went back to the hotel while Camille hit the streets with the bridal party and her British boy.

I got back to the Airbnb and realized that we were supposed to check out the next morning at 10am which there was no way we were going to be able to do. I started calling and walking around to hotels and eventually found one that we could check into right away. I packed up our bags, got a taxi, and in the end went to bed at 5am. Camille and I slept until 3pm the next day. Then we got lunch with Peter who said he wanted to talk about Mormonism but in the end Camille and I mostly just talked about ourselves. It got weirder than perhaps it needed to because Camille unironically wants to be a God but Peter was pretty cool about it. Eve came and chatted with us. Peter said he was going to a bull fight that night with friends and I really had wanted to go to a bull fight so I ended up going with him and Camille went with Eve to go hang out with more people from the wedding. Camille and I had been planning to go to Barcelona that day but because I had to get another hotel the night before, we had a place to stay that night. We went to go get Peter’s friends and brother (all of which, not to brag!, were very impressed that I was interested in animal torture) and went to the bullfight.

The bullfight was intense. We went to one where the bullfighters were on horses which made it so it was probably more dangerous if the bull got the horse for the bullfighter but seemed to require less courage. There were 6 bull and 6 fighters and it went from worst fighter to best. They would spear the bull 6 times in the back, then stab it with a sword, then get off the horse and give the killing blow by severing the spinal chord. The first bull/fighter was terrible. Turns out that the more skilled the bullfighter is, the more quickly and humanely the bull gets killed. The first bullfighter was terrible so the death was terrible. It was long and painful and in the end, the guy botched the killing blow so the bull was alive much longer that it needed to be. I got a little teary, it was horrible to watch. Everyone in the stands hated it too, the mood was somber, and all the people I was with said that was the worst they had ever seen. The fighters and the respective deaths of the bulls were all much better after that. The last fighter was excellent and I was surprised how much fun I was having by the end. In some ways I figured I had to be ok with it because I am not a vegetarian. And sure, those cows aren’t killed for sport but they also have much worse lives leading up to their deaths than the bulls that fight in the ring. It was interesting, to be confronted with death in such a visceral way, or even at all. For how much death is all around us, I very rarely see it or an confronted with its actuality. I went away a little disturbed by how much I enjoyed it. Everyone I was with agreed that it was a dying practice and that was probably a good thing but that it was like stepping back in time– a relic of a different age. I also left feeling like I had now really been to Spain, like this was the essence of the country in one, two hour period.

We went to dinner (it was about 8pm) and talked and ate. I was kinda into this Eat-And-Talk-For-5-Hours dinner thing. It was during this dinner that the similarities between Peter and I got even more funny and apparent. The whole time he had talked about how he was obsessed with LBJ because of this book he had read and everyone joked that he had a 2 fact per night limit that he could talk about him because they were all sick of it. I laughed and said that I was kind of the same, that I also got really into stuff, and in the end I gave them my Elvis spiel. I finished to a table full of astonished faces– you sound exactly like Peter everyone said. Even Peter was like “You said that exactly the same way I would have.” For all our similarities, when just he and I talked, there wasn’t very much, well I don’t want to say chemistry because he is fully married but I can’t think of another words so I am going with it but take all the sexual connotations out of it. Instead of actually being the same, it was like we fulfilled similar roles in our respective friend groups. We finished dinner and I got back to the Airbnb at 2pm. Camille spent the evening with her Adam Driver looking British boy.

The next morning we got up to got to Barcelona. Our whole trip we had been able to just get tickets when we got to the station but this time when we got their, the next two trains were full, so we booked one for 5pm that night and texted our new friends to see what they were up to, despite having said goodbye the night before. We stored our luggage and went to get churros with Eve and Gido, then met up with everyone else for lunch. There Peter and I joked about our respective obsessions and I finally got the whole LBJ story which was actually pretty interesting. We also talked about our families for a little bit and then we had to leave, for real this time.

Meeting all of those people was a real confidence boost– I had been a little worried about making friends on this continent, especially because I had such a close knit group I was coming from. It was so nice to talk and joke with these people. Peter said that meeting Camille and I was “more fun and less interesting” than he thought as far as the Mormon stuff went. He was like, “I kinda forgot honestly, you guys were just fun to hang out with.” In some ways it kind of broke my heart– I don’t like fast and easy friends, I want people to stay my friend forever. I don’t mean that in a clingy way (well, maybe), I just mean that I hate being separated from people I love. Everyone I meet and like, I want to keep them with me forever. Its silly but I think that is why I am not great at having acquaintances– anyone I like enough to be connected with, I like enough to talk to all the time. I love getting to know people, really understanding them, I find them all fascinating and funny, and I want to get under everyone’s skin and see the world the way they do. That probably makes me sound insane. And its not everyone! But there are people that I love immediately and those I love, I want to know, I want to explain.

That was obviously not the nature of the weekend but I was so surprised at how much I liked everyone and, had we all lived in the same city, would have been thrilled to hang out with them forever. It was also incredibly refreshing after being by myself and being with just Camille to have all these new people to get to know.