this is... the moment.

This is… the moment.

These quickly infamous words were uttered on Saturday, September 4th, 2010 at around 2:30 am in the Indian, a very smoky, somewhat sleazy “American” themed bar in Santander. Not even a week has passed since the strange Spanish man whispered these words to Caitlyn, and this phrase has become the theme of our stay in Spain.

Now, this probably means nothing to you, and maybe this is just a case of “you had to be there” stories, but judging by how much we use this phrase, I think I should enlighten all my avid blog readers (Rebs – she just likes the word blog) on the background of this phrase.

So, as we all do on Friday nights, we got together to rage blackout. Actually, there hasn’t been any raging or blacking out in Europe as of yet, but that doesn’t matter. So Caitlyn, Hillary, Matt (Caitlyn’s brother), and I met up at Plaza Cañadío, the square where we meet up every night we go out. Before they arrived at the plaza, Caitlyn, Hillary and Matt went to Peter Pan’s (probably the cheapest and sketchiest bar in Santander) for some drinks. There, they met our Spanish Amigo. He had been learning English, and wanted to try it out on some native speakers. Apparently he was awful (but who am I to speak, have you read my Spanish?). They spoke with him for a few minutes and made their way to the plaza.

So, that night we met up with all the Erasmus students (European students studying abroad). Giovanni, this pretty great Italian guy, brought us around to a few clubs, but we never actually went into one. It was a group of about 20 of us, and it brought me back to Orientation Week freshman year. Not only would there have been “too many dicks on the dance floor” as the saying goes, but probably too many spoken languages, too.

But I digress.

After following the Italian around for about half an hour, we Americans gave up on partying with the Erasmus students and broke off. We noticed that we always form an “Atlantic Ocean” between us Americans and the rest of Europe. We don’t do this on purpose, it just happens that way, I swear. But anyways, we broke off with some Belgians and an Austrian and made our way to a bar a little across the city that the Belgians were fans of. It was closed. Great. Europeans are the best at partying with (that slight isn’t fair, it just wasn’t a good night for them). So we ditched the last of the Belgians and went into The Indian.

I want to stress that this is quite a walk from Peter Pan.

So we hung out, just us Americans, when guess who happened to make it into this bar – yep – our Spanish Amigo. Joder. So he joined our group and was talking to us, it was kind of creepy, but we didn’t think too much about it (okay, actually it was super creepy and we acknowledged it). We continued to talk and dance when our Spanish Amigo leans over to Caitlyn and whispers, “It is… the moment… where we take off our clothes” in a thick Spanish accent, and proceeds to TAKE OFF HIS CLOTHES!!! No lie, he took off his shirt and started to unbutton his pants, all the while looking around to see if we were buying it. Yo, dude, too far. He saw we weren’t joining him and started dressing himself again while we all thought of ways that we could make it out of The Indian without him. Eventually we all had to go to the bathroom and ducked out of the bar.

It was 5 o’clock by now and Josh had joined us in the midst of this situation. We were all hungry so we made it to churro restaurant. After a round of churros and chocolate con leche we stuck around a little to recount how our night had taken a creepy turn for the worse when in walked none other than our Spanish Amigo. Oh, come on, there is no way this was by coincidence. The churro place was a good 15 minute walk from The Indian. How could this keep happening? Needless to say, we paid quickly and left as soon as possible.

Again, I’m not sure if you had to be there for this to really strike a chord with you, but like I said, it has become a go to reference for everything, and will probably be brought back to Cornell, just hopefully our Spanish Amigo doesn’t come with…

Sorry I don´t have a Spanish version, right now I am lazy and feel I can relay this story better in Englsih anyways.