Birthdays and Munich and Carnivale, oh my!

Oh boy I am behind on my updates! Although I must say first that I hope everything is going well in the states with all this snow! Holy cow it's starting to sound ridiculous.

Anyways, things for me are going very well! I celebrated my 21st birthday (what whattttt!) last Friday so that was just nutso because I decided to go to a discoteca for Carnivale (in costume) and then fly off to Germany to celebrate for the weekend! CrAzY! The discoteca was interesting, it was a pretty cool dance-club-bar type thing early on and they played old and new skool American music (think hip-hop and R&B), but then as the night continued the music changed to this monotonous dance "beat" that didn't really vary at all. THEN, the fun discotec-ers who arrived early and in fun costumes started to leave and creepy groups of Spanish men in masks ("costumes", I guess) starting to fill up the place and surround us hahah. So we decided that dancing in a tight little safety-circle just wasn't cutting it anymore and we peaced. Still a great night because I got to see a lot of the students I don't normally get to talk at Deusto going out and about in the night life, so that was a blast.







21st birthday shenanigans!









Then it was Friday and I flew off to Munich, Germany! (in case you weren't sure where it was) There I spent the weekend visiting Alexander Crist, a friend from high school who is studying there for the entire year (whoa!). We went to Marienplatz, Schloss Nymphenburg, some Bavarian restaurants with German names so of course I don't remember them, and then the best part..... the BMW Factory and Corporate headquarters!! Sounds nerdy, I know, but we got to sit it/touch these B-E-A-UTIFUL factory-floor cars, all brandy new and shiny!

Oh boy it was lovely. It was also cool because they had some of the "motorbikes" there and we could sit on them and make vrooooom noises and pretend to be racing- not touristy at all, they practically thought we worked there. Needless to say, although those beamers cost more than my college experience I think, I will always remember that real cream-colored leather interior against the cool navy blue paint color on the brand-new 5-series Gran Turismo when I daydream about driving in Europe. We'll always have Munich. <3


Por fin, this whole week/weekend was Carnivale, which I sort of mentioned before I believe but is really just a huge celebration of Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday (but really Fat last-Monday-to-this-Tuesday) where people dress up in masks or full costumes for the whole week. It's pretty entertaining for me to see demons shopping for shampoo or Superman being walked to school by his mom, I did NOT dress up but only because I'm too cheap to buy a costume and I stick out as an American in an orange coat enough already. However, it was fun to see all the other costumes and little parades of children throughout Bilbao for each grade school, and I'm glad I got to see an original Carnivale Mardi Gras treats-and-sweets legit Spanish/European Bilabo bash! (That name is probably why they only call it Carnivale.)