Events account, April 11th.

Personally I usually hate these event accounts, so you can just skip reading this - I won't be offended. On the contrary. I will be offended.
Just kidding.
I won't be offended.
When I'll write about interesting stuff in this trip I'll warn you.

So, I took off at 5:45 Friday morning, heading to Chicago with Iberia (Spain's El-Al). For some reason, they decided that 50 minutes should be enough for switching planes in Madrid's airport. So, I landed 20 minutes late, just to get to gate 8A and have the flight attendants there telling me that my plane had already taken off (I tried really hard to hide my smile) - which means that I got to spend unexpected 24 hours in Madrid, all expenses included! A 5 stars hotel, 3 meals each with at least 3 servings and vino tinto (red wine), a free phone call to anywhere in the world, free Spanish lessons from the bored clerk at the front desk, and a metro station to downtown Madrid just a couple of blocks away. Kipi-ka-yey! Madrid is definitely my number 1 choice of cities to get 'stuck' in for 24 hours. The streets are full of joyful people, and the city is decorated just to my taste.
So, I started scanning the Madrid-tour-book for places where I can meet girls :) For some reason the Reina Sofia museum of modern art seemed at the time like a reasonable choice. And it actually could have been, if it wasn't for my barrier of flirting with my teeth broken in Spanish. So I only got to hit on an Australian girl that turned out to be married :( Oh well. Sent a dash to Picasso and a couple of other exhibitions of NYC and FD Mexico, and headed straight to Madrid's Shinkin St.. Looks exactly as Tel-Aviv's Shinkin St., except that I couldn't find that Haredy guy from the Agvania Pizza. Now, if you don't know, the Madridians have some very weird customs. The floors of all the cafes are just full of used napkins. The more filth a restaurant or a cafe has on its floor - it means that it is more popular, and more people come to filth it even more. It's a vicious cycle that leaves you no good place to enter without getting your shoes filled with stuff. So I couldn't find a good bar where I could rest my backpack on the floor. At last I gave up. Anyone knows a good dry cleaner in Chicago? :)
On the plane to Chicago I got to sit near a guy called Mina. Apparently, Mina holds the name of one of the Pharoes from ancient Egypt. I spoke to him in Spanish, he answered in English, and then we found out he's a Christian from Egypt and I'm a Jew from Israel. The rest of the conversation with him continued in English. Mina won the lottery and was lucky to be one of the 55,000 people who get a green card each year. At age 27, he left his previous life as a single accountant in Cairo, and got for the first time on a plane, heading to a brand new life. I let him take my place near the window :)
Well, this is it for now. I thought that shopping from the internet in Chicago would be cheaper, but apparently netaction.co.il give better deals for flash memory mp3 players. Maybe it's the taxes. I don't understand this.
Well... That's it for today,
Cheers,
Eitan.