Sangria Nights: Sleepless in Spain and Elsewhere

College is about three things: homework, fun, and sleep. But you can only choose two.

Traveling has made me an insomniac. Not simply because of jet lag, time changes, overnight flights and six hour layovers. I run myself ragged while abroad (and at home) because I just don’t want to miss anything.

I’m not sure that I ever saw the Cairenes sleep. Or even go to bed. They were always still out, at restaurants and ahwas, coffee houses, all over the city. Even children would be out until 2 or 3 in the morning playing soccer in the streets because it was so much cooler than during the day. My friend Gouda put it best – “nothing even starts until midnight.”

Spain represented for me a week-long true vacation. While Cairo was fun and exotic, I had gone there to work and study, not be a tourist, and there were responsibilities that I had to attend to. Spain had none of those.

I flew into Madrid, and met my friend Nick, who had been studying in Pamplona. My flight was two hours late leaving Amsterdam, which meant there was no way we’d be able to catch the bus tickets Nick had already purchased. Of course.

The plan was to take a week and see Andalusia, the southern region of Spain, visiting Seville, Granada, and Valencia, in that order, then jump back to Madrid for a night to catch our flights home the next morning. We only had a day or two in each city, so compromises needed to be made; sleep went first.

After arriving in Seville at 10:30 at night, we found our hostel, checked in, took showers, and promptly went out. We went to be around two, and got up at eight for a full day of sightseeing, walking around the whole city until dinnertime, about 8:30. Then we went back out.

The logic here is simple and deadly: we have to leave in the morning, and it’s a five-hour bus ride, so why sleep now? Sleep on the bus.

Brilliant.

In fairness to my traveling companion, I would like to make clear that we did significant amounts of sightseeing, and our exploits were in no way confined to the nightlife of Andalusia. We had a delicate balance. It was probably good we only kept it up for a week.

The quote at the top of this post is true in more arenas of life than school. It’s the rationalization I give to myself when I go see a 14th century Spanish palace over sleeping in. It’s also my justification for when I ate churros con chocolate and relaxed in the park instead of going to a museum.

Generally, my go-to sacrifice is sleep, the theory being I can sleep all I want when I’m dead. However what I have learned from this summer and fall is that not seeing one more famous painting will ultimately pale in comparison to the night smoking shisha and drinking Turkish coffee with my friends. People too, can be missed just as fiercely as places, and I have come to rely and value the relationships I have forged much more that I appreciated visiting the Sphinx.

The solution: sleep on the bus while planning the next adventure.