The dream begins.

I worked five more months at the plant center before I started chasing my dream of beginning my own bar/hostel. I needed experience and education for this, starting with bartending. I had seen ads all over instagram for EBS (European Bartender School), and although sceptical at first, I quickly became excited to learn. I signed up for the school in Madrid, as I had loved my last vacation there, I wanted to improve my Spanish, and my budget didn’t allow me to travel too far. I applied for a month-long course in January and a couple days after new years I hopped on a flight back to my favorite city in Europe.

I arrived a couple days before the course started, just to be safe and get a couple days to myself. I didn’t do much, besides practise my Spanish, walk around Madrid, and mentally prepare myself. The day before school started, I had to move rooms and here I met some classmates for the first time. It was three guys and they all spoke Spanish, exept my bunkmate who also spoke English very well and helped the other guys learn some English throughout the month.

The first day of school, me and the two other girls in the room got to know eachother walking to school together. We arrived and we were nervous but so was everyone else, and the instructors were so fun! This day was just getting signed in, learning how the month is going to look like and getting our first lessons. After school some of us went out for cocktails and got to know eachother better. We studied our first lesson for tomorrows exam because there’s exams everyday!

This months was magical! Even though there were two seperate classes for Spanish and English, we all got along great, and had fun together every day. The instructors were serious when need be, as they are still teachers, but they always made classes fun and there almost didn’t seem a barrier between student and teacher. Together we studied, explored Madrid, flaired in the park, and went out. It was also at this time that Mamma Mia the musical was in the theater (IN SPANISH) and ofcourse we HAD to see it, and dragged the guys with us.

With roughly 66 cocktail recipies memorized, knowledge of spirits, beers and wines, a basic but fun flairroutine executed, a freepour exam gone good and the bar exam gone amazing, I passed the course with a 95%, along with most of my classmates. We all hugged and celebrated knowing that we are all officially bartenders now. A bittersweet moment, feeling both relieved not to worry about studying and exams anymore, and sad to know it’s over. I stayed a couple days after graduation, said goodbye to all of our classmates until it was just three of us. aWhen the time came for me to leave, Dani accompanied us to the trainstation and Santi went with me to the airport to say goodbye. Again, I was sad to leave my now even more favorite city in Europe, but only for a moment, as I had my next trip already sheduled.