El Escoreal was more of a "cultural & social" event: apart from having some drinks the first night with my workmates (no, I did not go out 'till 6 in the morining again - last year was enough for me!), I also watched the Vuelta (the spanish "Tour de España"). After seeing it, I can happily confirm: visiting bike races is probably the most boring sport event to attend to - 5 min of action (uh, which action?). Also, I went with Martin and Carlos to the El Escoreal monastery, where basically all the spanish Habsburgs are burried - i.e. a "must" for an Austrian, monarchist, or a republican who wishes to release his anger (we were wondering why Carlos, a Mexican Republican, did not piss on the graves - just kidding in case you read this, Carlos ;-]). Anyway, a quite impressive place, but not what you would expect from a King who pretends to live a modest monk life (well, Phillip II probably thought it was...).
The second event, La Noche Blanca, was quite fun - and very long, until about 11 am in the morning. We tried to visit some of the performances and attractions, but stopped this quite soon: You just can't imagine how many people are out on the streets, it seems all of Madrid is there at once. My modest estimate is one million, really - I never have seen something like this (and I thought Madrid is crowded at night quite regularly... well, this beats everything). So after fighting through the masses, we went to a party place on the southern rim of the center, which proved to be just as crowded. In the end, at about 7 am, we decided to "retreat" to my place and have some copas (drinks) with good music at my place. There somebody showed me "Testimonios" on youtube.com: if you understand a bit of spanish, very funny comedies of Björk et al.!
