Episode 6: Gavin 0-3 Barcelona

So today (Friday 28th) was the third time I’d be in Barcelona since starting my year abroad, surely a la tercera va la vencida, right? Wrong! This time it was for a meeting at the Departament d’Ensanyament’s main building.

Thursday afternoon I still didn’t know if I was actually meant to go to the meeting or not, hopefully not given that it would be almost literally impossible to get to Barcelona at 11am, but then I got ‘es importante que vengas’, well that’s just fantastic, so it’s a case of get up at stupid o’clock to get a bus at stupid o’clock to get a train at slightly more reasonable o’clock to arrive at Sants-Estació at something past 10 giving me time to get on the Metro etc. etc. Or alternatively I could ask pretty much anyone who lives in Barcelona “help! Can I sleep at your place? Like, tonight, in 4 hours?” Thankfully Karina, an American girl, said I could, so that’s the bed sorted, now the getting there.

The buses from Amposta to L’Aldea run at 20 to the hour on weekdays, getting me to the train station on the hour, or 10 minutes after the train leaves to Barcelona, there was one at 19:50 or another at 21:44, I decided it best to get a taxi only by the time it had showed up, picked me up, got stuck behind a bus that didn’t stop in Amposta and would still have got me there late, I missed the 19:50, fantastic. So now I’m waiting here for nearly 2 hours and the 19:50 was 11,25€ as opposed to the 21:44 being 24,30€, now this presents a problem as I took out 40€ to last me the two days, the taxi was 13 plus 24,30 = 37,30, leaving me a whopping 2,70€, this was to get me round Barcelona’s Metro system twice and then back home. This is not good. So I’m sat there in the train station wondering just how I will manage this (to this day I’m still not entirely sure) and suddenly it occurred to me: my credit card! That’s got some money on it and I brought it just for this sort of emergency! And it’s in my room. FUCK! Not bueno, not bueno, not bueno, not bueno, but it wasn’t like I could do anything about it, so I got on the train when it eventually arrived and just sat down watching whatever film it was showing, got into Sants and rung Karina to find out the stop, and it was on the same line meaning it would only cost me 1,45€ so that’s a plus, got to the machine and it turned out I could pay by card (on which I couldn’t withdraw money because I didn’t have 10 euros) so this helped a fair bit, bought the ticket, got to Vallcarca and met Karina, went to her flat and got a decent night’s sleep, knowing that I could get up at a normal time the next day as opposed to 5 or 6. Woke up the next day, had breakfast, showered, etc. then set off from Vallcarca to Diagonal, another 1,45€ then I bought another ticket on the way across Diagonal to get to Muntaner, tried getting through the barrier onto L6 and it wouldn’t let me, tried again, wouldn’t let me, on the third time of trying it turned out I’d got the wrong ticket, BCN has 2 underground systems, there’s the Metro and the FGC, meaning I’d just wasted 1,45€ at a time when I really could have done without doing that. Ended up buying an FGC ticket which was exactly the same price (so a bit of a middle finger if you ask me) and got on the train and arrived at the meeting, where there were a grand total of 7 people, and it wasn’t even in a meeting room, it was one of those open plan offices where there’s about 100 people with their own desk, I just travelled 90 miles for this? I was highly unimpressed, also at the fact that 3 of the other lived in Barcelona and the other Reus. But anyway we had the meeting and then I set off back to Sants and I figured I’d walk to save money, which wasn’t actually that difficult, found the train station and then this is where the fun began, I got to the ticket office and had 8,70€ and my card to buy an 11,25€ ticket, only it’s not like England where you can pay some by cash and put the rest on your card, so this meant I had to then find a Bancaja in Barcelona given that I couldn’t just nip to a cash machine, so first of all I had to find someone who knew where one was, then find Carrer de València on a map, then figure out where I was on said map, and this bit took a good 15 minutes. Eventually found Carrer de València and after walking for what felt like about 2 miles I thought ‘surely I would have found it by now’ so I asked someone who thankfully knew where it was, and I got to the other side of the road I saw a sign saying Avinguda de Roma, meaning I was never on carrer de València. Smooth. So I got to the Bancaja and then came the one tiny glimmer of good luck that comes with every one of my trips to BCN: they asked for my passport to make sure I was the cardholder (it’s standard in Spain for some reason) which they’d only gone and told me to bring so I could get into the building where the meeting was in the first place, so I withdrew what I had and set off back to Sants, and it’s always a lot quicker when you’re going back to a place, got there in seemingly no time (looking on Google it was an exact 2 mile round trip) and got my ticket, now just to wait for the annoyingly infrequent trains to L’Aldea for nearly 40 minutes. Then when I finally got to the station my luck wasn’t to end there, I now easily had enough money to cover the bus to Amposta, only some twat had ripped the timetable down from the stop so I didn’t know if I’d be waiting 50 seconds or 50 minutes, as it happened it was 50 minutes. So eventually at half 6 I got into Amposta, having left the meeting at about 11:45 that morning, this was meant to be a short, simple day.
Well, now to wait until the next time that I have to go (November 8th), if i don't pull one back this time it may well just be game over.

Episode 5: Gavin 1, Catalan - well, probably about 30-odd by now but the comeback is on!

So today I managed to not speak a word of Castellano, well except for one but I’ll get onto that during the course of this post, also a message I sent but that doesn’t count as speaking. Today was all about speaking English and Catalan, and I started at the school with speaking English to all the children as is becoming the norm, it’s becoming a lot easier to remember que no entenc català o castellà. But after school I went to Yoigo to top-up my phone and be unimpressed that for every 10€ you top-up, 1,53€ gets taken off in taxes, also quite confused at the amount now I look at it, I mean that's 15.3%. Oh well. So after doing all that in Catalan I went for a tallat i croissant then home and to the gym, where I managed to ask to go into the gym and later change a 5€ note, all in Catalan, damn I’m getting good :D then some guy in the gym just had to speak to me in Castellano, I’d just finished a set of bicep curls and he asks me “¿es el tuyo?” while pointing at a towel that someone had left on a bench, and now I think about it I didn’t see anyone claim said towel the whole time I was in there. But I responded with “No, no és” and got on with my next set. Then to Eroski where I was forced to use my one word of Castellano to ask where the avenas were, but other than that it all went nice and Catalan, then it’s just been a case of go home, cook tea, have tea, listen to Town match and be highly disappointed that it hasn’t been another 4-0 win, we bloody score 12 goals in 4 away games then struggle against the lowly Scunthorpe. Well, that was my day up to well, just about now really, Adeu.

Episode 4: Something is seriously wrong here

As you probably know there hasn’t exactly been an abundance of photos of my time here so far, the main reason being “I’ll transfer them tomorrow” and other sentences to that effect. Now another couple of reasons have cropped up: first of all, installing the software to actually transfer them has been nothing short of a nightmare; you’d think it’d be as simple as putting in the disc, clicking a few buttons, ‘reading’ the terms and conditions and clicking I agree, et voilà. With this you put in the disc, pick your language, pick your camera model and install, and by install I mean have it try to download the program over an Internet connection that’s worse than Lebanon's, and God forbid you should actually download software (or go anywhere near YouTube) over this connection! No no, it’ll get about 10% through then act like a stroppy teenager and just refuse to work, meaning you have to cancel the install, take the disc out, put the disc back in, pick your language, pick your camera model, wait about 10 minutes for it to find the network again and THEN try and install. 7 attempts and 90 minutes later I finally succeeded. Then came the next fail: the photos, just have a look at these and see if you think they’ve come out okay:

Nope. Me neither, so I now have to figure out what the hell’s going on with my camera.

Rant over.

Episode 3: Barcelona, we need to talk

So it’s well documented from Episode 1 what happened last time I was in Barcelona, I ended lugging half my bodyweight in luggage halfway across the city in clothing which wasn’t exactly weather appropriate, how I was still standing I’ll never know. Well Monday was the second time in the last week I went as I was planning on finalising my registration as a referee in Catalunya. The day started off pretty well, the bus was surprisingly cheap, 1,45€ to travel the equivalent distance of Huddersfield to Thongsbridge, which last I checked was £2.50 (2,88€), then came the drop-off, and to put it simply, if a bus claims to take you to a train station, you’d expect to be able to see the station when you get off, not have to walk another mile (by which I literally mean 1.0 miles) and for 90% of said mile be thinking “there is no conceivable way that the train station is this way.” The other 10% being “fuck me, that actually is the train station!” It is so inconveniently placed it’s unreal. Then I found out I had half an hour to wait so went and had something to eat, this was the beginning of my new lifelong vendetta against flies, every 5 seconds they’d be landing somewhere on one of my arms and I’d be swatting it away, until I caught the wire connecting my phone to my headphones, sending the phone flying and out came the battery, aw damn, I’ll just pop that back in and turn it back on, ah see, it’s fine, “please enter your PIN”……DAMMIT!  After trying and failing with the first and last 4 numbers on the SIM I decided it wouldn’t  be worth risking some ill thought-out combination, so that’s me without a phone for the rest of the day. Then I did my bit to attract some good karma, translating for a New Zealand traveller trying to get to Valencia, during the course of the conversation I was told I’d have to pay 25€ for my ticket to Barcelona, now I know it’s a fair way away and all but 25€? Come on! Not that I actually said that, I waited for the ticket office to open and some woman and a group of people got there first, I was still in the queue when the train arrived and was told “forget it, just get on.” So a 2-hour train ride later and I arrive at Sants-Estació, expecting to be stopped at the barriers, except there weren’t any, I just got a free trip to BCN, using up all that good karma in the process. I was a bit early for my meeting with the CTA (Comitè Tècnic d’Àrbitres) and it was ridiculously close to la Rambla, so I figured it’d be rude not to, got on the Metro at 1,45€ for a single trip, me gusta, and went shopping (in my defence, I have needed some new running shoes given that my old ones are in England, and the sunglasses and sports watch were very reasonably priced), then for a KFC, and my God, just because I pronounce tower correctly doesn’t mean I want you to speak to me in extremely basic English that I can’t even understand! I’m talking to you in castellano; talk back to me in castellano! I then heard a Spanish person come along and pronounce it tow-where so I now know what to do next time. So I ate and set off to the meeting, only there wasn’t one, basically they’d said “come to this address on a weekday after 7” not knowing that I don’t actually live anywhere near Barcelona, because it was then a case of “you should have gone to Tortosa.” Now allow me to put this into perspective:

You are seeing this right.

 

I just travelled 2 hours, ‘spent’ 25€ on a ticket to travel said 2 hours, and will now have to travel another 2 hours, probably actually pay this time, and hope to God the buses are still running (they stop at about 10), only to get in touch with someone completely different, in a completely different place, just to do this all again some other time! Arrrrgh! At least it was only 11,25€ for some reason, only trains to L’Aldea-Amposta aren’t really that frequent, meaning I rolled into the station at 10. Past 11.  On the plus side, Lady Luck finally decided she’d done torturing me for the day and threw me a lifeline; coming out of the station I had two choices: walk it, I can easily walk Huddersfield to Thongsbridge, the only difference being I know where I’m going, or borrow someone’s phone and ring one of the kindly signposted taxi numbers. Then along came a third choice: ask to borrow the phone of a girl who’s battery has died, but whose boyfriend is coming to pick her up and happens to live on the exact same street as me! Booyah!

So the way I see it, Barcelona, I’ve been inside you twice in the last week and both times have just been a huge mess, I think we need some time apart.

Episode 2: I no speak español

Well this is weird, I’ve spent the whole week speaking to Carme, the other teachers, and people round town in Spanish and Catalan, and even Italian a couple of times, then I start in the school where the kids are told “solo habla inglés.” So not only does this mean not speaking Spanish while in the classroom, it means having to sit there looking blank while the teacher (which this term will mostly be Carme) says something to the children, okay she mostly speaks to them in Catalan so my understanding genuinely is quite low, but I’m picking it up like nothing else, and when she doesn’t speak in Catalan it’s in English, so I’m allowed to understand XD. Then come the questions from the children, who like to revert to Spanish (or castellano) when they don’t know their question in English, so I’ll be asked “¿Qué es tu equipo favorito?” And just as I’m about to answer I’ll hear “¡chicos, en inglés!” Oh that’s right, I don’t speak Spanish, so I did not understand a word of your question. And then one that really threw me off my feet: “what Spanish words do you know?” Crap, think fast! “Well I know, hola, adiós, bueno, sí, no, and cerveza por favor.” “And I’ve been to Spain about 10 times *uh-oh, someone’s who’s been to Spain 10 times should really know more Spanish than I claim to know* but they were all holidays in resorts where everyone speaks English anyway, which is why I don’t know so much Spanish.” My pronunciations have proved quite useful though, when I told them I like David Guetta I was asked “You like the song Tee-tan-ee-um?” “Tee-tan-ee-um?” “Yes, it is a David Guetta song.” It took me about 30 seconds to figure out she was on about Titanium.

Saturday was a pretty strange day, it started off with a lie-in til 12 (we haven’t reached the strange part yet just FYI) and a pretty lazy afternoon. Then I fired up the computer to listen to Town’s match and it seems that the website takes the time from your computer but forgets time zones, given that English kick-offs for me are now at 4PM, so at 2:55 my time it’s telling me there’s 5 minutes to kick-off, not that it affected the stream in any way and that’s the important thing, but I had to leave because Carme had invited me to watch her son’s hockey match which started at half 4, so I left the match at 0-0 and went to watch the hockey. Now I know two types of hockey: ice hockey as in the NHL where there’s more padding than a Superbowl and dentists get rich, and the kind played on Astroturf with a ball and only the goalkeeper wears any real protection, the third kind I discovered today involves a sports hall type surface, a ball, rules much more akin to ice hockey (sans the fighting), and rollerblades. Yes, rollerblades, I saw this and I’m all WTF, and even stranger is the scoring: as opposed to counting goals, it’s a first-to-two in terms of how many 10-minute periods you win, Amposta unfortunately lost in both senses, they were 1-1, 1-2 and 1-3, but back to football-related matters, I knew that between me leaving and getting back we’d made it 2-1 so I went back expecting to calmly see out the rest of the match, that is, until I loaded the stream again to hear “it’s a penalty! Kay’s gone and pulled him back in the area and the referee had no choice!” Fuck. So that’s me on edge again, until Mousinho skies it of course :D final score 2-1 and we’re now 3^rd having played more games than just about anyone else in the division. So 9PM approaches and I decide I’m hungry and can’t be arsed buying anything in, so not knowing any recipes involving tomatoes, lettuce and orange juice I went out and found a place called Bon Gust, the starter salad was pretty standard: mixed leaves, tomatoes, red onion, then chorizo, jamón Serrano, tuna and cheese, it was actually quite a plateful. Then I had a main course of sausages with whatever garnición is, it turned out to be scrambled egg with mushrooms, a sort of sweet, spicy tomato sauce, what looked like fried sliced avocados, something similar only orange…and CHIPS! And I don’t mean “we read about these in an English cookbook, but we just can’t get it right” chips, I mean “did you order these in from a chippy in Yorkshire?” chips, they genuinely were that good, it was all I could do not to ask for salt and vinegar. Then came the dessert menu, it’s quite safe to say that this was the only thing I have ever seen or will ever see that was in Catalan, English and French, there was not a single word of Spanish on that menu, well, barring the odd Catalan word that happens to be the same in Spanish. Oh and did I mention that the salad, main course, dessert, a beer and a coffee afterwards came to 18€?

So yeah, that was my Saturday, one of the more surreal ones but probably one of many.

Episode 1: No la encuentro

Well this is it, my dad and brother have just gone to bed, leaving me watching the rest of MOTD2, knowing that next time I wake up it’ll be to go to Liverpool and then BCN. This would be true apart from the fact that I never did get to sleep, I just lay there awake for hours until I decided ‘fuck this’ and went downstairs to watch TV, I was leaving at 3AM anyway and it was like half two. So come 3 o’clock I hear my parents waking up and we get everything finalised, I’m not tired in the slightest (somehow) and just know that today is going to be epic. We finalise the packing, get in the car and head to Liverpool, no accidents on the motorways, nothing in the centre of Liverpool, this is gonna be one of those days. There was a slight hiccup when my bag was over the 26Kg limit but a quick shuffle around between that and my hand luggage and all was well (EasyJet’s rule on that is incredibly stupid by the way.*) I went through to departures via the boarding card check and security, where I took off my belt, phone, wallet etc. and for some (probably sound) reason my laptop had to go through the scanner on its own as opposed to in my hand luggage, went through the scanner and the various metal parts on my jeans didn’t set it off, which I don’t think has ever happened before, you know that sort of day where absolutely everything seems to go your way? This is one of them. So I put all my stuff back on/in my hand luggage and went to the gates – via Burger King given my lack of breakfast – there was nowhere to sit near where all the shops and stuff were, so I went to Gate 1 hoping it wasn’t too far from my gate and took a seat. It got near 6:20 so I decided to get up and go look what gate my flight was from, and then I noticed the screen at Gate 1: Barcelona EZY7203. Get. In. And when I started queuing, that’s when God or Allah or Chuck Norris or whoever runs things decided to turn on me, “All passengers for flight EZY7203 to Barcelona that have purchased Speedy Boarding are now permitted to board.” So they went to the gate and through the doors. “All passengers for flight EZY7203 to Barcelona travelling with children under 5 are now permitted to board.” So they went to the gate with a considerable numbers of prams, flip-flops and little girls carrying pink suitcases that were nearly as big as them, they went through the doors and towards the plane, 5 minutes later no-one else has boarded and the speedy boarders and flip-flops come back out of the door. Crap. “Passenger announcement, the EZY7203 service to Barcelona has been delayed by half an hour.” Leading half the queue to sit back down and leaving me 2^nd, well screw that I’m not sitting down now. Along comes 7:15 with another piece of good news: “Passenger announcement, we are sorry to announce that the EZY7203 service to Barcelona has been delayed by another 30 minutes.” This wouldn’t be so bad if I was making my own way out of the airport as opposed to getting picked up. As it happened we got on the plane about 7:30, when it should have departed after the first delay, and were off the ground at 7:45, pretty standard flight, nothing really notable to report, apart from that on a flight to Spain in October there were a grand total of 2 Spanish people and they were just in front of me, speaking English to each other half the time anyway.

When I landed in Barcelona (only about 20 minutes late as it turned out) is when the fun really began, you know that sort of day where absolutely nothing goes your way? This is one of them. Went into arrivals, gave the compulsory glare at the smug git whose bag comes out first, and picked mine up, went through the doors and looked for Carme, didn’t see her, kept looking, didn’t see her, kept looking, didn’t see her, this might prove problematic. This eventually led to me going to the tourist information and asking for the school’s number, 4 people, about 8 no doubt expensive phone calls, 2 answering machines, 2 even more expensive emails and a voicemail later, I was told to get a train to Barcelona Sants, so after being directed to the airport station, inventively named Aeroport, I then had to deal with my next enemy: stairs – harmless enough when I have no luggage, or just my hand luggage – absolute murder when I also have what is essentially a cricket bag with 26Kg of stuff. 3 flights of these later and I find myself at a travelator, only it wasn’t, it the handrails for a travelator with nothing but a floor inbetween them. WHY? WHY MUST YOU DO THIS TO ME? The 200 yards to the station suddenly got a lot longer, but eventually I got to the other end, where there was this miraculous device called an ascensor, where you push the button and wait for the doors to open, get in, press where you want to go and it takes you there, I tell you, more airports need to hear about these. So a fairly simple train ride later I came across another ascensor to ground level, and FINALLY met someone from the school, got in an air conditioned taxi and went to the school where they were holding the meeting that I never thought I was actually going to because I’d booked the flight before hearing about it and it started 80 minutes before I was due to land, Carme’s understanding was that my flight and the meeting were on different days, so she’d gone to the meeting instead of the airport, assuming I’d be there. ¿Cómo se dice monumental cock-up en castellano? Anyway we put my bags in Julio’s car and a few of us went for tapas, drinks and coffee, then after several Metro rides (BCN’s Metro system blows any English one out of the water by the way) we were back at the car on our way to Amposta, it was 5PM and 6 and a half hours after I thought I should have been going, so it’s fair to say I was asleep on my feet, and the heat and my jeans weren’t helping. My black jeans. That were tighter than a vice. I have no clue how I was functioning in English, let alone Castilian and Catalan, needless to say I was out like a light once in the nice air conditioned car, so contrary to earlier belief the next time I woke up I was in the back of said car somewhere on the N-340. We arrived at the school at 7PM and I was quickly introduced to one of my flatmates, Vincent, who at that moment was still teaching (and yes I did say 7PM) and a few other people round the school, then back to the flat to unpack, find a pair of shorts, get my jeans off and put some shorts on (after the day I’ve had, that is now my definition of heaven) and cenar con mis nuevos convivientes, and then the very title of the blog was made kind of redundant by the discovery that my other flatmate Alan is originally from Mexico, but hey, he’s called Alan, and I only noticed that connection 3 seconds ago while typing his name, that’s how fried my brain was considering I even watched Two and a Half Men last night.

*You can carry 20Kg of hold luggage on EasyJet for £15 on top of the flight price, you can add weight before check-in at the price of £21 per increment of 3Kg, up to a limit of 32Kg, at check-in it’s an extra £10 per kilogram, and you can add another bag for £8, but if they add to more than 20Kg between them you still have to buy the extra weight, so if you have 9 bags that weigh a total of 31.5 Kg then first of all you’re an idiot, but second of all that’s an extra £127. Your hand luggage however has to be no bigger that 56cmx45cmx25cm, but as long as you can get it into the overhead compartment without assistance they don’t mind about the weight, now I don’t consider myself the strongest person around but I could quite happily do that with 40Kg, so I can’t help but wonder if they have a policy on professional powerlifters.