It’s almost as if this weekend had been designed for me, I don’t work Fridays anyway, and school was shut, and almost every school in the country had decided to close on Monday – when I would normally be working at 8AM. Oh, and there was Barça – Valencia on the Sunday, my actual birthday. Oh, and the reason the schools were closed was Carnaval, meaning everyone would be out on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday getting drunk. So the plan was to go to the pyjama party (yes, pyjama party) in Vinaròs on Thursday and the fancy dress party on Friday, then on to Barcelona to get drunk Saturday and Sunday, and to watch the match, and on Monday Erin came in with “let’s go on the tour of Camp Nou and buy shirts”, hey, why not? Then wearily make my way back to Amposta, crawl into bed, and die. And it almost went to plan, on Thursday I opened the presents that had arrived from home this week, then went to work, but then I got home from work to discover that my drunken evil twin had escaped, next thing I know I wake up tied up in the wardrobe while he’s off in, I’m guessing Vinaròs at the pyjama party. I managed to escape sometime on Friday morning though, knock him out when he got back having lost one of my shoes, and tie him back up and put him in the wardrobe, then I headed to Vinaròs for the fancy dress party, had a couple of sangrias and a shot of something, nothing too much, and stayed out until about 5 which for Carnaval is amazingly early. Then on to Saturday which I can safely say is not up there with the best days or nights of my life, it was just a case of wake up in Vinaròs, go to Amposta, sort your bag out, go to Barcelona, after 2 hours on the train to Barcelona hear the intercom get stuck on a loop of “propera parada: L’Aldea-Amposta”, umm, I think not, given that that’s where I got on the train, get to the hostel, get some beers in, go round the Rambla area, regret having your nearly £400 HTC Sensation as opposed to your £30ish Nokia 5228 in your pocket when it gets swiped, get separated from your friends, forget which way to go out of the Metro stop to your hostel, spend SIX FUCKING HOURS looking for it, arriving at half 8 in the morning, halfway through breakfast, oh, and on your way have some guy try and swipe your wallet, notice, and crack him round the head about as hard as I physically could, he soon ran off.
Sunday was a little better, apart from having to spend an hour or two in Barcelona Police Station to report a phone stolen that you know you’re not getting back. Pricks. I wouldn’t mind, when you can lock it and wipe it remotely, do people really think they’ll get anything for it? Next time I go to Barcelona I’m going armed with a phone that would be worth about 0p on Envirofone and some “100 euro notes” “accidentally” hanging out of my back pocket. But back onto Sunday, we got out of the police station and went round a few bars near the hostel, walking into one to a chorus of “SCHOLESY! GIVE US A WAVE! SCHOLESY SCHOLESY GIVE US A WAVE!” Yeah there was a stag do in there watching the football and by Scholesy they were referring to, well, me. I was trying to drink less than I had on Saturday but hearing it was my birthday they went and bought me…something…I know there was a Jägerbomb and Sambuca in it, other than that I have no idea, we spent the afternoon in there watching Liverpool destroy Brighton, and Suárez missing a penalty, whay. Then we headed back to the hostel for a quick siesta, then had to get all the way across the city on an absolutely packed metro to get to the match, where we arrived late, missing the first goal, although we were close enough to hear the cheer, and then arrive to find that it was actually Valencia’s goal we’d missed, fair enough. We then saw 5 Barça goals and quite an easy match, of course though, no beer. After the match we headed to pretty much the same area we’d been on Saturday, with the dodgy prostitutes and ‘beer guys’ out in force, swarming round you like ‘you want blowjob? I give you sex’, ‘you want buy beer?’ all while touching you mainly in the pocket area, so that may be where my phone's gone off to, fantastic, I think we’ll be leaving now. Got to Plaça Reial which is quite a decent area given how close it actually is to La Rambla and went round a few bars there, then headed down to Port Olímpic where there were a few clubs, which were obscenely expensive, and again with beer guys and prostitutes hanging round outside, and no, I don’t appreciate being grabbed hold of when I’ve already said no and am trying to walk past you, if you weren’t a woman you’d be on the deck by now (although to be honest that rule may not have applied to some of them, not that I had any intention of finding out.) So if I ever go round Barcelona to simply get drunk again, I know the parts to avoid.
Then I had a relatively quieter Monday, went to see George off to Olesa then met Erin to head to Camp Nou for the tour and to buy a nice cheap Barça shirt (I have spent an obscene amount of money since getting paid) and we went round the museum, round the stadium, and into the shop, had our photo taken with the Champions League trophy, and this weird Spanish guy was behind us asking, well, anyone, if he could be in their photo with them, even a bunch of French kids who must have been 12 if not younger, it was kind of awkward. But we picked out the shirts, mine was 81€, 106€ If I’d had a name on the back, no thanks, and headed down to Sants so I could get my train back to Amposta and she could go across to Plaça Espanya to go on some trip with her Catalan class, we went into McDonalds and used this fancy ordering machine where you put your card in and tell it what you want, and then get to the payment stage and have it say ‘please insert your card.’ Uh, my card’s right there, in the reader, what do I press now? ‘Please insert your card.’ I have! ‘Please insert your-’ fuck this, next machine, which actually worked. So we went and got sat down and I must have necked half my Sprite in about 2 seconds, given all the previous alcohol consumption my mouth was drier than the Sahara, coming out of McDonalds we saw a train on the board going to L’Aldea at 18:03, “how long have you got?” “Well, 18:03 that’s *looks at watch* now. Shit.” I still had to queue up to buy the ticket by which time I’d pretty much accepted I’d have to wait for the next one in an hour and a half, so not too bad really, eventually got home to Amposta, crawled into bed, rung my mum as she’d been ringing but my English phone had died, and I never took the charger to Barcelona. And then set the alarm and went to sleep, got up the next morning with my alarm, had breakfast, got dressed, put my watch on, wait, my lesson started half an hour ago? Phone: 8:36am, watch: 9:36am, phone: London (GMT), watch: GMT+1 (Spain.) Son of a bitch! Thankfully though nothing too bad happened.
I think I’ve definitely decided though that the next weekend I hit this hard will be my stag do, or my 30th whichever comes first.
