Episode 17: Las Fallas and Mental Valencians

This is what we’d been looking forward to for weeks, Las Fallas, to this day I’m still not entirely sure what they’re celebrating, but hey, alcohol and fireworks. The journey there was a lot simpler than on other weekends, given that Vicent’s family lives in València and he offered me a lift, as he goes down there most weekends, so it was a couple of hundred miles of touring Montsià to avoid the tolls, music and banter, I’m still quite proud of my translation of “Comunidad Valenciana, provincia de Castelló” to “you are now entering Spain” he also explained to me what orxata is, where the name comes from and why we should have some, it’s basically a drink made of water, sugar, and he described the third ingredient as xufes, which neither of us knew in English so he described them as root vegetables similar to potatoes, so I just knew it would either be heavenly or disgusting, although the origin of the name was slightly reassuring. The reason we got onto it was because I finally found out where the hotel actually was and it was in Alboraia, the place where orxata was born – but of course you knew that already. After a bit of research upon getting back I’ve discovered that xufes are tigernuts in English, so no I’m still not entirely sure what they are. But we got there and he dropped me off at the hotel, and then I went straight to the bar with the other guys, didn’t even have time to unpack, which was probably for the best given that I had an obscenely large bag with an abundance of as yet unworn clothes for reasons I’m not sure I will ever understand. We went from the bar to the room to drink even more alcohol then went to a music festival right on the edge of town, and to say it was free it was actually pretty good, even if Telepizza were trying to charge 2,50€ a slice, I think not. Although before going in we decided to absorb some culture by having our own mini botellón on the other side of the stream with what we had left over. Inside we were quite obvious tourists when La Oreja de Van Gogh came on as we were pretty much the only ones who didn’t know the words enough to sing along, but still it was pretty fun, we then hung out on the street for a bit to discover what Vicent had been warning me about: anyone between four and sixty years old were randomly grabbing fireworks (and yes that did say four), lighting them, and throwing them either on the ground or at each other, or at randomers, including but not limited to us, it was like the London riots only with a lot less actual rioting, and it was at something like 3AM as well, you really had to be there, so we went and sought refuge for a bit in an Irish bar, at 4€ a pint we didn’t stop long. And this was all over València and even Alboraia, where we came out of the Metro and were still faced with random bangs going off every 30 seconds, we went back to the hotel and slept at something like 4AM, but not before opening the windows as wide as they’d go because it really was that hot in the room.
Come 8AM we realised that opening the windows was a big mistake, when a group of about 20 kids decided to have a little firework war right in front of the hotel, they were that loud I could have sworn some of them were even in the room, it was like being in a warzone I tell thee. After cursing God for inventing fireworks we decided that closing the windows and sleeping for another 3 hours, still being able to hear the fireworks, might be a good option. Eventually we got up, had breakfast, and went to watch the Mascletà. But not before realising that I'd forgotten the singlemost important thing I'd need this weekend: suncream, I was not amused.
Afterwards we found a bar that Vicent told me about to go and have dinner, and it was bloody cheap, 14 euros each for paella, meat, veg, chips, whatever else we had, beer, wine and some free shots thrown in at the end. We went our separate ways afterwards, the girls heading to the beach and us heading to find an Irish bar to watch the rugby, and as a rule, Irish bars are expensive in València, I went and ordered the mandatory St. paddy’s Day pint of Guiness, and got charged 5,50€, that is 5 euros and 50 cents, there are bars in Amposta where I can have nine, count them, nine beers for that price. Mental. Got back on the lager after and that was a whole 50 cents cheaper, on the plus side, England 30-9 Ireland, so at least there was something to be happy about, also I got talking to this random Italian bloke in some painful mix of English, Spanish and Italian (my Italian has really gone downhill.) We went round the city for a bit before deciding to head back to the hotel, buy more alcohol, drink said alcohol again, and then go out again to La Nit del Foc, where we’d be meeting a load of other foreign people, one of who Ollie knew. So we pretty much spent the night with them, again getting fireworked at by Valencians, and having one of those that lights up then zooms off in any random direction come right in front of my face, this event simply would not pass British Health and Safety. After a load of walking from the bridge where we all met we found ourselves by the main train station and the bullring at a makeshift outdoor club where we spent the next few hours getting drunk and dancing, and the bar system was weird, you had to go to a till to buy a ticket with which you could then go to the bar and swap for a drink, oh well, as long as it doesn’t stop me buying my alcohol I’m cool with it. And the toilets were confusing as well, it took me a good few minutes to figure out that, despite both entrances having the ladies symbol, they were actually unisex, even though there was someone there stopping you going in one entrance, he didn’t really stop a firework being thrown in there though, I know that my mum is reading this now and remembering that my 8-year-old self used to HATE fireworks! And wondering how the hell I coped, let’s just say I think I’m desensitised to them now. The rest of the night was just spent getting more drunk, going back to the hotel, having a laugh at Ollie who was out like a light as soon as we got back, stealing the girls’ lemonade for no apparent reason, although we shared it with Laura so it doesn’t really count as stealing, plus she gave me the key to go get it, and staying up until daylight (read: 7:30) knowing full well we had to be checked out by 12, this is gonna suck.
After what felt like nowhere near enough sleep I heard someone knocking at the door, and was ready to murder whoever was doing the knocking until I opened it and saw Catania there all dressed up and ready to, well, leave, so I toned down my murdering to a “you had better have a good reason for this.” “Um yeah, it’s 11, you guys might wanna get up.” “I see, thank you, but we really don’t want to, we’ll see you in an hour.” So we dragged ourselves out of bed, thankfully there was no World War III outside our window this time, and we went to a bar for breakfast/dinner, avoiding the Mascletà crowds which none of us could be bothered with, we had the traditional patatas bravas and sandwiches, and Fanta, with much-needed hangover-destroying sugar, and made our way to find the Plaza de la Virgen, which was a lot more difficult than we envisaged, eventually we found her still under construction, only to then be set on fire, it really is daft all these fantastic models they build that are the size of houses, to think “you know what we should do with these? Burn them.” Then we made our way back to the town hall at about 4, where Catania, Dom, Erin and Ollie all headed off to the bus station leaving me and Laura with our train at 8 and bus at half 10 respectively, most of this time was spent in the general Burger King area, before failing to find a proper restaurant to have tea, it also involved nipping into the station to leave my bag in the lockers, I really don’t know why I never thought of this before, but oh well, our travels also involved crossing the parade route several times, and finally having some orxata and it was good! Like seriously good, Vicent had warned me we wouldn't like it at first, but he was wrong. And when we were in the train station area at about half 7 the clubs were already starting up, not the thing you want to happen when you discover you don’t actually have work the next day, but couldn’t stay anyway because you’ve no hotel booked, oh well to the train station it is, to get my bag out of the locker and realise you’ve about a minute to sprint a good 400 yards, easy enough without a huge bag or huge hangover, absolute hell with both of these things. Managed it though by the skin of my teeth, leaving only Laura to pass the time in Las Fallas before her bus left, while I’m sat on an absolutely packed train for a couple of hours.
I was lucky enough to have the train stop in L’Aldea as the original plan was to go to Vinaròs and get a bus from there, but at 10PM that is not happening, so instead I arrived in L’Aldea and rung the taxi number on the signpost outside the station, to discover that I’ve woken the guy on the other end of the phone up, I’m pretty sure this is something that could only ever happen in Spain, it was quite clear he didn’t much fancy getting up leaving me with the option of, well, walk it, I could not believe it, until I then saw a car coming towards the station with a taxi light on top, salvation! It took me a minute to explain to the driver that yes, no-one had rung her, because the guy I got on the phone was asleep and incomprehensible. A few miles and 15 euros later I finally found myself at home, with my nice, warm, comfortable, forgiving, cosy bed.

La Mascletà during the day	La Nit del Foc during the night

Episode 16: “Are you naked?” “Yes.” “I need my camera!”

So this weekend started out with an absolute ballache: buying the bus tickets. I found this website called todobus.es that would let me buy my HIFE and Alsa tickets at the same time, quite convenient, until it wouldn’t accept my British bank card, or my British credit card, I must have tried about 5 times before deciding to just do them separately, so I went to HIFE’s website and bought the tickets to Zaragoza no problem, then spent the next 2 hours trying about 20 times to buy the tickets to Bilbao from Alsa’s website. I think this is where the problem was, the woman on the phone even told be their systems can’t really deal with debit cards, or non-Spanish cards, who the hell built their system? I wouldn’t mind, the only reason I was using my British card was because El Ministerio hadn’t paid me on time. Again. Leaving me with very little in my Spanish account, though it was still a debit card so Alsa would probably have still been a bit dodgy, so much for “Hacemos tu viaje más fácil”. Luckily La Caixa came to the rescue, in that you can buy Alsa bus tickets through their cash machines (or most of them at least), I’m not entirely sure there’s anything they can’t do. I went to the mahine with my credit card (it still didn’t work with my debit card) and bought the tickets no problem, this is definitely something to remember for next time.
Now onto Friday and a good 11 hours spent travelling, as is tradition. I had to get up at 6AM for my bus that left at 7:45, and here came the next hiccup: I hadn’t had chance to print off my HIFE ticket, resulting in having to carry my passport, NIE, and a piece of paper on which I’d scribbled all the details off the PDF on my computer, the driver did look at it a bit dodgy – can’t really say I blame him to be fair – and rung Tortosa bus station, where he told me they’d check my details and what have you. So we got to Tortosa and everything actually went smoothly, there was a 20-minute wait so I got off and went to the desk, handed over all my papers, 2 minutes later I had an actual ticket in my hand for the rest of the journey to Zaragoza, via a whole host of places that not only did I not know existed, but half of them led me to wonder why they existed, and who decided that buses would be suitable for their roads, and then there was a good couple of hours of desert before arriving in Zaragoza. Zaragoza should be good though, go round the city for a bit, see the sights, grab some dinner, or alternatively discover that you’re a good 15 minutes away from the city centre and instead sit outside the station in what is actually quite a nice square (could use a bit more greenery though) next to the water features with a magazine, then the next ticket related hiccup: receipts from La Caixa don’t exactly look like tickets, so I handed it to the driver and he had a list of names, of course La Caixa hadn’t sent over my name, it simply came up as “Caix” luckily I saw this and noticed that it corresponded with my seat number, and he seemed to believe me, so let me on. And then a few annoying hours, only I could end up sat next to the only other English-speaker on the bus who has some of the most bullshit problems that just have to be shared with whoever she’s talking to on the phone, and the rest of the back of the bus, even if only one person could understand her, I couldn’t put my music on because my phone had decided to go from 5 bars of battery when I arrived in Zaragoza to “battery low” warnings 10 minutes later, I still don’t understand that. But anyway I arrived in Bilbao and got off, and straight to the Alsa desk to swap my Caixa receipt for an actual ticket for the return journey, met Laura and Sefo, a Canadian guy, and headed to Eroski, where Laura talked me out of my alcohol-based Lent promise with some Sunday-based logic (yes I know it’s still Friday, don’t ask), I still blame her entirely. After finishing all the alcohol we had we headed out to Laura’s German friend’s leaving do, which was basically drinking, a lot of German food, and some weird ball on a balance board thing where you had to get the ball round some path into the middle of the board using only your feet, no-one succeeded. We just decided to be boring and head home after that given that by that point I’d been up about 20 hours and Laura even more.
Saturday then and we headed to the centre of town again, and Bilbao were playing Real Sociedad that day and that’s basically the Basque derby, cool, what I found out the hard way though is that Real Sociedad have similar colours to Huddersfield Town, it got me some looks. Met Sefo again in the park, still in last night’s clothes, stay classy Canada, and went round eating ice cream and doughnuts, and then the one thing happened that I never thought would happen in Bilbao: I had to take off a layer, now I know this may be hard to believe but it was actually hot and sunny in Bilbao, but I won’t complain. I did that fancy trick where you take off a shirt from under another shirt and got some more looks, but oh well, we basically trekked round the city and the Guggenheim, and took my photo next to a massive spider for some reason, then back to Laura’s to drink more and head out again, and then get back at about 6 in the morning, the only problem being that my bus left at half 9 in the morning, Christ help me. We got back and watched random YouTube crap for about an hour before randomly falling asleep, I had set my alarm to go off every 2 minutes after 8AM so there was no chance I was waking up without it. Until I did. I woke up, looked around, heard no alarm, saw that everyone else was asleep, and panicked, “oh my God, what time is it? What time is it? What time is it? What time is it? What the…it’s 7:55!” I had naturally slept for less than an hour which I don’t think has ever happened before, after having drunk for the first time since my birthday, incredible. This didn’t stop me being groggy as hell though as I collected all my stuff together while filling my coffee cup half with sugar, this still didn’t work and I almost, ALMOST, fell into the ‘fall back asleep’ trap, Sefo woke up at some point to pick up a mattress, fall on it, and go back to sleep. Then I said my goodbyes to anyone who was conscious i.e. no-one, and made my way to the station, got on the bus with my real ticket, and slept, very awkwardly, given that I was right behind the driver in an aisle seat with someone sat next to me, not cool. I’d perked up a bit by the time I reached waiting for a couple of hours in Zaragoza again though and got on the bus to Amposta, thankfully not Barcelona because I fully could not be bothered with another 2 hour train journey and a taxi, the bus went straight to the bus stop in Amposta, or alternatively the bus station in Tortosa where we had to change again, gah! Why?! Just take me home already!
Eventually when I did get home I did what is becoming the done thing, falling on my bed to wake up at 6AM the next morning to go to work.

Episode 15: Seeing off my youth in typical drunken fashion

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.

Episode 14: A sunny weekend in Bilbao

So this must have been pretty much the most spontaneous random trip I’ve been on so far: “doing anything this weekend?” “No, why?” “Fancy bussing it to Bilbao?” “Okay.” Was pretty much how I decided I was going. Then I discovered that me and George would be getting a bus from Barcelona Sants, fair enough, so the bus left at 10:30pm on Thursday and was due to arrive in Bilbao at 7am on Friday. That is eight and a half hours on a bus. I’m not entirely sure you couldn’t get from London to John O’ Groat’s in that length of time, I’m suddenly a little more sceptical, but hey, it’s an experience to learn from, and hopefully never experience again, I’m definitely going back to Bilbao at some point, but not getting a bus from Barcelona. This is mainly because, first of all, I had to get to Barcelona which is about half the length of England away from Amposta.

So the Thursday first of all: it was a pretty relaxed morning spent, well, in bed, given that I’m on 8am Mondays and Wednesdays, 9am Tuesdays and 3pm Thursdays – this Thursday was actually 4pm, all the better. So I eventually got up and started packing my bag, prioritising alcohol of course, and then the rush hit; my 4 o’clock lesson came and went, then a private lesson with one of the secretaries until what ended up being about quarter past six. Then there was either the 18:40 bus from Amposta which would get me to half a mile away from the train station, three minutes before the only possible train I could catch was due to leave, or the 18:30 taxi I’d decided to prebook because I’m that damn smart, so this gave me 15 minutes to get home, dump school stuff, get bag, get back downstairs, which I managed with a fair bit of time to spare thank Christ. Then that was the rush pretty much over, it was more waiting now, for the taxi, for the train, then getting into Sants at about 9, and getting some much-needed food down my neck, and also having George and Erin set me the challenge of necking all 12 cans I had on me on the bus there…didn’t happen, I know, I’m as surprised as you are. What did happen however: we cracked open one each once we were out of the city and I put down the table tray in front of me and put my beer in the cup holder, the separate cup holder, the cup holder that – if you’re not careful – drops down even further than the tray itself and sends your entire can all over the back of the bus, I was not happy. But I finished what I had left and went to sleep. If you’ve never tried going to sleep on a freezing cold coach, then don’t. Ever. Seriously. The first obstacle was the roundabouts, of which I swear they average one per mile on the road to the pit stop place we were going just outside Zaragoza (I think), I was there laid across the back seat (George was on the floor) under my duvet (my sleeping bag’s in England) and drifting off, drifting off, drifting off, woah, roundabout, I’m awake again! Well this sucks, but I couldn’t really blame the driver for it. What I can blame him for is pulling into the pit stop at about 2:15. By this time I’d drifted off into a sort of half-consciousness. And now any Spanish bus drivers reading this (I’m sure there’s shedloads of you), take note:

Acceptable: being nudged slightly awake by pulling into the pit stop, reversing, parking, and the slightly jerky movements that come with all this.

Not acceptable: “ATENCIÓN PASAJEROS, LES COMUNICAMOS QUE HEMOS LLEGADO AL PUNTO DE DESCANSO DONDE PUEDE SALIR PARA COMER Y BEBER, Y REANUDAMOS EL VIAJE A LAS TRES.” Yeah thanks for that mate, not like just about everyone on the bus was asleep and could give any less of one or anything. Tit.

Surprisingly though after this I got a surprising amount of actual sleep which I was quite impressed at, until about 5:50 when he announced that we were nearing Vitoria, now pretty much yelling down the intercom when you’re arriving at peoples’ destination is acceptable, plus I figured at that point it was pointless trying to get any more sleep, and I’m pretty sure George was out cold since before the pit stop, jammy twat, I nudged him awake though after the driver announced we were nearing Bilbao, and then we got off to then go and experience the maze that is Bilbao’s metro. And by maze I mean, well, a Y-shape, it’s one line that splits into two, if you get lost on this your body should be donated to scientific research when you die as you may just be the missing link. And one of the first things that struck me is that it turns out the word eta in Basque means and. Although to be fair the whole Basque language strikes me as quite strange. So we navigated the metro and met Laura at the nice humanly-possible-to-be-awake time of 7:30, went back to her flat and had breakfast before she went to work, and then we slept. On actual mattresses, that didn’t move, this was absolute heaven.

After getting back up at, I dunno, 12, we went round the centre of Bilbao, mainly seeking out the stadium, as you do, oh, and we got absolutely PISSED on!! Laura told us that Basque weather is basically English weather only 15 degrees warmer. Bollocks! It was not 15 degrees warmer! The rain, however, was about right, so we sought shelter in some café we found that turned out surprisingly cheap, which may have been to do with being undercharged 10€ on an 11€ bill, not that I’m complaining. What I will complain about is how the rain stopped while we were inside the café and started again when we came out, this seemed to become a weekend theme. But yeah we went back to Laura’s flat and then to her work’s anniversary do. All I will say about this evening is Gavin + free unlimited beer + free unlimited kalimotxo (this stuff is a bitch) = leaving it to your imagination, this is mainly because I (thankfully) can’t remember most of it, and we all know the rule: if you don’t remember it, it never happened. It didn’t. Shut up, no it didn’t.

Onto a very hungover Saturday spent being told about all these things that, you know, I didn’t really actually do, but there you go, and arsing around the flat, venturing out for the tour of the San Mamés museum, and drinking hair of the dog as is tradition, we watched The Full Monty as well for some reason, first time I’ve ever seen it, don’t really get it, but on the plus side it’s set in Yorkshire therefore it’s a good film. Afterwards we played Godknowshowmany drinking games before heading out to an Irish pub for a bit of a quieter one, probably a good idea given our bus was leaving for Barcelona at half 10 the next morning.

Now onto the next morning, where it rained. Again. Only this time it decided to be a real twat and save a special surprise for us: hailstones. It’s like it was expecting us to be too hungover to catch the bus – I had no hangover whatsoever, winning – and decided to give us a special send-off because it woke up too late to start when we’d woken up. We went into the shop beforehand and bought crisps and drinks and stuff, only to then have people actually enforcing the ‘food has to go into hold’ rule on the bus, not even a bottle of water! Goddamit! I mean I may not have been hungover but that doesn’t stop me being about as tired as the first day I arrived in Amposta. But we got off at the pit stop given that it was at a more reasonable time, about 2pm, and stuffed ourselves, while watching a bit of the Australian Open Final, which was actually the first thing I’d heard about the Australian Open. But then after getting back on the bus a bit of luck came my way, in that I was expecting to get to Barcelona Sants at 6, miss the train out and end up arsing around until half 9 for the bus that arrived in Amposta at 23:40, and instead got to Sants and about 5:55, giving me time to get the train and cut about three hours off my journey (yet another reason Catalunya > the rest of Spain ;) )

So I got in at about the time the bus I thought I’d be getting left Barcelona, and went straight to bed and slept/passed out/died/a combination of all 3 to wake up fresh and early at 6am on Monday, go to work, go check my balance – which before this weekend had been €€€€€€ – and get depressed, feel like crying, and accept the fact I’m not eating this week. Yay!

Episode 13: Casually climbing a mountain while hungover

This is becoming a regular occurrence when neither me or George have anything to do, we’ll go to Barcelona on the Saturday, have a few, go to the Barça match if they’re playing, get the train or bus out to Olesa as it’s closer than Amposta (then again it’s almost impossible to be further than Amposta while still being in Catalunya), have a few more, go collapse on his sofa, wake up and go to a café down the road for a Super Chik sandwich – the best thing ever to come out of Spain, yes better than the national team, or Barça, which pretty much is the national team – and coffee, then we went to scale Montserrat, Catalunya’s biggest mountain, Montsià is second, but not really as touristic and doesn’t have a train going up it.

So yeah this is more of a photo album update than any massive post, enjoy!

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And there'll be more over time as I no doubt revisit.

Episode 12: No I am not a student!

It’s happened to me twice this week, two different teachers (or staff members) have spoken to me as if I’m actually a student in the school, I mean okay I’m about two years older than some of the students but really? I mean going by hair colour alone I stick out like a sore thumb, so that must mean there’s a foreigner in the school, didn’t we hire an English person to be a *ahem* teacher a few weeks ago? Yes. Yes you did. I am that teacher.

In total it’s happened three times, the first being a few weeks ago, I had a few of the students in the mediació room for a lesson (although the main purpose of this room is for a teacher to take a student if there’s problems with their behaviour or something like that, so that’s also confused people at first whenever I’ve told them I’ve had lessons in there) and we needed another chair, so I went to the foreign language office next door, and as I was unlocking it I heard “Què fas?” From beside me, look and it’s, well, I don’t remember ever seeing this person before, but he’s obviously a teacher – or secretary as it turned out, now I would have happily answered along the lines of “Necesitamos otra silla para la clase entonces la voy a coger de aquí.” Only my students were right there, meaning I no hablo Español, so after telling him in English that I didn’t understand, even though I did, one of them came out with something in Catalan which I assume was what I would have said anyway because he looked a bit like ‘wait, you’re a teacher? As you were’ and walked off. I wouldn’t mind but I even had a key and was unlocking the door with said key at the time, I doubt they give keys to the students.

But yeah onto this week, I went into the aula de professors (I don’t actually remember why) and heard someone behind me saying “Diga…Chico, diga.” Oh there must be a student in he – wait, are you talking to me? So I turned round like “¿Perdona?” And I think that was when she twigged because she said “¡Ah, disculpa!” Then the second time it happened was a case of arriving as late for a lesson as physically possible without it actually being classed as late, and one of the staff members was like “Amb qui tens classe?” “Segundo de Batxillerat,” “Sì, però quin professor?” “Pues…yo soy el professor.” And the look on his face was just ‘wait, what?!’ And I continued to my classroom.

On a plus side, I discovered how cheap Amposta can be when I went out to watch El Clásico in quite possibly the cleverest named bar I have ever seen: 20age, which I kept calling Age 20, or 20, but 20 in Catalan is vint, so read that again with vint in place of 20: vintage. You clever clever people. In fact on about bars, as young as I must look to some of the staff in the school I haven't once been ID'd yet. So anyway I went there and think I was the only one there without a Barça shirt (I REALLY need to buy one), got sat down and ordered a beer, along it came with a small bowl of olives and onions, not too shabby, so a couple of hours, 4 beers, and 6 goals later (I caught the end of Betis-Valencia while I was there) I went to pay and had a 20€ note at the ready, so the bargirl comes up to me, “dos cuarenta” Wait what? I’m here with 20 euros and you’re asking me for small change? 60 cents a beer? Me gusta! So I kept the note in my wallet and gave her most of my shrapnel, and went outside to ring my mum as she’d asked a few minutes beforehand, 18 minutes and 5,85€ later we hung up, that was an 18-minute phone call to my mum that would have bought me almost ten beers. That is actually quite incredible.

Episode 11: Barça 5-0 Levante, Gavin 2-4 Barcelona, and why it’s always inglés and never ingles

So last week I’m in class and it’s the end of unit exam, with the most hilarious listening part ever, when it came along Carme put the CD in the player, and then the voices came on, luckily I was stood at the back of the room so none of the students could see my reaction, but they just sounded like utter goons, just phrases like “it’s reeeeally exciting being surrounded by huuge mountains every day” (on about snowboarding) and even Carme who isn’t English looked at me like ‘yeah, this is totally how you guys speak(!)’, but before the exam she took in all their notebooks to mark them, they did their own front covers and everything, some said “English”, others said “Anglès”, and others said “Angles” which means, well, angles. No, seriously. But anyway, we then got talking about what it was in Castellano, where inglés means English, and ingles means bikini lines, apparently…so talking about bikinis instead of English…works for me!

And along came another ‘I don’t speak Catalan, honest!’ moment when the advance copy of the school’s magazine came in with an exclusive interview with the new English person, now we had the interview in English but it was all translated into Catalan, and I’m looking through it like “I think that’s mistranslated, that’s not what I said” etc. this was at the front of the room with Carme so away from the students, until some of them decided they needed help with something and figured the best course of action was to go to Carme, in full view of me reading this interview, I’m not sure this whole ‘I no speako Spanish’ thing will last much longer.

This is two rows from the very top.

But anyway to the 4-day weekend, along came Saturday and my sixth trip to Barcelona, no official business or anything, just going to get drunk and watch some football, then get drunk some more, then get a bus to Olesa, then drink a few more, simples. So got there, met George, went straight to the Irish bar where we’d watched the England match, and I had pretty much the perfect seat: screen on the left – Wigan v Arsenal, middle screen – Wales v Australia, screen on the right – Scum v Norwich, right then, get the beers in and let’s watch some sport! About 10 beers and 4 matches later we leave and make our way to, first of all Burger King, where they did beer, highly impressed, and then the Camp Nou and got in the queue for tickets, and there were guys there in the queue trying to sell tickets! Yeah because that’s real for 10 Euros mate, although I’m honing my pronunciation of “Ich spreche kein Spanish” because I figure less of them know German than English, but yeah we got to the window and made the mistake of not asking for our tickets together, meaning we ended up almost at opposite ends of the ground, but there were plenty of free seats up in the very top of the stadium so we ended up sat together anyway, then I went to the toilet figuring it was too early in the match for me to miss a goal…or not…bloody Fàbregas. So a while later into the match we decided it was beer o’clock again, and it wasn’t badly priced at all, the top stadium in the country, one of the best in Europe, and a beer was 3,20€, alright I’ll have one of – wait, alcohol free?! The fuck is this?! Cervesa sense alcohol? And it even had it in English underneath as if to just rub it in, there do not serve alcoholic beverages at the Camp Nou. I don’t even… So we went for the next best thing, a massive tub of popcorn. Yes, popcorn. This was also 3,20€ but somehow that much less satisfying, and saltier than the Dead Sea, leaving us gagging for a drink that we didn’t want because it had no friggin’ alcohol! Give them their due it’s one way of making people spend money, but I was resilient and refused to spend anything else save for the bus ticket to Olesa, then drinks, many drinks, think we must’ve stayed out ‘til about 4 or something, and this is just in the smaller bars, not a nightclub in sight, and just like last weekend I somehow functioned on about 5 hours sleep and la madre de todas las resacas, it was a case of ‘this place looks good for a huge fuckoff bacon sandwich and a huge coffee with plenty of sugar’, which it was, and got me through the day about as far as arriving back in Barcelona, bloody George gets his trains into Barcelona for 3,05€ where I’m paying upwards of 11, but anyway I bought my ticket back out to Amposta, got on the train and slept, only this time I’d know where my stop is when the speakers practically yell “PROPERA PARADA L’ALDEA-AMPOSTA” in my ear, it really was that loud, so slept as best I could, then got to L’Aldea and just couldn’t wait to get home, but from what I knew about the timetables I’d have to wait about half an hour for the bus first, I would have known more but some twat thought it’d be funny to rip down the timetable at the bus stop. So I’m there waiting and not knowing how much longer I actually will be waiting, turned out to be an hour, could’ve been worse, but I got on, got sat down, and really wanted to sleep, but we know what happened last time I did that now don’t we? So I braved it until getting home, where I finally just crawled into bed and slept like a baby.

Episode 10: Another trip to Vinaròs, only this time it was planned, and com es diu nas en castellà

Well this is strange, for obvious reasons I’ve never celebrated Thanksgiving, what with it being American and all and me being British, but then I come to Spain and end up celebrating it for the first time ever, because that makes total sense. But anyway I was on ‘beer duty’ and went to Eroski to find, well, whatever I could, I’d been told this new San Miguel 1516 stuff is very good, but they’d run out, so I went for the standard Estrella, and I was walking along the aisle and – hang on – is that Duff beer? As in Duff beer from the Simpsons? Me gusta! So I picked up a few of those as well to take and got on the bus to Vinaròs. It was a lot easier finding Dan’s house this time as last time I’d not only slept through Amposta, I’d actually slept through the stop in Vinaròs and ended up in the petrol station where the driver was filling up, God only knows where I’d have ended up had he kept driving, but I don’t really want to think about it if I’m perfectly honest. So we got to Dan’s house, then from there to Erica’s, an American auxiliar in Vinaròs (which is technically in the Comunitat Valenciana, the only reason I know Dan is because, while he lives there, he works in Alcanar, which is in Catalunya. Think how close Chester is to Wales and you get the idea.) So there was a load of us there having Thanksgiving Dinner, with some Charlie Brown Thanksgiving thing on DVD in the background, had the chicken, had the stuffing, salad, beers, now let’s hit the clubs, and it’s alright for clubs is Vinaròs, some of them practically on the beach, not bad at all, and I think I’m already getting too used to what we English would see as ridiculous clubbing hours, you talk about going to a club before midnight over here and they look at you like ‘are you pissed?’ And then you don’t get back until, well, 6AM is early. So we get back at some time around 7 and then somehow function the next morning on about 5 hours of sleep (okay, afternoon), then it was suggested to go see Morella for the day, well why not? We went to Dan’s tutor’s house, walking past some sort of massive party, and some of the grande-est paellas you have ever seen, then while something was happening with her keys preventing her actually being able to get to her car, or something along those lines, we nipped into a bar to grab a coke to (hopefully) get rid of our hangovers before the journey which was a hell of a lot longer than expected, I figured it’d be a place maybe just outside Vinaròs, but instead found myself going so far inland that I was expecting to see Madrid at any moment. And then the next obstacle: hangover + car + sometimes feeling a bit travelsick anyway = I do not feel good, add to that a winding mountain road with sharp turns and I’m praying to get there soon, I wasn’t the only one though at least, as Kerry said when we eventually did arrive and get out of the car, first things first: get some bloody water necked! Think the coke was a bad choice, but anyway we had our tour of Morella and talk about old! It’s almost entirely within an old castle that has been incredibly well preserved, I’m not sure anything has been done to the exteriors of any buildings and there was all sorts of little traditional shops and what have you, I wouldn’t mind living there if it wasn’t in the middle of quite literally nowhere. At the end of the afternoon we bought a couple of things and headed back, feeling a bit better in the car now after walking around in the crisp mountain air, so we’re descending, descending, descending, what’s with my ear? Descending, descending, this is beginning to hurt now, descending, arrrrrghh!! So I’m basically sat there not being able to hear a thing until we get out of the car in Vinaròs. So yeah, this was a fun weekend!

And I now think that one of the girls in my class is convinced I speak Catalan, my only theory supporting this is that I’m bloody awesome at languages I don’t know, but other than that I have no idea how she’s gathered this, she said “the other day I saw you speaking with the other teachers in Catalan.” Trust me. You didn’t. I almost told her that I would have believed her had she said Spanish, but remember, I don’t speak Spanish either.
And then this week when I was in the mediació room with some of the students, I can’t remember what we were talking about, but it got onto body parts, and one of the girls comes out with ‘naso’ and they all fall about laughing, and I’m just sat there like “well…what’s going on?” Turns out that everyone in Catalunya learns Catalan as their first language (obviously) but then when some Catalan children straight up tell you that to get from Spanish to Catalan, you take off the last letter, that just seems lazy, except in this case where nas is Catalan for nose, but in Spanish it’s nariz, not naso, so that’s what turned out to be so funny, and come to think of it I’m not entirely sure why they were speaking Spanish in the first place.

Episode 9: If it can go wrong, it will, and if it can’t go wrong, it will find a way

So yet another trip to Barcelona is upon me, only there are no meetings this time, no official business, nothing to do with school, reffing or anything, although on about reffing I do have to learn the rules in Spanish by this Friday, though I mostly know it anyway, plus in the rulebook it says “Este libro se publica en inglés, francés, alemán y Español, si existe una diferencia entre los textos publicados, el texto inglés hará fe." So that’s advantageous, what with being inglés and all. And then I’m taking the exam Friday evening at 8, only it’s in Tortosa which as you may remember from Episode 3 was where I was meant to go instead of Barcelona to register in the first place, wish me luck! So when I got back from Tortosa I got everything prepared for going to Barcelona to get drunk and watch England get raped by the Spanish, so that’s England shirt, Town shirt (we played away at Swindon in the FA Cup, the less said about that match, the better), wallet, phone, sorted. Then the next day I got up, giving myself time to go round Amposta to buy the ingredients I’d need to have my own crack at cooking arròs al forn, well, today, and then get the bus to the train station, with half an hour to spare before my train (the cheaper one) left for Barcelona, so I had a sandwich and Coke to kill the time and got on the train, then got to Barcelona and met George first of all, had a couple of beers, then went to the Irish bar in Urquinaona which was quite fun to try and pronounce, then had a shitload more beers with everyone else and I was sat there like “Town are playing right now, what the bloody hell’s the score? Stupid phone credit and me not having any of it!” But after it had finished I took off my Town shirt to reveal my England shirt I had underneath – I always wear my Town shirt when we’re playing, kind of a lucky charm…usually – but anyway after the ‘transformation’ I was then left wondering how exactly they get Sky in Spain, not that I was really bothered, all I cared about was seeing the match, and then the weirdest thing happened that can only be explained by Steven Hawking, Stephen Fry, and a tear in the space-time continuum: England won. The free-kick went in, heads up, Casillas stranded, Lampard nodded it in, and “ENG 1-0 SPA” is the weirdest sight in existence. So we had yet more beers and then made our way to our various casas, some lived in Barcelona, George in Olessa, me in Amposta about 120 miles away, with a direct bus. So yeah, it’s been a pretty good day so far, now to go to the bus stop and go home, simples, so I get on the bus and “rest my eyes”, to then be woken up by “Oye, señor, tienes que salir ahora, hemos llegado a Vinaròs.” Wait, what? I’m not even in Catalunya anymore? Fuck. This isn’t good, to put it in England measurements, I’ve just caught a bus to Huddersfield to then wake up in Leeds, I had to ring Dan at like one in the morning because luckily he lives there (Vinaròs, not Leeds), and then try and find out where exactly in Vinaròs I was, it was especially fun finding out I’d walked a good half mile in the wrong direction, dammit I just want to get to a bed! I eventually found him and went to his flat and got to sleep. Then the next morning I was rudely awoken by what can only be described as about four churches all seemingly hosting a wedding or two, until Dan told me “oh, that’s normal for Sundays.” I could not hack that at 9 o’clock on a Sunday morning. But after getting breakfast and getting dressed I got on the bus to Amposta (again) and this time didn’t fall asleep! Got off the bus and back to my flat and was like “yeah, I may have ended up in Vinaròs.” So for the rest of the day I’ve just been having a lazy, slightly hungover Sunday (that sort of hangover that you can tell is there, but it’s not too bad, but it won’t go away) and cooked the arròs al forn as promised, and my God it was good, I may have eaten about 4 meals’ worth of the stuff because I’m just that good at cooking, and now I’m writing this up and just arsing around on the Internet, as you do, ciao.

Episode 8: Gavin 1-3 Barcelona, an ever more complex scoring system, and why late trains are a good thing

So this morning I had prepared for everything that could possibly go wrong today, because usually if it can, it does, I had on 3 layers, 2 of which quickly found themselves in my bag as soon as I got on the bus to L’Aldea. So I get to the station and buy my ticket to Sants, 11,25€, the cheapest available, good start, so I wait for the train, get on it, and travel to Barcelona, get there, and decide to walk to the meeting to save money on the Metro, and buy my ticket back straightaway to save any mishaps causing me to miss my train back. And now for Google Maps to come into play and screw me over, with roundabouts and first lefts and what have you, when I thought I was going the right way I went and spent my last note on a (bloody huge) sandwich and bottle of water, hoping to kill time before the meeting which would later turn out to be a mistake. Then the fun part started; I thought I was to take the road I was on straight to the Departament d’Ensenyament, nice, clean and simple, until it abruptly ended at a T-junction, I hedged my bets going one way and luckily enough saw two police officers, so I asked them where Via Augusta was, and they mentioned Avinguda Diagonal, now the problem here is that I thought I was already on Diagonal before turning onto the road that I thought went to the building. But I took their instructions and eventually found myself somewhere familiar, Carrer del Bruc, only Carrer del Bruc is actually the place where the CTA is where I went to (try to) register as a referee, so no wonder it was bloody familiar! So now I was totally winging it, I went over to the Metro stop across the road and deciphered from the map there where to go, then found myself at Provença, hang on, didn’t I come through here for the other meeting when I bought the wrong ticket? How big really is Barcelona? Oh well, outwards, upwards, and inlandwards, as I knew that Provença is on the same line as Muntaner, the stop closest to the Departament, so just head in that general direction and I’ll find it, oh look, there’s 15 minutes until the meeting, what was that about killing time? After a few more twists and turns I saw Muntaner and eventually the building, arriving at 3PM on the dot, time management at its finest. So we had the meeting which actually proved a lot more useful than the other ‘meeting’ last week, and it finished at half 5, next challenge: either get to Sants on foot in time for the train that leaves Barcelona-França at 17:48, or have to wait another 90 minutes for the next one.

Given that I now knew where I was going it was a lot easier, I walked down to Diagonal with Dan who lives in Vinaròs and was getting the bus straight from Barcelona, that goes through Amposta, but it was marginally more expensive and I already had my train ticket anyway, get to Diagonal and I had 5 minutes before my train left França, and I could only assume it’d leave Sants 3 or 4 minutes later, so now down the road from the roundabout where I should have turned off to go to Diagonal, but don’t really know how I managed any different, even trying to retrace my steps on Google Earth right now I just simply cannot figure it out, but anyway it got to 17:48 and I could just see the top of Torre Catalunya, the hotel across from Sants, and decided to start running, in my jeans, after having done deadlifts yesterday, let’s just say my hamstrings don’t really like me right now. Then me and some other guy ended up basically rugby tackling each other, you know that awkward as hell moment when you and someone else are walking opposite ways and you go one way, they go the same way, you go the other way, they do, one of you goes the other way, and you eventually get past each other, well we were both running in opposite directions with very little time to actually get past each other as opposed to through each other, especially with 6 lanes of traffic coming at us, hurt a fair bit, but anyway, I ran into the station, got through the barrier (as opposed to queuing up, buying my ticket and then getting through the barrier :D) and looked on the departure board, “oh crap, it’s not there, it’s not there, it’s THERE! IT’S LATE! YES!!” Literally could not believe my luck, waited for the train, got on, sat down, and went to sleep, waking only near L’Ampolla to think “hang on a minute, it’s gonna be past 8 when I get to L’Aldea, will there actually be any buses?” Fortunately after a few texts to Kerry I found out there would be at 8:25, again raising doubts about getting to the stop on time, fantastic, but as it happened I got to the stop with about 5 minutes to spare, plus it was late anyway.

So I got home, had some tea, and opened my laptop to blog about today, and check Facebook, and see a certain update along the lines of “I’ve been paid”. Interesting, so if I were to, say, go to my online banking and have a look at my balance…

Yeah, they know their memes out here.