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 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 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 7: Gavin 1-0 Mosquitos and a return to England

You, the reader, may or may not know that there are an absolute fuckload of mosquitos in Spain, but fortunately I’ve been lucky enough to not get bitten once, not that I have any idea how, but anyway, I went to class on Friday and went to the mediació room with four of the students as is rapidly becoming the norm. So we’re in mediació and they suddenly notice a mosquito, and I swear the girls were more manly about it than the boys, and it wasn’t bad there only being one given that one day last week there were fourteen (again, how I haven’t been bitten I’ll never know) but anyway it went up to the light at the top of the room and seemed intent on staying there, until about 20 minutes later when it suddenly flew right in front of my face, we’ll see about that Sr. Mosquito, BANG! I clapped right in front of my face; more through blind hope than any sort of aim given it was practically on my nose. And I got it; now the next issue was getting rid of its remains from quite literally all over my right hand, or just get off what I could and continue as if there weren’t the remains of a dead disease-ridden winged beast on my hands (literally.)

And you may think that ‘return to England’ part of the title means I came back, but I didn’t (and given my experience up until now, if it was up to me, I wouldn’t), but given the weather, I wondered if I’d been transported back to shitty WankLancashire while I was asleep or something, but then the news came on with pictures of the Basque Country and other parts of Catalunya and, just, wtf? This sort of weather simply does not happen in Spain, especially not when you’re about 7 miles from the Mediterranean Sea, but anyway it’s dies down a bit now and hopefully my next weather issue will be not being able to fly home because Britain’s been buried under a whole inch of snow, but to be fair I kind of hope that doesn’t happen. We shall see.

Anyway, I must be off as I’m continuing my match with Barcelona tomorrow and I’ve just picked up the ball in my area, I will pull one back, ciao.

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 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.