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 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 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.