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 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 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.