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 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.