...and here in spain i am a spaniard. i will be buried with my marionettes
After nearly four days in Spain, I finally had a glass of cava. It was good. It was reasonably cheap. It was near the Picasso museum. I met a German dude from Berlin while I drank it. I also ate a tapa. That's right, "a" tapa. If only I wasn't half worried about making my train to Nice that evening, I would have enjoyed these things oh so very much.
The day began slow. Pastry breakfast with the Israeli girls. Again alternating between bad Spanish and English. They informed me how bad American coffee is. I attempted to explain the difference between a "cafe Americano" and an "American cup of coffee." Due to the language barrier and uncertainty over whether or not I properly conveyed the concept "drip" using hand motions, I'm not sure if I got the point across. I also was unsure whether they were trying to tell me that Americans use inferior coffee beans of if they merely do not know how to properly brew it. Oh travelling! Oh how much one learns!
I spent a few hours at the internet cafe emailing, and talking to the credit card company, this time getting them to agree to send me the new credit card to Nice, rather than Barcelona as I was itching to get out of town.
Long walk to the place wehre I drank the cava.
Semi long walk to Barcelona's Arc de Triumph, where I rested. A dude walked up to me, and I immediately assumed he was trying to rob me, but it turned out that he wanted to ask me psychological questions for some sort of survey that his daughter was conducting. Even after he told me this, I still doubted him, but felt too tired to stand up so took the survey. The survey was written in Catalan, so the guy translated it for me into Castillian. I'm pretty sure he didn't rob me or get me to buy anything, so I feel good about the interaction.
The next 24 hours were mostly terrible. I caught a train in Barcelona to Cerberes, a disgusting town on the French border. Horrible train station. Dark, dirty, felt unsafe. I made the mistake of using the bathroom. I took a shower an hour ago and still feel unclean from the experience.
Not only this, my connection to Nice was cancelled because of a storm in southern France. It took waiting in line for 45 minutes to find this out. Instead I was sent to Nice through Paris. Thus, instead of a 8 hour overnight train in a sleeper car (to which I WAS LOOKING FORWARD), I got to sit in a crowded 2nd Class car to Paris, along with all the other diverted travellers for about 10 hours. After an unsuccessful attempt at sleeping on this train, I got to wait in the Paris train station for an hour and a half where I got to pay 3 dollars for a small bottle of water (water never seems to be free in Europe unless it comes from the bathroom sink -- any many of these have signs saying explicitly not to drink from them).
The highlight of the train station experience was an old French man smiling at me and telling me that I was good for giving up my seat for another old French couple even though I was clearly tired.
Then, a 7 hour train back down south to Nice where I enjoyed the constant screaming and shrieking of 4 Australian brothers age approximately 1-6. Normally, I have a high tolerance for screaming children. You may remember that I found the occasionally crying Chinese baby on the flight from L.A. to N.Y. to be cute. These children were terrors. For some reason they were very good at screaming, but not at actually speaking. Most of their communication was in the form of simulated laser beams, guns and fart sounds and almost none of it as word.
I wanted to kill them.
The day began slow. Pastry breakfast with the Israeli girls. Again alternating between bad Spanish and English. They informed me how bad American coffee is. I attempted to explain the difference between a "cafe Americano" and an "American cup of coffee." Due to the language barrier and uncertainty over whether or not I properly conveyed the concept "drip" using hand motions, I'm not sure if I got the point across. I also was unsure whether they were trying to tell me that Americans use inferior coffee beans of if they merely do not know how to properly brew it. Oh travelling! Oh how much one learns!
I spent a few hours at the internet cafe emailing, and talking to the credit card company, this time getting them to agree to send me the new credit card to Nice, rather than Barcelona as I was itching to get out of town.
Long walk to the place wehre I drank the cava.
Semi long walk to Barcelona's Arc de Triumph, where I rested. A dude walked up to me, and I immediately assumed he was trying to rob me, but it turned out that he wanted to ask me psychological questions for some sort of survey that his daughter was conducting. Even after he told me this, I still doubted him, but felt too tired to stand up so took the survey. The survey was written in Catalan, so the guy translated it for me into Castillian. I'm pretty sure he didn't rob me or get me to buy anything, so I feel good about the interaction.
The next 24 hours were mostly terrible. I caught a train in Barcelona to Cerberes, a disgusting town on the French border. Horrible train station. Dark, dirty, felt unsafe. I made the mistake of using the bathroom. I took a shower an hour ago and still feel unclean from the experience.
Not only this, my connection to Nice was cancelled because of a storm in southern France. It took waiting in line for 45 minutes to find this out. Instead I was sent to Nice through Paris. Thus, instead of a 8 hour overnight train in a sleeper car (to which I WAS LOOKING FORWARD), I got to sit in a crowded 2nd Class car to Paris, along with all the other diverted travellers for about 10 hours. After an unsuccessful attempt at sleeping on this train, I got to wait in the Paris train station for an hour and a half where I got to pay 3 dollars for a small bottle of water (water never seems to be free in Europe unless it comes from the bathroom sink -- any many of these have signs saying explicitly not to drink from them).
The highlight of the train station experience was an old French man smiling at me and telling me that I was good for giving up my seat for another old French couple even though I was clearly tired.
Then, a 7 hour train back down south to Nice where I enjoyed the constant screaming and shrieking of 4 Australian brothers age approximately 1-6. Normally, I have a high tolerance for screaming children. You may remember that I found the occasionally crying Chinese baby on the flight from L.A. to N.Y. to be cute. These children were terrors. For some reason they were very good at screaming, but not at actually speaking. Most of their communication was in the form of simulated laser beams, guns and fart sounds and almost none of it as word.
I wanted to kill them.
posted by Jed at 8:00 AM
2 Comments:
Given your discussion of rowdy children, the spam comment above is rather amusing.
Oh, and thanks for the postcard! It made my day.
you know, for some reason i had the idea that blogspot was a somewhat more "upscale" blog and was in no way expecting tacky ads.
Between thinking about those kids, internet spammers (who I believe should be put to death by hanging, despite my generally firm opposition to capital punishment), and this ridiculous french keyboard that forces me to retype EVERYTHING, I'm afraid of soon losing my mind.
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