The Spanish inquisition : part un
I'm returned from Spain and here for your entertainment is the first part of my musings on Barcelona (although most of it appears to be about getting there...)
In an uncharacteristically lucky streak I have just managed to chain my bike up as my bus was approaching and so I'm now en route to London. This gives me time to wax lyrical about my vacation to Barcelona as I breakfast on diet coke (real genuine British diet coke- the continental stuff tastes vile as I discovered to my dismay) and some Spanish apple oat biscuits (which come individually wrapped and resemble (as my friend so beautifully put it) giant condoms). And joy, oh joy, the bus driver is making an announcement and I can UNDERSTAND him. The last few days have taught me many things, not least of which is that I'm terrible at languages. It didn't help that up until about twenty four hours before my departure I thought that Spanish was the language of choice in Barcelona. Now, I don't actually know any Spanish anyway but I went to the trouble of visiting my local library (and children's library... such is my talent) and borrowing some language guides for the novice. I even tried out one of those introductory online courses the BBC have. And then as I was sitting in the pub on Friday evening enjoying a pint in honour of a friend's birthday, a fellow drinker kindly pointed out that they don't speak Spanish in Barcelona; they speak Catalan. And so at that point I ceased worrying about such trivial matters as language barriers and ordered another beer.
I didn't sleep on Saturday night at all for fear of missing my flight. In fact, I did one better and had a barbecue with friends before going to watch a medic show at the hospital and getting slightly squiffy to boot. So by four a.m. my travelling friend and I were walking up the hill, heavily laden with rucksacks and probably slightly hungover (or at least dehydrated), to catch the bus to Gatwick. That is one thing you can't fault about Oxford- it has a vast array of frequent, reliable services to get you the hell out of the city (day or night) if the tourists just get too much for you to handle. The bus website claimed that the journey took two to two-and-a-half hours. My flight left at 9.20 and the airport recommended arriving two hours early which is why we ended up boarding a coach at bizarre o'clock. This (and the lack of any preceding sleep) may also go some way toward explaining the fact that at four a.m. I was happily snapping my camera in the direction of a poster of “License to Wed” I spied near the bus stop. That or I'm way more obsessed with John Krasinski than will ever be deemed healthy.
So naturally, having left an inordinate amount of time in which to get to the airport, the bus took ninety minutes. This therefore necessitated much waiting around in the airport which wasn't too irksome because I had a book and my friend can sleep anywhere. I mean anywhere. This guy can nod off in seconds. It's truly astonishing. Speaking of books, I thought I'd chosen well with my Bill Bryson “Notes from a Big Country”. What better than reading other travelling tales whilst doing the same yourself? Except that good old Bill mentions planes... often... and usually they're falling out of the sky at spectacular speed. Now as I've mentioned before I'm not the happiest of flyers. I squirm nervously in my seat from take off to landing and my heart rate leaps into the realms of sinus tachycardia every time the plane banks. And so I found myself frequently having to skip over chapters whenever I sensed the words plane, flying or crash lurking around the bend.
Security clearance was as tiresome as ever. Since I last flew anti-terrorist measures have stepped up some more and now all liquids and gels have to be carried separately in a little plastic bag and even then you're only allowed to carry minuscule quantities. I'm sure that this has very little to do with safety and much more to do with increasing company profit margins of drinks manufacturers as us poor suckers are forced to purchase drinks in the departure lounge instead of carrying on our Tesco value lemonade as we could previously. I swear blind that the next time I fly I'm going to decant my (precious British) diet coke into 100ml containers and take it through security just to beat the system. So I'm standing in line and suddenly remember throwing some cosmetics into my carry-on luggage at the last moment. Will my tin of Vaseline be considered a threat to international security? The answer, apparently, is yes, as a member of staff promptly handed me a small bag for the potentially lethal lip gloss before allowing me through.
The flight itself was thankfully very uneventful and we arrived into Barcelona a little after midday. Our first task was to find the hotel which met its first hurdle once we'd made our way out of the humongous terminal. The ticket machines for the train had an English language option which we frantically pressed in the hope of understanding the variety of complicated travel options. However, the only English which appeared on screen was a small message prompting us to “select your ticket type”. Thanks Einstein, we would if all the options weren't still in Catalan. Fortunately, a member of staff took pity on our naïve englishness and responded to our frenetic waving and pointing in the direction of our desired metro station and pressed the right buttons to produce tickets. A short journey later we were staring up at Sagrada Familia in the beautiful Barcelona sunshine.
Luckily, our language difficulties did not extend to the hotel as the staff spoke very fluent English and only looked mildly amused at our attempts at broken Catalan before conversing in our native tongue. Our first evening consisted of pottering around the harbour, dipping our feet in the Mediterranean and eating paella whilst feeling increasingly more spaced out from lack of sleep.
The next day we awoke late and I set off in search of coffee. This proved to be incredibly difficult. Finding the coffee wasn't in itself difficult- our locality boasted a plethora of cafés and restaurants. No, the trouble came when I tried to get across that I wanted the coffee to go. I don't think this concept really exists in Spain. Everyone seems to sip their morning espresso on the terrace over the course of a week or so. I'm more of the London mentality of necking a large vat of latte whilst running in the general direction of the tube. Once again my complete lack of knowledge of Catalan reared its head in a dialogue which went something along the lines of:
Me: El cafè amb llet si us plau... umm... y emporter?
Vendor: (confused) water?
Me: No... emporter? Umm... to go?
Vendor: (seeing the light and understanding my English far more than my Catalan?) Oh! Emporter (pronounced entirely differently)!
At which she promptly produced my latte in a small plastic cup (a far cry from our Styrofoam ones) with a piece of kitchen foil over the top as I frantically tried to stop her from dumping sugar into it.
That morning (well it was nearer afternoon by this point) we visited the large aquarium which includes one of those large glass tunnels that allow you to pretty much walk through the shark tank. It was pretty awesome.
That evening we donned our swimming costumes and headed for the beach. This was somewhat of a novelty for me. My childhood memories of beaches generally involve the north coast of england and water that you'd never dream of swimming in for fear of dying of hypothermia within seconds (or something toxin-mediated if you survived long enough to swallow any of the water). This water was warm(ish) and clear and the sky was sunny. It was wonderful. So wonderful in fact that we spent most of the next afternoon doing exactly the same thing. Luckily the metro system in Barcelona is very efficient and simple to use so we were able to trip back and forth between our hotel and the beach with relative ease. Having said this, the tickets (again!) were somewhat confusing. On our first full day we purchased a card which claimed it was valid for ten trips for the remarkable sum of around four English pounds (the cost of one single journey on the London underground if you've had the misfortune to forget your Oyster card). We congratulated ourselves on securing a deal which seemed too good to be true. Which, as you've undoubtedly already guessed, was exactly that. It turned out that these ten trips had to be made within an hour and fifteen minutes. Who is ever going to manage that? Unless you like getting on and off the metro just for kicks. Bizarre. The metro did have a major redeeming feature in the form of many posters of Rafa Nadal (a photo of which I include here for Lola's ogling). Perhaps getting on and off the tube repeatedly isn't such a bad idea after all...
In an uncharacteristically lucky streak I have just managed to chain my bike up as my bus was approaching and so I'm now en route to London. This gives me time to wax lyrical about my vacation to Barcelona as I breakfast on diet coke (real genuine British diet coke- the continental stuff tastes vile as I discovered to my dismay) and some Spanish apple oat biscuits (which come individually wrapped and resemble (as my friend so beautifully put it) giant condoms). And joy, oh joy, the bus driver is making an announcement and I can UNDERSTAND him. The last few days have taught me many things, not least of which is that I'm terrible at languages. It didn't help that up until about twenty four hours before my departure I thought that Spanish was the language of choice in Barcelona. Now, I don't actually know any Spanish anyway but I went to the trouble of visiting my local library (and children's library... such is my talent) and borrowing some language guides for the novice. I even tried out one of those introductory online courses the BBC have. And then as I was sitting in the pub on Friday evening enjoying a pint in honour of a friend's birthday, a fellow drinker kindly pointed out that they don't speak Spanish in Barcelona; they speak Catalan. And so at that point I ceased worrying about such trivial matters as language barriers and ordered another beer.
I didn't sleep on Saturday night at all for fear of missing my flight. In fact, I did one better and had a barbecue with friends before going to watch a medic show at the hospital and getting slightly squiffy to boot. So by four a.m. my travelling friend and I were walking up the hill, heavily laden with rucksacks and probably slightly hungover (or at least dehydrated), to catch the bus to Gatwick. That is one thing you can't fault about Oxford- it has a vast array of frequent, reliable services to get you the hell out of the city (day or night) if the tourists just get too much for you to handle. The bus website claimed that the journey took two to two-and-a-half hours. My flight left at 9.20 and the airport recommended arriving two hours early which is why we ended up boarding a coach at bizarre o'clock. This (and the lack of any preceding sleep) may also go some way toward explaining the fact that at four a.m. I was happily snapping my camera in the direction of a poster of “License to Wed” I spied near the bus stop. That or I'm way more obsessed with John Krasinski than will ever be deemed healthy.
So naturally, having left an inordinate amount of time in which to get to the airport, the bus took ninety minutes. This therefore necessitated much waiting around in the airport which wasn't too irksome because I had a book and my friend can sleep anywhere. I mean anywhere. This guy can nod off in seconds. It's truly astonishing. Speaking of books, I thought I'd chosen well with my Bill Bryson “Notes from a Big Country”. What better than reading other travelling tales whilst doing the same yourself? Except that good old Bill mentions planes... often... and usually they're falling out of the sky at spectacular speed. Now as I've mentioned before I'm not the happiest of flyers. I squirm nervously in my seat from take off to landing and my heart rate leaps into the realms of sinus tachycardia every time the plane banks. And so I found myself frequently having to skip over chapters whenever I sensed the words plane, flying or crash lurking around the bend.
Security clearance was as tiresome as ever. Since I last flew anti-terrorist measures have stepped up some more and now all liquids and gels have to be carried separately in a little plastic bag and even then you're only allowed to carry minuscule quantities. I'm sure that this has very little to do with safety and much more to do with increasing company profit margins of drinks manufacturers as us poor suckers are forced to purchase drinks in the departure lounge instead of carrying on our Tesco value lemonade as we could previously. I swear blind that the next time I fly I'm going to decant my (precious British) diet coke into 100ml containers and take it through security just to beat the system. So I'm standing in line and suddenly remember throwing some cosmetics into my carry-on luggage at the last moment. Will my tin of Vaseline be considered a threat to international security? The answer, apparently, is yes, as a member of staff promptly handed me a small bag for the potentially lethal lip gloss before allowing me through.
The flight itself was thankfully very uneventful and we arrived into Barcelona a little after midday. Our first task was to find the hotel which met its first hurdle once we'd made our way out of the humongous terminal. The ticket machines for the train had an English language option which we frantically pressed in the hope of understanding the variety of complicated travel options. However, the only English which appeared on screen was a small message prompting us to “select your ticket type”. Thanks Einstein, we would if all the options weren't still in Catalan. Fortunately, a member of staff took pity on our naïve englishness and responded to our frenetic waving and pointing in the direction of our desired metro station and pressed the right buttons to produce tickets. A short journey later we were staring up at Sagrada Familia in the beautiful Barcelona sunshine.
Luckily, our language difficulties did not extend to the hotel as the staff spoke very fluent English and only looked mildly amused at our attempts at broken Catalan before conversing in our native tongue. Our first evening consisted of pottering around the harbour, dipping our feet in the Mediterranean and eating paella whilst feeling increasingly more spaced out from lack of sleep.
The next day we awoke late and I set off in search of coffee. This proved to be incredibly difficult. Finding the coffee wasn't in itself difficult- our locality boasted a plethora of cafés and restaurants. No, the trouble came when I tried to get across that I wanted the coffee to go. I don't think this concept really exists in Spain. Everyone seems to sip their morning espresso on the terrace over the course of a week or so. I'm more of the London mentality of necking a large vat of latte whilst running in the general direction of the tube. Once again my complete lack of knowledge of Catalan reared its head in a dialogue which went something along the lines of:
Me: El cafè amb llet si us plau... umm... y emporter?
Vendor: (confused) water?
Me: No... emporter? Umm... to go?
Vendor: (seeing the light and understanding my English far more than my Catalan?) Oh! Emporter (pronounced entirely differently)!
At which she promptly produced my latte in a small plastic cup (a far cry from our Styrofoam ones) with a piece of kitchen foil over the top as I frantically tried to stop her from dumping sugar into it.
That morning (well it was nearer afternoon by this point) we visited the large aquarium which includes one of those large glass tunnels that allow you to pretty much walk through the shark tank. It was pretty awesome.
That evening we donned our swimming costumes and headed for the beach. This was somewhat of a novelty for me. My childhood memories of beaches generally involve the north coast of england and water that you'd never dream of swimming in for fear of dying of hypothermia within seconds (or something toxin-mediated if you survived long enough to swallow any of the water). This water was warm(ish) and clear and the sky was sunny. It was wonderful. So wonderful in fact that we spent most of the next afternoon doing exactly the same thing. Luckily the metro system in Barcelona is very efficient and simple to use so we were able to trip back and forth between our hotel and the beach with relative ease. Having said this, the tickets (again!) were somewhat confusing. On our first full day we purchased a card which claimed it was valid for ten trips for the remarkable sum of around four English pounds (the cost of one single journey on the London underground if you've had the misfortune to forget your Oyster card). We congratulated ourselves on securing a deal which seemed too good to be true. Which, as you've undoubtedly already guessed, was exactly that. It turned out that these ten trips had to be made within an hour and fifteen minutes. Who is ever going to manage that? Unless you like getting on and off the metro just for kicks. Bizarre. The metro did have a major redeeming feature in the form of many posters of Rafa Nadal (a photo of which I include here for Lola's ogling). Perhaps getting on and off the tube repeatedly isn't such a bad idea after all...