School's school. Same old relationships, gossips, lessons, break-times, rapports, homework. To be honest I've missed it all, and I'll miss it again when my course is finishes, in another two weeks time. The compulsory excursions have been fun, not from a tourist perspective, but rather for the half-an-hour sit-down outside a bar in whichever part of the city we're left in. Tuesday made for a bad bar experience however. After studying Spanish now for 6 years or more (and having a degree in it) I like to think that when ordering a drink, I can successfully get across the message of what drink I want. Sitting outside a bar on Tuesday, I ordered a 'caña' (a half pint of the most standardly priced beer, or thereabouts) instead of the usual 'cerveza' (you wouldn't go in to a bar in the UK and ask for 'a beer', its just not specific enough.). I felt sorry for the waiter having to put up with all us English folk trying to order something, he obviously had to deal with tourists quite a bit. On his return, the waiter brought back three half-litre bottles of a 'reserve' estrella damm, each costing six euros (the other two lads had also asked for 'cañas'.) In all fairness, I should have told him to take the bottles back. I wasn't worthy of drinking such a fine beer with my unemployed status, and the waiter/establishment certainly wasn't worthy of my six euros. For whatever reason, we drank them and paid up. Our loss. Its not even a big deal. Why am I typing about it then? Well to be honest, it really grated on me that, from the waiter's point of view, I still fit in to this 'guiri' (northern european tourist) stereotype: I want the biggest beer possible. I want to spend as much money as possible. I want to speak as little Spanish as possible. I want to avoid Spanish culture at all costs. To an extent, I'll never be able to break that stereotype (for example, sarcasm is not such a large part of Spanish culture!), and, to an extent, the guy was only after a few extra euros, like everyone. Still though, it ground my gears.
Wednesday was the big night, la festa de Sant Joan. The best part of the Catalonian population staying out on the beach until it starts getting light, drinking, smoking, lighting fireworks and just generally being sociable.On a Wednesday. Great.
So, after drinking a two-and-a-half litres of beer, an energy drink and a litre of wine, watching the sunrise, buying some churros and riding home on the metro watching everyone with heavy eyes, I'd had an incredible 10-hour night out, spending about the same amount of money as I'd spent the afternoon before, on a short but sweet, over-priced bottle of 'Estrella Damm Inedit'. Thursday, as you can imagine, was about as written off as my old Peugeot 306 was two years ago, when it was struck by a rather large badger. Barcelona was shut down on Thursday anyway, and everyone felt a bit sorry for themselves, not in the least bit helped by the sad news of the train accident just down the coast.
Yesterday I went to Montserrat, a monastery up on a jagged, weird-looking mountain about 40km from Barcelona itself. The monastery itself, having been rebuilt several times wasn't particularly photogenic, so the mountain made for a nice little panorama after climbing a good few hundred steps.
Today is the England/Germany football game, so I'll be contributing a bit more to the good old guiri stereotype by going to a bar, having a few beers, and swearing at the telly.
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