Barcelona: Things I hate etc etc

Hay que pasa hombres?

The sun is shining, the spring is springing and Liverpool are sweeping through Europe like it´s the 80´s again. Oh joy

Brief summary for those who can´t be bothered getting to the bottom (only 19% of people ever get to the end of newsletters dont you know)

PET HATES, LIVERPOOL GREATS, ILLNESS GRATES, DAN EDUCATES, VISITING MATES, HIT RATES, OFF TO SEE KATE(S), FORTHCOMING DIARY DATES

Firstly just to illustrate that it´s not all fun, fun in the sun some things I hate about Spain

1 MY NEIGHBOURS
Deaf, spiteful and with a horrendous taste in smurf-techno the young and old of my apartment block unite in a nightly contest to see who can turn their radio, stereo or TV up the loudest. I want them all to die.

2 PENNY WHISTLE / ACCORIDAN PLAYERS
Just shut up and leave me alone. I am not a tourist I live her and I see you every day!

3 MOPEDS
There´s a bit of a noise theme here I know. Barcelona has a kind of quid pro quo going on - mopeds can ignore the rules of the road, or the pavement for that matter, on the understanding that you can run them down in your car without fear of prosecution. Ever since my car blew up I´ve been unable to add to my tally and just got annoyed instead.

4 STUPID, FAT ENGLISH MEN WHO WATCH FOOTBALL MATCHES IN THE SAME PUBS AS ME
Borderline rascist, congenitally stupid and no idea about the game, sit there with their tattoos and pints spouting on for 90 minutes.

5 MOANERS
I know I´m moaning now but...

Generally Spain is great and I´m thinking of working for the Spanish tourist board on my return.

Highlight of the past few months was going to the Barcelona - Liverpool game with Bob and Jon. I managed to track down some tickets through a friend of a friend of a student and then after some comedy bad-Spanish haggling I managed to get the price down from exorbitant to merely horrendously expensive. We had to wear Barca tops and act Catalan to get into the Barca end (ie smoke, complain, hate the Barcelona football team) and we were in. Fantastic atmosphere, great stadium, great view but generaly dull game - the highlight of which was the score from the other game in the group (oh how little did we know about the next match at this point in time). I was able to impress the locals by swearing in English and Spanish so causing the maximum amount of offensive to all, which I know is not big or clever in anyone´s language. Afterwards we retired to the pub to drink to Gerard Houlliers health, remanise about the glory days and get over-emotional about everything for a night.

Things have been going along very nicely thank you. This was after the month of February was spent coughing up my inards and generally feeling like a plate of leftovers. I had to struggle to work through my Grippe (Spanish for flu) as basically I´m self employed. However, I was more or less rescued by the efficiency of the Spanish Health Service (note to Tony B - it costless, efficient and so easy to use even dumb-ass non-Spanish speaking people like me can use it). Sorted me out with lots of free drugs and allowed me to grumble about the amount of tax I pay the Spanish goverment (for the first 6 months it´s 1% by the way)

A selection of visitors have again darkened my door. Mathew and Gemma came out to see the famous, wanking albino monkey at Barcelona Zoo, Rosie came out to speak flawless Spanish to people and get most of Martin´s stuff from the kaputt car in the middle of nowhere and Bob stayed on to play for our football team in a heoric 1-0 cup defeat against the best team in the league.

Teaching continues to be education, education, education - all the bloody time. All my groups are learning very little English but generally having a good time. They were all particularly pleased to learn "You´ll Never Walk Alone" which I had downloaded from the internet for them and sang for them in the lesson.

Spanish is improving though not a particularly rapid rate. Highlights include going through a whole list of ailments for the doctor to diagnose my cold and after I finished she asked me in perfect English how old I was. I actually managed to sit through a hour and a half lecture in Spanish on video techniques in teaching though I now know enough Spanish to realise what I was learning was useless.

Good words in Spanish that should be in the english language. Tranquillo - mean take it easy mate Grippe - a much much better word for flu Pongo - means I put Foc - Catalan for fire

English words bizarrely used in Spanish include hobby jersey, pullover, sweater (though spelt differently) standard (not bog standard though which would be "standard de servicios" I think) goal, football, penalty, offside, hat-trick (come on ref you´re having a larf hasn´t been translated yet)

So far www.danjamieson.com has recieved 180 "hits" which could of course mean I have been to my own website 179 times. The queue of blue chip sponsors don´t know that though do they. Please remember I have no control over the contents of the site - everything on there is down to Jon and Carl.

That´s about it folks, I´m about to take a holiday from my holiday and go to Italy to see Kate. I arrive in her small town just as England v Italy kicks off so by the time she finishes teaching and joins me in the pub I will already be the most popular man in town and will be swimming with the fishes before the night is through.

Hasta leugo

Dan

For those who want to know when to leave the country my medium term plans are two months of leisure mascarading as work, a month of "unexpected illness" in June where i miss the beautiful Spanish sunshine to sit in pubs all day and watch the World Cup. Contracts finish at the end of June, swiftly followed by possible running with the bulls (depends on how much I drink in the proceding month) then back to Blighty for Cath and Graham´s wedding, followed by unemployment, grumbling and fading suntan from the end of July onwards.