Here is the belated report of Moo Cow's recent excursion and after I shall be almost up to date with current events! Along with a few mates from my old school, the illustrious DGS, I spent a week in the capital of the Catalunya and Spain's second-biggest city, Barcelona. There were five of us in total and it turned out to be an interesting experience in several ways.
Arriving there in the fume-spewing airborne hamster cage that is a Ryanair £36 return flight, we were greeted by a smiling Sun and a surprising 18 degrees Celsius: cue jacket-removal and pleasant mutterings by all Brits present. However, Spain once again lived up to its potential as the bearer of the most weird-and-wonderful smells known (and unknown) to man. The entire week managed to demonstrate to my associates that time spent in Spain is akin to a game of olfactory Russian roulette. The spectrum of possible odours ranges from the "Wow, this restaurant smells incredible! The chef must be cooking little bits of rainbow mixed with kisses from Lindsey Lohan out there" to the more harrowing "Has there recently been an ethnic cleansing in this vicinity or is it just that the local sewer has been made redundant from his job and spent the last 6 weeks without a shower watching daytime TV and eating microwave meals?".
With 18 degrees C and clear blue skies on the 31st of December, we soon managed to forget that we had been awake since 3am and that we actually had no accommodation for the first night. It also helped us to remain light-hearted after one of our party's cards was swallowed by a cash machine almost as soon as we arrived. We left our suitcases in the station, ignored the bad omen and sallied forth into the unknown city. We spent several hours exploring the centre, targeting possible points for festivities, admiring the scenery and desperately trying to seek some available accommodation. Alas, there was none (as if that was a surprise 6 hours before New Year's Eve in one of the most highly rated cities in Europe). Prior to flying out to Barcelona, we did have the sense to book a flat for the other four nights there, so we knew we were only homeless for NYE itself.
Back in the station, we got changed into our glad rags and ventured out to meet 2 of my mates from Erasmus in Santander, each of whom had a friend over from France and the States respectively. The party that night was awesome; we did the countdown in Plaça Reial in the midst of hundreds of people and then proceeded to spend the majority of the rest of the night touring the Plaça's bars and wandering around La Rambla searching for a club until the early hours. We got the Metro back to the station where some lovely benches were awaiting our weary selves. In fact, one of my favourite moments of the week when two English ladies were chatting up my mate on the Metro and it was obvious they were cracking on to him to everyone else except the silly sod himself. So when they asked "...So where you heading off to now?", he came out with the awe-inspiringly suave reply: "I'm going to the train station to sleep!!!". Nice one, Heemy, at least you gave me a laugh!
After five hours of intermittent dozing in the station's chilly conditions and two hours waiting in a café near our flat whilst the lazy Spaniards took their time in cleaning it, we finally moved into our pad for the remainder of the week. Turns out it was an awesome little place on Caller D'Avinyo right in the heart of the Barri Gotic (the city's centre). It was better than staying in a hostel or similar as it was awesome to have a place to host pre-parties for all my Santander mates that were there. We sat down and took stock of the night before and heard that one of our mate's phones had been pick-pocketed and someone tried to take one out of another mates hand whilst he was using it!
The first visited location we headed to was, of course, the world-famous stadium of FC Barcelona, Camp Neu. We did the stadium and museum tour and realised what a shame it was that it was the winter beak of Spanish football and thus we wouldn't be able to see a game there. No trip in Barcelona would be complete without investigating the art and architecture. So cue visits to the Cathedral, Museu Picasso and Gaudí's La Sagrada Familia and Park Güell. It was mind-blowing to finally get to see some Gaudí in person, as I am a bit of a fan and have been for some time.
We also had another brilliant night out on the bar strip next to Port Olimpic which was eventful to say the least. As we left, two of my mates had their wallets lifted straight out of their pockets in the crowd, one of them being the poor sod who had his phone nicked only days earlier. The title of Europe's pickpocket capital seems to be a deserved one. We returned to England on the 5th a little older, a little more culturally informed, and more importantly a little wiser about which pocket our wallets and phone should be located in! The motto of the week was "Triumph over adversity" without a shadow of a doubt.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
End of Term and Christmas
So, the end of term arrived at the University of Cantabria and as such I discovered a tradition of Spanish university life. Called champanada, it involves skipping the entire last day of lectures and going to have a massive party outdoors (this outdoor partying/drinking actually has a name of its own, botellón). I think the name champanada is a play-on-words between the sound of a bell ringing and champagne, although I could be mistaken. Also I am not sure whether this tradition is the last day of every term, or just Christmas.
Anyway at 11am, I headed down to the patio-terraces that are on the hill facing the university which are the main area for UniCan's champanada. There was about 500 people there all milling around, partying and just generally getting off their face before lunch. Pretty awesome sight, really!
One funny memory that comes to mind was the fence where the boys kept running to in order to relief themselves throughout the day was next to a block of flats (although to be honest in this country, they are everywhere). The occupants were so intent on dissuading the young gentlemen from 'watering the plants', that some of them used their shower attachments to spray water out of their windows onto the offending youths below, although this attempted deterrent was in vain.
The whole event began to finish at about 7pm as students scuttled off to sober up before dinner with mummy and daddy (most students in Spain still live with their family as they stay in their home town for university). At 11 o'clock people started to hit the main bar zone until about 3am. So was a pretty intense day of celebration!
Whilst back in good ol' Blighty over Christmas, I indulged in the usual activities (i.e. pubs and clubs) in my home town, in addition to making the most of the sales at Bluewater. I didn't go too mad though, as my cash reserves were being saved for my 6 day trip on New Year's Eve for Barcelona.
Anyway at 11am, I headed down to the patio-terraces that are on the hill facing the university which are the main area for UniCan's champanada. There was about 500 people there all milling around, partying and just generally getting off their face before lunch. Pretty awesome sight, really!
One funny memory that comes to mind was the fence where the boys kept running to in order to relief themselves throughout the day was next to a block of flats (although to be honest in this country, they are everywhere). The occupants were so intent on dissuading the young gentlemen from 'watering the plants', that some of them used their shower attachments to spray water out of their windows onto the offending youths below, although this attempted deterrent was in vain.
The whole event began to finish at about 7pm as students scuttled off to sober up before dinner with mummy and daddy (most students in Spain still live with their family as they stay in their home town for university). At 11 o'clock people started to hit the main bar zone until about 3am. So was a pretty intense day of celebration!
Whilst back in good ol' Blighty over Christmas, I indulged in the usual activities (i.e. pubs and clubs) in my home town, in addition to making the most of the sales at Bluewater. I didn't go too mad though, as my cash reserves were being saved for my 6 day trip on New Year's Eve for Barcelona.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Andalucía summary... 2 months late!
I have really hit new levels of blog-related procrastination: nearly two months without an update. They have been pretty intense months, in all fairness! The end of November/beginning of December saw me and 20 of my Santander Erasmus companions venture to the other side of the country on a 9 day road trip, making the most of a week that contained two national holidays. We spent one night in Toledo, two in Granada, two in Cádiz, two in Sevilla and one in Córdoba and had an awesome time in each place.
Whilst there we visited some awesome sights, including: the old fortified city and cathedrals of Toledo; the Alhambra (a beautiful Moorish palace) and the Sierra Nevada in Granada; Flamenco dancing, the Cathedral, the Plaza de España and the Alcazar palace in Sevilla; and the Cathedral in Córdoba that is rather cheekily built inside a massive ex-mosque. There is, of course, a link to my photo album of said places in the sidebar.
We also passed by Gibraltar on the way to Tarifa, which is a town located on the "Costa del Windsurf". Suffice to say that upon trying to enter Gibraltar it transpired that, like a complete plonker, I had left my passport all the way back in Santander and was thus denied access to my own country. How I enjoyed sitting in the frontier McDonald's mindlessly stirring a McFlurry for 2 hours whilst my French mates ran around like schoolkids having the time of their life in "my country".
The people in Andalucía are a lot more accessible if you need help or feel like chatting to a stranger in comparison to Cantabria. However, the downside of this is that when you do talk to them, they have this daft accent that omits the majority of the appearances of the letter S, a sound which Spanish is not exactly shy of. The end result is that they sound like they are speaking with a dummy in or have some juvenile speech impediment. I assure you that this ceased to be amusing rather quickly.
Toledo is actually not in the region of Andalucía and is situated right in the centre of Spain. We used it as a stopping point on the first day to avoid a full 12 hours driving. It had beautiful old buildings, but was how dead the nightlife was for a Saturday night beggars belief. Granada was not particularly attractive as a town but appeared to have a lot going on. Unfortunately we were there on Sunday and Monday nights and therefore didn't really get to sample the nightlife. Cádiz was really quite pleasant in terms of architecture and general city ambience. The nightlife on the Tuesday night before the Wednesday national holiday was good, but it seemed like quite a small town and would probably get boring pretty quickly. Sevilla was far and away the best place we visited: awesome architecture, brilliant nightlife and so many fantastic sights in one area. The flamenco there can only be described accurately as mesmerising and addictive. If you ever get the chance to see it, do, as you will not be disappointed. Córdoba was scenic but pretty small and we weren't there long enough to judge it accurately in all fairness.
Whilst there we visited some awesome sights, including: the old fortified city and cathedrals of Toledo; the Alhambra (a beautiful Moorish palace) and the Sierra Nevada in Granada; Flamenco dancing, the Cathedral, the Plaza de España and the Alcazar palace in Sevilla; and the Cathedral in Córdoba that is rather cheekily built inside a massive ex-mosque. There is, of course, a link to my photo album of said places in the sidebar.
We also passed by Gibraltar on the way to Tarifa, which is a town located on the "Costa del Windsurf". Suffice to say that upon trying to enter Gibraltar it transpired that, like a complete plonker, I had left my passport all the way back in Santander and was thus denied access to my own country. How I enjoyed sitting in the frontier McDonald's mindlessly stirring a McFlurry for 2 hours whilst my French mates ran around like schoolkids having the time of their life in "my country".
The people in Andalucía are a lot more accessible if you need help or feel like chatting to a stranger in comparison to Cantabria. However, the downside of this is that when you do talk to them, they have this daft accent that omits the majority of the appearances of the letter S, a sound which Spanish is not exactly shy of. The end result is that they sound like they are speaking with a dummy in or have some juvenile speech impediment. I assure you that this ceased to be amusing rather quickly.
Toledo is actually not in the region of Andalucía and is situated right in the centre of Spain. We used it as a stopping point on the first day to avoid a full 12 hours driving. It had beautiful old buildings, but was how dead the nightlife was for a Saturday night beggars belief. Granada was not particularly attractive as a town but appeared to have a lot going on. Unfortunately we were there on Sunday and Monday nights and therefore didn't really get to sample the nightlife. Cádiz was really quite pleasant in terms of architecture and general city ambience. The nightlife on the Tuesday night before the Wednesday national holiday was good, but it seemed like quite a small town and would probably get boring pretty quickly. Sevilla was far and away the best place we visited: awesome architecture, brilliant nightlife and so many fantastic sights in one area. The flamenco there can only be described accurately as mesmerising and addictive. If you ever get the chance to see it, do, as you will not be disappointed. Córdoba was scenic but pretty small and we weren't there long enough to judge it accurately in all fairness.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
