BARCELONA

SPAIN

Ola Perras!

If competing to be Max's favourite European city was ever some form of barfight, Barcelona just smashed its empty glass over Cologne's head and beat Amsterdam in the face with a barstool. After which it turned round, pointed at Paris, and said "don't even fucking think about it". France would probably surrender anyway.

Barcelona is awesome.

Everything about it just puts me in mind of how all big cities should be. It isn't grimy like London can be, or depressing like Moscow, it's cooler than Berlin and it isn't a mindless French clusterfuck like Paris.

The only city I can compare it to in my experience would be Trier, where the old lives alonsgide the new without being confusing. However, Trier lacks a beach, a cable car and decent weather.

The hostel we stayed in was a major upgrade from Paris, even though when we first found the very non-descript building it was in with a big For Sale sign over the door we got a little worried. They also decided to change the lock on the second night which made their key somewhat obsolete so we just had to buzz until someone let us in. That wasn't as enjoyable. Otherwise great.

I'm gonna bombard you with pictures now; I'll say, as ever, that the rest will be on facebook within the week, but with regards to previous uploading of photos experience, take this promise with a big big pinch of salt; the facebook uploader can be shit.

I'll start with general city photos, shall I? These ones are fairly typical of the main roads and wicked little side streets that Barcelona enjoys having.



Take note, Paris: This is how a major city CAN work if you pull your finger out and design your roads well. No honks, no beeps, no near-misses. And Barcelona had almost as many bikes as Holland. No way in hell could Parisian drivers deal with that.

I don't even know exactly how many photos I took of these little streets. I just love them.

One thing Barcelona has whored from Paris however is the Arc de Triomphe which I mentioned in my last France post. What the Spanish one lacks in size by comparison, it more than makes up for in general design and location choice.

The photo below is taken from just in front of the arch, looking down the boulevard (is it a boulevard? Does this qualify for boulevard status? It's a boulevard) in the opposite direction.

This is me in part of an old cathedral in Barcelona's big cultural hub, which we spent a day looking for without realising we were in it. I'm looking rather touristy. And on a lion.

One of the highlights would probably have to be Gaudi's Sagrada Familia cathedral. Having already confessed to cheating on Cologne with Barcelona, I'll backtrack briefly to say that even after a lengthy comparison, the Cologne Dom would still win in the "ZOMG that's incredible" architecture competition. It's wicked nonetheless.



These photos would have been a lot better without the shitload of cranes and scaffolding going on. It's also worth noting in the lower photo that the building actually continues right down almost to where my foot level would be; it's bastarding huge.


This is me doing my best nonchalant British-person-abroad pose in front of La Rambla, a big street designed for mugs, tourists and the gullible. There is some crazy shit on this street. Remember, anyone carrying beer cans will first offer you a beer. If this is declined, hash will be suggested, "the best hash man, the best. Outta my country man, my country, the best. 40 euros a gram. Nah nah wait, 35, 'cos you my friend man".

Take it elsewhere, Spaniard. There exists a country called Holland.

It does however have this bloke, who kicked ass.


Just in case this photo is a little unclear, he holds onto the stick and his arse levitates 3 feet off the ground, while he waves and smiles and poses for photos with his other hand. What did kill the experience for me was seeing his friend, who presumably takes the next 'shift', standing just to the left wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a fag in his mouth, except with his face painted gold and wearing another horns headdress. He looked a bit like a fan who was a little too keen.

I lost my paella virginity while here. I went for the chicken option over the seafood, as nothing puts you off a plate of rice more than a pair of Langoustines sprawling over the top of it.

Good effort chef.

This restaurant is special enough to offer seasonal garrisons. I didn't ask what the current 'garrison' on offer was, but had I ordered it, I'd have been more than disappointed if they hadn't brought a load of soldiers with "Winter" written across their helmets to go with my paella.

Barcelona also has a beach. I was introduced to the Mediterranean for the first time.

This guy has lots and lots of time.

Me gazing out towards the little harbour. The cable-car tower is in the background. If I had as much time as Captain Sandcastle in the picture above, I'd have gone for a ride.

Being on the beach a mixed experience for some.

Another high point was the art gallery. Unfortunately we didn't see any art, so the gallery itself wasn't exactly a high point as such, but the views from the top and surrounding area were definitely worth it.

I believe that's a bullring in the background. I'm also a big fan of this photo. I don't even think I was consciously posing for this one, which is a definite bonus.

And this is me with the art gallery itself. I'm a big fan. This picture does no justice whatsoever to the size of this building.

And this is the view from in front, right at the top of the steps. Something about it puts me in mind of Rio de Janeiro. Maybe its the rolling hills with a big sprawling Metropolis underneath. Either way, Cologne has no hills of this calibre.

Winning in Barcelona.

It's a brave man who tries the chocolate milkshake at the Hotel Colon.

Anyone with any ideas of the thinking behind a rooster with a dog's body, do let me know.

Similarly, I will pay good money to anyone who can give a plausible explanation to the indescribable, horrific wonder below. This was in a shopping centre in Barcelona's "most culturally rich leisure area"

Look at that thing. Not only has someone sat down and designed it, some poor sod in Spain has had to pay for the fucker. If this was England, it would be the taxpayer, probably for some politician with odd tastes. It depresses me to think that, for the UK, "£10,000 of public money frittered on giant gnome taking a dump" would be a believable occurrence.

A statue of a boy squeezing a frog. This is one of the most sadistic statues I've ever seen. There is no artistic value; it just seems cruel. Is this tradition in Spain? Superstition?

"Don't forget to squeeze your frog tonight, Pedro. You don't want the flu now, do you?"

A collection of wooden knobs, and wooden people sporting large knobs. Your call.

In case you weren't already aware, the Grim Reaper is Spanish. He lives on Barcelona beach.

And a guy taking some handbags for a walk.

That's pretty much all of it. Like I say, don't hold your breath waiting for the rest of the pics to appear, but you get the basic idea. Barcelona is a pretty sweet city.

AMSTERDAM

HOLLAND

Getting to Amsterdam after 2 days in Paris was unspeakably awesome. Even driving was ok. The first thing I noticed upon returning to Amsterdam, and after being in France, was the lack of beeping and honking. In Paris, there's a very strong mindset that holding the horn down for - no joke - at least 20 seconds will somehow disperse the cars in front of you.

It was also wicked to be in a country where people can understand you. There are some countries, such as Germany, where I'd feel ignorant or a bit of a twat for not knowing at least a few basic phrases. When we were looking for our hotel, we saw one bloke outside a restaurant who we asked for directions.

"Excuse me, do you speak English?"

"Yes .. of course?"

How awesome is that? He looked at us if we were a bit special as he said it as well, which made it even better. As if to say 'you're in the Netherlands now, silly Englishman'. Speak whatever the hell you like.

This multiple language thing can however lead to complications. When we were in Paris, we went to an Italian restaurant. The people spoke Italian. The menu was in french. We spoke among ourselves in English, and I had my German head on. It was the single biggest mindfuck of my year abroad.

We also ate at a wicked Italian restaurant in 'Dam, where I didn't try the cucumber because of what it might contain.

This year abroad has done nothing for my maturity. Leave me be.

It was also New Years Eve. Now, I had no concept of what New Years Eve would be like in the most lax country in most of the world. Let me tell you: it is an absolute warzone.

It's fun, but in that kind of "I may die at any minute" way. It's comparable to the opening scene of saving private ryan without the maimed and dead people, and in Amsterdam instead of a beach.

This is my first example. This bit of road was clear because a firework had just tipped over and blasted the crowd 12 or so times.

The rule seems to be that if you own a firework, you have to let it off anywhere you like. So walking down the streets in and around Rembrandt square, there are people lobbing firecrackers into crowds, lighting up those spinning pinwheel things in the middle of the road, and loads of people seeing how dangerously they can live before it's next year, like this lady, who made us all dance by rolling firecrackers at everyone.


My favourite would have to be 3 guys on a bridge, holding onto one of those fireworks which is usually reserved for the 'big finale' of a firework display. It was about 3 feet long. I started jogging a bit when they got a lighter out, and began to run when one said "see how long you can hold onto it before you let it go". If that guy had had a better grip, I am fairly certain people would be dead and that road would be closed. It was an absolute artillery piece.

Other than this, we did a little sightseeing, though not enough to qualify for photos, and visited some coffee shops.

I sketched this man after a few hours in a coffee shop near Rembrandt Square, I'm quite pleased. It's entitled with my favourite quote from the day. That particular question didn't get a reply that I'm aware of, but it was followed, after 10 minutes of complete silence, simply by ".. but, y'know ... people can change .."

Wise, wise words.

This was my favourite sign from that particular cafe:

This sign was just in the street. I'm still not totally sure exactly what it was getting at, but hey? Who can argue with the storing of problems?

And won't somebody please think of the children?

PARIS

FRANCE

As someone who has spent relatively little time in France, Paris was quite an exciting prospect for me. Something about capital cities and stereotypical images just puts me in an excitable mindset. However, I offer people the very good advice of planning well in advance, with ideas less vague than my own, before attempting Paris. Consider this your first free lesson.

1. Driving

This was an experience that will haunt me for the rest of my life. Whoever designed the Paris road system: You are a fucking idiot. Spare me the "the city is constantly expanding and the roads and streets become ever more complex" excuse. It was designed by someone having a seizure while holding a pen.

This is not complimented by French drivers. White lines on a road are something of a decoration rather than a guide for driving in Paris. So at junctions with 3 theoretical lanes, the number of cars in each one goes something like 5, 3, 4, 1 , 12 and so on for about a km backwards. Moscow was better than this.

This is a real graphic of the Paris road system. If what I believe is true, then anything marked in black or white is inaccessible by vehicle.

Once you've survived a junction, if you can make it more than 100 metres without having to make a detour because of a one-way street or 1000 mopeds piled 3 high across an intersection, you've done well for yourself. Our Sat Nav lady must have been crying on the inside. We found our hotel easily enough, but then couldn't find anywhere to park within 3km of it. Which leads me neatly to my next point.


2. Hotels

We were quite lucky in the respect that we were able to find a hotel online with relative ease, which isn't bad considering we booked it December 29th. It was fairly cheap too. We got a few glimpses of it, with sad eyes, from the car window as we slowly passed it by 400 times. And after 45 minutes, we found a car parking space.

At this point, we were so pissed off and tired that we decided to go for the first hotel we found; we had no idea even what direction our original hotel was. After seeing the first hotel we came across and the leopardskin-clad man-woman smoking outside, we voted to push on for the second. It looked like this. I think the star-rating system was a forgotten dream it had as a child.

That isn't bog roll in the toilet. Nor had anyone been to the toilet. Nobody knows what it is. The things on the floor are also dead bugs.

This picture isn't actually blurry. This is to try and show the questionable stains on the mirror. I call this my "screw Paris" face.

We didn't watch any telly for fear that whatever is growing on the wall and bedside thing had laid its spores in the remote.

It was also in a bit of a shit part of Paris. I won't go as far as to say it was a Banlieue but it wasn't too far off. I'm also gutted in retrospect that I don't have a picture of the curtain for you, which was a sheet pinned to the wall.

3. People

I have no qualms in poking offence at the people here. I have met lots of French people. They can be lovely. Most of the ones we met in Paris were either needlessly grumpy or just plain weird. It's been a few years since I learnt French, and though I used to be quite good at it, my parlez-vous-ing has been a bit crap of late.

The guy at the hotel had no concept of "je ne parle pas Francais" as a meaning for "no speak the lingo, use more sign language please" so we struggled our way through that one somehow. And everyone else was either suppressing anger or, like I say, were just weird. One man stopped to stand next to us and smoke, telling us some story in French while we nodded and smiled and sidled away slowly.

4. The Metro

Now, the tube in any country is always a challenge for me, particularly on home soil as many of you have experienced. If the Underground was in instrument, I'd be crap at it despite years of practise.

This one was the worst yet. The French, it seems, have yet to discover the wonders of what we know, so second-naturedly, as a day travelcard. As in, a ticket which allows for a days worth of travelling without having to change. We didn't have the French version of an Oystercard, so this meant buying a new tube ticket for every journey we made, which wasn't exactly expensive, but after a days worth starts to strain the old wallet.

These cards are so limited per journey that you can't even get through the barriers at the other end. We had to wait in a little enclosure until someone came in from the other side, at which point we ran and quickly pushed past the barriers before they shut again.

If you look in the middle of the destinations in this photo (click to enlarge), you'll see where we took a brief detour to Russia.

I was also a big fan of this man, who has mastered the art of retracting his head into his body during sleep.


The last underground related thing I can think of was the guards we saw in one station. These weren't armed police, these were regular soldiers doing the rounds. I thought this was quite a good move on France's part, what with increased terror alerts of late, until I saw that none of their weapons contained any bullets. Nor were they carrying any. Nothing says security like a magazine-less rifle.

5. Sightseeing

The Eiffel Tower remained as elusive as it did last time I was here, so I decided to check out the Arc de Triomphe. It was certainly an arch. There was also some Triomphe to boot.

Those blips on the top are people. It is what I can only describe as a fuck-off arch. It is mahoosive. We didn't decide to go up the arch (is that even the right phrase? to go up the arch?) because it was getting late, and we were having stirrings of 'we don't wanna be in this country for new year' so we bailed out. Paris is ok, but my god, make sure you get it right.

This is Charles de Gaulle with a seagull on his head.


At half 3, we brushed our teeth in an underground car park and hit the road for Amsterdam. France does have some highlights I guess, but no amount of half-arsed Parisian charm can hold a candle to the Netherlands.

NEUERBURG - hangover take 2

GERMANY

Today, I woke up in Luxembourg in my boxers wearing eye shadow and sporting a moustache drawn in eyeliner. From what I gather, my hosts were going for the Captain Jack Sparrow look. I'm really not sure how this happened.

I can feel a bit of a headache coming on.

NEUERBURG - Post-christmas lows

GERMANY

Thank the fucking Lord.

Neuerburg has just undergone a 3 day long Internet drought. It came back about 20 minutes ago. Ordinarily, such an occurence would be a kind of 'aw darn it' sort of event, but yesterday it was compounded by the fact that the electricity for our building was cut off, for reasons they still haven't explained to us.

I think this was the first time I wished my apartment wasn't so swish and modern, because when the electric goes, it means everythings fucked. Namely, my solar powered wall operated blinds; apparently when there's no power, the default setting is 'pulled up', which makes sleeping any later than 7am a challenge.

The telly was also inoperable, as were my lights, which made everything into an interesting, toe-stubbing guessing game after 5pm. The laptop battery lasted just over an hour before it too fizzled out. That actually felt a bit like an old friend dying.

Showers were impossible because the water couldn't be heated and I couldn't see a damn thing anyway, and nor could I cook because we have those gay hobs that just heat up, as opposed to a gas one.

To summarise, yesterday was a balls balls day.

Tomorrow I think I'm hitting up gay old Paris for some French new year antics. And to find out for certain what the difference between brie and Camembert is.

BOLLENDORF/ECHTERNACH

LUXEMBOURG

Because I'm such a committed language student and all hardcore like, I decided to stay on the continent for crimbles and new year.

The Germans do Christmas on the 24th, and I was lucky enough to share German christmas in Luxembourg with my friend Kristina and her family. On the 24th, we ate a wicked christmas dinner, played Trivial Pursuit in German (we won) and drank too much.

We rolled out of bed the next day kinda later than we'd all planned, and drove up a very steep hill to a restaurant in a place called Echternach, for more christmassy food. I had possibly the best steak ever. I'm aware I give praise easily, but this steak was something else. There was a party in my mouth and everybody was medium-rare and dipped in garlic butter. Oh man.

I'm now peeved because I've realised that I have no photos of this occasion, apart from two landscapey ones I made Kristina take on her iPhone, which she's yet to send me. So yeah, even though there are no pictures, it did actually happen. And it was great.

NEUERBURG - not in the news.

GERMANY

I just checked my stats. Yesterday, someone got to this blog by google-searching "neuerburg germany news today 23 dec. 2010".

THAT, my friends, is what is known as optimism.

I ask this searcher: what were you expecting to find?

The only real news I can think of, though not limited to Neuerburg, is that it is today is Christmas in Germany. I'm heading on over to Luxembourg later to celebrate accordingly.

NEUERBURG - hangover

GERMANY

Morning goslings.

Today I am hungover. Let me rephrase that. I am close to the point of dying in my own vomit while I type this entry, very very s l o w l y. Hangovers have been somewhat rare events these past few months; they now seem to be making up for 4 months lost time.

Last night was Feierabend, because school finished for crimbles yesterday. We started out at a Mexican restaurant, which may have been one of the best meals of my life. I had a steak fajita. Steak. In a fajita.

After this, we headed back to Herr Henkel's flat, the coolness of which cannot be described with words, where the alcohol consumption included, but was probably not limited to:

• Beer

• Vodka

• Rum

• Jaegermeister
  

• Whisky

• Cognac

• The German equivalent of Sourz/Aftershock

And some godawful apple stuff.

We played on the Xbox a lot as well. I remember playing Gran Turismo 5 wearing a pair of night vision goggles. I doubt if I'd have been able to see any better without them.

There was also one of those electric shock machines, the ones where you put your hand into a handprint and it sends a shock through you. It's meant to be used for 'truth' or 'lie' scenarios. I was zapping myself for fun by the end of the night. It also made my right hand jidder uncontrollably again, suggesting impending heart failure as well as a thumping headache.

But - I'm feeling pretty good at the moment, because recently I've managed to do proper socialising. Admittedly it's been socialising in the capacity of 'let's drink', but I don't mind this because, as we've discussed, I speak much better German after alcohol. I believe next monday we're going out in Luxembourg.

Oh yes, and I'm going to Barcelona next week. The Spanish have christmas too, right?

HEIDELBERG

GERMANY

Last week I was in Heidelberg. Heidelberg has always been on my list of 'places to definitely visit in Germany' because everybody raves about it.

We stayed in a friends cousin's WG, which was pretty great. It felt much more like a homely student home in the UK, by which I mean dingy and messy, but in that acceptable studenty way.



We didn't see a great deal of the city because we woke up fairly late, but the bits we did see were good. There are some weird shops in Heidelberg. I bought an extendable fork.



We also checked out the christmas market, and had steak and onion brötchen for breakfast, followed by nutella crepes. And mulled wine; I now have the Heidelberger Weihnachtsmarkt mug to add to my collection. So you know, I am a winner.


The only thing that marred the day was the temperature. In the words of a poet, it was motherfucking freezing. Granted, I make terrible shoe choices, but I really expected five (five!) pairs of socks to make at least a bit of difference on the soaking feet front.

The other thing was this. I won't go as far as to say it marred the day, but it was certainly one of those eye-opening, questionable things in life.

"What to wear today? It's cold out, a coat is surely a good idea. Hmm, and what else? Oh, of course! How silly of me. My silver leggings. My sparkly silver leggings. A modest and well-planned outfit for any city. Oooh, and my fluffy pink leg warmers wouldn't go amiss! Let's break those out, shall we? They'll look lovely over my Ugs."