I came, I saw, I ridiculed, the zig goes spain….

Warning - this post contains the usual wide sweaping generalisations made by the english about cultures that we dont understand. It is probably best not viewed by anyone. Or certainly anyone spanish.

Read the full post 

This post is sponsored by Estrella Damm and red plastic chairs.

Before we begin, I’d like to start with a thanks. This trip like most of my badly research, botched european holidays was not without incident, actually looking back it was one of the more successful. I think thats because of one thing, someone who was guiding me, acting like a local, whose face I saw at every turn, steering me out of danger - yes, “jesus christo”. If religion is a fashion, jesus christo is my new black.

Before travelling to spain, I had the following pre-conceptions:

1) Spanish people are beautiful

2) Patatas Bravas is the definitive form of potato.

Only one of those turned out to be true, and I’ll give you a hint, its involves potatoes. The former proving that even living the life of a stress free king, might not exempt you from ageing like a prune. I’d heard a bit about spanish life from annett in advance of this trip which consisted mainly of “spanish people live at home until they are 50, they do everything their parents say, family comes first, everyone is religious, probably out of boredom…..”.

Pretty much all of this seemed to be true. I love the slow speed at which life happens in spain, the total dis-interest in making money and the non-service culture. I hate to imagine what they teach in business studies classes in spain, I’ll have a go at summarising how I think the Spanish economy works:

1. Rent small shabby shop

2. Open the doors

3. Buy red plastic chairs

4. Take sponsorship from Estrella Damm

5. Make inside of shop a little shabbier - use old photo’s, shrines to mr christo, adverts for estrella damm etc

6. Insert big chest freezers everywhere, fill them with icecream and fish. Make sure everytime you go in that freezer to get something the whole restuarant knows about it, your really working now, make sure everyone sees. Get stuck in there, cock your leg over, take everything out and spread it over the restaurant.

7. Customers come. Ignore them for a bit, serve them something vaguely related to what they ordered.

8. Collect profits. Spend them at nearest small shabby shop with red plastic chairs.

9. Rinse, and repeat.

Its really good when you travel to get off the beaten path, and really interact with the locals. We achieved this goal flawlessly, getting lost for two hours in the middle of nowhere, at about 4am walking in circles.

This gave us the chance to meet many splendid drunk local men to ask for guidance. While they appeared to have no difficulty locating Annett in the dark, their map reading skills left a little more to be desired, they wouldn’t have been able to locate our hotel room, had they been standing wet in our shower. And what a hotel! I didnt know they were allow to build hotels on the hard shoulder. Thats the closest you can stay to a 4 lane motorway without needing to use indicators on your way to the bathroom.

The purpose of the trip - the primavera festival was awesome, if my future career as a world enslaving tyrant doesnt take off I now know I have an intoxicating backup available as a vodka smuggler. It was great to get to partake many times in my nations favourite sport - queuing. Primavera is presumably organised by the english, the organisers pioneers of the revolutionary new “pre-queue queue”, queuing system. This seperates queues into a series of other preliminary, seperate queues, in which once you get to the front you’re awarded something which grants you entry to yet another queue, its like a real life game of snakes and ladders. The snakes part being all the mis-information floating around which leads to un-neccesary bonus queuing, in totally unrelated queues. Ah the joy of the queue ride.

It was really humbling, particularly with my german progressing at a snails pace to watch annetts language skills in action, sorry make languages skills, speaking in perfect spanish, internalizing in german and then talking with me in english, at pretty much the same time. I did my usual trick of speaking the few german words that I know at everybody, as I now do regardless of which country I’m in, including england. Proving that learning german words forever displaces their english equivalents.

I’m searching now for some kind of conclusion. Usually when I visit places, I like to frame them as either “I could live here” or “I couldnt live here”. I guess the conclusion of this post, is the answer to that question which is a “I could live here”. I dont think forever, but the spanish people and way of life is fascinating, and I’d like to experience more of it. But for now, its good to be back in the zig, riding on my bicycle where my danke’s and tschüss’s go appreciated.

This post was brought to you by Estrella Damm, red plastic chairs and the letter B.