big matt

this weekend is an extra long bank holiday. tomorrow, we're off to the beach...and i'm driving. i've been studying the driving etiquette of the spanish and its safe to say you drive as close as you can, with elbow on horn.

the hire car is from the airport, and should be a 5 door with air con. the suggestion is a fiat stilo. no matter what kind of car it is, i keep getting blind panics about driving on the wrong side of the road - they hit me with a cold sweat (which i suppose is better than a meat sweat, but still...)

i normally wake up about 4 in the morning (just before my nightly wee) thinking 'dear god, what the hell im i about to attempt?! sliproads, the wrong way round?! gearstick on the right?! overtaking on the left?!'

needless to say, these sweats normally pass. for example, at the moment, i'm not feeling that worried...though the nightly wee is yet to come...

Labels: españa

sundays are challenging.

yesterday, myself and james took ourselves to play squash at a public
sports centre. it was a bit of a trek, so imagine our disappointment
to find the sports centre closed...because it's sunday.

it still doesn't cease to amaze me how everything closes here on
sundays - seriosuly, the only things to do are go to the church or go
to the cinema.

having successfully tagged all my ipod songs a little while ago, i
actually had to read a book yesterday. yeh, i know. suddenly church
seems a much more appealing option.

Labels: españa

i've uploaded some more photos, including the night we went to london
to see hannah dancing. i apologise, i'm in almost all of them. the
links, as always, are on the right.

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with a free day, i figured i'd do some day-tripping.

arriving at atocha station this morning, i was slightly naive to
expect no-one else to have had the same idea on easter saturday. the
queue was longer than 10 minutes, which was how long i had to catch
the train i'd hoped for.

change of plan; go somewhere different and closer.

on the train i jumped, aiming for another station in the north of
madrid, where i would purchase my ticket for the final destination.
twenty minutes later, im in pitis. off i head into the station to buy
my ticket.

'una ida y vuelta a el escorial' (yeh, i wasn't messing about) and
handed over my bank card.

'we don't take cards,' came the response.

incredible. i left the station to look for a cashpoint.

i don't know why pitis deserves a train AND metro station because it
is in the middle of nowhere. i couldn't even see a house. i can only
assume that marmots make use of this public transport phenomena.

so, i ended up stood on an empty platform at pitis, singing gnarls out
loud (there was no-one to hear me), rather annoyed that the only place
i'd managed to get to see was marmotville central.

Labels: españa

this week and last have seen metro strikes in madrid. this generally means being squished into someone's (normally smelly) armpit as you both try to hold the same part of handrail.

but this morning, another problem of the strikes was highlighted to me by a blind girl. i find it incredible how blind people learn to move around with such apparent ease; especially on and off escalators and trains. happily walking to the metro turnstiles, this girl walked smack into a 3ft movable sign (placed directly in the path to the metro gates) informing passengers about the strikes.

coincidentally, on the tv news this morning, a wheelchair bound man has started a website containing photos of obstructions he encounters on his daily business. the pictures he had could have been of any spanish street. bricks, skips, fences, plantpots, cars, steps, buckets, pipes - all lying on the street because it's a convenient place for their owner to put it.

although not perfect in england, accessibility for disabled people has been improved quite a lot in recent years. these things proved to me that sometimes, this country is still sooo backward.

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so, once again, having used tim's blog as a way to kickstart the part
of my brain that deals with blogging, i too have a jumper stealing
story.

thursday night, we went to a €10 all-you-can-drink bar (big mistake, i
believed i pulled some significant muscles dancing to beyonce like a
tit). anyway, i had put down my jumper underneath a pile of coats on a
table only to return a little while later to find the pile gone along
with my jumper.

after some buscandoing, i decided to settle for the remaining jumper
that was for a girl, black and had a zip. later that night i spot a
girl (american) carrying my masculine, brown, non-zipped jumper
around...

'excuse me, that's my jumper'

'oh, is it?'

'yes, and i think this one's yours.'

'yeh it is. how did you know i had your jumper?'

'because i saw you carrying it'

i'm telling you tim, you're jumpers in serious danger from american girls.

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