Barcelona, Morning Bitchiness, Spaniards, Audrey Hepburn and my Feet

Backtrack. The 7 of us rented an apartment in central Barcelona for a week.

 

Day one:

 

People usually tell me that for a Frenchman, I’m friendly. I don’t know whether I should take that as a compliment, but since I’m a Frenchman and therefore lies do not scare me, I decide to take it as one. So even though I am generally naturally friendly, when the alarm clock rings at 3.45am to catch a plane at 6, I usually turn into a bitch (although the more appropriate term here starts with a C and ends in UNT). But I’ll tell you one thing: Never sleep with me! and if you do, never stay the night! Leave before you wake up next to the Beast without the inner beauty. At 3.45am, I hate the world, I hate myself, taxi drivers, friends, airport employees, flight-attendants, nasty overpriced croissants at the airport, cheap charter airlines, passengers who clap their hands upon landing etc, etc, etc. This feeling usually lasts until a more reasonable wake up time around 2 in the afternoon.

 

As a whole, I was as usual a pain in the ass all morning. Complaining a lot, sighing a lot, breathing really loudly and uttering the sounds pffff and rrrhôôô a lot when the charter tourist behind (he was a charter tourist, I wasn’t of course, I was just a misplaced first-class passenger fooled by a 60€ round trip) ordered 3 beers in a row at 6.05am.

 

But then, we arrived in Barcelona and for some strange reason, it all stopped. I don’t know what’s wrong with these Spanish/Catalan people, but they surely know how to put you in a different mode/mood as soon as you touch the ground.

 

I counted last night. I’ve visited 42 countries so far and I must say that Spaniards must be the most civilized people in the whole world. How can a country have so many friendly, handsome, polite, patient, playful and creative people all gathered in the same beautiful country? I am stumble. There must be something wrong there, I don’t know what it is, but please tell me that they all turn into macho monsters or unreliable jerks after a while. You know, just like us Frenchmen. A lot of people love us before they meet us, but when they start living with us they realize how unreliable and dirty we actually are.

 

The hardest part being that this feeling got worse and worse during the week. They all became sweeter and hotter by the day. I can only recall one unfriendly person during the whole week. A Policeman who yelled at us waving with his hand in the air a lot, shouting something that sounded like a Mexican drinking song. Admittedly, we were trying to park the car in a police station thinking it looked like a garage.

 

Anyway, so we finally got to Barcelona and headed for the Plaça Cataluna where our apartment was located. We got to town around 9.30 in the morning. A French woman from the agency told us we could meet her at 11 to get the keys. We were drained. I was put in a corner behind a suitcase to moan by myself. When the agency woman finally showed up, it was 3pm and I had already eaten 50 euros worth of tapas. In case you’re wondering, that’s A LOT of tapas. Then, we finally saw our apartment. A 120 square meter heaven on a pedestrian street, with a balcony overlooking a quaint little courtyard with lots of laundry hanging. The living-room had paintings of Greek gods and my bedroom had a huge black & white portrait of Audrey Hepburn on the wall. The owners were evidently gay.

 

Superb series of Variations on the theme “Audrey Hepburn” by Frog: