So this Word document of mainly one-lined notes and reminders has somehow succumbed to over 5,000 words since...around three months ago. The ‘chore’ of blogging has caught up on me, and in the determination of not letting this be another blog site left unfinished, I’ll be writing a post long to give you probably about an hour’s reading time...Here we go...!
Before talking about the situation now, I’ll try to remember back to a few months ago, while still studying at the Universidad. I spent around a week working (or should I say mainly procrastinating heavily on the Internet), pretty solidly on my Contextual studies essay for my home university. I had a period of around two weeks when I was worried of the workload and not being totally organised with my subjects (of course I’m emphasisng this as being a massive problem, because any work in Spain has to be somehow compromised with going to the beach everyday and missing early morning classes due to late partying nights). This short period of time was when everyone miraculousy started studying, and the general attitude towards partying temporarily changed, with reasoning for not going out in the evenings being 'Tengo que levantame temprano por clase manana' (I have to get up early for class tomorrow). Anyway, all of this went smoothly, and in the last couple of weeks my notas (grades) were finally placed online!
I comfortably passed the three of my subjects, which was quite amusing thinking of the fact that I put such minimal time/effort into the work knowing that 40% was my pass mark, and it would be equal to 100% once transferred to the credits in England. I’ve since gone to the International Office in the attempt to sort things out (always a difficult objective in Spain), and they told me to email the professors. I’ll go there again soon*...if for the miracle that I’ll wake up before midday for once (Actually I do, but the heat is a drug, and pushes you back to sleep...My bedrooms boiling!).
*I went to the office again yesterday, and was told that my grades had been sent to my home university, and so ya estar, everything is all done. Let’s hope there are no problems when I contact the Uni when I return next week!
The subject I was most concerned about was the Spanish A2 (the middle free of charge level that the University offered between A1 beginner and B1 Advanced). Although it was good going to these lessons for more exposure to the language, the teacher was poor and would always waste the first third of the lesson asking us ‘Que has hecho hoy?’, Que hiciste?, meaning ‘What have you done today/What did you do? This was something that got on all of our tits, and the only real reason why I was learning things in the class was because I was studying on my own most of the time!
Anyway, so there were four parts to the subject, a verb test (with incredibly complicated Spanish conjugations..or so they were at the time of writing!), an oral presentation, a writing exercise and finally the main exam. As you may know, I’ve always loathed presentations, so now add that to the fact that I had to do it in another language, I was shitting myself. Although having said that, watching my other Erasmus friends make fools of themselves standing at the front of around 50 people made it almost, or perhaps entirely worth having to do a presentation myself!! I decided to do my presentation on the last day possible, with the reasoning being that the amount of people pissing off outside to the sun and missing class, would gradually increase as the semester went on, and also the other factor that my Spanish would be at a half-decent level by this time, I’d hoped.
Most people in their presentations talked either about where they come from, how to make some sort of food receipe, or something along the lines of alchol. One guy explained how it's possible to keep beers ice cool, by adding salt into a bowl of water to lower the freezing point. Of course this is a vital bit of knowledge for the average Erasmus student! Perhaps he should have presented this idea to the ‘cerveza guys’ that molester us around every plaza at night. ‘Cerveza guys’ being the term we’ve adopted to describe 'un monton' (lot) of middle-aged Pakistani men that go around selling beer for 1 euro, until around 4am. They hassle us roughly every three seconds. “Cerveza quieres??” Beer do you want??”.
It’s annoying, but when the supermarkets are closed (which, at 9.30pm, is the reason why it’s common to meet friends there just before closing time! It’s nice to have the option to buy cervezas before heading to a disco. Because they are so desperate in selling you them, it’s easy to budge down the price a bit (1 euro is far too expensive!), and in attempt to make the deal sound more attractive to us, they also have two other words in their Spanish vocabulary – ‘Muy fria’ – telling us that the beers are ‘very cold’. Yeah, as they should be! Nos vemos manana ceveza guy! Pictures of these guys to follow.
So after hearing nearly everyone’s presentations in my class, it didn’t exactly put my confidence high...Almost, if not everyone had studied Spanish for a semester or two before coming to Spain. People were talking comfortably.
So I made enough powerpoint slides for my presentation to last around 10 minutes, each slide having a reasonable amount of content so the audience's eyes were glued to the screen, rather than staring at me and giving a shit about what I was acutally saying. Being the only British student in the class, I talked a bit about London and the attractions, famous food dishes of England (and with the sly comment of why the British people are so ‘gordos’/fat). Also mentioned my travel experiences this semester and also a few of my interests. The presentation went really smoothly, and it proved helpful by walking around the house practising by reading the presentation ot myself, so that when it came to the presentaiton, I didn't really have to think about I was saying...much). I was really pleased to have gotten through it okay. Ed 1-0 Spanish language.
The whole period between the middle of June and July was the time for despedidas and more despedidas (leaving parties). As friends return to their home countries, Erasmus was slowly dying, and this gave the city a completely different atmosphere. Erasmus and the mass of international students was a large factor to why I love Valencia. City life is exciting - the first I've experienced, and I'm sure the Erasmus scene in VLC can't be compared to any other city. Even though Erasmus was changing the feel of the city, my last couple of weeks were probably the most enjoyable of the semester! Carlos came back to the flat, Gunter came for vacaciones, Mattia came with three friends from Italy, and a Portugese friend of mine and his girlfriend came to take my room. So for this period there were about eight of us living in three habitaciones (plus any others that decided to crash at our place, in the many comfort spots of our living room floor).
La Copa del Mundo! - The World Cup
Despite seeing our friends leave, us remaining ‘Erasmus survivors’ have still been really enjoying ourselves. The World Cup has been great, giving us a strict daily schedule of going to a bar in Plaza Honduras to see an afternoon game, then to the beach to catch some sun (which I might add, is consistently scorching and nearly unbearable!...), then seeing an evening game. Every day brings consistent 30 degree heat. The sea is nice and warm, like a bath, and it burns your feet to stay standing on sand for more than a few seconds. Perfect. Oh sorry, forgot to ask; How is the weather in the UK?, Jaja (the Spanish equivalment to the English Haha).
The atmosphere has been really great, with a lot of rivalry between our nations and Erasmus friends. Chanting for any nation playing against Germany, in a German bar was always entertaining...:D. It was also interesting to see groups of one nationality come together to support their team – even in one night we saw some Nigerians in a pub (which excited me, because at the time I was strongly considering doing my Erasmus in Africa next semester, I’m kidding, it was just a joke because the weather only started becoming really nice at around May time!
group as Germany this World Cup, but seeing this
image amused me enough to it to make it on this post!
really well towards the end of the semester, shame we didn't meet earlier!
Nos vemos en el futuro! (She's not really boring,
I just liked to bring up the 'boring belgians' sterotype ;)
The atmosphere was amazing! As Roja (red) covered the streets in bars, pubs, pisos and the port, Spain was prepared, and so was I! Equiped with a Spanish shirt, a bufanda (scarf), a cap and face paint, I was temporarily a real Spaniard.
puerto con un gran pontella. A swarm of red!
Leifur, Timmy and Myself
It's time for some beach pictures...!
 | |
| Our group earlier in the semester...The beach looks dead! |
Continuing on with the international spirit of the World Cup, we spent an evening in the piso of Midas (Holland), watching the Eurovision Song Contest (to which the Americans, and most Italians) had never heard of. It was a fun night, laughing at each other’s countries acts (especially Iceland’s, who had a huugee/fat female singer - As the singers on Eurovision are usually beautiful, I assumed this could have been part of the act, and that a couple of kids could appear from under her skirt or something...Oh well, it didn’t happen – No votes for Iceland!! It was also amusing giving our ratings to the hot presenters coming on the screen to announce the votes of their countries. United Kingdom came rock bottom in last place, I was proud!!
So back to the despedidas, the first victims of returning back to normal life were the Australian girls, and Timmy. The definition really of a despedida in our Erasmus eyes in Valencia means, to ‘chalar’ (talk, drink and chill) at the beach for the night, before heading to a disco at around 2-3am. We'd frequently have botellons at the beach, and swim at night, especially now the weather is nice! Watch out for the Spanish pikeys though, and if you go for a swim, keep an eye on your stuff! - it's common that groups go around the beach during the night looking for valuables to steal. We witnessed a few people empty someones bag, so we went over to them to ask what they were doing, only provoking the response 'tranquilo tio' (chill out dude/man).
Spaniards and Erasmus students fill the promenade and different Erasmus groups place themselves all over the beach. These botellons are always socialable, enjoying our last moments before heading home. As soon as I’m thinking of a botellon, my trail of thought instantly goes to Tapio (Finland), this is because he doesn’t fail to entertain me when he’s stoned.
Tapio, You've got one hugeee lizard tongue!
Las3 was the next part of the night (we always joke about going to this club ‘a las 3’ (the time of 3am). This was an enjoyable night - Mattia was able to hire out the whole upper section of the disco for our friends. It also happened to be the night where Fez met his new lover...Laura from Wales!! (Woww this feels like I’m writing so far back into this semester!)
The following night we went to a Sushi restaurant, as seen in the previous post, for a final farewell for Timmy – he deserved the multiple fiestas de despedidas, and for sure get’s my vote for Erasmus student of the semester!
With more despedidas being thrown about, Scott’s one was particually fun. We headed to the beach, then onto Las Animas (a club which’s name I think means something along the lines of ‘the suppoters’. It’s one of the main discos in Valencia situated closely to where the Foruma 1 race was, with views of the port.
It’s a common thing that public relation workers and disco promoters give you discounted tickets at the beach before heading to discos. But as the semester has gone on, contacts start appearing, and paying for disco entradas (entrances) becomes a rarity (or so it definitely is a rarity if you climb over fences into discos...More on this later!).
Tonight a few of our names were put on the VIP list, so once we’d enter the club, we’d just say the name of the promoter and be able to enter without any problem. Not! There was a problem, and we couldn’t enter como asi. Since experiencing this, and at one other occasion near the start of the semester, I learnt that it was more reliable to collect free entradas beforehand.
So with the problem of us not being able to enter for the moment, Myself, Fez, Timmy and Stefan were told to wait in the opposite side of the long queue. Seeing that nothing seemed to be happening with us, and fed up of waiting, we saw the two security guards look the other way and were all thinking the same...”Lets just walk in...”. Drunk Timmy went first without any worries, followed by Stefan (German). Hannah (American) and Savannah (Australian) then grabbed myself and Fez to pull us in. Within a couple of seconds it was easy to blend in with the mass of people, Nice. I’m sure several people were raging at us while watching us just walk in, Haha. It was amusing to think it was so easy to enter in such a large club like that.
This was the same week that Las Animas opened their terrace for the summer. It’s a large open area on both sides of the club, with views over to the port and nice lounge areas around the side of the disco.
Talking about Las Animas leads me on nicely to a night in L’umbracle, a modern club at the City of Arts and Sciences, which has a huge outdoor area, and a smaller more intense disco below, called Mya. Both are available with a 15 euro* (with copa/drink) entrance fee. (*Mentioning price solely for information purposes, We’d never pay it. :D). This was a recent night, consisting of myself, Mattia, Romain (French) and Benny (German), until we’d meet other friends in the club later.
La noche divertida en L'umbracle!
Yo fui expulsado de la disco dos veces
After having a few drinks in our piso and listening to music on our consistent neighbour-molesteraring stereo system, we headed out to the club at 2am, for when our free entrances would expire. We left the flat ten minutes before this time, rushed for a taxi and made it at L’umbracle with a couple of minutes spare, Erasmus style.
Walking through the long isle of the disco, the scenario of Mattia showing a glimpse of 10 euros in his wallet somehow prompted the suggestion of a bet of climbing up on the stage to dance with the girls that work there. Seeming the perfect idea at the time, I took the money and started walking towards the stage, at the time being oblivious to the guys saying No, don’t do it’. Enjoying myself up there for around 5 seconds, one of the security guards quickly saw, and started walked me out of the club, despite protests from myself and the guys. Mattia hoped saying ‘He’s from England, they do this sort of stuff there’ would be a reasonable explanation for my doing, and that it’d be enough to keep me in the club. Considering running back into the crowd, but not acting, I was kicked out of the club. Okay okay, L’umbracle wins this time...but not for long.
So being alone, and of course not considering the option of paying a full 6 euros for a taxi by myself, I walked around to the other side of the disco, waited for the guard to walk the other way, then jumped the fence (and perhaps losing my balance and falling over on the other side), and walked to the guys, innocently. It’s common that people climb over without paying, then blend into the crowd within a few seconds, and the thought of around ten of us all doing it makes me laugh. Ed 1-1 L’Umbracle.
After Mattia left us for his Polish girlfriend (perhaps shouldn't be saying this publicly :D...), it was left to myself, Romain and Benny (German) to enjoy ourselves. Being one of my more drunker nights, I was willing to do more stupid things, like taking a newly poured drink off from the bar and drinking it myself. It was a nice drink, and it definitely beats Matt’s philosophy on obtaining free drinks in clubs, which is one of telling the bartenders with confidence that he works there. Not sure how successful this one was...!
So you’re probably wondering how I was thrown out of the disco the second time. Well, let’s just say it refers to a group on Facebook named ‘Realising how drunk you are when alone in the toilet’. I sort of fell asleep in a toilet cubicle downstairs (perhaps for one hour...just for a nice relaxing siesta). The door, being locked and occupied for this long period was probably the reason why the SAME security guard that threw me out the first time, came knocking and trying to open the door. Ohh que suerte. On the plus side, I did re-design my t-shirt with vomit (okay that’s a large exaggeration, but I preferred the funny...). So the final score was Umbracle 2-1 Ed!
So before ranting on about more depressing despedida parties, I’ll talk about my depressing dreams of how everyone is leaving. Nah not really... I’ll talk a bit (or probably a lot) about my week trip to the South of France.
Un viaje a sur de Francia -
Frejus, Francia – un vacacion por una semana / el 24 junio a 1 julio
A break from all the beach days and hard work...to visiting the South of France on the 24th June. The flight was at 8am the same night (or morning if you look at it like a non-Erasmus person!), which happened to harshly interrupt the San Juan festival the night before, which was the reason I purposely stayed in Valencia an extra few days instead of travelling to France earlier.
Okay so talking about France goes out the window...San Juan comes first...!
La festival de San Juan! - Una noche muy loca
San Juan is one of the biggest festivals/celebrations of the year in Valencia to celebrate the summer solistice, and it’s the only day of the year where making bonfires on the beach is permited. Hearing that the beach would be filled with around 40-50k people, I was so looking forward to it!
Preparing for the night. Suitcase for travel to France, Check. Camiseta, Check. Alcohol, Check. Going down to the supermarket in the evening was quite amusing – the shop was packed and people were only buying alcohal. The party was going to be a huge piss-up, a super-sized botellon!
Wearing my camiseta that I bought from the University Politenica souvenir shop, I got everyone to sign it, and as I wore it on the plane to Madrid, I had no idea what was signed on it (probably imagery of genitalia of some description). I wore it because during the week I'd be away, the majority of our ‘Erasmus group’ would have left, so in a way it was a small despedida for me.
An updated version of my camiseta. Names, sentences, flags, memories - VALENCIA. I’m so glad to have this, and it’ll be placed on my bedroom wall soon!
of them after reading through them again!) from the shirt!
"Hey Eddie!! U r a * dude. Stay in touch xxx" -Amisha
"Hi Ed! It was really nice to meet you...por fin!! Keep on working with your Spanish! :) Kisses" -Stepanie and the special accent!
"Skydiving w/ you was DPM! (de puta madre=the shit!) besos" -Melyssa
"Bedziemy Tesknic!" (We will miss you) -Olga
For an unforgetable Erasmus with you! -Romain
"England may be #2, but you are #1" -Sean
"Solo Espanol chico! Espero que nunca olvidas este semestre. See ya at the Reunion!" -Julian (Taking the mick out of us always saying 'Okay, We'll only talk Spanish today!, which always fails as we return to talking English almost immediately again!)
"Hola Ed! Cuando vengas a Rumania, Llamame! (amigo de Feisbuk)" -Teo
"Gonna miss you. Thanks 4 an awesome 5 months" -Inga
"It was a really cool semester with you!!" -Gabriel
"Ed- My favourite recoat. I'll see you around" -Nick (Making the fun out of my Englishness!)
"It's been great knowing you Ed! Hasta pronto in England or Sweden!" -Philip del Inter
Although impossible to find anyone, and impossible to hear phone calls, we somehow found our group and chilled out around a bonfire for the evening.
It’s a tradition to jump over a fire three times, then over seven waves in the sea. So doing this, we ran for the water and had our first ‘during the night’ swim, at 3am!
Haha Sean.
I ended up leaving the beach at 4am on my own, due to our group disbanding, and Fez thankfully deciding to go home WITH MY BAG earlier. He assumed I’d already left because I went to meet someone for the last part of the evening. It was a crazy night, like Las Fallas was during March, with a concierto a la playa con buena musica y bailadoras.
So arriving back home at around 5am, I had a plane to catch! Perfectly timed, vamos al aeropuerto!
Let's go to Francia..!
I stayed in a small place called Frejus for a week, really close to St Tropez. It was difficult finding flights, as RyanAir neither did direct flights to the South of France from Valencia nor Alicante. Using a non-discount airline shot the prices up to around 200 euros plus – which is a ridiculous thought when friends in Valencia were talking about heading double the distance to Scandinavia (Norway specifically) for only 6 euros.
As a solution it turned out cheaper flying to Madrid first, for just 4 euros, then onto Marsielle for another 30 euros. It would be good if RyanAir offered a service like this...one to tell you the cheapest possible ways to get somewhere. I hadn't flown at all three weeks prior to coming to Spain, and I'm seeing the difficulties in flying from where and to I want to. I hope in future years flying will become so much less of a deal, like a taxi service! :D
The other possible route to get to France was via Cagliari (Sardenga, Italia), instead of Madrid - this sounded exciting, with the opportunity of exploring around for a day, but the transfer flight was a little close, and I didn’t want to start rushing around. It turned out to be a great decision...as I’ll explain below!
So the flight from Valencia to Madrid all went smoothly. Being in Madrid airport was enough for me to say that I’ve visited the city...Not really, but it’s an impressive airport – can’t really remember the British airports to compare it though. Waiting around for a while, updating my blog waiting for the gate to Marsalla to open. Oh, wait a second...Where did the flight to Marseille disappear to on the monitor screens?? Instantly suspicious of me having some bad luck here, a few seconds later a red flashing ‘Cancelado’ appears next to the flight. This was to be expected, as there were strikes going on in France at the time. I wouldn’t have had this problem if I didn’t delay my flights for the San Juan festival...No pasa nada – nadando en el mar fue divertido!
With myself and a large group of frogs left in the same situation, we kept together and headed back to the fantastic RyanAir desk. Welcomed by a two-hour long queue, we ended up finding out that they weren’t offering refunds, but instead a useless replacement flight two days later, on Sunday.
Being in contact with parents who could see updated flight information/schedules in France, I went over to terminal 4 to see what the deal was with Iberia airlines, who apparently had a flight going to Nice in the evening. Queuing for about an hour here and finally talking to someone, I was told I wasn’t able to purchase a ticket at this desk, but instead the desk behind. Well that was an hour wasted. The tickets with Iberia ended up being far too expensive, and definitely out of our Erasmus comfort zone of Ryanair! I was however fairly easily managing to understand what people were telling me in Madrid – I was starting to think it was because of the accent, or the fact that the people of Madrid don’t talin in a fast forward >>X8 mode like in Valencia. I prefer to just think I’m improving...:D
From most people’s Erasmus’ experiences, there have been high and low points – Well, this is the only near-close to ‘low’ point I can think of, as I was extremely stressed and pissed off with all this flight rubbish, almost to the point I didn’t care. The situation looked so bad, and without options it looked like I’d have to head back to Valencia (It shouldn’t really be said in a negative way, but after already catching one flight and spending hours waiting around, I wanted to get to France!).
One positive did come out of queuing though, and this was meeting two guys working for the Red Bull marketing team for Formula 1. I chatted them for a while and conversed about what sort of work they did, and if they meet the racers on a regular basis – They do, and their body language suggested a ‘Meh, it’s still a job’. The guys were having problems getting to Valencia, as this was where the Formula 1 race would be taking place this weekend (That notably I’d also be MISSING due to being away! – We had plans to watch it from a balcony, but after hearing the situation from friends in France, it sounded like it was pretty difficult to get a decent view of the race). The second positive was meeting a really friendly Dutch group in the airport queue, who offered me a beer while waiting - muy aprecionado! Beer has never tasted so nice. (it's still not really though...).
With all lack of hope, I returned to the main terminal via bus (even struggling to do this, as every bus I needed to catch seemed to purposely move away from me as I’d approach within 5 metres of it). It was like the buses were playing a game with me. Very amusing for anyone watching, definitely not amusing for me!
So after about 20 hours walking around the airport and queuing (okay maybe about 5 hours), I met up with a couple of the frogs from earlier, and we decided to hire a car from Europcar and drive ourselves to Marseille. At this point I was accepting anything to get myself into France - I knew returning to VLC would change my mood, and I’d no longer want to go through the process again to go on holiday (Damn – really shouldn’t use the word ‘holiday’ here, seeing as I’ve already been living one for the previous six months!).
Due to not having driven since the early part of January, and not liking the idea of driving on the left side of the road with the gearbox on the right, eh? :D, I let the other two people suffer from driving tiredness, while I laid down in the back of the car chilling. I also considered watching an episode of Californication on the laptop, but this may have taken the piss, Haha! I always start to laugh as I think of things like this. Not managing to a get a good night’s sleep since Tuesday due to San Juan, I managed to get some in the car, although this was always interruptedupon stopping at bloody PAY TOLLS in France.
I hadn’t eaten a proper meal since Wednesday either, and I wasn't going to spend about ten euros on a plastic tasting baguette at the airport! To be honest I couldn’t be arsed to eat por el momento anyway. This sentence links perfectly into the topic of Spanglish!
Spanglish is the language we’ve all become mas or menos (more or less) fluent in over the semester, and hearing it from the girl in the car opened my ears to new things! It was by far the best Spanglish I’d heard!
Here are a couple of phrases that impressed me, along with some that our friends in Valencia always laugh at. Credits to Filippo, Romain and Fez for being the top contenders.
I like it con two people
It’s better if you wait hasta...
Dos against dos
Is she your mas or menos girlfriend? - Stan (Polania). My #1 Favourite.
Vamos a las half-past cinco – Filippo (Italia)
I’ll do it mas tarde - This was Fez' I think
Are you going tambien? - Fez
Estoy dentro (I am in) – a literal translation for agreeing to do something (I own copyright to this one!)
Vete adelante! - Go Ahead! - Another literal translation...not sure if this works in Spanish!
These were the good ones I could remember, although some were forgotten when it came to writing the blog!
Going back to the car hire with Europcar – it cost 205 euros mas petrol = 85 euros each. I was happy to pay this, as it meant not having to find a hostel for two nights close to the airport, and wasting days. The journey took around ten hours from Madrid to Marseille, and we arrived at Marseille International Airport at 4.30am. Many people sleeping in the airport, waiting hours for flights – Why is this? – Why delays and cancellations?
From the airport I took a bus service to St Charles gare, a 25 minute ride. I queued for about an hour (even at this time in the night), and was able to book a train ticket (25 euros) direct to Frejus for around 7.30am in the morning. I was surprised this all worked out, as I assumed strikes would further interrupt my travels.
I was looking forward to getting a couple of hours sleep on the train, but this was again disrupted every time the train stopped at each station. Oh the joy of travelling! I woke myself up on time with the laptop alarm, to which amusingly woke up about four others at the same time, with full laptop volume of Guru Josh – Infinity 2008. Hope they enjoyed the wake up as much as I did.
Walking out of Frejus train station...Soooo, Now what? The parents said they’d pick me up, but I wanted the challenge of arriving at the villa myself and surprising them. I knew once I’d find the beach, I’d be able to remember the directions. Asking one old lady where the beach is was totally ignored, as she didn’t take any notice of me, but thankfully the next guy did, and I was on my way...
I’m getting bored of talking about this - It isn't as fun writing about things that happened a while ago! Long story cut short – I walked for about an hour and a half, and had my bit of fun by surprising the parents in the nearest town to our villa :D
Romain taking the mick out of my eyes!
1 comment:
hahaha, best post and best spanglish!! :D
Fez
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