barcelona, day one, part two.
Alright, so, like I said, I had to meet Tin-Win and Sherry at the hotel. The guy at the front desk said, “Are you going to live there?” and I said, “No,” even though I had a shitload of baggage with me. He obviously didn’t believe me, because he said, “If you’re going to live with them, you have to pay extra,” and I said, “OK.”
That evening after I got there, we went and walked around a little………. first stop… dinner. Appropriate. Dinner was this small restaurant. We got there kinda early, and I think it opened at 8PM, so we sat around for a bit and waited for it to open up. When it finally opened, the waitress was really nice and explained things to us because the menu was in Catalan and Spanish and we obviously can’t read the whole godamn thing. She had good English. We also asked her for some suggestions of shit to do, and she went out of her way and tried really hard to find us interesting things to go to. Very nice of her.
We had some bachalau and really rich mushroom pasta and some other stuff. It was fairly tasty and not too expensive. Not too expensive at all. Sherry and Tin-Win got a set meal that came with a whole! bottle! of! wine! and it was okay. Actually, it was gross, because wine is gross. But it is okay in terms of price, because it was a fucking bargain! Actually, most food in Spain is a fucking bargain. I am a fan. This place is definitely way cheaper than elsewhere in Europe… I mean, I think anyway.
After that, we went to La Rambla and just walked around a little. There was this famous? cafe? there and we went outside it and sat on a street bench. Didn’t buy anything although all these people had a red drink and we were trying to figure out the whole time what the red drink was. Anyway, the bench fit three people. It was divided in half. The three of us sat on the left half, and the right half was empty. At some point, a chubby dude with glasses comes and sits down next to us. He has a flyer. He wants to know where so-and-so place is. This, by the way, is like the second time someone has asked us or me for directions. When I first got to Barcelona and was running through the EXTREMELY HOT subway, some guy stopped to ask me for directions. More of those to come later in Spain as well. Apparently, we look like we know what we’re doing, even when we don’t.
Anyway, guy sits down. He has an interesting accent. We ask him where he’s from. He’s Russian. But he doesn’t have the hot Russian accent, so what good is he?!!! He’s asking around and trying to find out where the bar is, but no dice. No one knows. Everyone’s a tourist. I tell him I’ll go with him, because I can translate, because he doesn’t know any Spanish. We approach a group of people, but he insists on speaking English… it’s a group of relatively young kids from Guadalajara, Spain. Apparently, only one of them knows how to speak enough English to answer us. He tells us he doesn’t know, though, cause he’s a tourist, too. Hell, most Spanish tourists are Spanish. It’s pretty fucking weird.
So we approach an Indian dude standing near the Metro. He doesn’t speak English.
So we approach a taxi driver, and he knows what’s up. We return to the group. This Russian guy without hot Russian accent is, by the way, there with two of his friends. They work for CitiBank or some shit and are there for training. Why doesn’t he have a hot accent? He’s Russian, but lived in New Zealand for seven years. His name is also weird. It’s Maxim. Anyway, I’m really interested by all this, because, I just went to Russia, and well, he’s a random stranger and random strangers are fun. Tin-Win and Sherry, however, don’t seem to be amused or enthused at all. Maxim’s friends, Vladimir and Dmitry (nice Russian names… Dmitry joked that we can call Vlad “Putin”), were there with him as well. They didn’t really talk to us… Dmitry said a couple lines, but the other guy didn’t say anything.
Maxim wanted us to go with them but Tin-Win and Sherry didn’t want to, of course. I can’t wholly blame them, because it didn’t seem that exciting anyway, but it was just funny how much they didn’t even want to talk to them. Finally, Sherry said that we would walk with them halfway and we would part ways then.
Along the way, Maxim said that he wanted to say something to Sherry. Sherry was jokingly scared. He asked if he could be honest. What he said next is not, I don’t think, what any of us were expecting.
He started off by saying that I was cool and supportive and open and easy to get along with. He said that was the good stuff. Then he said that Tin-Win was supportive of me, because although Tin-Win didn’t want to go out, she said, “If you want to, I will.”
He said that Sherry seemed defensive and insecure. Interesting. o__O
The only (primarily) funny part was that after he said that, half an hour later, Sherry was still saying, “I can’t believe he said that!” which kind of, in some ways, proves his point. Ha ha? But yeah, kinda weird that he said that stuff to begin with.
What was also funny is that he couldn’t believe our English was so good. He’s not the only one, we would soon find out. Many Europeans are quite amazed when Asian people have good English! It’s quite funny. We said he was American, and he’s like, “But you look Asian!” How to we even respond to that?!!!!