goodbye my liver

When I woke up on Friday morning, I was thinking about enjoying a relaxing weekend at home, on the couch, binge-watching something... well, maybe next weekend.

Should have had more caffeine at work.

After work I met with a Basque friend of mine, who I got to know in our Catalan course. We wanted to find Euskal Etxea, a Basque house, because neither of us had been there. We took the metro to Arc de Triomf (Jaume I would have been a lot better...), but we never actually made it to Euskal Etxea. We found many interesting bars instead, with many interesting people, including a Finnish-Spanish couple who had met in a Czech course. I think it was at around 3am when we finally found Euskal Etxea, but it was already closed... at this point everything gets a bit blurry; we took taxis to different night clubs because we really felt like dancing, and oh boy did we dance.

Stupic gin&tonics made the search more difficult :D

When I woke up on Saturday, I was still drunk, and that continued the whole day. I blame the midday beers and the beers after that. I met some Esperantists in the evening; an Italian friend who I got to know in my first Esperanto meeting in Torricella 9 years ago, and a Vietnamese friend who I first met in the World Congress of Esperanto in Hanoi 2.5 years ago. I also met a new friend, a local Esperantist, and we sat with his friends and had a loud, chaotic, Mecixan pica-pica in Esperanto, Spanish, and Catalan. One of the guys came to me and asked if I was the multilingual girl who was interviewed for El Periódico last June. He was the first one who recognized me!

Nachos with bacon. I could feel my arteries closing up.

Today was a bit more... well, calm. I met with these Esperanto people and few of the local friends, and I had my first calçotada! Basically, you have lots of grilled green onions which you then peel with bare hands and dip in romesco sauce. After that there was grilled meat, potatoes, and white beans, and for dessert we had some crema catalana and ice cream. And cava and red wine and ratafia, local liqueur. I was feeling very happy when I left :D then I met another local Esperantist for some beers, we chatted in Catalan and I'm quite proud of being able to form sentences by myself, even if it takes a while!

Calcotada is serious business, hence our fashion. Picture taken by Flama.

After the battle. Picture taken by Dani with Flama's phone.

Tomorrow is my 1-year anniversary with Barcelona... I can't believe how quickly time flies!

Arts and crafts and creepy guys

So... what's wrong with Catalan men? I had a weird encounter today, it was the second one in a week; I left work at the same time with our Arabian Quality Manager, and chatted  with him in front of the metro station of Catalunya before going in. I took the green line and was supposed to get off at Fontana, after the stations of Passeig de Grácia and Diagonal. 

The metro was packed and I was listening to music, when we got to Passeig de Grácia and many people entered, including this one man, who winked at me. I got flustered and started playing with my phone, and he came to stand behind me. He touched me, and I thought that there was simply no space behind him, but then he moved his hand to my butt. That was one of those absurd situations where I just feel like laughing out loud. We got rather quickly to Fontana, and I don't know if it was his station too, but he exited the metro behind me. I took the escalators and was thinking of something clever to say, but then someone came to stand between us and he wasn't able to follow me. As I got out of the metro station I turned around, and he was still following me, looking straight into my eyes and smiling. I managed to lose him on my way to the place where the local Esperantists meet.

I didn't feel threatened at any point, I'm just sad that I wasn't able to snap at him in Spanish. I had a somewhat similar situation last Thursday; I left work and was on my way to this makeup store, when a well-dressed guy stopped me at Plaça de Catalunya and asked for directions to some restaurant. I told him that I don't know where it is, since I haven't been here that long, and then he just started walking with me and chatting, in Spanish and Catalan. He was about to go to the direction where the makeup store was, so I told him that I was going the other way, to La Rambla, and he said that he will accompany me there because he liked talking to me. 

Well, we walked La Rambla, all the way to the harbor, and he told me things about tourist attractions and different places along the way. He even introduced me to one of his friends that we met on the street. We walked for a few hours and it was really nice, he even showed me this one restaurant that looked like a magical forest. At that point it was already like 10pm, so I said that I should go home. We went to the metro station, and he asked if he could cook for me at his place. I said that I'm going home, alone, and then he started to describe very vividly what he would do to me if I went with him. I understood every single word, and he was telling me those things while we were surrounded by people! Once again, I was just laughing out loud and thinking about my trademark quote, mitä vittua täällä oikein tapahtuu (what the fuck is going on here - something I shouted in Bar 11 in Reykjavík several years ago... good times). I'm not used to that kind of attention from strangers.

And that's that. Yesterday I went to this Danish shop called Tiger and bought glue for decoupage. I didn't have a pencil holder at work, so I decided to make one for myself.

before...

...and after.

Looks like I found myself a choir! And the rehearsals are very close to where I live! I will go there on Monday and sing something, so they will know where to place me as they have several different choirs. I'm so excited! I love this city a bit more every day.

yesterday after lunch break. wow, much rainy, such warmth