Carpe Annum

(L-R) Coco, Juanita y Concepción 

Last year I had a conversation with a friend about maintaining a long distance relationship whilst being abroad in a country where the girls are notoriously beautiful and the food (especially Valencian paella) is second to none. After a long period of consideration we decided that, for me to get the most out of my year in Spain, I needed to try to eat as many Spanish babes and bang as much paella as I possibly could. So how have I done? As tasty as my friends Coco, Juanita and Concepción look, I'm yet to eat them and I don't plan to before I leave in the next two weeks. As far as the paella is concerned, I've been slightly more successful. One morning after the night before, I woke up in a hungover stupor sitting on a sofa with one foot quite happily sitting in a plate of a paella and the other (still in a cast from my Parkour injury) on a chair next to the paella. Partial success.

The run up to exams recently has been filled with the inevitable time spent in the library and trip to Ibiza. A group of us took a trip to the latter a few weeks ago for a long weekend with the intention of learning about the Eivissenc dialect and how it compares to our more familiar Valencian dialect. I had an awesome time and went for lots of swims.

Life in the fast lane

Three particular observations from the library are worth pointing out. First, excess Spanish public displays of affection do not limit themselves to outside the four mighty walls of learning. It is very common to see a couple fondling each other, opposite you, and exchanging saliva whilst highlighting their notes. Second, it is not uncommon to see cool people smoking a spliff during their revision break. Third, at 6 o'clock everyone has a tea-time break called 'Merienda' where everyone seems to bizarrely congregate to slurp on their carton of milk and peach juice and nom on Bart Simpson endorsed break sticks before returning to normality again. Other than that, most things are the same unsurprisingly.

Before I came here I optimistically predicted that I'd be going to Benicassim with all my new (and cool) amigos. I am saddened to tell you that this is not happening and I am in fact returning to the motherland later this month. However, I did ask myself how it would be staying forever and entering abuelohood here. Again, this dream was shattered when I went to one of the city's parks and saw a respectable looking abuelo walk straight under a tree to rub his face against the leaves of the low hanging branches before moving on to tickle the top of his head with a bit of lavender. I understand how this might be a nice thing to do at lunchtime but I'd prefer a different sort of retirement.

(Ibizan) Sunset on the Adventures of Simon Baker

I could continue and complain that my lectures are copied and pasted from Wikipedia or be cynical about the advert draped over one whole side of the football stadium that advertises holidays to Turkey and Greece with a photo of Venice, but these are minute things in an otherwise wonderful city. I've thoroughly enjoyed being here and being with the fantastic people that I've met along the way. Sin duda, a year I won't forget.

Muchas gracias y hasta luego,

Simon

Hello,

It's been seven months since I arrived here and I'm still confused about one thing: do Spanish people stare at me because I'm outrageously good looking or because I look ridiculously foreign? I've resisted the traditional Spanish hairstyle thus far but I'm starting to think that, as I only have just over two months left, it might be time for me to get the traditional chop for the sake of belonging and being stared at less.

My quest for linguistic perfection is continuing and every intention I have is a good one. For instance, when I was booking my bus online for a recent trip to the north of Spain, I had the choice between two seats to myself or one next to a stranger. Obviously I chose the seat next to the stranger as I figured that this (10 hour journey) would be a perfect way to meet and practice with what I predicted could be a friend for life sitting next to me. Unfortunately, Fortuna had something else in store for me and she decided to place me next to a charming man who not only smelt of durian but also I immediately suspected that he couldn't speak a word of Spanish. I gradually worked this out whenever he passed me his ringing phone and saying "it's for you" and I had the lucky opportunity to speak to his shouting friend every 15 minutes. Not a problem, I'm sure I'll get plenty more opportunities.

Punctuality in Spain is notoriously awful. There was a special announcement in one of my classes to say that the following week the same class would actually be starting on time and that it wouldn't be 30 minutes late like normal. In another class the teacher stood up fifteen minutes in (having been fifteen minutes late) to say that she was stopping the class as we were covering the material too quickly. These aren't really issues for a country where you know that tomorrow is another (working) day but here things are quite different.

A Falla: Bacchus having a bath

The mother of all holidays here is a celebration called 'Fallas' where the city shuts down and the party begins for 5 days straight. This is something I had been looking forward to since I had arrived and it is quite impossible to describe to the outsider how the whole thing happens. Each neighbourhood has a sort of society called a 'casal faller' that raises money to build vast papier-mâché structures called 'fallas' and these are placed in each neighbourhood for all to walk past and see. Valencia is known to be the European capital of fireworks (as I was told by a drunk man) and it is with no surprise that the law is changed for the duration of this festival so that you can throw almost military grade explosives in the street. It's impossible to sleep. Everyday at 2pm for the first 19 days of March there is a firework display in the main plaza called the 'Mascletà' which is more to do with sound than light. It is worth a watch for the last minute or so of the video, look at the decibel count. There is a 30min firework display every night followed the inevitable street parties throughout the streets of the entire city. On the last night of 'Fallas' all the 'fallas' (the structures) are gloriously burnt and it is an absolute pleasure to see roughly €200,000-300,000 go up in smoke. Book your flights for next year.

How to burn €s

I've become marginally interested in Parkour here and tried to perfect something similar to this trick the other night and managed to do some damage. I found myself the following morning sitting in a wheelchair waiting for an X-ray alongside the elderly (who I presumed all had Parkour injuries as well) as well as a Jim Morrison lookalike staring at me and talking to himself. After unsuccessfully asking for some crutches, I found myself hopping out of the hospital with the same hop I entered it with and I sat in the back of a taxi whilst the radio appropriately played REM's 'Everybody Hurts'.

New Balance/No Balance

The Spanish don't tend to say goodbye too often. Instead they opt for 'hasta luego' which means see you later. Although they're very friendly, they do have a competitive edge. For instance if you're in a lift and someone else enters they'll immediately greet you. The lift silence commences until they get off/you get off. At this point it is common to say 'hasta luego'. Very friendly. But what you don't realise is that there is an unwritten competition whereby the person who says 'hasta luego' in a more ridiculous way gets a point, and instead they say something along the lines of 'awa wego' or 'aaaaaaaaaao' or' 'ao'. This is very fun and now that I've cracked the game I'm starting to rack up points which I hope will lead me to Spanish paradise (fluency). You should play it as well.

¡Aaaaaaaaaao!

Writer's Blog

It's tough being a blogger. It's hard to constantly satisfy my dedicated readership with periodic insights and opinions about my adventures abroad. I've finally emerged from this creative drought (Christmas in the UK and exam period tumbleweed) and am now ready to deliver what so many of you have been asking me for.

Trying new things: tasty rabbit

I come from England where exams are very important, timetables are drafted months in advance, special exam halls are set up and lined paper (a basic necessity for any first world exam) is kindly provided by whoever is setting the exam. Here, things are slightly different. There is no such thing as telling the student the structure of an exam, the concept of 'past paper' does not exist and the student is notified about the time and the place of the exam less that 48 hours in advance. When it comes to the actual exam there always seems to be a nail for a clock, but no clock, plain paper is handed out sparingly and the student is expected to write essays and aim for the highest mark, 1/1.

Revising was made bearable by two things. First, reading through my notes and discovering words that I had misspelt consistently. In one of my classes, the lecturer always used to speak about 'Los Pactos de...' and I was never able to grasp the '...'. I had written down a mixture of Barmacoa, Barballoca, Bonamaclao, Bomacloa and Balmacloa, but never the correct 'Pactos de Moncloa'. This shows me that I should stop shying away from my dictaphone in an attempt to look 'cool' and secretly record my lectures like the Erasmus student that I actually am. Second, revising in my room gave me ample opportunities to look outside my window and see the hilarious world below. On the street where I live there is a weekly flea market for stolen bicycles, books etc. but there is an unfortunate lack of parking. A group of innovative entrepreneurs have come up with a genius and illegal idea to direct market goers on to pavements, help them park and charge them a couple of euros for this service. The police know about this and often stealthily creep up on these entrepreneurs. For me, the voyeur from above, this provides excellent amusement as I can see the game of cops and robbers in full swing; the entrepreneurs loitering in the streets trying to look as if they are on the phone or waiting for someone, the cops surprising them and the entrepreneurs running away, hiding behind cars and peeping around corners to see if the coast is clear.

It must be normal to stare out of windows here. Everyone in Valencia lives in flats and from time to time whilst eating my breakfast on the 6th floor, I see a Chinese man smoking on the 12th floor in the building opposite staring intently at me. This ability to stare at people is one of the great perks of living in a flat. One might think that those that live in flats are unable to keep pets in the same way as those that live in houses, but recently I've come to the conclusion that this is not the case. It's normal and accepted here to take your dog for a walk and allow him to do his business anywhere in the street and as long as no one is looking (except me who is staring from above) and you can keep walking on as if you were leaving a banana behind in Mario Kart. I've seen rabbits and snakes in flats, something I can understand, but the other day I saw a man taking his pet pig on a lead to do his business on the pavement. The pig was oinking away as happy as he could be and unphased by all the passers by taking a second look at what they had just seen and believed to be a pig taking a crap in the middle of a city. We're looking into buying a hamster.

Cicero Baker

'What about football?' I hear you asking me. Yes, i'm still #1 fan. In fact, the other day I experienced Andy Warhol's 'Feghouli Minutes of Fame' by being in the right place at the right time. I was buying tickets for a game and the next thing I knew Feghouli was standing next to me also buying tickets. Video cameras and the press appeared taking photos of him and I was asked to give an interview about Feghouli's career ( I don't know anything about him and managed to say that I thought he had a really great game last weekend to which the interviewer replied that he had been injured- fortunately they cut this bit out). Nonetheless, although I'm concerned about my accent in this, I'm happy with my hair and also about the fact that I was neither dubbed nor subtitled. Have a look at my interview, I appear at 1:21 and 3:45.

I watched a documentary about the tough economic conditions currently faced by Spain at the moment and over half of the programme was dedicated to Valencia and the criticism over its recent (and seemingly useless) public expenditure. From here I learnt that there is a bus tour of all the wasteful and costly projects of the City. If that's not enough to tempt you to come visit me, the design festival is up and coming. I'll sign off with the slogan for the festival, something I'm sure you won't want to miss.

Valencian Fine Art

From Valencia, With Design

Laters x