387: In the wrong place at the wrong time - almost!

Yesterday I came the closest I've ever been to being directly involved in a terrorist attack. I had arranged to spend some time at a 'gin and music' evening - well, who wouldn't - hosted by InterNations, a worldwide ex-pat group. It was scheduled to take place from 8-10 p.m. at the Petit Palace Boqueria garden hotel. It is located just off Las Ramblas, the most famous thoroughfare in Barcelona. Just before 5  p.m. the terrorists struck by swerving a van left and right into pedestrians walking along Las Ramblas. They killed 13 people and injured about 100 others. 3 hours later I would have been there. It could have been me. A sobering thought. There but for the grace of God....

                                     

In passing I wondered if this church was offering sanctuary:

My accommodation for the night was in the university halls of residence off avenue Diagonal, a long way from the incident, so instead of supping G&T I found a nearby Burger King and had to put up with a burger and a beer. I coped. Admirably.

The secondary reason for the visit was to visit/recce some (language) book shops for when I become inundated with Spanish students who want to brush up their English. This morning though, in the light of events, I decided not to bother but to go almost straight home. Not far from the Barcelona Sants railway station is a big square called Espanya and there can be found an old arena, it presumably once hosted bull fights, which is now given over to shops, a multi-screen cinema and 4 underground levels of car parking. I had a quick wander.

Turns out there was a second terrorist attack yesterday, this time in Cambrils - 5 miles from where I live in Salou. Police shot dead 5 terrorists. 

Spain, of course, is reeling, and they have announced 3 days of mourning. Those attacked in Las Ramblas came from 34 different countries. I have had "update my what to do when I'm dead letter" hovering near the bottom of the to-do list. This is a letter I prepared some years ago telling my executors which mattresses my pennies were hidden in. It is time to move it to the top of the to-do list. One never knows when there will be a bullet with one's name on it. Sorry to be maudlin.

One question, which is puzzling me, for the more sophisticated amongst you. I was puzzled by seeing several Nespresso shops. They all seemed to be almost empty. What is the point of them? Is this indicative of a new fad about to sweep the world, courtesy of George Clooney? This old dinosaur simply puts instant coffee into a cup and pours hot water onto it, topping it up with some milk.

                    

The video, to finish, is a bit "rude". It features the "F word" in many of it's incarnations. If you don't like that kind of thing, and I generally don't, then please don't watch it. I am including it because there is a message to the terrorists right at the end. 

386: Dizzy Dezzy

I've hardly stopped since I got back from Spain on 13th July. I'm almost dizzy from all the travelling. I gave blood on 14th at the Cambridge Blood Transfusion Centre at Addenbrookes hospital. The interesting thing about giving blood these days is that some time after your donation you get an SMS to say which hospital it has gone to. I wonder if they'll ever tell us which person it has gone to. Would I want to know? Perhaps not. But we're all flesh and blood and all equal in the eyes of the Lord. 

The following day Olga and Alya arrived to spend the night chez nous. Olga is one of my Skype students from Russia and was in London with her daughter for some intensive English tuition. They spent a few hours exploring the delights of Cambridge and I picked them up from there to transport them to the rural idyll that is Ramsey. They seemed to enjoy their time with us and on Sunday went back to the bright lights of London.   

On 21st we headed off to Lancaster for an overnight stay before the 3½ hour ferry journey to the Isle of Man. I had carelessly bought train tickets from Lancaster to Heysham for Sunday 23rd rather than Saturday 22nd but some grovelling at the ticket office elicited the correct tickets at no extra charge. 

A very nice, relaxing week in the Isle of Man before heading back to Lancaster for another overnight stay before trogging North to Scotland for the duty visit to Mother-in-Law. 

A few walks hither and thither to start rehearsals for my two upcoming long walks: 15 km around Osterbeek (near Arnhem) in early September and 30 km across the Scottish Cairngorms on 24th September. If you're reading this and haven't yet succumbed to the urge to sponsor me on the long walk then please feel free to donate.

And finally, before I go back to Spain tomorrow, there was a 15 minute helicopter ride over Cambridge earlier today given to me as a present from No 1 daughter. Thank you Mo, it was great.

A small selection of photos taken during the month and a short video of the Nigg ferry 'docking'. What fun that was driving on and off.

Cambridge

lovely view of King's College from 2,200 feet.

The Isle of Man

The Nigg Ferry

385: The magic talking fish

Two people very close to me have asked for another blog, so here goes.

Salou port

sorry about the focus - I wanted to emphasize the mountains in the background as well as the hotels at the water's edge.

I arrived in Salou, my new 'base of operations' just over a week ago. The journey here, from Warsaw, was not without incident. We touched down in Barcelona's Terminal 1 about 30 minutes late. Not a problem. No time at all to clear the airport as both Poland and Spain are in the Schengen agreement . I took the free bus shuttle to Terminal 2 and walked along the aerial walkway to the train station. Unfortunately, the little window, where they usually sell train tickets, had the blinds down. I think they were having what I will call a mañana break. That's a shame, I thought to myself, as there is a train waiting to leave. I approached a ticket machine with some trepidation. There was an option to get instructions in English, which I pounced on with relish. What there wasn't was a destination called Salou. I think the machine was just for destinations local to Barcelona. I bought a ticket to Barcelona Sants and turned to watch the train pulling out of the station. 30 minutes to wait for the next one. Never mind, time for una cerveza while I waited. As I was boarding the train I noticed that the little window had its blinds up and was again open for business.

Unfortunately again, when I got Barcelona Sants there were approximately 3 minutes to change to the Salou train and I had no ticket. Of course, by the time I bought the ticket that train too had left. Only 90 minutes to wait for the next one. Hey ho.

By the time I got to my little flat in Salou I was more than ready for an early night. 

Since then I've been soaking up the sun most days. My kit arrived from Warsaw at midnight on Monday evening. Yes, midnight. Most of it is unpacked now and has been chucked haphazardly into any old drawer or cupboard for later sorting out. The 17 boxes of various sizes, 2 holdalls and 1 sun lounger all arrived safely. A bargain at 1,000 Euros. Have a look at the Dutch auction on clicktrans.pl if you ever want to have stuff moved across Europe.

On Tuesday I ordered a unit from Carrefour online to hold the PC and printer. None of your Amazon next day delivery option here. It was shown as 3-5 working days and the tracking status still shows "order being processed". I do hope they can finally get a wiggle on as I'm flying back to UK on Thursday.   

The weather changed today and we've had rain and some thunder. Apparently the rest of Spain, where the rain falls mainly on the plain, has already had it for the last day or so. Here in Salou I have been enduring 30 degrees most days. 

I'm reading an interesting book by Bill Browder, who was the driving force behind Hermitage Capital Management. It is called Red Notice (How I became Putin's No. 1 enemy). He has lots of stories and anecdotes and I was particularly amused by the Russian proverb about a Magic Fish. "One day a poor villager happens upon a magic talking fish that is ready to grant him a single wish. Overjoyed, the villager weighs his options - maybe a castle, or a thousand bars of gold..... As the villager is about to make his decision, the fish interrupts him to say there is one important caveat: whatever the villager gets, his neighbour will receive two of the same. Without skipping a beat the villager says 'in that case, please poke one of my eyes out'."   

384: Bring on the McDonalds!

I'm in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. My last chance to explore this particular part of North East Europe before my move to Spain at the end of the month. I can say that I have at least tried the local food. Yesterday evening I found myself in a "cafe" two minutes away from my hotel (Vilnius City Hotel). The menu was only in Lithuanian and I had not a word of that particular language to my name (I have since discovered that if you make a sound as if you're sneezing, "achoo", then that means thank you).  So, back to the old tried and tested method of closing the eyes and jabbing a finger somewhere on the menu. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I ended up with a Lithuanian staple called cepelinai but it wasn't for me I'm afraid. Back to the hotel and to bed with a beer. You can't go wrong with a beer. Unless you have too many and then, of course, there is the potential to go very wrong.

Luckily, this morning, during my walkabout, I found a McDonalds. Right in front of the station. Haven't ventured inside yet but I feel more comfortable now I know it is there as a standby. :)

A few selected pics from my perambulations this morning. Some I've captioned and some not. Off to Kaunas tomorrow - probably, before flying back to Warsaw on Monday.

This so reminds me of Odessa with the locals laying out their wares for private sale.

A very ornate covered market. I though it was the train station when I saw it first.

 

Graffiti? or street art? It certainly gets the message across.	Lots of old wooden houses around - at least in this one there is a large choice of TV channels to watch.

383: Oh this year I'm off to sunny Spain.....

I've done it! I've bought a tiny apartment (a bijou pied-a-terre to use most of my Franglais in one go) in Salou on the Costa Dourada and at the end of June I will move my teaching base from Poland to Spain. Bring on the sunshine.

This blog will take a slightly different format from my usual 'travelogue' style and instead I will give the reader an insight into the kind of things you might like to consider if you ever decide to buy a property abroad - and one or two things that tripped me up.

Once I had decided I wanted to move to Spain I had to decide where. In theory the further South one goes the warmer the climate. Around Malaga and Alicante would have been ideal if I was simply seeking the sun. But actually I wanted to keep the same working regime as I have at the moment (i.e. 3 weeks 'abroad' and 1 week in UK). Looked at from that point of view then somewhere 'near' Barcelona would be better. I started looking at properties on the internet that were on the Costa Brava (North of Barcelona) or Costa Dourada (South of Barcelona). Once I found what I hoped were reputable estate agents (realtors to my American friends) I signed on and sat back to wait for details of a plethora of available properties to come winging their way into my in box.

It wasn't a plethora because there wasn't that much available in my price range but there were a few that I thought I might like and I decided to visit and inspect them. Then I made my first mistake. I decided to visit Spain on 5th January because it was Epiphany in Poland and there would therefore be no lessons to miss. Stupid boy - it was Epiphany in Spain too so the estate agents were closed. In fact it turns out that in the winter most of them are closed on Saturdays as well. At least I got a look at the local geography but I had to arrange another visit to view any properties.

I went back a few weeks later and had a look at a couple of properties that looked interesting. I whittled down the list to just one, in Cambrils, and made a tentative offer. It wasn't ideal, and didn't even have a balcony. At this point fate intervened and nothing happened for several weeks. I decided to start looking again and found the palace I am now the owner of. Do please notice that the first 'a' in palace has been crossed out.

Before moving in I had to get a NIE number and open a Spanish bank account. Without either of these things it is impossible to buy property in Spain. The first proved easier than I had thought and the second much more difficult. I downloaded an application form for an NIE and presented it, and several other documents, to the Spanish Consulate in London. I had fully expected the trip to be in vain and to be told that I needed all sorts of other documents but no, they accepted what I had taken along, with only minor modifications, and a few weeks later my NIE appeared in my email in box. The bank account was a different story. When I opened a bank account in Poland a couple of years ago I simply showed them my passport and hey presto, here is your account number and debit card Sir. In Spain, rather different. I needed to prove not only who I was but how much my pension was and where I had got the money I was hoping to plough into this property in Salou. It's all done now and internet banking is fine but it was a bit of a naus jumping through all the hoops to prove I wasn't laundering money.

I've rambled for long enough. There can be a Part II but it will only appear on request.

hang on a minute...

Welcome to the Med

382:A Greek tragedy

In ancient Greek theatre a play in which the protagonist, usually a man of importance and outstanding personal qualities, falls to disaster through the combination of a personal failing and circumstances with which he cannot deal! In my humble opinion (IMHO to use the abbreviated language of the internet & social media) every one of us has an almost daily struggle with a combination of personal failing and circumstances, to a greater or lesser degree. Look at that poor immigrant lad the other day - set upon and badly beaten by a gang of yobs who had succumbed to group dynamics. Wrong place, wrong time.  Circumstances over which he had no control - simply a matter of bad luck.

What prompted the title? I am in Athens, the cradle of Western civilization, for a few days R&R. 

I arrived yesterday afternoon on an Aegean air flight from Warsaw. After so many Ryanair flights it was a pleasant change to be offered a meal on board. There was even a choice. The choice was take it or leave it. There were a few people drinking wine, which seemed to be hidden in the inner recesses of the trolley, but I was happy enough with water, having topped up with G&T in the business lounge at Warsaw Chopin. 

The flight was pleasant enough and the transit through Athens airport was very fast, thanks largely to the Schengen agreement.  Good old Google maps helped me navigate to my hotel in the centre of town. It was a little unusual getting off the train and going up the elevator to the metro. I had been expecting to go down but the metro only goes underground when it gets nearer to the city centre. 

I'm just back from a very nice breakfast where I was sitting next to a nice young lady. She was armless enough though.

Dinner last night was, predictably enough, a moussaka, eaten sitting outside a cafe on a pedestrian precinct and watching the world (and his wife) go by. The moussaka arrived very quickly, prompting me to speculate that it had just been 'otted up in a microwave. Nevertheless, it did the job.

I don't propose to knock myself out over the next few days visiting the sights but rather to relax and slow down for a while. 

Now though, as an Englishman working out of Poland and visiting Greece, it is almost time for my daily Spanish lessons.  And while I'm mixing cultures let me finish with a video clip of Nana Mouskouri singing Abba!!

Who doesn't have a dream?

381: Crimbo limbo

The urban dictionary entry for Crimbo Limbo says "The period after Christmas Day and before New Year's Eve, mainly spent sitting down and eating leftovers. Many find it extremely dull."
I must confess I don't find it dull at all. It's been a long long time since I was bored and could say I had nothing to do.
My Crimbo Limbo is being spent in Golspie, in the North of Scotland. In between eating too much and drinking too much I have found time for a few walks to enjoy the beautiful Highland scenery - if not the Highland weather. Here is a picture taken at what the locals call  "the big burn". Those of my family who walk included it as part of a 4-mile trek around the village.

The 'children', who were up for a few days, have gone home and back to their busy lifestyles. Peace and tranquility has descended for the last day of the year. Hogmanay will pass quietly in this household.

At the end of November I went to Amsterdam for a few days to soak up the culture. I found it a very nice city with lots to see and do. I managed to visit quite a few interesting places, including the famous red light district. I hasten to add I was only looking in through the windows, not looking out. I read afterwards that the 'going rate' for 'standard' services is 50 euros for 15 minutes. Unfortunately I ran out of time and didn't manage to sample the wares in the 'coffee shops'. Maybe next time. Here are a few of the pictures I took.
My video clip is of the Red Army Choir singing the Volga Boat song. In memory of the Russian plane that crashed into the Black Sea earlier this week. I understand that many musicians perished. May their souls rest in peace.

Happy New Year to my few loyal readers.

С новым годом

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