Barcelona and the Dutch

Took the train to Barcelona a couple of days ago. The train was great. It was on time, air-conditioned, clean, and cheap. Kind of like what English trains must dream of being.

Barcelona is gorgeous, filled with absolutely crazy architecture. They were celebrating some anniversary of Gaudi's birth, death, loss-of-virginity, or something, so we wandered around the town and took a gander at some of his buildings. We went on a tour of Casa Milla and walked around the outside of the Sagruda Familia amongst others. We didn't actually go into the Sagruda Familia which I'll have to do another day. We were a bit hot and tired by that point in the day and there was a bit of a line (in the way that Jupiter is a bit of a planet). Crazy stuff, though, all of it. This area of Spain produced Gaudi, Picasso, and Dali: all of whom specialised in weird-ass art. That alone is a good reason to move here.

The Hell with dreaming of a one bedroom flat in London that I can't afford. I now dream of a crazy brightly coloured weirdly shaped palace in Barcelona that I can't afford.

Why am I living in London anyway? It's filthy. Public transport there is the laughing stock of Europe. When you go out, no one wants to eat anything; they just want to drink gallons of horrific tasting beer and throw up in the street. Barcelona ROCKS compared with London, although admittedly I was only there for a day. Continued exposure might reveal a few flaws. I suspect the heat could get to me after a while.

Oh, and I don't speak Spanish. I should probably sort that out before I move here. I bought what I thought was some antiperspirent the other day and it seems to be some kind of aeresol perfume. I'm still spraying it on my pits in the hopes that it's just strongly scented but I'm a touch doubtful. Vicki says it "smells like Germany". Whatever that means.

Possibly it was intended for the German Tourist market, though there don't seem to be a lot of Germans here. Lots of Dutch though. If you have to pick a holiday resort town, by the way. You can't do much better than picking one full of Dutch tourists.

English and German package tourists have some rather well-documented flaws. But Dutch tourists seem to consist entirely of gorgeous impossibly tall blonde women with a penchant for going topless on the beach. They also have one of the most amusing accents in the world. They all sound like some kind of cartoon character, the kind that makes you laugh just to hear them.

Easy on the eyes, easy on the ears: that´s the Dutch.