🚄🚄🚄 ready for takeoff
As I already wrote, the high-speed 🚄 Valencia-Barcelona looks cool. Kind of resembles a rocket lying on its side. Even covered in soot, as if it's jet-propelled. Actually, almost all long-distance routes in Spain are electrified (in fact, 2/3 of all routes are electrified). All high-speed trains in Spain start with the letter A - AVLO, AVE, AVANT. This comes from the abbreviation Alta Velocidad. Very convenient - it's immediately clear that the train is high-speed. High-speed means from 200 to 330 km/h. Like a real 🚀.
🚻 at the train station is paid, and quite expensive, around 1-1.5 euros. But there's a little shelf for a 👜 above the urinal - I don't recall seeing anything like that before. And you can pay contactless, which is way more convenient than digging for coins. ¡Finally the wireless civilization has reached us! Unlike public transport.
In Eindhoven, Netherlands, where I was before returning, it's even cooler. They recently implemented a system I already talked about - where you just tap your card on the validator when boarding and getting off. Convenient, but we are the ones paying for this beauty - tickets there cost 3-4 euros, which is just insane. I definitely don't earn enough to live there. In my city, a 🚕 sometimes costs that much.
My seat was a single one, with plenty of legroom, and a little shelf for a 💻. Conveniently placed, too, you don't have to press it right up against your belly like on a plane. At the entrance to the carriage, there's a rack for large 🛄, and above the heads - for hand luggage. You can take several suitcases with you, but the total weight is limited, though no one really checks. What they do check is with a scanner, like at the airport. Unfortunately, this all appeared after a series of terrorist attacks at the beginning of the century. Spain actually has a long tradition of terrorist attacks - anarchists, nationalists, leftists, and, finally, jihadists. Which kind of hints to us that despite their politeness, a devil lives in the soul of a Spaniard. Pozner talked about the exact same thing in his series of shows with Urgant.
I liked the train, although it has its downsides. When it switches some substations along the way, especially when passing through a tunnel, a power surge happens in the outlets (at every seat). When I was going to Girona, it didn't bother me. But when I broke my laptop screen in Girona and was traveling back, I was using an external monitor. It kept turning off, which was mildly infuriating.
National cultural codes in communication
I was taking the 🚅 to Girona not directly, but with a transfer in Barcelona. Surprisingly, closer to Barcelona, a conductor approached me. In tolerable English, he informed me that I didn't have to get off the train, but I would need to change carriages and seats. I asked: ¿but can I still get off anyway? You can, but it's not mandatory. So that's what we agreed on.
The thing is, when the 👅 is not native for either of you, everyone talks like a wooden dummy: repeating things twice. Otherwise, the risk of misunderstanding is just too high. This is especially relevant in an official situation, like a 🚅, which is even specifically advertised to tourists. Maybe the cultural approach also carries some weight. There are civilizations where it's implied that everyone is smart, and you have to guess the hidden meanings, hints, and conclusions. Like in France, or in Asia. There are places where it's customary to politely and carefully use words and repeat things twice so that everyone gets it, like in the USA. And then there are places where they just speak bluntly, like in the Netherlands. Fortunately, everything was simple here, and I got out at the " Saints " station in Barcelona to buy ☕️ and a 🥐. There are wonderful children's climbing frames nearby in the shape of a 🐉. I don't know how comfortable they are, but it's cool that they made it like that. In Nice, I think, there are also interesting ones, in the shape of a 🏴☠️⛵️. I don't know what kind they make in 🇷🇺 now, but in my city in Latvia, the climbing frames, while beautiful and convenient, are usually quite boring.
Having once again gone through the rather formal 🩻, I barely made it to the train. Because of its compactness in width and height, the train is very long. Even though the carriages are clearly numbered (in Spanish and Catalan, like everything around here), running to your carriage is a whole quest. Usually, my nerves give out, and I get into a carriage earlier than I need to. There's enough room inside anyway, so you don't really bother anyone — yet another advantage over aviation, where everyone is constantly crowding and waiting.
By mid-day, I reached my destination. There I got on a bus, where, fortunately, I could pay directly with a card, albeit expensively. It turned out that I was living on a hill, and I would have to ride my bike up to a hellish height. This slightly chipped away at my morale. And I still had the ¡quest of picking up the 📦 with the 🚲 from the MRW delivery service ahead of me! I didn't risk sending it straight to my address in Girona — the street of the Tower of John the Baptist.
Small product placement integration
What I didn't think through was that Girona is in the north, and it's noticeably cooler here than in Valencia. It rains more often. When I was walking to the 🚌, it was dripping on my head, and I was glad that back home I had treated my jacket with STORMPROOF water-repellent spray (the cheapest one I found in Latvia). That's how I got to my 🏘 on the hill, successfully moved into the room I rented on ABNB for 43€ a day. In total, I paid 600+ euros for 13 days.
I had to go pick up the 🚲 — but how, if it's raining? I thought for a bit, hopped on a 🚌, and rode to the MRW warehouse. The rain had stopped by then, but riding back with a bunch of stuff didn't sound too appealing. Bolt and Uber weren't working. The local taxi app didn't have an option for a big 🚗 where a bike would fit. Calling and explaining in Spanish exactly what I needed didn't tempt me either. It was only later that I found out that most 🚕 in Girona are intentionally station wagons, so you can shove a 🚲 into them. I think it's partly because of the popularity of cycling.
But at that moment I didn't know this, so I decided to move under my own power. Put the 🚲 together, nodded to the worker. He took the empty box. I shoved my stuff into my backpack — and off I went. Luckily, in Valencia I had dropped by my favorite store, Decathlon, where I bought the top-of-the-line hiking pants. Since I became a tourist again, it's a sin to cheap out, especially in a budget store where the top model is 80€. With pants like those and my wonderful packable Uniqlo down jacket, I wasn't cold. I'm name-dropping brands heavily here, as if I'm getting paid for ads. But no — it's genuinely about decent and inexpensive stuff. If they start paying me for ads, I'll let you know, don't worry.
Navigation apps, including Organic Maps and Google, lie terribly to pedestrians and cyclists in hilly cities with stairs and cobblestone paths. So I rode taking a roundabout way — since I didn't know the area myself yet. I found this out after the fact. Plus, it was nighttime. Everything was ↗️, ↗️ and ↗️.
Here I was very glad about my decision to keep two chainrings up front on my bike, even though having just one is trendy right now. I even increased its gear range: put a "frying pan" on the back. That's a cassette with a large 46-tooth cog. This saved me, and my knees said "thank you" too. With a creak, and not immediately, but I rode up the terribly steep serpentine to the street of the Tower of John the Baptist.
The buzzkill at the apartment
The apartment was spacious. On the first floor, there were three bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. On the second floor — an office, a library, and another bathroom. The landlady, named Olga, lived on the second floor and only came down to the first for the kitchen. So, in theory at least, I even had a separate private living room with a 📺. Then, of course, it turned out that things weren't exactly like that, and the friction started. I'll probably just tell you about all of it right away, so as not to prolong the pleasure.
What really upset me was the statement that laundry is paid after the first two washes. There was nothing like that in the ABNB listing, nor in the 🏠 house rules description either. Suddenly declaring that a wash costs 5€ is just a dick move. Especially after I used the eco-mode for washing, and tried not to crank the heaters in the rooms up to the max. Moreover, Olga was too shy to say this to my face, and wrote a letter on paper. I don't have a 🖊, so I decided to answer her in person, if it came to it.
At first, I just blew it off, and decided that I could wash things by 🙌. Been there, done that. But then it turned out that she was also unhappy that I turned on the gas heater, but then sometimes aired out the room. Here's how it went: she was cooking a 🥩 in a special grilling machine. Smoked up the whole kitchen, and naturally, the smell spread to the living room and my room. I rarely eat 🍖, and the smell of burnt 🥩 definitely doesn't appeal to me. So that's why I opened the 🪟. She closed them when she went to sleep, and then confronted me about it in a new ✉️.
At this point, I lost my patience, and wrote a reply on ABNB, where I pointed out that I would have closed the 🪟 myself. They were open temporarily, just because of the strong smell. Then I wrote that by my estimates, a single wash could in no way cost 5€. I looked up the average electricity price in Spain recently. Read that a washing machine spends the most on heating. If you wash in eco-mode at 40 degrees, even for a long time, it's nothing like washing at 100 degrees. Maybe I didn't factor in the price of water, but the absolute maximum a wash could cost is 2€. If you take a completely impossible market price, the worst this year, maybe 3.5€.
I know this all sounds very pedantic, but try to understand me, too. I need to work and live in comfortable conditions, I paid big 💰💰💰 for this by my standards.
No one will read the list of grievances to the end
My main, very much justified grievance against Olga is the following. You can't change the rules on the fly if you promised certain contract terms. I mean, I could have contacted ABNB and demanded my 💰 back, since she was being so stubborn. Besides the fact that there was a washing machine in the listing, there was also an "equipped workspace". But the joke is that there was no properly equipped workspace in my room — just nightstands and closets. Another serious screw-up.
Neither of us wanted a real conflict. She asked for "cooperation". I agreed. Explained that I don't mind, but I need a normal desk to work at, there's no other way. We decided that I would take the table from under the 📺 in the living room just for the workdays. On the weekend I'd return it, so her son would be comfortable playing on the console and watching a flick.
The landlady's 15-year-old son, Xavier, lives with her part of the time. I think he lives with his dad the rest of the time. The landlady Olga is Catalan, and has absolutely no connection to Slavs or Scandinavians. As it turned out, it's somehow a rather popular name in Spain. I can't say anything about the reasons for this.
On the first floor, as I already said, was my room, and through the wall was Olga's bedroom. Here you can make a dirty joke. To make it easier for you, I'll tell you that Olga, although 47 years old, has aged well, she takes care of herself. Her photos with her son are hung all over