vacation

It’s been far overdue to write about my spur-of-the-moment trip to Spain, but I couldn’t be arsed to do anything the last week but relax because I’m tired and I’m on vacation, so you can’t sue me for wanting to take a break; quite frankly!

My journey began two Monday’s ago when I decided on Sunday evening to go Southern Spain since a friend of mine invited me. He lived in Granada but since I couldn’t find a good priced flight there I decided that I would fly into the southern city of Málaga first, and I was able to get an awesome deal from Swiss International Airlines, which needs to be commended for their awesome services! So in order to get to Stuttgart for my flight I had to take a train the night before from Strasbourg to the airport, and hope that I got on the last S-Bahn that goes to the airport which is practically in Filderstadt; but anyways. As above you can see what the S-Bahn stop looks like at the Hautbahnhof as I was panicing to make sure I got on the last train going to the airport. I met this really nice woman on the train who was heading to Bremen in Northern Germany but was in Strasbourg for a conference on Polar Caps Climates or something. She was very polite German woman with very good English and horrible French! Anyways Finally I arrived in Stuttgart after the people on the train practically fell asleep on me, how do you say “get the fuck off me” in German I wonder? 😉 Anyways, it was a rush to get to the train, and I nearly missed the last one but once I got on it was okay!

I got to the airport and it was completely empty which was awesome. It’s a small little airport with three connected terminals and is very quite modern and comfortable. My 6am flight to Zürich was the first flight out, so I knew that it would be a long night, but since I arrived at about 01.30 it wasn’t really; so I was happy at the same time. I walked around, found a bathroom, and then got comfy and took a nice sleep with my backpack which was the greatest pillow ever! I woke up to the sound of an sms from Robb who promised to wake me up in time for my flight; what a dependable friend, being all the way in Sweden! So I went to brush my teeths and make myself look at least human for the flight; and then went to the check in which obviously at 5am in the morning doesn’t have much too it. The woman was nice at the Lufthansa check in but there was a delay on my Swiss flight because of lack of crew rest or something so it got delayed an hour. I went through security, which takes 5 seconds, and then went down to my waiting gate. I had to go through customs before being let in, and then I was the only one down there for about an hour until the other 5 people on my flight were arriving. They were all clearly Swiss. There is something very Swiss about them that makes them quite different than everyone else; I can’t put my finger on it, but they all struck me as very Swiss at any case!

The flight was up and down in 30 minutes and then I was in Zürich the beautiful city in Switzerland. The airport is super-modern with tons and tons of shopping, so I slept for a few hours and then woke up to Chinese men inthe international departures area screaming; it reminded me of Toronto and how much I don’t want to go back at times. I had to go through customs again, and security twice because the Swiss are anal about people in their country despite only 1 in 5 total people there are actually Swiss; like seriously right? Anyways this annoying Spanish guy kept asking me where the gates were to the same flight I was on to Málaga, but I pretended not to speak English to get him to leave me alone, it sounds mean but really the guy was annoying and didn’t take a hint. I just didn’t want him to know I was on the same flight as him! I hid in the SAS flight area for Stockholm and felt much more at home, and even had a nice conversation with a student from Jönköping! Her name was Katja, and loved the fact that I spoke Swedish to her, as she has no confidence in English at all.
After a few hours in the air and lovely service from Swiss International Airlines I was in Spain and again had to go through customs. What do they not understand about “no hablo español” ? They gave me a bit of a hard time since my visa had expired but I got all my papers and such so it was okay. I went in search for the bus to the bus station, and then the other bus to Granada which was a pain in the ass. First judgements of Spain; nobody speaks English, everybody smokes horribly, its hot and humid, it’s got palm trees, lots of poverty at the bust station. All in all, trying to find the ticket office was a struggle but the bus was very very cheap and in 2 hours I’d be in Granada. I slept and had a lovely time in the bus, but it was very hot and I had to listen to a Tunisian guy try to pick up an Italian woman in the row ahead of me. The guy was a sleeze and really quite annoying, but it humoured me that she wasn’t interested.

I got to Granada and Sebas was waiting for me; and really it was interesting because he wasn’t anything like I remembered. We went to his home and I was knackered so I took a litle nap after lunch at 4pm. I more or less slept right until the next day in his childhood room; and then I woke up to music blaring from the room next to me. I didn’t care but seriously! He instructed me that at 14.30 we would go to a café to meet his friends and they would walk around Granada with me to show me around. He has a motorbike which was scary as hell but eventually I got used to it; but seriously, it’s scary as hell.

His friends were really really nice, Gabi as shown on the left, and Nadine shown on the right with lots of sunburn from climbing the mountains. Gabi was Spanish and spoke limited English, so our method of communication was French; he was really quite lovely and good at French too. And then also Nadine was Québecoise so we spoke in French as well and she even asked me to help her with some English; which I was happy to do. I hit it off great with Sebas’ friends and even got along better with them because they were more upbeat and not moping around. We went to a bunch of cafés and went to the highest point in the city to look upon the city. It was beautiful and very very hot. I wasn’t prepared for tropical climate as I thought everyone was exaggerating, but alas I survived. 

So after climbing the hills that seemed to go on forever we went back into the city for something to eat. Did you know that in Granada when you buy a drink which is a standard 1.50€ you get whats called ‘tapas’ for free? This means that you eat and drink for a low low price of approximately 15:- or 1.00CAD; I just about cried and was so happy. So we walked around and saw lots of stuff like the parks and some fountains and showed me how nice Granada was, but apart from that everyone got tired and then we went over to Nadine’s flat to watch the film “Proof” and meet some more friends. They were all Spanish but some spoke a little bit of English and one of them understood French but was too afraid to respond; so she spoke in English. I really was surprised at the lack of proficiencyin English of Spanish people; it’s quite shocking, but alas who cares!

These pictures are of the park that we loitered around at, and then on the right is the bullfighting ring in Granada, which has been remade and is very modern. At night it gets quite cold, and goes down to about 8°C so I was a bit chilly but we sook refuge in some of the bars and such since everything is so darned cheap. Sebas’ parents were very hospitable and amazing cooks but they didn’t speak anything but Spanish so communication was limited but very friendly! They even introduced me to the whole family and showed me tons of pictures; I understood a little but tried to learn as much as I could.

The next day we were going to meet up with Gabi and another friend since Nadine was going into the mountains again, and so we went to a bar and basically killed time until we did nothing. It was kind of boring and awkard since it was all in Spanish, but I didn’t care that much as it was just interesting to see how different things were. We went home and relaxed for awhile, but it was really difficult to talk to Sebas since he’s really quite depressive and low on energy. He’s kind of weird and intense too so I found it better to connect with positive and friendly people; but all would be revealed in the end.

The next day we met up with all of the friends and all and Sebas left me with Gabi since he had a band rehearsal or something to go to. So we went to a Moroccon/Tunisian Sheisha bar, and I had bubblegum tea which was amazing and we chatted for hours. None of the others showed up and Sebas was late, but since they knew the owners of the place we got to stay quite late. These arabic speaking people next to us were quite rude and kept giving us rude looks for speaking in French, but we just ignored them and had a jolly good time. We walked back home since Sebas was late, but we found out that he had been trying to call us but nobody answered our phones so he was quite pissed and found us on the way home. I have no idea why but in any case we went back home and then decided that we would go out the next night, Friday and have a good time.

So went out we did, and I found it difficult to relate to Spanish culture, but I’m not latino so it’s okay; I don’t have any desire to be in any sort of latin country. I like my personal space and bubble and don’t want anyone to interfere with it. We stopped by and picked up a bunch of Sebas friends from high school, none of whom spoke any language in common with me so communication was again awkward and limited. I helped them with English homework and we went out for super cheap Sangria’s at a local bar and then went to a disco. I lost the ability to see and breath due to the smoke in the disco, and then lost all desire to speak in English; so I came off as a bit weird since I really didn’t feel like speaking it at all! We went home without me saying anything since I had nothing to say, and had a little too much to drink.

Woke up on Saturday to find out that there would be a lunar eclipse so we made huge plans to walk up to the highest point and spend the night up there watching it! So we went to buy Sangria which was only 2€ and then kebabs which was my first time having it; and it was the most amazing thing ever in my entire life! Anways, they were cheap and we walked all the way up, but took a minibus cause we were lazy. There were tons of people up there, and we ate our kebabs as you can see above, damn Nadine! Also you can see us, as I was freezing cold, with my new Spanish friends: Lucía, Myself, Marie del Mer, and Gabi; they were so nice and polite and friendly that they made me feel at home.  We watched the lunar eclipse as seen throughout Europe, and I had far too much to drink, having a full 1.5l bottle of sangria to myself. So I was a bit tipsy on the way home, after having conversations with Canadians, Americans, Danes, Swedes and some French people! We started to head over to Nadine’s house, but Sebas wanted to talk to me so I was reluctantly pulled over.

He more or less took shots at me for about 20 minutes telling me how rude I have been and all this shit that I have done, which was all lies and that I never did; but I tried to be polite to his family but obviously I couldn’t talk to the, and then he made up some shit about phonecalls and whatever. It was all bullshit until he talked about how I got along better with his friends; and I gave it to him straight up and told him that it was just very uncomfortable to talk to him because he was on the verge of tears the whole time. I can’t help that his friends were better and easier to talk to than him, so whatever I just brushed him off. So we walked back and all seemed to be fine until we got to Nadine’s house.

There were tons of Spaniards there and then it middled down to a few of us, about 8, and I had been talking with Gabi and Marie del mar when Sebas went absolutely crazy and got into a huge screaming match with Gabi and the others because we were talking in French. Everyone took Gabi and my side since none speak English and they didn’t care; and because Sebas was being an asswhole. He was debating that we were talking about him, which we weren’t, and that it was rude that we were speaking in a langauge nobody understood. They all knew I couldn’t spanish, and none of them could english, and really it just came down to him being jealous that I got on better with the rest of them; but that’s his fault. So anyways he stormed out, as they told him to calm down and relax since they didn’t care and that I could talk in any language I like since I don’t speak Spanish. They were supercool about it; and even we played some weird Spanish games for a few hours. Sebas eventually stormed out in a huge drama-queen like exit basically throwing me out of his apartment telling me to be at the bus station at 6am and he would bring my bag.

I was pissed off but didn’t care, because I thought he would take something from my bag or forget to come since I had my passport and papers in there. All turned out well, and I talked to Nadine and Gabi and they wanted to know what he was bitching to me about. All of it came out, and then they told me that everything he had been saying behind my back about me being a horrible person and how they didn’t believe it because it didn’t seem right. All in all, Sebas was a pathological liar who lied about everything and all except for his name, and even to them about a lot of things. So really it was just better that I could erase him from my life; and I made new friends. Gabi and Nadine were planning to go to Dublin and invited me along, but that wont happen because she’s moving to Portugal and doesn’t have any money; but still we got on great and they were the ones that made my vacation awesome!

I didn’t sleep and took the bus back to Málaga and made it to the airport and slept until my flight. I had a few more connecting flights on the way back. All the customs again and all the paperwork but it all went smoothly until I landed in Geneva, Switzerland. Geneva airport for two hours, but the funny thing is that there are no chairs in the entire airport. I mean no chairs, nowhere to sit, nothing. How is this possible? So I parked myself on the ground and sat around for hours. I saw many differnet nationalties, mostly British with horrible accents, and then lots of Danes and even I saw someone who looked like my friend Bojan from Austria.. I took a picture of him and it’s on the right; I was going to go talk to him, but obviously it wasn’t him, but in any cause wie ghets Bojan? 😉

I got through security, which you can’t go through until 20 minutes before your flight because of limited space in the waiting area or whatever; so thats why there are no chairs.. People with connecting flights get screwed! Anyways, it was beautiful view with mountains everywhere and my flight for Zürich left, and I got there and waited 20 minutes for my flight back to Stuttgart. It was all lovely and no problems except for missing the last train back to Strasbourg by 1 minute. As I was stepping onto the platform the train left the track so I was pissed. I bought a ticket and went back to the airport where I was knackered and slept again until the next train out. I slept from 10pm to 6am straight with no interruptions in the airport and then took my train. Train stations in Germany have no waiting areas and it was cold in Germany! Usch; but eventually and finally I got back to France and made my way to my comfy bed.

A wonderful end to a wonderful trip (with some exceptions) but I’m totally happy that I went and I got to have some tannage and nice weather! Highlights from the trip? Orange trees; which apparently are on the roads of Granada, I couldn’t help but take a photo of the tropical climates! And seeing WoodyWoodpecker on the street was just a laugh and a half. We followed him and then bought ice-creame for shits and giggles. Like seriously, dressing up in costume? That’s just too rich! Finally I wrote about it, and my hands hurt so I’m off to watch Melodifestivalen final and have my ranting review of it tomorrow! 🙂  

To wake up on a Monday to find all the trees along Boul. de la Victoire missing is a little creepy. Apparently as we slept the city came around and trimmed back all the branches and basically left the trees with nothing so that they wouldn’t have to worry about autumn. Apparently this is the way that the French deal with lazyness to avoid problems, which really isn’t a problem but ey think it is anyways. What a wonderful way to start out the week, don’t you think? Despite this, all was okay.

Funny story, on Sunday when Charlotte came home, she came over to say hey and I was still lounging around in my pjs being lazy as a sloth. We went to go cook some chicken, and that creepy pair of Moroccons followed us yet again. This time it was even weirder because we were in her room and they walk by and say hello, so I think we felt the need to talk to them for a few minutes. She asked thet all one of them to help her fix her door since we weren’t tall enough, so he did and the meanwhile the creepy guy started talking to us and took interest in the fact we were foreign and coming from nice countries. Then he was very odd and he came out and asked “Vous êtes ensembles, comme vous vous sortez?” we both laughed and said no, and then he took everything a step farther and asked “Ahh d’accord, donc l’as-tu frappée?” and of course I answer “quoi” not fully understanding the meaning of what he was saying. He said it agin, and I said “No” and then he asked why not. I was like WTF you perv, why are even asking this; so we shut the door on his face and then laughed on the floor for about 20 minutes.

French slang is weird, but of course we aren’t sleeping together. We should have told them that she had a boyfriend so that they won’t bother us anymore, but it’s unlikely since now they know where she lives. Luckily for me they have no idea where I live!

Tuesday dawns on us, and I was a bit silly staying up late on Monday, but I can’t help 8 hour Skype calls helping out a friend, so it’s all good. I decided not to go to morning classes because 1) I woke up and was blind and 2) I was choking on my tounge, so I just went back to bed and passed out. The homework due was stupid and I had no interset in doing anything, so whatever. Classes were good, but the person that’s stalking me who I thought was from Azerbaijan, actually turns out to be from Moldova. I’m avoiding all contact thus far, in fear that I will be attacked and such random things like this.

Wednesday consisted of going to the laundramat where there were two girls from Skåne there talking, and of course I couldn’t help but laugh at their accent and struggle to understand what they were saying. They didn’t understand how the machines worked at the place, so we were giggling as they struggled and then helped them. It’s more expensive than our one in the Galia, but it works 50% faster, so I don’t mind spending another 1.50€ and walking 20 minutes to it. Next time I take the tram, quite frankly.

Still no plans for my holiday, so I’m a bit upset about that, but most importantly my bloody keyboard is broken and the Shift doesn’t work, so i’m pissed and I’m ordering a new one from Holland. It’s the only European country that carries it, so I have a Dutch friend helping me out with that, thank God. I need to get it soon though, as it’s driving me crazy to not have a shift key.

Now going to make dinner with Charlotte, so not much else going on, at least as I’m aware of.

🙂

PS: Yes I’m holding back because typing is very awkward at this point without a Shift key.

I haven’t been to a wedding since I was 7 years old, and that one was when I was in Göteborg, so it was quite different than Canadians seem to do it (or maybe just because I’m older)! Mom and I went into Orangeville on Friday to prepare for a suprised reception for my aunt and uncle who have been together for 25 years but only now decide to get married 🙂 My cousins Alison, her fiancé Bryan, and other cousin Cameron all were the ones to organize it, and my mom’s job was to take the two newly-weds and distract them for a few hours. She was successful and they had no idea that there was going to be a few huge tents on their farm property in the middle of nowhere!

So in my ‘grub’ clothes on and my aunt Vickie helping me which watching the two children run around terrorizing the 5 cats, we helped put up the tarps and set up the dinner placings while Alison and Camerson went to the wedding. The tent guys showed up late by 2 hours so we were panicing, and then before that when we went to pick up the cake they had forgot to make it so we were in a panic and arrived late. All turned out okay and everyone was happy when they arrived, since everything was perfect thanks to aunt Vickie and I 🙂

Alison and Cameron are what I consider my brother and sister, as we grew up together. Aunt Sharon and my mother are sisters, and they are more or less best friends so everytime that we went to their house or they came to ours we always wanted a sleepever so we would make sure the parents drank too much and then guilt trip them about drinking and driving. Despite the amount of times that we planned not to stay the night, it always turned out that way and we would be rebels and play Blinds-Mans-Bluff despite it being a forbidden game. We were crazy and reeked havoc on each other, with tickle attacks and sleepovers that I started to miss as we started to grow up and not see each other as often.

Having stated this, it’s been about 6 or 7 years since I hae seen Ali and Cam together. Usually one is working or moved out or something, so I was incredibly happy to see them both together and we had a blast, especially thanks to Ali’s fiancé Bryan who I have named the adopted brother 😉 Funny enough my bros and sis’ had a horrible and devious plan for me that I didn’t know about until it was too late!

They vowed that they were going to get me incredibly drunk since I’ve never done that before, and of course they didn’t tell me until it was dinner time, and it was too late anyways. I didn’t mind, since I was with family and they were drunk too, so I had about 19 glasses of punch spiked with champagne, and then some Aussie wines that were really dry. The result was me being drunk for the first time, and waking up relatively tired and cranky because of headache which I fixed with tons of water. They got me drunk, and tickled me until I was in pain, and then we just layed on the trampoline and had a good catching up which made me so happy, and I was lucky enough to meet Cam’s girlfriend Sylvia who was really nice too!

Our cousins from Kitchener-Waterloo came also, minus René who decided to be rebelious and move to Florida (to the chegring of mother and father) since he met the girl online and is getting married to her and living with her now. He was always a bizzare guy, but this just proves it and all the aunts and uncles can’t believe it since he was the nerdyiest of them all. Natalie (his sister) decided to bring a ‘friend’ who I think was named Chris and was an athlete like her. They totally fit together, and he was introduced as the ‘friend’ but we all knew that he was the boyfriend, but I coudln’t see how they could be dating. Aunt Bonnie and Gary would never allow that I imagine, so we eventually found out that they were in denial and told everyone that he was a friend just because they didn’t want anyone to think badly of her or Natalie.

None of us really cared since we were too drunk anyways but we named Chris ‘Dreamboat’ since he was fairly good-looking and ‘hunky’ as Bryan said. Having said this, he was a american-football player that met Natalie when they were playing real football on some team and he was the ref. He’s really short, but is really strong, but despite his ‘hunkyness’ I did notice that he had the grossest smile that was awkward and horrible to look at (sadly) and he had no personality! Aunt Vickie asked me about it, and commented that if I couldn’t get someone’s personality to come out, then they have none; so we figured that he was just a little bit weird. He finally decided to introduce himself to me (after finding out I was the favourite cousin) and shook my hand, only after joining in the tickle war with Ryan and Colin and the bros & sis’. I thought this to be weird, but whatever! The Botzang family is weird, so I will just ignore it and I figure that I will never see the guy around anyways so it’s not big deal!

Other than that, everything has been funny and I slept all day since I still had a hangover and slept like crap on the chesterfield. After I woke up I went on my run and took a different route, but since it was so hot out I wore very minimal clothing. I figured that since I have a nice body, I might as well flaunt it around; but too bad that everyone is away on vacation for the long weekend, that nobody saw! Oh well, and then I went to play tennis at the school and it was all good.

Mom went to another cottage to a friend of dad’s so I’m alone for the weekend. John and Marie (who’s not home) are having some people over at their house and I think it was 3 guys and a girlfriend who were gawking at me when I was on the back lawn stretching. I figure that I should have said hi, but they seemed drunk and I didn’t feel like dealing with 30 year olds who were drunk off their minds at 6pm. I might talk to them tomorrow when I’m in the back mowing the lawn and might ask them to come for a run, but if Marie isn’t home then I guess it will just be John, and I will be tired so we can do a short distance just so that he doesn’t keel over and die! 😉

PS: I will post pictures from it when Alison e-mails them to me 🙂