:: @ Choepie’s ::

I’m in Barcelona sinds last Thursday and all together, I’m having a great time.

Ana and I went for dinner the first evening and I suggested to try out a Greek restaurant close to the appartment… it was excellent food, a long time since I had good Greek food and I actually thought it didn’t exist in Spain :-). Friday was working day but lateron summercase was on, a 2-night festival starting both days around 18h untill easily 6 in the morning + 1 hour to get home, so after a working day it was hard to stay awake, but the bands were good, and we managed to see what we wanted to see. Before 2manyDj’s we saw the Editors, The Maccabees, The View, PJ Harvey and some traces of Scissor Sisters. But both Ana and me launched up way to fast in drinking and we had to get some rest halfway the night. It took Ana a lot of effort to get through but she managed to get up and running just in time for 2 Many Dj’s.

Saturday was the best day, James was great, A decent set of Jesus and the Mary Chain (still alive ?:-) a bit boring Air, but then Kaiser Chiefs with yet another great concert, ending up with Chemical Brothers and some snapshots of Felix da Housecat and the Glimmers. Another fine day in festivalworld. I did like the festivalsite, just next to the sea, a refreshing wind came from over the water, but the beer was way too expensive.. 3 euro for a 30cl Extrella Damm… no, that’s robbery after 115euro entree ticket. Also messy toilets and hardly any food to get… they have a long way to go to reach a status of ‘Best festival in the world’ like the one I went to 2 weeks earlier : www.rockwerchter.be.

We arrived sunday half an hour earlier home then saturdaynight, and got up around midday, having some light lunch and decided to spend the rest of the day on the beach in Sitges, gay-paradise, but neverthless, very nice place to go. It lacks the ugly buildings tourist areas tend to have and therefor it is nice to be there. We spend some time on the crowded beach and had dinner before taking the train back home. It takes about an hour to get there, but on sunday’s you can spend that time. On our way home, Ana and I decided to take a beer on the very nice terrases 10m from our front door, and having an unexpected guest over (Brendan from Los Angeles), I send him a text and he joined in. In search for some food for him, we ended up in ‘La Taberna’ just another bar, next to Plaza Ibiza, just around the corner. There I found my trap : the bar had more Belgian Beers than a regular Belgian bar, and the Duvel is even cheaper then in Madrid… pure danger. At 01h30 I tried to walk home with my eyes closed, just to start practicing for the day I need to do it blindly.

(*) thanks  Jon !

I definitely should give it a second thought, about what my friends back in Belgium advised me some years ago : Buy yourself a mobile home.

I’m in Barcelona again, after spending 5 days in Belgium at the start of this month, 4 days in Alicante and now I’ll be about 10 days in Barcelona, I do wonder why the hell I’m paying rent in Madrid. It won’t get better then this. After 5 weeks of seperation from Ana it was really good to see her again. But seen the though ride I had from Madrid, I preferred to make it a relax evening, we do have a heavy weekend to go as well.  Ana is doing absolutely great in Barcelona, and when she showed me around I could imagine myself over there without any problem. We do have some agreements to cover before but I don’t see any issue there. It’s a matter of sitting down a while and talk about it.

I saw the flat, Ana found, for the first time yesterday and it is a nice, but strange appartment. I guess, once you get used to it and once my stuff is in it, it will be a place you love or you hate. There’s no middle way. There are only a couple of negative points on it : noisy living room, can be solved by using bigger speakers on the television and music, not so private terras, actually I only had 1 private terras in my life : the flat in Rotterdam, the terras was completely closed up untill 2m high and there was no house around that was high enough to peek into my terras. All the other terrases or gardens I saw before, had one way or another a neighbour that could see it. So…. what is left… eh : millions of powersockets and (light) switches. I think somebody studied electricity before in the house : ok, millions will be a bit over the top, but for at least half of the swiches in the house  we couldn’t figure out if it was doing something. There are for example at least 4 switches that turn on a seventies version of a led light on…. nothing more… turn the switch and next to it (or somethere else) a little red light goes on, and that’s it…. no noise, no hidden light, nothing. Just that little red light.

It is funny but scary at the same time… maybe we are activating a secret circuit and is the house still wired all over the place with microphones, camera’s and sensors !!! Spooky !

Well tonight and saturday there’s Summercase (www.summercase.es) I’m curious how they arranged the festival, being used to go to www.rockwerchter.com for 1000 years now, I’m afraid I’m very spoiled on a smooth organisation. I do have my doubts that in Spain things are that strick, but then again, they are getting better and better in it as well. As soon as I’m capable, I’ll post a review of it…