Monday 2/10:

First day of class, and I'm all ready to go to school :) (After all, this is the chance to meet all those international chixs :D). Wake up at about 10:00, get ready, allay Rohit's fears about being charged for an extra day if we don't check out exactly b4 11:00 (we finally leave at 11:25, and Patricia has no problem at all. In fact she shows concern for my running nose and bad throat and suggests some medicines).

Get to school just in time for the 12:30 class. First up is the Spanish course. Good beginning I say :) Well not really so. So this woman (don't feel like calling her lady!) comes to class and starts speaking in the most rapid spanish I've ever heard! "Wha?", I hear myself say. "Yeah sure", I hear Johnson from Hong Kong say. Ah, finally she says just one sentence in english. "All of you who don't know any spanish at all, take this handout and leave the class. Read it for tomorrow and come!" Wow! Anyway, time to leave class and do some PRgiri. Unfortunately, I can only see the chinese/japanese people outside, so that's bad. In ne case, i go and introduce myself to them. Nothing really interesting, so I move on. Time to check out the cafeteria. The coffee there is amazing (and cheap by european standards), but that's abt it. The rest of the food (apart from the donuts) is crap, and I wouldn't know neway coz it's all meat. So much for eating in the mess.

Next class is customer centric systems. It's all globe. Won't have to study much. I orkut and mail all through, so it was fun.

Anyway, so after class it's time for Rohit and me to shift to the apartment! We already checked out of the hostel in the morning, so all we need to do now is take our stuff to the apartment in a cab. Small problem at home is that we have only 4 beds in there (after all there are only 4 of us living there, right? :D). anyway, doesnt matter, i park myself on the sofa and saurabh shared the double bed with rohit and arvind (god knows what happened at nite ;)). surprisingly, i slept like a log (kudos to the makers of the sofa). or maybe it was just the tiredness from all the shifting. just hope the owner of the apartment doesnt plan to visit us (at all!)

Saturday and Sunday 30/9-1/10:

So our 1st weekend in Barca was pretty boring. We went to a couple of parks (duly filled with a lot of gays on the grass!) and saw the Barca equivalent of the Buland Darwaza. Still getting used to the city... Oh, we also go to El Corte Ingles, a pseud store (the first we see in Barca) to ask for (of all things) a phone connection. And after getting the lady to open the pack and explain the stuff, I also tell her, "I'll be back later" :D So we get back to the hostel and go to the Afghani who runs an internet store close to our hostel and also sells phone connections. So here's the deal. He offers us a phone card for 20 euros (as opposed to 25 by the other stores) and gives us 29 euros of talktime (as opposed to 19 euros by other stores). Obviously we would buy the card from him, right?! So the first card he gives me, I manage to figure out that it has only 12 euros of talktime on it. Sorry dude, I'm not buying that. "No problem", he says, "doosra de dete hain". The 2nd card he gives me has 28.51 euros of talktime (pretty close, eh?), but then I manage to figure out that it's valid only till the 5th of October, which is 5 days away! So after that he starts to get agitated, and says, "Lena hai to lo, nahin to pareshaan mat karo". Ok dude, I'm done with you. I'll buy the more expensive card. So we leave the ranting Afghan at his store and decide to go back to El Corte Ingles (stupid decision coz we cud get a card much closer to home, but then, we have an unlimited travel pass, so...).

Oh, did I tell you, there's a wonderful coffee shop near our hostel :)

Friday 29/9:

So after fighting to wake up in the morning, we (bole to Arvind, Dharini, Rohit and me) go to ESADE. More spanish speaking as I ask all the beautiful girls I can find how to get to the Univ :D Alas, the answer was given to me only by the bus driver, but that's ok.

On our way to the univ, Arvind tells me that the bald guy in our dorm was cursing him for switching on the light early in the morning (6:30 AM!) coz he cudnt sleep all night due to the snoring of another person in the dorm (guess who! :D :D :D). Thankfully for him (and me) I won't be there long. We shift to the apartment as soon as the owner gets it fully fixed (can't afford to have him see me living there, I'm not supposed to :D).

ESADE has a beautiful building and the location is beautiful too. We meet Merce there and she shows us around. She's a very nice lady. Later, I take all the ppl to the gym to register (and get cursed for it since we go a long way downhill and then have to climb it all back up on our way back). We go back to the hostel and we're too tired to do anything else, so we just have some maggi and sleep.

So, finally, the long awaited blog on my travels and travails in Barca and around starts. Ya, I'm a little late, sorry all you fans who've been awaiting this with bated breath! But ya, this lecture was just too boring for me and sleeping looks rude, so the only option left was blogging :D

So let's start from the beginning. Will try to break up stuff by day (barring memory/intended lapses :D) so I can make it easy for my fans ;)

Thursday 28/9:

So I leave from Delhi after a nightout with Pooja and Saumya. Rohit disappoints me first thing in the morning, when he tells me that he doesn't drink (and with child-like enthusiasm narrates the incident when he "tasted" beer during his internship in Mumbai!). Anyway, on the flight, I'm too sleepy to bother about it any further, and apart from eating (and drinking some fine beer) I sleep all through. Rohit the b*****d has the balls to not wake me up when the airhostess brought chocolate and tell me about it after we alight! Anyway, after getting out of the airport, I have to use my spanish immediately to ask how to get to barcelona city (talk abt instant gratification!). well, several conversations (in spanish) later, I realized that I have a long way to go b4 i can even feign to understand spanish. anyway, a long walk (with rohit's ultra heavy and uncomfortable suitcase) later, we finally got to our hostel, Alberguinn. Btw, I don't understand how ppl can call a 25 min walk a 5 min walk, unless i dont understand numbers at all, which i sure do!

Right, so not much happened after reaching the hostel (except more disappointment when I came to know that Arvind and Tarun also don't drink, and Saurabh was my only true friend). Just met with ppl and went to sleep soon after. G'nite!