Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts at get ready to an imaginary travel back to the SU...

Here there are something like my memories of this days we spent together in Barcelona and surroundings. It’s nothing to be took seriously, as i like to say, it’s just bullshit inspired in actual facts, and I wrote it for me (to help myself to remember those unforgettable moments), but maybe you will enjoy reading them also.

If you try to, take it easy because it’s quite a long trip, and just remember I tried to focus in the funny side of the thing, so if something is not very polite take it as a silly joke, ok?

And feel free to add whatever I may have forgoten and please forgive all my mistakes (I’m also human, despite the rumors), omitions (I cannot remember everything), misspellings (who cares for the hortografi?), and distortions of reality (who cares for the reality? not me! I’m not a journalist!).

The name of the thing is:

HOW TO SURVIVE 2 WEEKS OF CULTURE,

SEX & STRANGE GAMES.

(IMPRESSIONS FROM SU-BCN 2002: “GAUDÍ, MODERNISME & FUN IN BARCELONA”)

So here we go, the SU is over, but it’s cool to look back, specially if you have lived 2 cool weeks with cool people of all over Europe ready to have fun and to play strange games... Actually the participants were quite cool but quite strange people also, just remember Sutono, Nikola, Ozge, Agnieska, Antonio, Berti, Christian, Atila, Elif, François, Joke, Kostas, Maciej, Aga, Nina, Oksana, Renata, Sanni, Simon, Stefanie or Zuzana, to give some examples. Do you think they were representative of the people of their countries? (I don’t think so, but it could be fun).

And with this strange people we’ve been all around this also quite strange place known as Catalunya: we’ve been in Barcelona but also in Girona, Argentona, Figueres, Tremp, Empuries, Mataró...

And we’ve seen the Campus Nord, the Universitat Central, the Palau Reial, the Güell Pavillon, las Ramblas, la Plaça Catalunya, the Cathedral of Barcelona, the Cathedral of Girona, the city walls of Barcelona, the city walls of Girona, the city walls of Tremp, the Sagrada Família, la Casa Batlló, la Pedrera, the Gothic Quarter, the Colonia Güell, the Catalan Twin Towers, the 3 Towers of Tremp, el Palau de la Música, la Vila Olímpica, el Poble Espanyol, Empuries Ruins, el MNAC, el Museu Picasso, el Museu Dalí,...

And we’ve seen some participants with such cultural sightseeing overdoses that their eyes were red and their forehead veins palpitating, ready to explode.

But, for the first time in History, I will try to follow some cronologycal order in my memories, so, to start from the begining, I must explain that this year some participants arrived a little bit early (something like 5 days); so for example Oksana had the opportunity to visit other significative Catalan towns like Vilassar de Mar (which under the rain is even more boring than usually) and Castelldefels (famous for his ‘cheap but expensive’ Chinese restaurant). And we said bye to Ferran (per cert, tio, que et vagi bé per l’extranger).

In Vilassar, Oksana and me we enjoyed the romantic rain and listened my collection of old-fashioned vinyls and tasted something like chili pepper vodka and Ukrainian chocolates, and we learned new card games... (‘the Game of Stupid’ was quite cool, but the name of the game was a little bit humiliating, why don’t you call it ‘the Game of the Not So Clever’?).

And we exchanged “Heroes del Silencio” for “Pkean Enbeu” (I don’t know how to pronunce it, I don’t know how to write it with my keyboard, but the music is quite great).

And she became such a new member of my family that, when I had things to do, she even went shopping with my mother.

And one particular day, the Day 0 finally arrived, and we went to wait for the participants in Universitat, and there we started meeting new people, new participants and new Aegee-Barcelona members, and then I went to buy some breakfasts and prepare some things and later I tried to erase from the booklets the mobile phone of my mother (because sometimes I use that mobile phone, but if somebody calls me there he will probably talk with my mum instead of with me).

And that afternoon in a gas station happened something strange, also: 2 boys wanted to blow a volleyball ball but had to wait for quite a big time because before them there was somebody trying to blow more beach mattresses than space we had in the car. This 2 volleyballers, instead of getting fed up with us, they were hypnotized by Marisa’s charisma and they became our chofers and took us to Marisa’s Hotel (also known by some cruel guests as: the Refugee Kamp), so we could put all the matresses in the other car and everything was OK.

And we came back to the meeting place and there I didn’t only met more participants that were arriving, but also I finally saw my ex-whatever.

“I feel sorry for you”.

“I feel sorry for you, too”.

OK, fuck it.

That night I started making new friends from all over the world (usually we can only say friends from all over Europe, but this year we had one Indonesian, Sutono, also known as: the Happy Man).

The party was, of course, in the ‘Night Local of AEGEE-Barcelona’ (also known as: Albert’s House), and there I saw again my old kolité Kostas (also known as: Shark Eyes) and received quite more presents than I did in Christmas: presents from him (alcohol and food, he knows my tastes), from his girlfriend (a very special flower), and from my G.D. (something special, too).

And, being 23 years old, I started sleeping with a teddy bear (no, now I’m not talking about Kostas).

I read a strange letter, I drank a little bit to get over it, and then I saw a lot of people looking for someone with artificial parts in his body, or for someone who had ever been in jail or who could spit to more than 5 meters, or trying to decide (the first night!) who they wanted to make love to in the next 2 weeks, just to win a Universe bag and a t-shirt.

And then we sang “Happy Birthday Joke”.

Next morning there were the compulsory presentations of AEGEE (always the same, always different!) and the presentation of the Massage Contest and the still shy participants explained things about themselves like “my name is that, i’m from there, i study that”; and –can you imagine?– other organizers interrupted my masterclass about Gaudí (“His Life, His Art & His Underwear”) to make a line in alphabetical order!!

And we tried to grab our hands without looking and to untie the ties, and then there were human sculptures in sexy-surrealist-cubist positions... after that, Subirach’s stuff looked almost as childish as Chillida’s.

And I tried to help the participants to order food in a restaurant, translating without knowing even the Spanish words (what the fuck is “adobado”? and where the fuck is the sauce?).

Some people did a siesta under Nexus’ shadow but I saw tourists that preferred to get a suntan using both the direct rays and the reflected ones, and I saw for example Atila quite red afterwards... while, despite the participants were anxious for going to the center, we took them sightseeing in the suburbs, to see el Palau Reial and the first Gaudí buildings.

I didn’t go to the Descarga Cubana (did Compay Segundo finally appear?), but later I went to see the tourists tasting the first sangrias (or something that was supposed to be sangria) in “El Agüelo” (also known as: “the Old Fucker”; a.k.a: “the Bastard Who Always Tries to Cheat Drunk People”). And there I received the first massage of the Massage Contest (with sexy long nails) and the first short kiss (but nothing else because we were too close friends and maybe even family (doesn’t it sound disgusting?)).

I missed also the Catalan lesson, despite everybody knows I must improve my Catalan spelling because I’ve been studying 5 years in the UPC; but I think you can’t complain of the guide in the sightseeing tour of that afternoon (Berti saved me giving me some water when my voice was going to disappear in front of la Pedrera).

Inside that strange soft building, we saw the furniture exposition and I explained that everything was practical and comfortable (because I had read it somewhere), but later, in the other side, we tried to open one of that practical and comfortable doors and realized it wasn’t so practical and comfortable as it was supposed to be.

The Museum Girl told me that we had to climb the stairs because it was dangerous to use the elevator because it could be stuck between 2 floors. As I was surrounded by beautiful girls who I didn’t mind getting stuck with, I decided to take the risk with them. Unfortunately, the elevator worked alright.

In the roof, I discovered a technique to make the tourists pay more attention to Art and after telling them that the chimneys probably symbolized warriors, I told them that actually the chimneys symbolized phallic symbols (for those who were not used to talk about elevated stuff, I explained that “phallic” means “dick” (a.k.a: that strange thing that usually exists between boy’s legs) but in other occasions I had to explain the same thing so many times that I think they were asking about it just for fun).

And we saw and listened cante flamenco, also. Beautiful thing but a little bit scary, because sometimes the girl shouted as if she had some real pain somewhere.

And that night I saw a lot of people kissing the Pope..

The Game of the Paper has always been fun, but if the paper has the picture of a sacred old Polish who is the Big Boss of the Roman-Catholicism and who proclaims that you can prevent AIDS without using condoms... waw, that’s so kinky!

Amen.

(Actually the papers with the picture of the Pope where tickets for a shit Pub, so we took a look at it. We didn’t like the place, but we liked the papers, so we went to ‘la Musiqueta’ to play kissing games and sing stuff like “Sitting in the Dock of the Bay” or “Happy Birthday Albert”... and also there we found some friends of Roser who very impolitely tried to seduce our participants).

And also that night I saw a new participant that I hadn’t seen before and I felt a deep feeling somewhere between my heart and my... eh... whatever. She had beautiful eyes, a lovely face and an athletic body with perfect conic tits... but my heart almost broke in 2 when I realized that she actually was François with painted lips and some make-up; so I gave up drinking and went to sleep.

Next day, in the Sagrada Familia I heard a very interesting comment from one of our art experts, who had just realized how much Gaudí loved the plants and the vegetable ornamentation:

“This is not a church, man, this is a salad!”.

And I saw lazy people who used the lift to climb the ‘phallic’ towers and brave people who followed my advice and used the stairs (believe me, I know few things about life, but I know when it’s better the lift and when it’s better the stairs), but the traffic jam of big-bottomed tourists made the climbing less beautiful than expected (despite we saw the underwear of the blonde that was in front of us).

And, on the top, we resisted the temptation to spit on the Japanese tourists downstairs.

In la Colonia Güell I saw people believing that a funny newspaper hat was going to protect them from the Spanish rain; and we met a famous Republican veteran who was also a famous writer and who was also a quite friendly and lovely elder who invited us to some cava (a.k.a: Catalan champagne)... and the fact that the glasses were more dirty than the asshole of a diarrheic bull in front of a Spanish torero, didn’t spoil the magic of the moment.

And, talking about dirt, we saw quite a lot of dirty stuff in Dalí’s Museum, but it was the 4th time I visited it and, despite I love it, I’m quite tired of making jokes about those dicks and pussies and shits and vomits.

But, by the way, somebody saw there the painting of the tiger that converted into 6 Lenins? I saw more or less the tiger, but I didn’t get the Lenins part.

And we had a bocata picnic and luckily it didn’t rain.

And, in Girona, I even missed “the Dinosaur” a little bit, because Edu and me had to be the guides without having a complete knowledge of where were we, but we managed quite well, and, after some efforts, we found everything we were looking for:

a) the river and the bridges to cross it,

b) the giants,

c) the city walls,

d) the stairs to climb the city walls,

e) the ancient toilette,

f) the Cathedral,

g) a bar to sit and relax a little bit.

But instead of climbing the stairs of the Cathedral backwards and counting the steps to go to heaven (or at least to get lucky in the A.E. Gymkhana), this year something weird happened and I saw the participants doing it in the opposite direction.

Did it work anyway? I think so, at least for the Whisky Team.

The youth hostel in Costa Brava was quite cool and for the first time in AEGEE-Barcelona History, probably we will be allowed to come back to same hostel twice!

I chosed the best room, of course, sharing it with 4 of my favorite girls. If we didn’t do any pyjama party or played to be amebas or something even more sexy was only because at the last moment Nicola joined us. But he and later Sanni tried to teach me to do proper massages and I learned so well that Nina gave me 3 points!

I really liked my room and my roommates, despite I missed the snoring concert that everybody was talking about the next day... I think the title of the concert was “Sutono’s Soneto” or something like this.

And next morning one of my roommates jumped to my bed and started embarasing me. I’m not going to say who was, but I can tell that was too hairy for my taste ant that had 2 very scary pierced nipples... and that I hope that nobody will put pictures of that in the internet.

But well, well, well...

It’s time for the hot stuff (a.k.a: ‘Ginkama Alcoholico-Erotica’; a.k.a: ‘A.E. Games’), and I will censor most of it because I don’t want this text to be used by lonely onanists; but I can tell you that I saw people putting salt or even cream and flams on their bodies just to have an excuse to be licked from the ears to the toes!

And people pretending that they were in jail just to have an excuse to take off all their clothes!

And people holding spaghettis and straws in different parts of their bodies just to have an excuse to practice sexy positions in such a romantic atmosphere: beautiful night in a beautiful beach with soft rain and the lovely light of the photo flashes!

And girls jumping on the top of boys (Joke, you shouldn’t blame Sutono, and the next time you jump on him do it more smoothly).

And boys fighting for a girl (not metaphorically but physically, pulling her from her arms and legs)...

And then I thought I had seen enough, so I went to drink some tequilas with salt and lemon.

Etcetera.

Next morning we went back to the party place and listened the complaints of the woman who had to clean up the beach. I understand her, because “cleaning up the beach” didn’t mean only “collect a lot of empty bottles and used condoms”, but also “collect a lot of forgotten clothes and shoes and throw them in the garbage”.

After examining some garbage containers we even recovered Nicola’s hat (yes, that useful thing I was using the night before to cover my... ehem... whatever).

And we saw Greek ruins and Roman ruins in Empuries and I answered difficult questions:

“How can you know if they are Greek or Roman?”

“Eh... well... I just read the banners...”

It’s also interesting to notice that in the entrance of the Roman part there’s the sculpture of an erected dick (yeah, phallic stuff before Freud: that’s the Italian style!), but when I showed it to the participants most of them thought I was joking again (fucking tourists...).

And that day I saw a lot of people lying in the sand of a beach, like trying to get sun-tanned but with cloudy weather, so I suppose they were just trying to get over their hangovers.

My tequila friend was not very talkative but I thought it was also because of the hangover,... things become a little bit clear (but not too much) when my mother received an SMS saying that it was not her fault. My mother, of course, was a little bit confused.

“Don’t worry, mum,” I told her, “as you can see nobody blames you”.

And, talking about blame, what about the ‘Bus Hits’?

I saw people with good musical taste that loved them, but I also saw people with no idea about music who were quite fed up after listening that tape less than 100 times!

The last days of the SU, if I was bored, I only had to whisper “bus-hits” to the ear of Nicola and look at his face turning to blue in anger.

And, back in Barcelona, visiting the Gothic Quarter and the Cathedral, I saw a stupid man that said we could go to the Gothic roof, and few seconds later that we couldn’t “because it was raining”.

Outside, there was no rain at all, and it was quite confusing for me, even before 12 of our most clever participants noticed the fact and came one by one to tell me: “Xavi, it’s not raining”.

Now, looking back, I think we should have came inside again and beat the guts out of that man (the fact that he works in a religious place doesn’t allow him to lie us about the weather).

The Picasso Museum wasn’t so sexy and dirty as Dalí’s, but quite cool anyway.

Picasso is a controversial artist and some people like him and some others don’t, and I enjoy not only seeing his paintings but also the comments that people do when they look at them (specially the people with intellectual looks and thick glasses). For example, this year my favorite comment has been:

“Mmmh... the first room looks interesting... see you later, I’m gonna do some shopping”.

We didn’t dare to take the participants to Miró’s, but we went anyway to Montjuïc (Juic Mountain) , the place with the fountains and all the stuff.

And, in the Pavilion Mies van der Roe, they tried to make us pay to see a chair (actually it was ‘Barcelona Chair’, a very important one, despite it looks like a normal chair), so I went with few wise participants who didn’t care for important chairs to the building in front of it, a modernist old factory that nowadays is used as a ‘cultural’ place, and I expected to see there an exposition of ugly people (Richard Avedon stuff) and an exposition of great paintings of last century; but both expositions were over, so we had to enjoy the best of the ‘Contemporary Bullshit Exposition’ (a.k.a: ‘Contemporary Art’). OK, it wasn’t as good as Modigliani, Monet, Cézanne or Picasso, but we saw some blue big things, and a pregnant wall (really!), and an ass from the inside, and some lightening numbers, and we went inside a Russian artwork and even sat on it and had some chat in a quite comfortable ‘artistic’ sofa... and when the next visitor entered we tried to behave like if we were part of the art thing, but she didn’t took pictures of us. And the guard was quite funny also, and liked to make fun about Russians and knew some strange stories about Greeks that confused Kostas a little bit.

And then, all together again, we went to the MNAC and saw an exposition of Modernist banners and medals. Let me reproduce now the comments of our experts in banners and medals: “That’s all? That’s all? What kind of exposition is this?” or “Mmmh... an exposition of banners that are advertising other expositions... isn’t it ironic?... well, maybe it isn’t, but it’s food for thinking anyway!”, and in front of the museum there was a nice view of the city and nice views are always cool, and then I went home because I was quite tired (fuck the Olympic Stadium).

And what about the typical Catalan gastronomy in the cheapest Chinese restaurant in Sagrera (the first exit in alphabetical order)?

Later we did pub crawling in only one pub in Gràcia... because if the first one is good, why crawl any more?

And there we played the Game of the Paper with:

a) LEVEL 1: papers without the face of the Pope (too easy),

b) LEVEL 2: ice-cubes (not so easy as it seems: so, Richard, please, practice at home for the next year!),

c) LEVEL 3: no objects at all! (easy and great, I started it as a joke and as an excuse to kiss Sanny, but we really played a couple of rounds!).

And next day I finally saw Maxim, my brand new Siberian cousin, so fuck the SU and fuck the Park Güell, I took one day off and joined all my family at the airport to see him arrive. And he was very cool: small, blonde, cute and angry; and I bet my ass he will be a heartbreaker when he grow up.

But I couldn’t let the participants without an spiritual guide, so I explained everything I knew about Park Güell to Kostas and told him to behave like if he was me.

I’ve been told he did his best, but he used the old trick of explaining the interesting things only to few pretty girls to impress them with his knowledge... It’s not a very polite trick, but it looks wise, maybe I will use it next year.

And I also missed the salsa lessons because I hate discipline and I only like dancing slow romantic songs.

But I went with everybody to play the city rally, and I saw weird stuff again.

In my station, the goal was to collect some money from other tourists and I saw participants doing strange theater plays, pretending to be bullfighters, doing human castles, singing, dancing, selling their bodies (or at least trying to), writing banners like “PLEASE, GIVE US MONEY, WE NEED IT TO BUY ALCOHOL” and stuff like that.

I can proudly announce that the effort was worthwhile because all the groups together collected a total amount of... almost 2 euros !!

But I also took a look at some other stations and saw people begging for kisses (at first sight it looks more pathetic than begging for money, but you know love is always unpredictable), and learning and teaching something like “shesha shushes dun shushat menshan fesha dun penshat” that sounded almost like a magic formula to invoque evil spirits.

And, talking about evil stuff, we also went to Poble Espanyol (the magic place for tourists were distances doesn’t exist and buildings have painted widows) and with the money we had earned that morning (plus some more money) we bought sangria and wine and whisky and we drank a little bit before getting inside the place (the already traditional ‘taja tonta’), but not as much as last year.

Inside, I joined some participants to make fun of the Spanish folklore shops, and we took some pics with toreros hats and lolailos dresses and castañuelas, without buying anything (not very polite, but quite funny); and we saw people blowing melted glass to create bottles and porrons (quite a good blowjob, in my opinion); and we entered to a bodega to taste sangria for free. But the Bodega Man really knew how to make business (and how to speak Greek, also).

Tourists: “This sangria tastes better that the one we drank before”.

Me: “Yes, because this one is cold and the other one was warm... and also because the other was ‘Don Simon’, the cheapest shit you’ll find in the Pryca shop”.

Bodega Man (trying to look serious): “And because my sangria is the best sangria in all Spain”.

Tourists: “Give me 3 bottles !!”

Me: “Yes, trust this man, he for sure have an objective opinion...”

And then we went to celebrate my birthday, with my family and Kostas and Renata (as a special guest who didn’t take a shower) and we had a birthday cake and some ouzo and a candle that I had to blow, despite the fact that I was actually born in January (if someone organize a surprise party for your birthday in the exact date, what’s the surprise? I liked better this way: 5 surprising months before the day!); and later we went to a hot bar to sweat a little bit and to drink sangria again and later to ‘la Paloma’, a disco with destroyed amplifiers that mixed ‘shit techno music’ with ‘funny fart sounds’, and we saw stupid break-dancers who pushed us because they needed space for their show. We should have started a fight but we didn’t just because Aegee believes in peace and love.

It was a long time since I hadn’t gone to that kind of disco and I had forgotten that I don’t like very much those places, specially since they don’t play romantic slow songs anymore; so I waited a little bit to see if Kostas was an admirable faithful gentleman (and he was, of course), and then I went to sleep.

And we went to the beach and had a high quality (and high price, but not very high quantity) lunch in la Vila Olímpica. There was some fish, sea-food, brave potatoes, calamars, and some other stuff I didn’t have time to see because it disappeared very fast.

And we lost 2 of the most charismatic participants of the SU, each one charismatic in his own style: one of them more funny and noisy, the other one more beautiful and decorative... But both of them made emotive good-bye speeches.

And as one of our experts in speeches said: “Mmmmh... I liked this one... it was very well structured...”

And I hate shopping, but if Kostas needed to do shopping, I went shopping with him. And I learned some techniques. “Best price? Best price? Come on! This shit was cheaper in the other shop!”.

And we went to Tremp (a.k.a: “Tremp, the town with the sexy name”).

It is a town in the midle of the wildest nature, you had to cross a very dangerous bridge to get to the hostel (specially dangerous for drunk participants), and all the time you could hear noises of strange animals, from monkeys to bunnies, including godzillas.

And we went there in a slow bus in which almost nothing worked properly but we had a good time. As we couldn’t play any tape, instead of the ‘Bus Hits’ we tried to organize a traditional AegeeEurovisión but most of the participants preferred to sleep (lazy bastards) so we could only hear “La Cabra”, “Mar Minalunk Babam”, some Serbian stuff, and few else.

Before leaving Barcelona we had to wait for Martí (a.k.a: “The Blonde One”), but it wasn’t his fault.

In Tremp the Major was supposed to receive us but he didn’t. (Can you imagine? He had something “more important” to do than saying hello to the coolest ambassadors from 17 cool countries?)

Only the Tremp Giants and a photographer were there to say ‘hullo’ to us, but that was enough, fuck the politicians; and we did some sightseeing and we ate quite proper food and we started walking.

Walk walk walk till the lake. Beautiful place; the weather wasn’t perfect but the water was warm enough and I liked a lot the small Titanic, and we swam and called the girls with our flags... Someone stole my flag some minutes but luckily I recovered it and when I went inside Roser’s father car he didn’t have to see my... ehem... whatever.

Because we came back by walking a little bit and later by Dad’s car... despite the thing with the train.

The ‘thing with the train’ was that Albert found a ‘shortcut’ following the railway, he told it to me and I told it to the participants and a group of braves leaded by myself decided to took the short cut... But when I saw the railway and the tunnel with my own eyes, the ‘Group of Braves’ had to find another leader because I had already joined the ‘Group of Cowards Who Like To Be Alive’. So they went into the narrow tunnel and, following Murphy’s Law, the train appeared in that very same moment and they had to run for their lives... Lots of fun and emotion, indeed.

I wonder why each year some of our participants have to be face to face with the Angel of Death...

After that mystical experience, I noticed that some people started acting like if they gave more importance to the small things and to the magic of being alive and they liked to enjoy little free pleasures like kissing each other (I mean even more than before)...

Just remember how much the points of ‘la Porra del Amor’ increased that night!

(By the way, that night was the night of the “Oh, oh, my God, what have I done?”)

Because, first of all, we went to listen ‘el Pregó’ (a.k.a: ‘that very interesting Catalan speech that most of you didn’t get at all’), readed by (I don’t know if also written) the Big Boss of Barcelona: Mr Joan Clos (also known by Alvaro as: ‘el Joan’). While listening to him, we tryed to drink that Macedonian home-made thing and some of us were quite impolite, shouting stuff to the politicians (like “Shut up! That’s enough!”) but later we accepted the free dinner anyway.

El Sopar Popular consisted in lots of elders fighting for some melted chocolate with melindros and bread with tomato and some small pieces of fuet. But after the ancient avalanche, it was posible to get some food and to get quite drunk (I can tell you because I did it). But do you know that it’s not good to mix drinks? So imagine mixing (in this order): raki... white wine... chocolate... red wine... bread with tomato and fuet... red wine... chocolate and wine again... and then we saw el Joan (a.k.a: Mr. Joan Clos Van Damm, the Major of Barcelona) and Alvaro called him: “EP JOAN, ENS FEM UNA FOTO O QUÈ?!!” so we took a picture with him and I couldn’t resist the temptation of, in a so solemn occasion, call some participants and say: “Hey, look! We are taking a picture with the Major, he has almost the same job as Eurodisney’s Mickey Mouse!”. And I was very jealous because he hugged Roser but not me (despite everybody knows he’s gay)...

And then we went to the hostel and finished the lunch and, to give my stomach the special touch, I tasted the Finnish stuff (I think it was like vodka or something worse).

But pay attention to the Joke of the Night:

“Finish it!”

“Finish it? Spanish it!”.

Well, I was quite destroyed that night, but I sat and had some voyeur fun, and later I went frog hunting, and later, when everybody was drunk and ready for the party and I was starting to have a hangover already, I went with Martí (a.k.a: “not the blonde, the other one”) for a walk, to take a look at the trempolines and to have a nice ‘drunk talk’ about life and (why not?) about how wicked girls are (all of them except our mothers... and except Sofia, of course).

Later, the Sleeping Marathon started. Some participants broke some ‘staying in bed’ Guinness records, spending night and day in the horizontal position, only waking up to get some food and coming back to bed to do some siesta. I can understand the people who did it in couples, but for the ones who did it alone (and snoring!) I suppose it was quite tiring...

Anyway, I found again a Brave Group and we went to see the Catalan folklore:

El ‘Ball de Gegants’ (a.k.a: ‘the giants that were supposed to be dancing’) was quite interesting, and they gave us free stickers with the Catalan flag and the lemma “GEGANTS DE TREMP” (excuse me for putting that sticker in that place, but the joke was so obvious!); the games for the children were quite strange and our (too old to play that stuff) tourists almost lost one of the balls; and the ‘sardanes’ (no ‘sardines’, ‘sardaaanes’) were, as always, a challenge for the foreigners that thought it was cool to learn traditional disciplined dances; and the ‘gralles’ (a.k.a: the Catalan flutes) were, in my opinion, too noisy for a hangover.

After lunch, there were less people practicing the Sleeping Marathon and I almost put together 10 people to make an excursion to the mountains. The question was obvious: “But where are you going?” and the answer: “I don’t know... we will see”.

But I think we found a good way: a good walk and good natural landscapes and one of the best things nature can offer: “food for free”. So we stole quite a lot of fruits, almonds, grapes and other stuff which name I don’t know in English, and we only hesitated in front of a lovely watermelon that, after all, was too heavy to carry. At some point of our trip, the group divided in 2: strong boys and one strong girl climbed one pick to meditate on the top; lazy girls and one lazy boy rested a little bit, gossiped a little bit, talked about the intringulis of Aegee, and came back home by the easy way (yes, of course I was with that second group). And the rain didn’t catch us.

But it started raining when we were in the hostel and it was dinner time and there are no Pizza-Huts in Tremp, so what could we do? Stefi had the solution: she found the number of “Pizza la Fada” and we ordered some pizzas there, and 2 lovely trempolines brought them under the storm. Don’t tell anybody, but we needed 5 phone calls to order 9 pizzas, and later one more to order the wine and the casera.

“It’s me again”, said Martí.

“Yes, of course”, said la Fada.

And they were the best pizzas we had eaten since we were in Tremp.

But it was still raining and we didn’t dare to go outside, and we started playing an old game known as the Game of the Chairs, and, to make it less childish, we used that rule that says that the one who doesn’t find a chair when the Tarantino music stops must kiss somebody on the lips... yes, that way it was mature enough for us. And quite fun, also.

And later we played with the bottle of Macedonian stuff, and we managed to finish it, but before we had to decide who was the most clever, the most charismatic, the most interesting, the most fucker and the most likely to practice zoofilia (Sutono! Don’t run! You have to play, also!)... and I was so happy to know that Maciej and Aga, if someday they decide to do a trio, they will call me!

And, shame on me, I had to explain again the Fish Position.

And we went to la Festa Major, and listened to the bands... eh... I don’t remember the names of the bands, but I can tell you that they weren’t the Beach Boys... I had an “Ajerejé” overdose, but the party was quite cool, we finally saw beautiful trempolines (apart from Roser!) and we ordered fantas and drank vodka with fanta. Christian tried to teach me how to seduce the trempolines, but I didn’t pay much attention and I preferred the Aegee girls (because they were also beautiful and because they were older than 16 years).

That night I decided to give up drinking again (at least until the next party), and I came back with Elif to drink some milk at the hostel and we had a strange but interesting conversation.

And, talking about strange but interesting stuff, when I went to sleep there was a lot of noise there and I told Zuzana:

“Please, can you close the door?”

But, maybe because of the noise, she misunderstood me, and she thought I had said:

“Please, can you come to my bed and take some more people with you so we can make a soft-core orgy?”.

So she came to my bed with Stefi and François and Martí the Blonde, and they started touching me. First I was confused and wanted to sleep but later I decided to try to enjoy it, so I closed my eyes and concentrated in touching Zuzi and imagining that the people who were touching me were only her and Stefi, but it was impossible to make Martí and François shut up so the orgy didn’t work at all (typical Spanish gatillazo). Maybe we could have arranged something, but then a lot of noisy people arrived, turning on lights and destroying the atmosphere and waking up everybody, so I was angry and my erection was totally lost.

When everybody shut up I closed my eyes few seconds and then Atila woke me up because he wanted to get out and the door was locked. I told him to wake up Miquel and Roser but it didn’t work, so I got up and opened the door.

Then, I finally went to sleep.

Next morning we relaxed a little bit and listened the Rolling Stones.

We went to get some food and I congratulated the wrong cook (fuck! I’m really sorry! I just wanted to be polite and make her happy!) and we ate paella, oh yeah.

Then, some people did a small excursion to see a farm, leaded by Sutono, who almost got us lost even before getting out of the town and we had to ask some nuns how to go to almost the same place where we were coming from... but the landscapes were cool again, and we saw cows and bulls and pigs and dogs and we stole some raw popcorn and lots of almonds and we kept them for the European cooking night. When we crossed a river, Stefi painted my face with mud like if I was an Indian, and I forgot about it so when we came back people asked what had happened to me and I didn’t get what they were talking about.

And we cleaned up the place (and my face) and we came back to Barcelona.

In the bus we sang the ‘Bus Hits’ (how great we were with “Bohemian Rhapsody”!) despite we knew we were playing with fire, and later we tried to make everybody happy and smiling by using the micro to tell old jokes. But Martí’s xenophobic joke was so cruel to the Frenchies that next morning François decided to leave us.

Having lost another of our coolest guys, we went to Palau de la Música, and then we went to a strange café before getting in. Very beautiful place, by the way (I mean the Palace, not the café with those strange posters and the crazy friendly woman).

That afternoon we took a train to Argentona (no, no ‘Argentina’, it’s ‘Argentooona’)... well, actually the train left us in Mataró, and there only a car came to collect us and the driver said he was not going to come back till he finished his football match.

So we were 10 people and we only had a small car that was only going to do one trip. What could we do? Of course we hold our breath, entered the 10 together inside the car and enjoyed the traffic jam and the human touch!

We had already started drinking some sweet and tasty red Eslovenian stuff in the train station, and in the house we did some cocktails and ate the almonds we had collected in Tremp. We tried to count the couples for la Porra del Amor (and the result was not clear, but it was somewhere between 15 and 3.000.000) and, as everybody had lost, we tried to bet for some names that night. We did it quite well.

When everybody arrived (did everybody finally arrive?) a bigger party started, with a lot of alcohol and music and the surprise of the night (that everybody knew already): the Great Strip-Tease Show. The problem of this kind of shows is that traditionally they consisted in ladies getting naked, but in the last years only boys perform it, so it was quite funny but I didn’t see any tits...

That was the European Night (despite all the patriotic Catalan paraphernalia and the national anthem you had to listen), and it was the last big big party, and, despite I had told everybody it wasn’t allowed to sleep there, some people tried to sleep in the garden. But it was fucking cold so people had to find ways of warming up, and the final number of points in la Porra increased even more.

If I saw it right, only one of our female participants didn’t score any point, and it was only because she wanted, but maybe I’m wrong because I was quite destroyed and luckily I found Edu who took me home before the party finished, so I didn’t see the last movements.

And next day it was la Diada, the national day of Catalunya (also known since last year as: Sant Bin) and there was the farewell and stuff like that, but I needed to sleep a little bit.

And, more or less, that was all.

I hope you had fun.

At least I can asure you I did, and quite a lot!

Peace and love,

X, the guide with the interesting accent

PS: And, belive it or not, the final number is... 25 (at least, of course).

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