TT’s been responsible for all the blog’s to date, so I thought it was time I put finger to keyboard. I bet Tracey didn’t tell you we’ve been robbed countless times whilst in Europe. First it was the people who rent us the apartments, then each and every café and restaurant we go too and the tour companies! None of this was mentioned in the travel brochures. One place wanted 25 euros for 2 lemonades a beer and a glass of house red, that’s $40 in normal money and the waiter had the audacity to smile at me when he handed over the bill. I almost punched him out! The highlight of Germany was the Porsche drive for me, which was only 1 Euro per kay, but when you’re doing a kilometre every 13 seconds it soon adds up! This has all been written about and the article submitted to Top Gear Magazine. San Sebastian was interesting; the juxtaposition between old and new is extreme. If you walked out on the balcony at 2 in the morning, and I did most nights ready to jump - after CNN described the state of the stock market, anyway, at first I thought it was 30 small diesel engines all idling at once, then realized it was the bones in all the old people rattling as they got up to go to the toilet. The beach looked like an overly decorated chocolate cake as the brown leather chairs matched the greyhound looking women’s skin perfectly and the only discerning variance was their liquid paper white teeth bordered by a necklace that contained more gold than the Reserve Bank. I understand Rio Tinto is planning to take over the beach! On the other hand my morning runs are punctuated by the most distracting female bodies on the planet. My aspirations of a 12 kay run always turned into a 10 kay jog as the blood slowly left my head and its too difficult running with an erection.
I believe San Seb are vying to be the cultural centre of Europe, so I believe all rate payers have been petitioned to oblige the most arrogant approach to any visitor they meet. I had to call on the hospital due to neck and shoulder injuries (a result of the double takes during my morning runs) where it took me 20 minutes to get an audience with three different nurses and after two hours seeing all the sick and injured (whom came in after me) getting attention, I approached the nurses and 2 other doctors, but still got no relief as apparently they didn’t understand me. It wasn’t until I boisterously told them all to “go forth and multiply” that I realized they did understood a bit of English.
I’ve told the kids the most graphical stories of kidnappings, child abuse and the eastern European slave trade. They don’t understand most of it, save for the nightmares, but Sienna gets the picture. This of course does not stop both of them running away a lot of times and does not deter “Princess Mikaela” – also commonly referred to as “Lucy” from choosing the most inappropriate times to have a celebrity moment and it comes with all the trappings. “I’m not staying there unless they have silk sheets? Daddy I don’t understand what they’re saying on the TV! I only want Belgium Ice cream! Don’t wake me up before 11am” the usual stuff. The wife of my life made the strategic decision to let the kids take and be responsible for their own luggage, - “carry on” I said with a smile, well Lucy’s roller suit case has broken on the bottom (a separate story) so every time she pulls it over a variation from carpet to vinyl, a step or groove in the footpath it falls on its side. Can you imagine how many surface cracks there are between Melbourne and Barcelona? Tracey has organized our National Lampoons European vacation with watch-maker like precision, and those that know her will testify that her obsession with punctuality requires counseling, so the slightest variation in train times, a delayed taxi or undercooked steak puts enormous pressure on her, then more importantly Lucy, usually followed by me then Sienna and Sienna and I have stopped laughing as we realize it only makes matters worse. The most memorable was when we were late for a train descending an escalator at central station, Munich, Tracey had dragged Sienna ahead to personally hold the train and as Lucy and I got to the bottom of the escalator the roller case fell over – but this time it wasn’t just the case - but also Spotty dog (Her traveling companion) and her back-pack. The whole lot was sitting at the bottom of the escalator, being continually nudged by the never ending steps and an absolute throng of commuters. I quickly intervened, but she was having none of that, she took spotty dog and the back pack off me and threw it back on the escalator so she could pick it up herself. I ask you! Germans apply the same military precision to their life that Tracey’s has to organizing our holiday and to Lucy’s credit she told them all to leave her alone and it was only her limited vocabulary that precluded her from making more explicit comments all with a level of aggressiveness usually reserved for the Zimbabwean president - or a 5 year old. She then proceeded to re-pack everything right there at the bottom of the escalator.
A reasonable amount of international travel and 10 weeks of Spanish lessons has only resulted in me remembering the swear words of various languages. On the other hand Tracey could speak a little French and lots of German and Spanish in no time. She’s a critical accessory on any European outing. Conversely, she can be quite nonchalant and unaware with other things, like the time she tried to enter the smallest door I have ever seen, wrestling one of our giant suitcases with Lucy in tow, mumbling under her breath “how can the largest train station in Bilbao have such a small doorway”? I just stood on the street with Sienna next to me rolling her eyes. Maybe because the door was the wrong one! We were staying in a 2nd floor apartment in San Seb and on the last day we went for a walk to get supplies in the late afternoon, this time Tracey was in charge of all the essential items, money and other stuff. We went to the Superamara and got drinks and stuff then on the way back Tracey discovered she had lost the key! Of all things! I was not impressed as my shortcomings on the language side are made up in remembering the important things. I asked her where she put the key and she said “I just put it between the fold of my purse” (which by the way seems to endlessly sprinkle coins all over the road as she never remembers to zip it up), we didn’t have the phone number for rental agency, so we stared to back track the 3 shops, Superamara and half kilometre walk we had just done and all the shops were already closed, bloody siesta’s. So we waited outside until someone came out of the building and we were at least outside our locked door. We knocked on the next door neighbor’s door and she let us in to review the possibility of crawling across from her balcony to ours and that was an easy one, Tracey went first and by the time I get there she informed we had (for once) locked the door. However we had left the girl’s window open, which had no flyscreen and the shutter was up. However it was a good metre between the balcony and the window ledge, my fear of heights is only matched by my fear of people seeing my erection and Tracey was “on a mission” I held her body close to the wall as she made the Spiderman type straddle from one ledge to the other, it’s a moment that still wakes me at night. The girls asked her if she was going to die and stood there with fingers in mouth. Anyway she made it - to the distress of all observers, including the 10 or so people on the street, the next door neighbours and then some.
We are in Barcelona now, where I am reminded of San Sebastian’s aspirations to become the cultural capital of Europe, which would be totally eclipsed by one of Barcelona’s most obscure side streets, I suspect Barcelona would not consider lowering themselves to the level of considering the dizzy heights of “Europe’s Cultural Capital” if only to look up and laugh. There’s more culture at the local quikimart than there is in all of San Sebastian. Barcelona’s back street’s make the Brunswick street festival look like a primary school fete. We all love it and I don’t want to leave, except there’s a giant cruise ship in the harbor with a room booked in our name
