Shopping

May. 27th, 2007 02:30 pm
rebness: (Mercedes)
Had a really nice, relaxing weekend after a terribly hectic week. The sun has been blistering and I´ve enjoyed just sitting out on the balcony, relaxing and reading. This was less a choice than something that was forced on me because I didn´t have enough cash even to just mooch on the Ramblas, but that was okay.

Due to various surprise!bills and miscalculations, plus only receiving half a month´s pay last month, I´m down to my last fifteen Euros until I get paid on Wednesday. I was all annoyed because I thought I´d be living on chips and my precious imported curry for a week, only to die of scurvy. The money´s going further than I thought, though.

I picked up a load of fresh asparagus for one Euro, green peppers and potatoes for fifty cents or thereabouts each, lemons for a few cents, chickpeas and lentils for 32 cents each and beef steak for a couple of Euros. Top that off with a bottle of red wine for 98 cents and I´m eating pretty damned well for not having any money. I made a nice Sunday roast today, but with a Spanish twist. It was damned tasty, even if I do say so myself. As for the rest of the week, I only really eat salad when I get in after work because I´m so dehydrated and tired after tackling the hill o´Do0m to get home, so I´m sorted in that department.

Shopping for meat is quite stressful, to be honest. I worked out that ´cerdo´ referred to pork, which I avoid, but the descriptions switch between Spanish (which I can follow) and Catalan (which likes trick descriptions), so I´ve focused on teaching myself the names in both languages for all cuts and types of meat. Couple that with stuff like rabbits tending to come with big, staring blue eyes still intact and poultry with head still attached and it´s still pretty much a learning process. I feel like an ignorant, sheltered softie sometimes and whilst I don´t come the asshat and grimace at these things in public, inside my guts are churning. It´s to my eternal lulz, though, that every time I go to get my produce weighed, nobody knows what parsnips are called in Catalan and they have to scramble to find the explanatory list. Ahahahaa.
rebness: (Catalonia)
There is a passage in the Bible where the Devil stands with Jesus on a mountain that looks upon "all the kingdoms of the world" and says, …Et dixit illi haec tibi omnia dabo si cadens adoraveris me-- "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." Imagine looking out on all those riches, offered so much power! What a tempting, horrible moment. What a story.

It´s a dark, intriguing story, to be sure. And suppose you worked on the outskirts of Barcelona and all you had to do was turn to the right and look out of the window to see this imposing mountain named after that story rising up above the city, crowned by a church, omnipresent and impossible to ignore. In the end, Laura, my colleague, had to ask what I kept looking at and I told her. She enthused about going up Tibidabo, and how one can see all of Barcelona from there. Hannah chimed in with the story of Jesus and how she always thought about it when she saw the mountain.

So, of course, the logical thing to do was to go up there and maybe it would stop intriguing me so much. Though nothing is ever so easy in Barcelona. It is an attention h0r of a city, which is why I shouldn´t have been too surprised to get off the metro only to be confronted by a huge willy ).


website stats
rebness: (Henriette)


Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.

Question: why do the British go insane at the slightest hint of sun? Why did my friends, family and I feel it was such a good idea to sit outside in that baking hot sun wearing that lethal tanning oil?

WHY when my skin is pale and sensitive and all English rose-y? Am lobster, yo.

My life iz ruined oh noes, etc.

Profile

rebness: (Default)
rebness

August 2013

S M T W T F S
    12 3
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 21st, 2025 10:52 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios