Tangerine's PoV

As I will need to buy lots of books in English the next 5 years for the University I have looked for libraries which sell books in English here in Barcelona.

1. The first one I have found, in fact, I have visited it many times and bought quite a few books there is Come in. In this one you can find most of the books your teacher could recommend you, but I think that the classical novels have a poor quality.

Contact:
Llibreria Anglesa Come In
C/ Balmes 129 bis
08008 Barcelona – Spain
93 453 12 04/93 453 18 06

2. The second library I want to mention is Hibernian Books, a secondhand English bookshop. Here you can find basically everything and as it is a second hand shop you can find better editions for a cheaper price. I bought yesterday a very nice edition of South of the border, west of the sun by Murakami for just 3 euros.

Contact:
Hibernian Books
Calle Montseny 17
08012 Barcelona
Tlf.: 93 2174796
www.hibernian-books.com

3. Elephant Bookshop – this one was recommended to me but I didn’t get to visit it yet. This library offers secondhand books in English for not more than 3 euros. They are moving right now, so I don’t know the new address but if you’re interested keep an eye on their website and you’ll find it out.

4. BCN Books: this library also offers books in English. There are three BCN Books Libraries in Barcelona and one of them is very close to where I live so I hope to be able to visit it soon and post about it.

Contact:

BCN BOOKS BOOKSHOP
Roger de Llúria, 118
08037 BARCELONA
Tel.: 93 4577692
Fax: 93 2081445
bcnbooks@bcnbooks.com

BCN BOOKS BOOKSHOP
Amigó, 81
08021 BARCELONA
Tel.: 93 2007953
Fax: 93 2009483
amigo@bcnbooks.com

BCN BOOKS CASH & CARRY
Riera d’Horta, 32
08027 BARCELONA
Tel.: 93 4763343
Fax: 93 4763340
cash@bcnbooks.com

You can also find some books in English in the most important libraries (Casa del Libro, Fnac, etc), but in these ones you can find mostly everything you need for a much better price.

Living in Barcelona is not cheap at all, but when you also have children it can be painful.

A. is already 9 months old and as here in Spain the maternity leave is just 4 months we decided to take him to a nursery school in September when he will be one year old. We knew from friends that finding a place in a public nursery is something close to impossible, but we felt like trying at least. The system is quite bizarre, it works like this: you have to submit your request, then all requests receive a number and then another number is generated randomly and based on this last number you take part in a draw. No, not an usual draw. They basically choose a number starting from which the requests will be accepted. This is something I really did not understand. Of course, when the number was published we realized that we weren’t lucky so we started to look for a private nursery thinking that we would be more lucky. WRONG! We visited a few and they were full, no place. Finally a colleague from work managed to obtain a place for A in a nursery not so far from home.

I really do not understand how this system works. In Barcelona a place in a public nursery costs 250 euros per month, while the private costs between 400-500 per month. We will take A to this private nursery 5 hours and a half and we will bring him home to eat and sleep, as this way we can save 200 euros per month. I think this price is exaggerated, and if all the nursery schools are full is not because everyone in Barcelona is rich, it is just because we don’t hope for a solution and if we want our sons to grow up well we have to make this sacrifice. It’s sad and I hope the Government will look into this as soon as possible and solve this problem, otherwise Spain will start to ask the immigrants to come here, as they are the only persons that still have children nowadays in Spain.

So, here are my tips for you if you are looking for a place in a nursery school in Barcelona:

1. If you’re new here, or you are planning to come to Barcelona I really recommend you to rent a house or buy a house somewhere close to Barcelona but not in the city. If you have children or you’re planning to have children Barcelona is a very very expensive place to leave.

2. If you’re already here and you are looking for a place in a public nursery you should start all the process in April approximately. The nurseries first organize a visiting day for the parents to see the nursery school. This day is usually published on the web Escolas Bressol de l’Ajuntament de Barcelona. Here you can find info and photos of the public nurseries and also information about the admission.

3. Even if you request a place in a public nursery I recommend you start visiting private nurseries in february and book a place for your children there, just in case you are not lucky with the public one.

You can consult the list of public and private nurseries from Barcelona on this web page and on this page you can find more information about the admission process.

4. If you did not find a place in a public or private nursery you can still choose one of the toy libraries in town where you can leave take your son to socialize a bit and you can also leave him there with a tutor a few hours a day.

That would be all for today. Good luck!

Today we entered the video club looking for a nice movie to see on a Sunday night but we could not decide on what movie to see. We finally saw one about the revolution that took place in 1989 in Bucharest. We were not very enthusiastic about this movie but we finally took it as nothing else seemed interesting.

The first image of the movie was the town hall of my home town. I could not believe my eyes, but yes, that movie was filmed in my home town, Vaslui. We saw other familiar places and we started to enjoy the movie much more than we thought we would. We spent a quite good time remembering Vaslui and trying to find out where the buildings in the movie were located. The strange thing is that Bruno told me that one of the character’s house was situated next to my parents’ house and I did not believe it until the end when a bridge which is situated right in front of my parents’ house shows up in the picture. I lived there for 18 years and Bruno who spent there two weeks knows it better than I. Shame on me.

The movie was really good, not because it was filmed in my home town, but because the actors were really good and the screenplay also. It’s much better if you understand Romanian and know some things about Romania and Romanians, but even if you don’t you will surely spend a good time seeing this movie.

I can say I have one more reason to be proud of my home town, and I am also proud that a movie produced with a very limited budget got to win so may prizes and nominations. Very good job!

More info on this movie here.

I really wanted to take some good photos today as until next year I will not see the city so full of flowers and books, but it seems Gods were against me. I have even lost my last chance to take some good photos of the Sant Jordi bread, as until I got to take pictures of it I only found some crumbs on the table. That’s very nice of you, B, but you could have waited at least one minute. Still I have taken a photo of what was left of the bread. Originally it was white – yellow (almost white, like flours and nuts) with red lines. Similar to what? The catalan flag, correct answer. That’s what’s left of it.

If you want to see how the bread really looks and how it can be made you can visit this page (Spanish only).

I hope until next year Gods will stop being angry with me and will let me take some photos (I hope the little alien, human to be, will also let me take pictures). For the moment here you can see the rose and the book.

I have also been meditating today about two questions:

1. Why people that say: “I will never give a present to someone just because it’s Valentine’s Day/Sant Jordi/Etc’s Day; if you really love somebody you give him/her presents when you feel it” give presents to their wives/husbands the week before or after the “special commercial day”?

For this I don’t have any possible answer for the moment. I need to sleep the question or ask Luis, a colleague of ours that gave a gift to his wife on tuesday but he won’t give her a rose today.

2. Why there are so many broken roses on the streets on Sant Jordi?

B says it is because girls get angry with boys and start to throw them petals (It kind of hurts as on Sant Jordi roses are not cheap at all). On the other hand, I believe that those are 15 years old girls that have secret boyfriends and don’t want their mothers to know nor they know how to lie and tell it was a colleague that brought flowers to all the girls in class. Any other idea?

La Diada de Sant Jordi is a Catalan holiday celebrated on April 23, something similar to Valentine’s Day. It is also known as el dia de la rosa (the Day of the Rose) or el dia del llibre (The Day of the Book). In this day lovers use to exchange gifts: the boys give roses to their girlfriends or wives, and the girls give a book to their lover. All the streets are full of roses and you can hardly find a woman without a rose in her hands. This is my first Sant Jordi here and I was quite impressed as in the last days I have seen catalan flags all over the place (in cake shops, in florist’s shops, etc). Actually the rose I have received has a small catalan flag on it (it’s hard to find one without it, I know B tried to).

It is expected to sell a quantity of 5,5 millions of roses today and around 500.000 books, half of the books that will be sold during the whole year.

It is nice to walk on the streets and see all the roses exposed to attract more buyers, see the boys and girls walking hand in hand, one with a rose and the other one with a book, see them kissing and wishing their love will be always like that, a sunny day like today.

Also, today all Spain celebrates the Day of the Book and for that here goes the poem I have chosen for this special day:

Soy, éste.
El que tú imaginas.
Aquel que dibujas con cada párrafo que pasa.

Y cuando me lees,
soy tan tuyo
que hasta me inventas.

Y no termino en el punto.
Me cuelgo de algún rincón
del laberinto de tu ser,
y soy de ti un trozo.

Me llevarás hasta en la mortaja
y aún después; atado a tu alma
surcaremos el infinito,
desde ahora juntos… (Marzio Girola, Soy)

Last Sunday we decided that a little bit of social life wouldn’t be bad, so we accepted Estanis’ invitation to go to Valls for a calçotada. I really wanted to know the catalan tradition, as I feel like a total stranger here so I guessed that this would be the perfect ocasion: a big nice calçotada, the most traditional of the catalan traditions in Valls, where this tradition was born (of course, with the permission of the pa amb tomaquet, I will dedicate another entry to this great invetion that could save the humanity).

Going back to out theme: the calçotada. I have encountered a very detailed explanation of what calçots and calçotada mean:

“In the town of Valls, capital of Castellers – the people practice the precarious art of building human towers – and of calçots. Calçots are pretty much re-sprouted onions that are not allowed to die. Catalans hate waste so they shove them back underground until something happens. They sprout and the shoots are then covered in earth to maintain a white, succulent stem which grows into a long, gangly spear something between a leek and a spring onion. And then, after months in the dark, they barbecue them.

The town’s annual Calçotada celebrates the harvest of these sumptuous, char-grilled treats by laying out huge steel barbecues through the streets. Calçots, grubby from the earth are laid in thick bundles across glowing vine embers and charred to black. On removal, they are wrapped in newspaper (to soften the skin and steam the innards) before being downed in much the same way as a baby bird might neck a worm. In another of the town’s plazas, five strong-armed volunteers pounded together a special calçot dipping sauce. “

Courtesy of PilotGuides

We had some trouble with starting the fire but we eventually did, and barbecued the calçots. Some of them were raw and some of them were delicious. Estanis’ mother prepared a special sauce for us. I had tasted the calçots before but I never liked them so much as last Sunday. It was a combination of personal achievement with Estanis’ mother sauce and the fresh air together with the nothingness that surrounded us.

There are some photos that we have taken but only a few as we need to buy a new memory card for the camera. You can see the pics here.

Time goes by and things are getting tougher every day. I’ve come to think that romanians have plague or something, I don’t understand how people can be so xenophobic here. Last Monday I had a quite unpleasant experience at the university. I had one class to which I couldn’t go before, because of the job and other circumstances. Teachers should stop worrying about the attendance at their classes and limit to teaching what they have to teach: if you pass the exam or not should be your problem. But it seems that to this teacher is very important to be present, it doesn’t matter what it costs to be there: if you want to study a career you should be at the university all day long.

Anyway, I got to school on Monday, with my work done (apparently) and the teacher asked me why she hasn’t seen me in class before. I explained all the visa and job thing, I told her that I’m romanian and that well, it’s not easy. She asked me if I was there with some kind of Erasmus scholarship and I told her that I didn’t have any scholarship and she asked: “So, why did you come here at all?”. I thought that she was joking or something but no, she seemed to be very angry for me going to Spain with no scholarship. I’ve spent two hours whishing to get out of there and just forget about her. She came to see if I did my paper was not ok, and I had to change it (I will have to present it tomorrow, how nice!) just because she didn’t want it to be ok. If I said something in class it was wrong, and if other colleague said the same thing it was just perfect. Could it be because I am romanian and they are catalans?

I don’t understand why people bother about these things at all. If I decided to come to Spain I did it for some reasons that I don’t have to share with everybody. I’ve got a job and I wanted to study a career, I don’t think that I do something wrong. Anyway, my colleagues were very nice people indeed, they just kept quiet and let the teacher say all that crap. Now I know why I don’t want to talk to anyone in class. Maybe I’m antisocial, tough luck.

Well, these are the latest updates from Spain. I hope I can write again soon but with all the things I have to do for the university and with the job I barely have time for myself.

Well, today I’ve decided to open my Digui Digui book (thank you, Raul) and start studying. It seems that I will not learn Catalan without the book, I understand it quite well but all that I could say until now was: “This train’s route ends in this station”, and I can only say it, I don’t know how to write it. I’ve also expected some miracles, like moving Pompeu Fabra’s headquarter to Madrid (what would the “castellanizado” name be? Pompedo Fabra?) and force everyone to speak Spanish at the University, or finishing my “catalan forgetting” chip and implant it in the teachers’ neck… but it seems it’s not possible. I have to learn Catalan .

So I have started today, and I hope tomorrow I will read this post and I will continue with it. Up to now I know the numbers, and to say who I am and I’m sorry and all this crap. I hope I will be able to visualize it as this is what I need for the University. Wish me luck!

Here we go. I’m here and I have to deal with the people, unfortunately. I have been here 5 years ago and I rememeber that the only peolple that I could speak to were the tourists and we talked in English. I left with a pretty bad impression about Barcelona, but times have changed and also the circumstances have changed. When I came I had no problem. When you go into a bar or into a shop they start to talk to you in Catalan, but if you speak Spanish they continue in Spanish. Not at the university. I made my exams here and I will start my studies, Publicity and Public Relations, in October in the Pompeu Fabra University, here in Barcelona. So I went to make all the necessary about the registration, and here it started. I talked to everybody in Spanish but they all tried to explain me things in Catalan, although I told them that I do not understand anything of what they said. Anyway, finally I could make my registration, with some problems, like, writing my first and last name in reversed order, so we have tried for 20 minutes to find my file.

After one week I went again to Pompeu Fabra because it seems that they don’t want to speak to their students by phone. I needed a paper to say that I am a student of Pompeu Fabra, because I have already paid and I need it for the visa, otherwise I will have lost the money for the exams, registration and for the trips here. And surprise! The persons that could sign that for me are on holiday until September. This is at least amazing. I already have the ticket because when I went to register I told them that I would need the paper and they told me “No problem, on the Information Point they will give it to you”. So I bought the plane ticket for the 26th of August because I have to be here before the 26th of September when the course starts , as it takes two weeks at least to get the visa. Let’s see what happens. This time they talked to me in Spanish, although I would have preferred Catalan for this type of news, if I wouldn’t understand it wouldn’t hurt.

Let’s see what happens in the end. My advise: Stay away from Pompeu Fabra if you do not speak Catalan.

Pompeu Fabra es muy Pompeu Fabra.

Aún recuerdo era pequeño y mi madre me compraba todo tipo de comics, hasta que ya estaba crecidito y me empezó a dar dinero para que me comprara comics de Lobo (DC). Por aquella época me chupaba un huevo todo tipo de tradición. Verdaderamente me daba igual todo, pero esa es otra historia.

No hace mucho he empezado a apreciar las tradiciones culturales de cada país, y me doy cuenta de que hay ciertas costumbres que no dejan de marcarme de alguna manera, interesantes desde varios puntos de vista. Como bien sabreis los que me conozcais no soy un chaval de palabras, así que si puedo hacer algo y puede ser con un gesto, casi que mejor.

Volviendo al título de la entrada, como que mañana (técnicamente hoy, o algo) es Sant Jordi, ¿no? El día del libro y de la rosa (y el Día del Libro nada más, y el de los derechos de autor también, y más cosas que tienen que ver con el amor, pero eso ya es otra historia…).

Para los que no lo sepan, cuenta la leyenda… que rondando Montblanc (Tarragona), habitaba un animalico que podía andar, volar, nadar y sufría algo parecido a la halitosis. Según parece este pobre animalico era el terror de los habitantes de la zona ya que su dieta principalmente consistía en zamparse cualquier cosa que respirara y que tuviera a mano. Así que esta gente decidió que cada día uno de los habitantes se dejaría comer por el bichejo para que los dejara en paz. El problema (yo lo veo completamente normal) consistía en que cada vez era más difícil encontrar a alguien que se dejara comer por el dragoncito (esto si que no lo entiendo, seguro que su estómago era como el doble de un piso de protección oficial de los de ahora, pero en aquellos tiempos…), así que decidieron hacerlo por sorteo. Hasta que un buen día nominaron a la hija del rey. Total, que el resumen nos lo sabemos todos; todo el mundo triste porque la princesa iba a ser engullida por la malvadisima criaturica, aparece Sant Jordi imponente en su caballo y le dice que que le va a dar de sartenazos al bicho hasta que caiga. Y así fué, luego lo llevaron al pueblo donde parece ser que la gente de Montblanc lo remató a sartenazos (estos sí). Luego el rey quería casar a Sant Jordi con la princesa pero este se negó y desapareció tan misteriosamente como había llegado.

Parece ser que esta versión de la leyenda no es más que una adaptación catalana de “La leyenda Dorada” de Santiago de la Vorágine, se vé que escrita en el S. XII.

Apuntar que Sant Jordi es el patrón de los enamorados en Catalunya (algo así como San valentín), y que personalmente veo un gesto mucho más sincero regalar una rosa que no comprar cualquier tontería por las ansias de regalar. Aunque sigo pensando que cualquier momento es bueno para tener un detalle con la gente que quieres. ¿No? De todas formas tampoco he conseguido averiguar de dónde carajo vendrá la tradición de regalar una rosa y un libro, pero eh, intentaré enterame y volveré para postearlo. Sí, es una amenaza.

Me gustaría que la entrada estuviera algo más currada, pero son la 1:14 de la madrugada, mañana me van a despertar tempranito para ir a currar y tal… así que creo que voy a dejar la entrada pendiente de revisar para acabarla de completar con algunos datos históricos y que a la mayor parte de la gente le suelen resbalar, pero la publico.

Si no es por joder…