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Now we know why Columbus set sail.

Posted by todd Mon, 13 Mar 2006 21:50:00 GMT

AKA: Sweet Jesus!



If you read my stories regularly, you probably know that I’m a mobile phone geek. I’m not a software engineer anymore, and most of my day involves either directing a group of engineers, or more often doing strategery (Thanks GW) to make you phone haters buy more stuff on your phone.

In short, my job is to turn you all mobile consumer whores. Don’t fight it.

The best part about a career in mobile is that your clients (the phone companies) are spread out over the whole world. That might seem scary if you only watch the US media, but as I’ve discovered, there are actually other countries in the world where people don’t live in mud huts or eat babies.

Those are pretty much the target market, so occasionally I get sent somewhere weird.

Barcelona was weird.

Barcelona is exactly two scotches and one sleeping pill away from San Diego. Actually that’s a lie. That got me to Belgium.

Tack on some Belgian beer and a terrible hot dog.. now you are in Barcelona Spain.

I know what you are thinking right now.

“Ooh. That would be soooo cool! Spain! The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria!”…

This would be true, if Nina was a transvestite hooker with a cataract problem and a voice as deep as mine. Personally, I don’t find that very “cool”. No joke, I was followed by this “woman” who went so far as to grab me and try and convince me to come with her. Now, Barcelona is notorious for pick pockets, and this woman was getting on my nerves anyway, so I wound up giving her a nice hard shove and telling her to fuck off. That worked and stopped her. She (not joking) pouted at me and looked highly offended.

Who knew that tranny prostitutes were so sensitive?

First off, people in Spain don’t really speak English. (shocker eh?)… My Spanish is terrible, although I can understand the gist of a conversation.

Guess what! People in Barcelona don’t speak SPANISH EITHER. It’s apparently some dialect of Spanish and French, known as Catalan. I got nothing.

All those years I spent watching Sesame Street, for NOTHING.

When you don’t speak the language, it’s tough to make friends in a new city. For instance, there were two very nice guys who always hung out in the hallway outside the apartment I was staying in. Every night I’d come home and they would be sitting there.

Every morning I’d leave for the tradeshow….. and they would be sitting there. They were dedicated to whatever it was they were doing out there, but I missed out because I couldn’t introduce myself.

Then one morning I walked out and sure enough, they were there, along with about 2 dozen little scraps of newspaper folded up into square packets, and a funny looking smoking device made out of a soda bottle and some tin foil.

They were very dedicated to freebasing cocaine. They looked very worried that I had busted them.

Now, I’ve been around the block a few times, and really could care less what other people do with their time. Beyond that, I didn’t really want to worry about getting jumped by drug addicts every time I came home, so what could I do?

I made buddies with them.

“No worries man, none of my business.” I told them while raising my hands up in the international sign for “none of my business”. Then I started walking away.
“Mi Amigo, Mi Amigo, come back!” said the crack head.

So I go back. Still not quite sure what the hell they were smoking. Apparently their English was better than my Catalan, and they had understood my statement, thereby automatically making me their buddy.

Crack head #1 takes a puff off his bong and offers it to me.

“No thanks man, I have to go to work. What is it though?” It sort of smelled like pot, and I’d heard that Barcelona was full of hashish.. That would have been cool. Pot heads don’t rob people… eat all their chips, yes.. rob them…. Notsomuch.

“Es cocaine y hashish”. Fuck. These guys were smoking cocaine and mixing in hashish for flavor, apparently.

“Thanks, but I have to get going. Maybe later” I figured that as long as they didn’t think I was going to call the cops, they wouldn’t screw with me.. so after about 5 more “Mi Amigo’s” I got out of there.

The rest of my trip pretty much consisted of me turning down propositions from ugly prostitutes and hard drugs from 22 year olds. On the upside, one of mi amigos actually did give me directions to a decent club my last day in town. They were the friendliest addicts I’ve ever met.

Still.. if you ever get the chance to fly 18 hours to Barcelona.

Don’t.