Elyandarin

(Only now getting around to posting about my Barcelona stay. Jeeze, it's been what, half a year? Oh and by the way, if anyone's curious, I got a Twitter account at http://www.twitter.com/elyandarin - I reasoned that since I was composing bite-size chunks of text ANYWAY...)-----------------------Me and my brother were stuck in Barcelona for three months, since Erik developed a kidney-stone and wanted to get treatment for it. Accordingly, I had a lot of time to spend there.We were unimpressed, to say the least, by the months-long waiting time for kidney-stone treatments - until we returned to Sweden and found that the doctors there didn't wa...

Typing in a Spanish hostel..."Prague had cheap prices and was full of thieves. Barcelona has bloody expensive prices and twice the amount of thieves. Why are we here again? "Well, OK, the weather IS pretty nice.""OK, we've established that I can find my own backside with a map and compass - if and ONLY if I consult them every two minutes...""Spanish, Spanish, every channel I zap to. No wonder these people are so hopeless at English. Dubbing ruins them as kids.""In Prague, most clubs were free to enter. In Barcelona, they cost money - but people are giving away get-in-for-free vouchers RIGHT OUTSIDE. Their little game of pretend lacks sty...

My over-all impression of Prague: 1: Take a medium-large city. 2: Unleash a plague of sculptors on it, covering everything with statues and filigree. 3: Marinate in pollution, coating everything with a layer of dirt and grime. 4: Sprinkle with people who are thieves, beggars, scammers, club promoters and/or drug dealers.* * *Fueled by paranoia, I held out for two weeks before my laptop was stolen from my hostel... from within my locker. (I wouldn't say I'm angry about the theft, precisely, or about the lackluster Police response. It's just that I've removed Prague from the list of locations I wouldn't nuke, a list which formerly included...