One week to go...plus a dinner and a friday

Yes, only one more week plus two extra days and I will be back in Barcelona. That is the time left until this internship (together with this blog) is decalred officially finished. Last weekend in Madrid has been also "officially declared" something. It has been officially declared "killing weekend", because I feel still not 100% recovered from the wedding and today is wednesday already. Tomorrow we have the goodbye dinner for Ali and Fernanda, and a leaving party on Friday.....oh well....I guess that, as the song says..."I will survive".
An example of our state on Sunday is that I forgot to close my bag with the small locker in the airport, when comming back to Basel. I realized just before the check in, and after half an hour of "pajarreo" looking for the keys I managed to close the bag. Then, two minutes after that, the keys dissapeared. Yes, I swear they dissapeared from my hand or my pocket or wherever. Anyway, I was aware of that once inside the boarding zone. That was after a small incident with the security guy in Madrid´s airport. I thought he was talking in german to me (my mind was already in basel), because he asked to open my arms and turn back for inspection, and I did just the oppposite (I mean that I didn't turn back). Then he was going to proceed and then I realized and turned (remember my arms were opened). Then he looked at me with an expression that we can qualify as bizarre, and I said...Man, I come from a saturady night wedding. No problem.

By the way, given that we are talking about airports, maybe you have time to read this article from "the economist" about the fear of flying. I read it in the plane and I liked it.

Ok, we are now on Monday morning, and the main thing is: Openning the bag. This is going to be very easy. I have my multifunctional "Topeak McGuyver XS" (this is the name written on it) that appart from solving any mountain bike mechanical problem you can have, opens lockers in the blink of an eye. In my case must be in the blink of two milion eyes because the McGyver strategy didn´t work. If you want security mini-lockers....just Samsonite. Then, under the influence of too many movies, I had my bed lamp in my right hand and the bag on the left one, ready to use force with the locker, when I saw myself in the mirrow and start thinking "this is not going to work either and you don´t want to break the bag". Fortunately, I am a creative man and a 10 min walk to the closest department store (where they sell the same samsonite bag) turned out to be better than the movie strategy. Now I know that I can open any samsonite bag that looks the same as mine with my keys, in teh case I have not lost them.

Other things. Yesterday I received in my mail box 2 sets of plastic bags full of indications in german that obviously I can't understand. The bags came together with a booklet to join the swiss police corp. These booklets look the same everywhere, so I am still not very convinced of the advantages of joining. Anyway, going back to the plastic bags, I don't know why but I was convinced they were a very civic initiative so that pet owners can collect the shit of their animals when going out in the street. Maybe they should implement that in Barcelona also, but my opinion is that in my city the problem is not in the "available resources" in the form of plastic bags to collect animals' waste, but in the "available resources" in the brains of some pet owners. So I was curious about the bags and started to look the indications up in my german dictionary (my beloved yellow german dictionary, which is the most unamortised investment I have ever made in a summer period). By looking at the dictionary I start to connect words such as "leather, women, cautious, take care, children, clothes". 2 possible explanations. First: I am not only unable to learn this language but also unable to use a mini-german-spanish yellow dictionary. Second: I don't think the plastic bags are for your dogs' shit. The thing is I still don't know hat are they for. In my case I think I will put some dirty clothes in next week. Maybe they send those bags to any person that has worked in the country and is leaving soon. That would be something like "It has been a pleasure for Basel city to have you in Switzerland, but please, take your thrash home".

I leave you with some pics from tuesday's dinner in the cool appartment that josh has found in the city center. It turned out to be a kind of party, but I was comming from a too hard weekend and left around 11, before things got dangerous agin.

Fernanda unable to decide among the hundreds of things Ali cooked in the afternoonThe music for the evening came from hereMusic for Thursday: Wolf Parade-Grounds for divorce (just to put a little of black humor in this wedding environment we have been experiencing this summer)