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Apr. 29th, 2001 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petermarcus...so after an uneventful, boring couple of flights I arrive in Barcelona where it is muggy and 20C, with a nice salty breeze wafting in from the Med. Then I think I badly insulted a cab driver.
See, we were driving to my hotel (meanwhile I'm cringing as I keep thinking he's driving on the wrong side of the road). We go through a section of town that's not very pretty, unlike 99% of the rest of the town. There are apartments with laundry hanging over the edges, grafittified, cars missing wheels outside. The cabbie shakes his head and points, saying something in Catalan. He doesn´t speak English, I speak bad Latin Spanish, and he keeps pointing and saying one word over and over again. I'm thinking he's talking about the buildings, so I ask "apartmentos?" He nods, but shakes his head again. So, in my stupid American ignorance, I say "apartmentos malos?" meaning bad or ugly apartments -- a place not to be. He shakes his head again, we try it a few more times, but he doesn't get his point across.
I look it up in the hotel. I think he was pointing to the Olympic Village, where the atheletes stayed. Ten years later, the Barcelonans are still proud to have been a host (as are us Atlantans), and I hope I didn't seem too unimpressed by the site. He was still friendly, even told me the maximum to pay at the hotel (which was a good thing as they tried to rip me off), so perhaps I still misunderstand, or he wrote me off as a silly tourist who wouldn't recognize a historic landmark if it fell on him.
See, we were driving to my hotel (meanwhile I'm cringing as I keep thinking he's driving on the wrong side of the road). We go through a section of town that's not very pretty, unlike 99% of the rest of the town. There are apartments with laundry hanging over the edges, grafittified, cars missing wheels outside. The cabbie shakes his head and points, saying something in Catalan. He doesn´t speak English, I speak bad Latin Spanish, and he keeps pointing and saying one word over and over again. I'm thinking he's talking about the buildings, so I ask "apartmentos?" He nods, but shakes his head again. So, in my stupid American ignorance, I say "apartmentos malos?" meaning bad or ugly apartments -- a place not to be. He shakes his head again, we try it a few more times, but he doesn't get his point across.
I look it up in the hotel. I think he was pointing to the Olympic Village, where the atheletes stayed. Ten years later, the Barcelonans are still proud to have been a host (as are us Atlantans), and I hope I didn't seem too unimpressed by the site. He was still friendly, even told me the maximum to pay at the hotel (which was a good thing as they tried to rip me off), so perhaps I still misunderstand, or he wrote me off as a silly tourist who wouldn't recognize a historic landmark if it fell on him.
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Date: 2001-04-29 09:03 pm (UTC)