Faux Pas or Maybe I’m Just Stupid

I went to my new neighborhood last night to meet up with a couple of the girls who live at my next address. The one who is leaving works at one of the cool restaurants in the neighborhood along Literato Atorin Street which runs adjacent to the Russafa Market. This area is a lot hipper and trendier than where I used to live—more artsy fartsy. I got to meet the owner of the place and we soon joined a couple of her friends at a table outside on the sidewalk of this rather quiet street (quiet meaning little automobile traffic).

One of the people at the table began rolling a cigarette by hand and I mentioned how I was dying to smoke a cigar but all of the shops where I buy my Cubans have been closed for vacation. I mentioned that underneath the signs advising customers that they will be back in September the owners should have free samples of the nicotine patch for people who are trying to quit smoking.

With this little joke one of the other people at the table offered me a cigarette. I declined but I asked they guy rolling the hand-made smoke if he wouldn’t mind making another one for me. He looked at me a little funny and assented. He finished rolling the first one and gave it to his friend who fired it up and passed it around the table. As it turns out, it was tobacco laced with hashish. I quickly withdrew my request for a cigarette. I took a small puff just to be polite and just about coughed up a lung.

I booked a seat on the 1405H train to Barcelona today, or the Euromed as this train is called. It gets into Barcelona’s Sants Station at 1713H. The roundtrip fare was 65.10€. I was lucky to get on this train as we are in the heart of the traveling season. When I was at the station yesterday to buy my ticket I noticed that the place looks like a refugee camp with backpackers camped out all over the place.

This move has been a huge pain in the ass. I can’t believe how much stuff I have accumulated since I arrived. All I have with me for the trip is backpack and my little bike messenger bag with my mini-laptop and a couple of books. I will be reading Ernesto Sabato’s El Túnel on the train. It’s only one hundred pages or so which means I may finish it before I get there.