After the general tantrums and police chat of the afternoon, we went back to the hostel and relaxed with a nice big cold bottle of beer, and surveyed the area. This hostel was by far the nicest we had stayed in. Everything was brand new, it had everything we needed in the kitchen and the staff's energy was infectious without being overbearing and annoying.
That evening we tucked into the advertised 'asado', which essentially means barbecue, and by the good Lord Quaver was it not the best meat I had ever, ever eaten in my entire life. I must have had six large steaks, four sausages and about three kilos of pasta and salad that night. Incredible. Even the diet-invalid Helen enjoyed it, smashing into the salad like an HGV full of knives skidding on black ice towards a primary school playground full of deaf and blind kids playing with Vaseline.
That night we met a plethora of interesting people. Interesting in the way that they were either interesting, or stupid enough that four months later I remember the stupid things they said.
First up were two Australian blokes, one of whom was genuinely interesting, the other was a complete waste of matter. He was going home the following day, after having been away from Australia for nearly twenty months. He had been to a few places in Europe before settling in England for a while, and then he had travelled around South America for about six months. Here is an abridged version of his comments over the five minutes we were talking about his travels:
'Nah, I didn't really enjoy Europe, I just didn't like any of it... Well, I was in London for a bit, which I hated, and then I travelled round but I just didn't really like anyone. It's hard being foreign in England.' To which Helen and I stopped biting our tongues and asked how in a greasy saltfuck he hadn't managed to meet a single Australian in London, which apparently he had not. He ended with the fact that he hadn't liked South America either. Wow. Hel said that he must have been really excited about going home then, as he obviously hates everywhere else on the planet - completely missing the sarcasm he answered: 'No, not really.' I just picked up my steak knife, offered it to him and instructed: 'Vertical, not horizontal'.
After they left, thank buggery, we met a middle aged Swiss couple. They spoke seven languages and talked to us about world politics in absolutely perfect English, they were by far the most interesting people we had met at a barbecue. Helen ended up swapping books with them, and we took their email addresses to further discuss the intricacies of Swiss banking in the 50's.
We stayed outside in the wooden planked garden area chatting with the staff of the hostel, the bloke who cooks the asado and a few random Americans for the rest of the evening. When it got to about one o'clock in the morning, a short, rounded, bald man walked out into the garden carrying a bottle of red wine and one glass and joined us. He looked like Dave Gilmour inflated to 1900psi.
Richard, as he was dubbed, was a rather posh man, who we later found out was a gay, atheist RE teacher. However, at our first meeting all he managed to do was insult Coventry, before giving away the fact that, despite saying he was 'from Warwickshire', he was actually from Coventry. Helen went apeshit at him, saying that Coventry needs all the support it could get. I half agreed and sat smiling into my warm beer.
We went to bed quite late, Helen flustered at her fellow Coventrian's lack of pride in his place of birth, me just slightly half-cut and full of meat. The joy.
That evening we tucked into the advertised 'asado', which essentially means barbecue, and by the good Lord Quaver was it not the best meat I had ever, ever eaten in my entire life. I must have had six large steaks, four sausages and about three kilos of pasta and salad that night. Incredible. Even the diet-invalid Helen enjoyed it, smashing into the salad like an HGV full of knives skidding on black ice towards a primary school playground full of deaf and blind kids playing with Vaseline.
That night we met a plethora of interesting people. Interesting in the way that they were either interesting, or stupid enough that four months later I remember the stupid things they said.
First up were two Australian blokes, one of whom was genuinely interesting, the other was a complete waste of matter. He was going home the following day, after having been away from Australia for nearly twenty months. He had been to a few places in Europe before settling in England for a while, and then he had travelled around South America for about six months. Here is an abridged version of his comments over the five minutes we were talking about his travels:
'Nah, I didn't really enjoy Europe, I just didn't like any of it... Well, I was in London for a bit, which I hated, and then I travelled round but I just didn't really like anyone. It's hard being foreign in England.' To which Helen and I stopped biting our tongues and asked how in a greasy saltfuck he hadn't managed to meet a single Australian in London, which apparently he had not. He ended with the fact that he hadn't liked South America either. Wow. Hel said that he must have been really excited about going home then, as he obviously hates everywhere else on the planet - completely missing the sarcasm he answered: 'No, not really.' I just picked up my steak knife, offered it to him and instructed: 'Vertical, not horizontal'.
After they left, thank buggery, we met a middle aged Swiss couple. They spoke seven languages and talked to us about world politics in absolutely perfect English, they were by far the most interesting people we had met at a barbecue. Helen ended up swapping books with them, and we took their email addresses to further discuss the intricacies of Swiss banking in the 50's.
We stayed outside in the wooden planked garden area chatting with the staff of the hostel, the bloke who cooks the asado and a few random Americans for the rest of the evening. When it got to about one o'clock in the morning, a short, rounded, bald man walked out into the garden carrying a bottle of red wine and one glass and joined us. He looked like Dave Gilmour inflated to 1900psi.
Richard, as he was dubbed, was a rather posh man, who we later found out was a gay, atheist RE teacher. However, at our first meeting all he managed to do was insult Coventry, before giving away the fact that, despite saying he was 'from Warwickshire', he was actually from Coventry. Helen went apeshit at him, saying that Coventry needs all the support it could get. I half agreed and sat smiling into my warm beer.
We went to bed quite late, Helen flustered at her fellow Coventrian's lack of pride in his place of birth, me just slightly half-cut and full of meat. The joy.
No comments:
Post a Comment