Life is full of decisions and choices. Lazy Cat has served me well and we’ve had some amazing time travelling together but as my time is limited and I can’t ride the bike up to Sweden this summer, I’d rather sell and get two smaller bikes which will be more suitable for our city life, than taking on the paperwork for another import. Therefore, the bike is up for sale and since it is hardly of any interest to anyone apart from Swedish folk the information below is in Swedish:
Svenskreggad Kawasaki 650 Versys årsmodell 2011 säljes i Barcelona. Perfekt för dej som är sugen på att köra lite i Pyrenéerna och Spanien men slippa en t.o.r. resa från Sverige. Jag har haft motorcykeln sedan ny och kört ungefär 6000mil varav det mesta som semesterkörning. Den är servad enligt manual med stämplar i boken. Den har alltid varit pålitlig och tjänat mej väl. En schyst allround hoj, funkar fint att köra med packning och har en bekväm passagerarplats, väskor ingår. Jag säljer eftersom min kille nu har eget kort och vi tänker köpa varsin liten hoj istället. Här på min blogg kan du läsa om ”all” min körning med hojen om du vill. PM om du är intresserad så kan vi diskutera mer.
Full last, dock med spansk reg, innan den importerades till Sverige. Nu har den svensk plåt och det är därför jag vänder mej till svenska köpare.
In a life with too many loose ends, I had to start somewhere and take control. So I booked my flight to Estonia. Now I know for sure that I can make it to the rally. Sadly, there won’t be an epic ride crossing Europe, getting lost, having break downs, with camping and running in new exciting places. But when life is too complex, something has to give – this time it was a matter of lack of time and money. As the rally is in the third week of July, it would mean turning down job opportunities so I could ride the 3400km to Estonia. In Spain, August is the holiday month so in July I’ll hopefully be able to pick up some work at summer camps and I can’t afford not to try.
So, flying to Estonia means leaving the bike in Spain, which in turn means that I’ll have to import it back… which also means that I’ll have a bike to ride in the Pyrenees in August when the country shuts down and it is impossible to find work.
Coffee trip to relax and soak up the sun. Photo courtesy: Christopher Harry Calvert
Time flies past in a stressful life where nothing really happens. I started my new job and quit again within a week – lesson learned, if it seems too good, it usually is. Now I have a new job coming up for the month of April, just a short gig but an interesting opportunity to teach in a Swedish environment. I was hoping to pick up something for March as well, but it seems like a dead run now despite ongoing attempts.
There haven’t been many opportunities for riding but my running is coming along nicely. It feels great to be back again, it has been rather a struggle after a longer period of fatigue and now I pace myself to not exhaust my energy levels but instead enjoy a shorter run – quality instead of quantity. Our new accommodation has a rather nice city run down along Passeig de Sant Joan, past Arc de Triumf and down to Parc de la Ciutadella. There are always lots of things going on in the park, practising acrobats or spontaneous dancing, so it makes for a nice loop and then I head back up again. Best of all, running is for free. Hopefully, I can make it down to the beach for a run soon as well. Poco a poco as we say in Spanish – a bit at a time.
On one of our rare excurcions we went to Esglesia del Sagrat Cor, with the intention to enjoy the view over Barcelona and the sea. Surprisingly enough, we enjoyed the church more than the view, partly because it sky clouded over while en route, but also because it was the first church on top of a church that we have ever seen.
Overall, life has been very much about being an immigrant since arrival, trying to fix accommodation and job while taking on the paperwork. It often feels like a task from Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, it is difficult to know where to start. Now at least we have accommodation where we can register, which will make things easier, a bank account has been organised and lost papers have been retrieved. Immigrating is hard work at the best of times. I came here because I wanted to, nothing forced me to, nevertheless, sometimes it feels like a struggle to understand the order of things, but that is the essence of culture clash. They are often daunting, like when my director of studies tells me to buy sweets for the students as a way of motivating them to behave in class – a perfectly acceptable way of classroom management in Spain it seems, however, it clashes with my culture where sweets are for the weekend and to give sweets to someone else’s children is just pure wrong (for health reasons among other things), especially in the role of a teacher. A more pleasant side of a culture clash is being woken up by the sound of firecrackers outside the balcony and finding out that it is the saint’s day of this particular district of Barcelona. Later the same day, we enjoyed a parade with riders and horses, drums and trumpets, and showers of hard boiled sweets which made the children and elderly alike crawl on the ground in pursuit of them. Sweets that made the streets sticky and caused my shoes to squeak all the way back home.
Quite a different awakening and a very exciting start of the day.
