The long walk: Puta madre

I'm still around, just made a longer stop in one town in south of Spain. The reason why I've been staying in one town for four months is simple. Ive started a life in a new city for eleven times already. And at one moment it becomes too easy. All you need to start a life in a new city is friends and everything else comes automatically.

Oh, since i don't have a lot of photos from my stay in Gandia i throw in random photos from my trip to make the post more colorful.

(One of my all time favorites, taken somewhere in north Italy)

The last post ended with me saying that now I'm going to Benidorm.
And that was honestly the plan. But before that i went to my home bar to have the last dinner and to say good bye. But there happened to be some of my friends who invited me to join in their table. And one beer leads to another and that leads to a shot and so on. And the next moment I've decided to stay here for a weekend.

(One villa in Pompeii)

During that weekend i experienced so much that i decided that I'm gonna stay here for bit longer time and learn more about typical Spanish way of life.

And i really love it. During that time there was a lot of parades and carnival's every week. And i mean parades so big that you watch it for more then two hours while its passing by from front of you.

And that's not all, there where small orchestras constantly walking around on the streets and playing music.

(Visiting ancient Greek temples in south italy)

As you may remember that my friend Kenneth went to Benidorm to wait me there.

Well he came back the next weekend.

Its friday, my home bar is full of people. I'm in front of the bar counter, chatting with the bartender as usually. The next moment somebody taps me on the shoulder. I turned around and i see my friend with a big smile, announcing - "I got robbed!"

Well we had a good weekend together. Monday he says that he goes back to Benidorm and we see on friday.

Well, i haven't seen him until this day. For some reason he went to France where things got bad and he went back to Estonia

I found that out few weeks later when checking facebook and randomly saw one of his posts. That's being best friends at its best!

(me being in a party in Saint Tropez on a four deck super yacht)

Now the next few weeks was every day in my homebar and making my stay here even better.

That means making friends with everybody. And that also means that it happened quite often that i walked into a bar with three euros and left from a bar being completely drunk.

And tuesdays, the only day when my homebar is closed. I was still with my family (the staff is my family). Because we have such awesome thing like el Colmadito tuesday. This is meeting in a bar at 1pm and taking few beers while waiting everybody to arrive. Then we go to eat which is mixed with a lot of beers and shots. Then at five pm we go to another bar where we play table football, pool and of course - drink some more. And at 9 we end the night.

With the staff we have a tradition to take beer and jagermeister shot everyday at four or five a clock (depending on when the daily shift ended). And this tradition grew bigger and bigger every week. Until one day i counted 16 persons sitting in one table. It still exist but its not as strong anymore.

Now we are getting into march when there was fallas (pronounce fayas since double ll in spain is y). Now that's the craziest shit I've ever seen. Party all day, all night - for a month. Okey in Gandia it was 10 days but Valencia is the place for that.

In day time you could hear an orchestra playing all the time, people singing, dancing, drinking local liquor and throwing bangers everywhere. Some of them even military type bangs. Even 2 years old childrens throwing them. And in night the same but add even crazier party's everywhere. And i lived for a long time in one of the main squares where the party never ended. I mean try to sleep then. And that was for ten days in a row.

I was devastated after that.

(Photo from Pisa in the main party square)

After that i finally decided to walk to Benidorm. The walk was very bad since it was raining like hell for three days and nights. Exactly the amount of time it took me to get there.

I didn't enjoy my stay in Benidorm a lot. That's because by now I'm so used to typical spanish town. And Benidorm is a city created for british tourist. Locals call it spanish version of Las Vegas. It has sky creepers and everything.

The only good thing was that there i could earn significantly more money on the streets.

And that there was also el colmadito where i could buy one euro pint.

So i came back to Gandia. Saw all the friends and had some parties. Until i receive a phone call. "Hey Mike, still looking for a job?", and i answer "Yes", "Great you start tomorrow at 8 am!"
Remember what i said in the beginning of the post? That all you need to start a life in a new city is friends! That's it!

All my life changed since that call.
So what was my work? I worked in sort of a factory/warehouse that sorts and packages oranges. And my job was to lift oranges boxes. You take the box from the conveyor belt, check the caliber of the oranges and lift it to the right stack.

And my coworkers where very nice to me. Some of them brought me breakfast every morning and in one of my coworkers place i lived for five weeks, even though i worked for seven.

Having the last drink with some of my coworkers last friday.