Crazy people in barcelona

There are indeed a lot of them (crazy people). Yesterday walking around town I spotted twice the same guy riding his bicycle wearing only a pair of sunglasses. Yep, sunglasses, not pants! He wasn't even a young person -possibly going home after a heavy night of drinking. Middle-aged man seemed pretty normal to me except that he was naked. I also read yesterday how the local authorities have shut-down some 30 odd afters. Now I don't exactly know how afters work (usually by the time you think about those I'm well passed-out) but it didn't sound 100% normal to me to read about afters opening around 5-6am and going on until 1-3pm... Ok, this is not about crazy people going out. I was reading how some people actually wake up early to go to thses places. Can you imagine setting your alarm clock at 5.00am only to get your dancing kit out and go party with people who've been doing this for the past 6 hours? How weird must it be to mix the taste of toothpaste with your mojito? I haven't tried yet and the simple thought of setting my alarm at 5.00am brings bad memories of Mayer cars waiting in the dark and cold British morning and flights to stupid places at very stupid times. So don't insist I'm not going to do it.

More crazy stories now with (possibly) a good news. We have put a deposit down for a flat here in barcelona. I know, it's crazy. Pictures will be published very soon. I felt really weird signing those papers. It really felt like getting married in front of an estate agent. Very strange feeling. On the positive side now we've got a flat we like no more estate agents. On the other hand, welcome to the world of bank managers!

I should have checked how things work in the UK but over here it is very difficult to get any information out of a bank. They don't even have leaftlets to tell you about their rates or charges. I've tried a few banks already and the message was always "everything is negotiable. Why would I give you a leaflet if that's not what you're going to get?" Fair point, but then it makes it absolutely impossible to compare offers from different banks. The amount of paperwork you have to go through just to get an offer just makes it impossible to get more than 2 offers (unless you don't care about giving all your personal and financial information to banks you'll never work with). So just pick a couple of bank based on the colour of their logo (with teresa we picked a red one and a blue one, just to be PC) and see how it goes.

Time for me to go for my first meeting with a bank manager (the blue one today). Let's see how it goes...