Calpe … la chasse. 18th of February, 2007 POST·MERIDIEM 03:15

Impressions of Spain, or more exactly of the Costa Blanca;

1. The Dorfjugend have mullets.
2. The weather is perfect. Of course, the locals find it too cold, and there are no other tourists here, so one ends up hanging around with the Dorfjugend and getting into fights, of all things. I have a Gorbachov-style bruise across my forehead, now. Not that I can remember the details—there was drink involved—but what the fuсk?! I am not normally a violent person, so I blame the Dorfjugend.
3. The signage is terrible. Like, two metres before a turn you’ll get a sign saying it’s where you want to go, so you’ll miss it. And other annoyances. Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles ...
4. Guadalest—a small village and Moorish castle in the back-country behind Calpe—is beautiful, the village, the views, the whole thing. I suspect visiting it in February was exactly the right thing to do, since there weren’t that many people.
5. If one shaves one’s head and acquires a complete English English accent, far too many diphthongs and all, one will have trouble convincing people that one is from Antwerp. (This was a barman here.)
6. Calpe is an excellent place to practice one’s German.
7. To my surprise, while my Spanish is terrible, I can still communicate relatively effectively with it. I blame resolutely monolingual locals.
8. The word overdevelopment could have been coined for this place.

Word of the day: die Jagd is German for “hunt;” la caza is the Spanish.