I almost had to sleep on the streets on my first day of arrival in Seville!
To summarise the story, I arrived in Seville at 8pm, after a 6 hours bus ride from Madrid. I was suppose to meet my host at 10.30pm at a restaurant about 10km out of the town area, and it took me almost 2 hours just to get there, as I was not familiar with the town, and I was going around in circles just trying to find the best way to get to the restaurant.
By the time I arrived at the restaurant, I was starving and decided to order some food… and you guessed it, the menu was in Spanish! The staff didn’t really speak much English either, and they asked for some help from a guy, Jossan, who happened to be at the restaurant, whom I subsequently found out that he was one of two magicians who were performing that night.
Throughout the night, I must have sent the host more than 5 messages, and tried calling him a couple of times. He didn’t answer the calls, but replied a few of the messages saying that he “will be reaching soon” and asked that I be patient. No concrete time was given despite asking that a couple of times in my messages.
Of course I started getting worried as it was already very late (past 12 midnight), and still no sign of my host. Furthermore, I was in an area of out town, and it was not as if the place was filled with hostels for picking!
During this time, I was entertained by Jossan and another magician Jose, who made an effort to get me engaged by translating some of the tricks they did into English, and I must say, the magic was very impressive! I was left wondering on a lot of occasions how some of them were done!
They even tried to perform hypnosis on me, although I have to say that it didn’t work on me, as I was very much aware of everything that was going on :P
Anyway back to the story… 2.30am came and the restaurant was about to close for the night, and still no appearance of my host! I tried calling him one last time, but no answer. I was extremely exhausted already, and asked Jose and Jossan if they knew of any hostel nearby that I could go to.
I really have to thank Jossan for being a life saviour that night, as he was kind enough to drive me around to look for a hostel that was still open and had rooms, and even helped me with my heavy luggage up the long flight of stairs! And that was how I made new magician friends!
As for the host, he finally called me back at 3.30am to apologise for not meeting me, and claims that there were family problems. However I was extremely cheese-ed off by then and it didn’t matter what the excuse was, and it was totally irresponsible of him to not have let me know earlier, especially when he was able to reply to some of my earlier messages.
Furthermore, it was already wee hours in the morning, and I was totally new in that area! If not for Jossan, I would probably have been sleeping on the streets!
...or you could take a flight back to Athens! :-)
ReplyDeletehey, Maryanne take care yourself
I will, one day! And when I do, rest assured that I will be bugging you! ;D Or perhaps in Cyprus? ;)
ReplyDeleteBTW, though I didn´t understand most of what was written, but I am impressed with your blog! Didn´t know you kept one, and wasn´t expect it to be on those categories!