lifes' quests

On a trip to Barcelona a couple of years ago, where my sister happened to work at that time, my capacities for trials was being put to the test.

It started of with a visit at Subways. I simply wanted a sandwich. The guy asked if i wanted 'integrale'. I didn't know Spanish, he didn't know English.
Gosh, what has maths got to do with a sandwich?? It turned out laters he asked me if i wanted wholewheat instead of white bread...

My sister having been there only for a couple of weeks and working, asked me to have a copy of the flat-key made and gave a superficial direction of where to find the appropriate shop. Unlucky the key master had left for lunch or siesta as the spanish call it, and left a monolinguistic daughter in charge. i don' want to get you - my reader - bored yet! A mere 2 hours later i was in happy possesion of two keys.

The next chapter were tickets for an eqine gala. the naive me thought: Nothing can go wrong here! Oh, how wrong was i! I had to deal with another monolinguistic of course, but that is not the funny part of the story... The event took place in a sort of stadium with endless different price categories. Neither could i say the letters of the categories in spanish nor say the prices.
I started sweating a bit, but finally i got the tickets.

Starting to feel like the prince in fairytales, the worst of all was still to come. My sister asked me to buy a pair of black tights for work, as all hers had ladders and gave me a maximum amount to spent, which was not very high.
If you think thats an easy task, you are com-plete-ly wrong.

My sister happens to be 5.11 ft. The average spanish female is a couple of inches less tall. i learned the word 'grande' and added an extra to it, in order to indicate Xtralarge or better extra long. It was a nightmare as u can easily imagine. Finally, when i had almost totally given up on ever succeding, i called at the corner shop, which looked simply antiquated to me. Surprisingly the furnished me with the required item, though not the required price, but i really felt much to exhausted to mind at all.

I can't say my sister valued my sucessfull quests as i had wished her to and finally there was no princesses' hand to be won, but anyway it was worth going for!