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The train to Bilbao should have taken less than an hour. But passing green little valleys scarred by the proliferation of high rise blocks and desolate industrial projects, it ended up being closer to four.I arrived hot, sweating and without the slightest idea of where I was staying

Chicas!! Chicas!!

James Taylor
2006-08-23 12:26:28

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the Madrid/Barcelona game had poor reception. There was a Connect Four, but it was broken.

If any one wants to piss off an entire Spanish Taekwondo team, here are some tips. I had met a couple of welsh guys
who were staying in my room and one of them pointed the toilet out to me on the way down to dinner. I didn´t see a sign indicating gender, but its not entirley unheard of to have mixed toilets so it didn't strike me as unusual. While in a cubicle, doing my business, so to speak, I heard some running around and shouting. Strange; but probably just some kids messing around. Someone knocked on the cubicle door and said something in Spanish. I didn't understand, but again I thought it was kids so I left it. The knocking soon became more vigorous and the Spanish voices chattering outside the door became more numerous. As I had not the faintest clue what they were saying I fired back a few "no habla espanol"s and left it at that. This continued intermittently for a while and then suddenly stopped. Whatever the problem was, I figured it had resolved itself.

I was more than a bit surprised to discover, on exiting the toilet, 30 or 40 tracksuited teenage spaniards, and their keepers, staring at me with a mixture of shock and disgust. Apparently I was in the female toilet and this was

View from the hostel windowa problem. On the tiny panel where the silhouete of a Womanly stick figure had presumably once hung, some conscientious but uneven hand had scrawled a tiny "Chicas". In biro.

And this was meant to be sufficient information when it came to the momentary, but all important, decision of selecting a gender appropriate lavatory was it. I suppose maybe if I was paying more attention I may have noticed it was only girls showering in the next room. But the important point is that I shoudn´t have had to. I have become accustomed to looking for that little figure two thirds of a way up the door (although in Spain ...