Spain, Callela. I arrived in the morning. The hotel was on the seaside, separated from the beach by the train track going to Barcelona. The station was nearby too. I loved the setting: the hotel, the sea, the beach, and the railway next to each other. AAAnd nobody could stop me from running from the station to the sea. This compensated for the irritation caused by not getting the sea view room that I had booked. The manager apologized, and in exchange, he offered me a luxury room on the top floor with a beautiful city view—I could see all the roofs, the felines on the roofs, and the sky from the huge balcony with a jacuzzi… The manager mentioned the jacuzzi with a radiant face. Still irritated because of the lost sea view, I told myself what he could do with the jacuzzi.
After that, half-pissed, I went up to the room, checked the city view, changed in a hurry, and ran to the beach to catch the silver glow. It was there, enveloping me, the beach, and the dark aquamarine sea. Infinite happiness… I ran into the sea… ooooooh… it was cold! I swam a little, and I ran out.
Going back to my towel, I saw a beach info board which said that the sea temperature reaches 25°C at 11 a.m. ‘WWWhen?’ I thought. It was half past eleven! ‘Maybe… if I p… in it,’ I mused.
Then I saw a little white bar a few meters away: small white tables with glasses filled with a lemon-gold-yellowliquid. It didn’t seem to be lemonade or beer. ‘Something in between,’ I thought—similar to the Austrian Radler. Overwhelmed by thirst and curiosity, I forgot the cold sea and went to the bar.
I asked for a glass of that one – pointing to the glasses on the tables. The bartender, a young man, said, ‘Yes, ma’am, on the beach?’ I answered mechanically, ‘Yes, on the beach.’ He gave me the drink in a plastic cup. I asked, ‘Could you please use a glass?’ I couldn’t enjoy that wonderful color drinking from a plastic cup.
He asked me again, ‘On the beach?’ A little surprised, I said again, ‘Yes, on the beach,’ to which he returned the drink in the same plastic cup. I was about to suffocate with indignation… Immersed in the silver glow and caught in my tunnel vision between the sea and the golden liquid, the obvious reason for the annoying ‘On the beach?’ did not occur to me. Where else?? Everything was on the beach; the whole world was a beach! When I realized what he meant, upon giving the correct answer, I finally got my glass filled with the wonderful lemon-gold-yellow liquid.
In the evening, the hotel restaurant displayed a festival of fresh seafood at dinner. It looked wonderful, but being full of the sea scent, I didn’t want seafood. I looked around but couldn’t find anything else. Quarterly-pissed, I asked a waiter: ‘Where is the chicken?