This is More Fun Than Doing My Assignment

I had promised myself that while I'm here there was one rule about eating that I could never break: no hamburgers in Spain.
So at least I waited three weeks to do so.

Late last night,  some people from the CELTA course and related friends/family went to a burger joint near where I live. I was tired and in a bad mood (for reasons that I have learned to keep off the blog) but I was also hungry. As said above, a burger sounded very American to me, but the guy who recommended it had a good track record of food places so not only did I go to the burger joint, I even bought one myself.

The burger was good. The meat itself was very good although they skimped a bit on the cheese. I made two faux pas in a row, however, because when asked how it was, I just said my burger was "okay, pretty good," and the guy who recommended the place commented that I am hard to please and should get more excited about good food. So then I said it was "the best burger I've had in three years," after repeated pressure, and now one of the Americans starting picking on me, saying "you live in the country of hamburges and you haven't had a good burger for three years?"

It's true now that I think of it, that I have had at least one better burger in the past three years. The only problem again is that I found it in Queenstown, New Zealand.

The US is the "country of burgers" in the same sense the Golan Heights is the "country of land mines." Mcdonalds, Burger King, Wendy's et al, are places that I try to avoid at all costs, and have successfully done so. Even eating a good burger in the "country of burgers" is not very memorable precisely because it is so common.

Whoops. As I was writing I realized where I HAVE had a better burger in the US. Burger Brothers in Towson Maryland. That place was amazing. So there. But even so, my threshold for calling a burger "amazing!" is still very high.

The day that preceded being grumpy and having a burger was actually quite nice. There was a birthday picnic in the Ciutadella, a really nice park in the city towards the water. We spent about six hours or so eating homemade spreads and drinking bad box wine. Some people went boating and I helped use up someone's camera with pictures myself in various action poses around the park.

Earlier that day, I'd gone with a friend to see the old Main Synagogue of the Jewish Quarter, which went out of use when the Jews were expelled from the city in 1391. The four synagogues of Barcelona had become lost to history due to either poor records or building over them, but in the nineties, they'd figured out where the main synagogue was and dug it up underneath one of the gothic quarter's apartment buildings.

Mostly, it was just cool to see a "Jewish" excavation site, as the restored building itself was extremely underwhelming: two small rooms with no original decor (the pieces in on the site were all donated from other places and none were even half as old as the synagogue itself) and only minimal explanation about the site itself.

Also I think because I was a foreigner I got ripped off, as the "requested" donation was demanded by the man behind the desk and I also wasted more money on a dinky pamphlet which got lost at the picnic.

An Israeli man gave a five-minute talk about the project. Apparently the tallest synagogue in Barcelona had to be shorter than the lowest church, which was interesting. We had an interesting conversation with an Israeli man who considers himself left-wing and I thought he had a very reasonable and balanced approach to various issues. I wish HE had been around during my trip in January. One thing is clear though; Israelis (understandably) hate the UN. Which is a shame, but ultimately the UN's own fault.

This week is the final week of the teacher training course. I guess I'm in the home stretch but Monday-Wednesday could get very stressful and upsetting. Thankfully the Ramblas hookers are only about a five minutes walk away starting at 1 am.