David Leigh

One thing I always make sure I do when I visit the UK is go out for a curry. It’s simply the best food ever invented and I could eat it at least 5 days of the week. Leftovers are always great for breakfast and the aroma of the spices cooking is unbeatable.

So yes, I did have a chicken curry on Saturday night, and yes, I did enjoy it. There are a few curry houses in Barcelona, but on the whole they’re not up to the standard of the UK - enjoyable enough though and I would recommend Cardomon in Barcelona; it’s nothing like in Britain, but the curries are good and they use plenty of chili to hot things up, one thing that is often absent in curries over here.

The most reliable option is to cook them myself, which I do often. Maybe I’ll share one of my chicken curry recipes with you sometime soon

A few years ago I was sent to a conference run by Network Solutions in Barcelona by my then employer. Although I could have stayed at their expence in Hotel Majestic on Passeig de Gracia I declined as I had another arrangement planned. (more…)

It takes about 20 minutes to get to the beach at Castelldefels from home, so Miriam had the great idea to take some time out while the weather is good and head for the beach during the week. Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? Unfortunately the weather this week wasn’t up to it. (more…)

Well I was given a 90 cm satellite dish, LNB, 25 metres of coax cable, a Sky digibox and all the bits and pieces required to hold it all together.

Does it work?

Of course it does! (more…)

It seemed like a close call, but in fact it wasn’t at all. However many goals Barcelona scored against Nastic on Sunday night it was really all down to how Mallorca stood up to Real Madrid. Although Mallorca were initially in the lead we only needed to hope for a draw.

That’s where Madrid show why they’re winners; they have the stamina to play hard for 90 minutes while other teams just burn out. So Barcelona didn’t win the league, not through their own fault - at least not in this round of the competition.

Well there’s always next year - if you do want to see them play you can reserve FC Barcelona tickets once the draw has been made in July.

Being an Englishman abroad is never more difficult than when it comes to a curry, as although it is possible to find Indian and Pakistani restaurants in Barcelona they don’t really cater too well for my tastes - usually not enough heat.

Last night we went to Cardomon with a couple of friends, somewhere we’d been for lunch one day when helping a friend move.

Opting pretty much for a bit of everything I’m glad to report that the food was as good as we’d remembered it - high quality ingredients, good flavour and nicely spiced food. Often you don’t find poppadoms in curry restaurants in Barcelona, but I’m Cardamon is an exception and once again they are nicely spiced.

The restaurant itself is in a converted wine bodega and it looks like no expense has been spared - it looks like a much more expensive restaurant.

So, if you’re visiting Barcelona and missing a curry head to Cardamon. You can find it at Carrer Carders, 31, just off Via Laietana. Call +34 93 295 5059 for reservations.

Just back from Travis at the Movistar “tent” at the Forum. The concert was great, good band and the singer seems a good bloke. 

The venue is terrible though, so lucky that it’s the last concert before they remove the tentpole and pull it all down. Apart from the layout - no good at ground level, but ok upstairs - you had to queue to buy beer tickets to present at the bar.

I really hate that attitude - they just don’t trust their bar staff.

The other thing - no food allowed inside, but no food available inside. When I get hungry don’t mess with me - I could easily turn to canibalism in the right circumstance. Like tonight.

PS Hi Marc!

Question; what happens if you take a bunch of half-wits and surround them with senseless bureaucracy?

The answer appears to be that they create the Spanish postal service which I try to have as little contact as possible as lost post and delays of a month or more are so common it’s just not true.

Once I asked how long a certified delivery to the UK would take - “depends on the destination post office” was the asnwer, which is taking the piss; I only send overseas mail by certified post these days and so track it online. It is often a couple of days before it even leaves the post office; well over a week until it leaves Spain; and then a day or so in the UK, typically 2-3 weeks in total!

So my problem with the Spanish postal service today is this; my Puerto Rican friends landed in Madrid from San Juan this morning and while queuing for tickets for the train at Atocha station they had a bag with credit cards and money stolen. Great start.

They phoned me and so I went to the post office to send money via Western Union. I completed the form, told the guy at the post office to send it Western Union and…

He sent my money by Giro.

My friends were just outside the Western Union office in Madrid, they didn’t want a bloody post office giro. Having never used Western Union before I didn’t know what my receipt should look like, but after the code number didn’t work and I took a look at the postal service website I realised what the problem was.

Well thanks a lot.

Normally at home we watch TV3, which is a Catalan channel. The reasons for doing so are simple. First, it shows all programmes in Dual, so I can watch English language programmes in English. Second, the programmes are, on the whole, much better than any of the Spanish language channels. Lastly as I live with a Catalan she likes to watch TV in her own language - natural enough.

One thing I’ve noticed some time ago and now more recently is the political bias of the news. I first noticed this when every edition seemed to have an item about domestic violence. So why were there so many stories of domestic violence suddenly - had Catalans as a whole suddenly become sick of each other and needed to bludgeon/shoot/strangle/poison their spouses to death?

Unlikely I think, a more reasonable explanation seemed that since the Generalitat (the autonomous government of Catalonia) was raising the issue of domestic violence in a series of posters across Barcelona and television advertising, that the news was also reporting in line with the Generalitat, who funds them.

Without wanting to diminish the issue of domestic violence, I am really uncomfortable with the fact that news reporting is being corrupted by issues that the Government is raising, whether or not they fund them. One of the Generalitat’s latest initiatives accidents in the workplace, and guess what - daily news items about work accidents, mainly in construction.

But to top it all, the Generalitat is lobbying at the moment so that the Spanish train operator Renfe’s operations in Catalonia are handed over to be controlled by the Generalitat. And so guess what we see on the news every day at the moment - a news item about how bad the train were today, look at the chaos.

Now domestic violence and workplace accidents are one thing, but this is complete propaganda; when I watch the news I want to make up my own mind, not be brainwashed into thinking what the Generalitat wants me to think. And since the Government is made up of a tripartite of incompetant liars, do they honestly expect me to believe that they could run a train service?

It’s not until you try and use a website that its sheer user-unfriendlyness can come to light. One of the big examples is the website of RENFE, the Spanish railway company, which although it looks good and is translated into a handful of languages, completely fails as a useful tool.

My girlfriend and I are planning to go to Valls on Sunday to attend the annual calçotada festival, and since it will involve two of my favourite pastimes - eating and drinking - we thought we would be better off if we took public transport rather than drive. The problem is that the website has never been designed with the idea of getting information out in a way that actually anybody to anyone. In fact it is a simple question of marketing; what does the train using population want when they use the website?

A simple question, but one that has been messed up badly. The site is subdivided into different areas of operation which are imposible to understand - why would I know whether I want one service or another?

The practical upshot of this is that the site may tell you that journey from A to B is impossible, simply because you’re in the wrong area of the site. If you go into another section you’ll find it is possible - I first noticed this when finding the timetable for a journey I have travelled before, only for the website to come up with a blank.

Why was it so difficult to design the RENFE website to be actually useful? Did anyone ever site down and think how customers were likely to request info? And why bother translating it when a tourist is even less likely to know which train service they need for any given journey.

It takes a special talent to do this.