This was my first impression of Europe, in Munich airport:

Clearly I'm fucking pumped about going to Germany now, but in the meantime, I'll have to settle for Espana.

After having a crack at navigating my way through Spanish transport systems, I reached my final destination, somewhere in the middle of Valencia, having babbled the right phrases Sue had instructed me to use, like secret 'don't ask, don't tell' codes that somehow got you to where you had to be.

Sue and Jazza's place is pretty awesome, in old skool V-town (I made that up, its quite clever, you take the first letter of a city, then hyphenate it with 'town' at the end), amongst lots of little bars that were littered with drunken Poms for Tomatina. One sloppy massive unit approached me on the street tapping at his hostel-tour arm band simply asking 'Home? Home?'. The funny thing in Spain is that you can tell people, "Go down that street, over the bridge, and then ask someone" I doubt he ever made it 'Home.'.

One of the coolest playgrounds in the world is in Valencia, a giant Gulliver, with slides and climbing ropes all over him. I'm guessing Spanish OSH aren't quite such the fun-nazi's they are in New Zealand.

Jazza and Sue showed me around the city for a while and we went out for some drinks later that night. I think the European culture has turned Jazza a bit fruity, evident in the trade of Jim 'Bean' for Agua de Valencia and his apparent enthusiasm towards men with beards.

I noticed not so much interest was displayed towards Sue ...

He has still maintained a high-degree of Loserism however. Infact, Spanish authorities have erected signs warning unsuspecting Spaniards about the biggest loser of them all, or 'El Doctoro Esselbrugge' as he is known here.

The next day we descended upon Bunol, along with 39,997 others, for Tomatina, the world's biggest food-fight. Although, it wasn't so much a food fight as a shower, with squashed tomatoes flung from trucks maneuvering through the crowd, with a slightly unfair ratio of about 100 tomatoes splattered for every half piece tomato you could manage to scavenge and throw (which was near impossible to do with an arm leverage of about 2 degrees) Groups of Spaniards would crowd around a naïve clothed punter yelling 'Camiseta! Camiseta!' before ripping off their t-shirt and heaving it into the crowd. Needless to say the Dolce & Gabbana clad Italians were none too impressed with their designer t-shirts being transformed into tomato juice mops.

It was a fun day, and afterwards, the streets turned into a party town, so we drunk and got sunburnt, while suckerz waited half a day for trains.

The next morning we set off for Baaarcelona (what a beautiful horizon!) home of Modernism, the first Olympics I can remember and some crazy buildings that look to be straight out of a Tim Burton set.

The Salvador Dali influence seems to have infiltrated into much of Barcelona's culture, with even drunken bums embracing surrealism to full extent.

There are heaps of street performers, most of them do the over-done frozen statue thing, but some of them make squeaky noises like the rubber chickens people give to their dogs. There was one awesome guy, who was an amateur juggler, but I paid him to juggle over my head. He dropped them a few times, but I didn't care coz I was drunx. We vamos-ed before he tried bringing out the knives and firesticks.

We went for a wander around Barcelona on the Gaudi trail, he's pretty much responsible for building half the town, from streetlights to mosaic garden bench seats, but as an architect he designed some of the coolest houses you could ever wish to live in. I bet that inside, you can probably walk up the walls and the ceilings if you felt like it.

They were cool, but this is hands down the most awesome building in the world. Sagrada La Familia is a cathedral he spent most of his life designing, which began construction in 1882 and probably wont be finished by 2082.

He even made sudoku puzzles on the wall, just in case Phill ever came to visit.

A lot of people have tainted these historical artifacts by scribbling their names on the walls, and I was a little disappointed to find out Lucie had been here, just this year and done the same thing. Tsk tsk tsk...

I noticed evidence of another familiar character who'd been to Barcelona, can you spot him?

That night we went to a club called Razzmatazz where Ratatat was playing. It's this giant warehouse with tons of stairs leading to different bars with one giant one in the middle. Trying to bluff your way through simple situations in Spanish is hard enough, but becomes ridiculous when you're a bumbling drunk in a club full of Spaniards and you can't decipher an audible word anyhow. Perhaps that explains how a guy introduced me to his girlfriend who greeted me with two fingers pronged into my eyes. Gracias.

The next day I went to the Museu D'art Contemporan Barcelona, which had an exhibition based around theatre. It had some crazy Spanish arthouse films playing, but I still think the best art in Barcelona is the street art.

Spanish Grandma's are probably the coolest in the world, they're like tiny Thumbelinas scuttling about the streets, dishing out telling off's in gibberish to anything that moves faster than a snails pace. I'm thinking about turfing out my clothes and sticking one in my suitcase to take back to New Zealand as a pet. Who else wants one? I'll sell them off $350 a pop.

We were pretty shattered after our stint in Barcelona, but we still managed to gather up the energy to check out a crazy nightclub that I'd heard about. Kubik is a temporary installation made up of massive water tank cubes with glowing lights that turn into a giant tetris game in sync with the music. We had a bit of a mission trying to find it amongst tons of bizarre constructions by the port that supposedly had something to do with the Olympics and were never used again. But when we finally did find it, it was pretty impressive.

After Barcelona we hired a car and ventured around Spain, checking out some beaches and old castles in little towns. This has gone on far too long, so here a couple of photos of beaches and old castles.

We also ended up in Morocco, but that story will have to wait till next time!