The Avatar (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} saurik) wrote,@ 2004-04-05 02:38:00 |
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Random Spanish Notes
(Local Time: 12:38.) Many of the restaurants have English menus, but I swear they are _horribly_ translated. I went to a restaurant last night that decided to just give me an _only_ English menu and I wish they had just given me the Spanish one. I actually found myself asking the waitress "Is 'potatos with spicy sauce' 'potatas bravas'?". I ended up telling her my order in Spanish, hehe. One restaurant whose menu was posted outside actually translated "potatas bravas" as "spicy hot" with no mention of potatos.
I also keep seeing various seafood dishes done "fisherman's style" which I actually think is a horrible, widespread mistranslation of either "in marinara sauce" or "marinated". The Spanish version is like "[clams] marinar" or "[clams] marinara" or something (I forgot which), and the English becomes either "fisherman style clams", or the really, really weird "clams in a seamanlike way".
There are pidgeons everywhere here. And people seem to actually _like_ them. I saw people happily playing with pidgeons, letting them fly up and land on their arms, not being at all concerned when they land on their head... I'm sorry, but coming from Chicago I view pidgeons as large flying rodents.
Fast food is ubiquitous here. Every block or so you find a McDonald's. Mark had actually commented that he thinks there was one place on Las Ramblas where he could see three of them at once in different directions. And the fast food places are large. It's not like the issue seems to be a core one of capacity. I stopped at a little fast food sandwich shop today named Bocatta that I had been seeing on pretty much every side street to find it was two stories inside.
Street performers here are actually useful and good. I tend to hate most street performers, but I've actually found myself giving money to some of these people as they really did add something. That's not to say they are _all_ good. There were a few people with some instruments who decided to come onto the subway the night before last who really should have paid _us_ to interrupt our conversation by making it impossible to hear each other over the racket. Oh, and I'm sick of hearing Aye Aye Carumba played on an accordian.
A common form of street performance here are human statues. You will be walking around and see someone whose face and clothing are all painted with metallic paint standing perfectly still. If you give them some money they do some little action that shows off their props and costume. They're quite random: everything from a stone miner to a marble Elvis.
Everyone seems to smoke here. And it's legal to smoke almost everywhere here. Many of the restaurants actually have cigarette machines in the dining area. The packages of cigarettes have massive notices on them, though, that take up one half of an entire face of the package, that say: Fumar Acorta La Vida ("Smoking Shortens Life"). The ground everywhere in the city is covered in cigarette butts.
The magazine stands here (the ones out on the street, in the middle of the crowd) sell porn. And I don't just mean porn magazines, I mean DVDs and videos. [Edit]This is like _half the stand_. And not just this stand, but the stand across the street that's owned by the same company and the one down the street under different management, too. Do they really sell this much? Fast food and porn seem the staples here.[/Edit]
I stopped at an Arcade to find "Dance Dance Revolution" is named "Dancing Stage" here. There were a lot of people crouded around it and I watched people for a whilee, but none of them (including the ones people seemed to look up to at it) were very good. I've seen Colin play too much, hehe. They had a _full size_ version of Ridge Racer (aptly named "Ridge Racer Full Scale"). They had an entire car there that you got in with a partial wrap around screen out in front of the car. The game was still Ridge Racer, though, with horrible resolution. And the "wrap around screen" was simulated with projector tricks and didn't actually have the right spatial projection for rendering.
I saw a street clock here that was quite interesting. It was built into the sidewalk and used little inset lights for the endpoints of the hands.
[Edit]I forgot the little local time indicator and I also managed to forget to type the punchline to the magazine stand porn commentary.[/Edit]
(Local Time: 12:38.) Many of the restaurants have English menus, but I swear they are _horribly_ translated. I went to a restaurant last night that decided to just give me an _only_ English menu and I wish they had just given me the Spanish one. I actually found myself asking the waitress "Is 'potatos with spicy sauce' 'potatas bravas'?". I ended up telling her my order in Spanish, hehe. One restaurant whose menu was posted outside actually translated "potatas bravas" as "spicy hot" with no mention of potatos.
I also keep seeing various seafood dishes done "fisherman's style" which I actually think is a horrible, widespread mistranslation of either "in marinara sauce" or "marinated". The Spanish version is like "[clams] marinar" or "[clams] marinara" or something (I forgot which), and the English becomes either "fisherman style clams", or the really, really weird "clams in a seamanlike way".
There are pidgeons everywhere here. And people seem to actually _like_ them. I saw people happily playing with pidgeons, letting them fly up and land on their arms, not being at all concerned when they land on their head... I'm sorry, but coming from Chicago I view pidgeons as large flying rodents.
Fast food is ubiquitous here. Every block or so you find a McDonald's. Mark had actually commented that he thinks there was one place on Las Ramblas where he could see three of them at once in different directions. And the fast food places are large. It's not like the issue seems to be a core one of capacity. I stopped at a little fast food sandwich shop today named Bocatta that I had been seeing on pretty much every side street to find it was two stories inside.
Street performers here are actually useful and good. I tend to hate most street performers, but I've actually found myself giving money to some of these people as they really did add something. That's not to say they are _all_ good. There were a few people with some instruments who decided to come onto the subway the night before last who really should have paid _us_ to interrupt our conversation by making it impossible to hear each other over the racket. Oh, and I'm sick of hearing Aye Aye Carumba played on an accordian.
A common form of street performance here are human statues. You will be walking around and see someone whose face and clothing are all painted with metallic paint standing perfectly still. If you give them some money they do some little action that shows off their props and costume. They're quite random: everything from a stone miner to a marble Elvis.
Everyone seems to smoke here. And it's legal to smoke almost everywhere here. Many of the restaurants actually have cigarette machines in the dining area. The packages of cigarettes have massive notices on them, though, that take up one half of an entire face of the package, that say: Fumar Acorta La Vida ("Smoking Shortens Life"). The ground everywhere in the city is covered in cigarette butts.
The magazine stands here (the ones out on the street, in the middle of the crowd) sell porn. And I don't just mean porn magazines, I mean DVDs and videos. [Edit]This is like _half the stand_. And not just this stand, but the stand across the street that's owned by the same company and the one down the street under different management, too. Do they really sell this much? Fast food and porn seem the staples here.[/Edit]
I stopped at an Arcade to find "Dance Dance Revolution" is named "Dancing Stage" here. There were a lot of people crouded around it and I watched people for a whilee, but none of them (including the ones people seemed to look up to at it) were very good. I've seen Colin play too much, hehe. They had a _full size_ version of Ridge Racer (aptly named "Ridge Racer Full Scale"). They had an entire car there that you got in with a partial wrap around screen out in front of the car. The game was still Ridge Racer, though, with horrible resolution. And the "wrap around screen" was simulated with projector tricks and didn't actually have the right spatial projection for rendering.
I saw a street clock here that was quite interesting. It was built into the sidewalk and used little inset lights for the endpoints of the hands.
[Edit]I forgot the little local time indicator and I also managed to forget to type the punchline to the magazine stand porn commentary.[/Edit]
