colloquium

Pretty much nothing happens here before 09:00 in the morning, except for the rain on the plains of Spain.

Breakfasts include beans. It’s like mandatory. So every time I order breakfast without beans. And every time I get breakfast with beans. Instead of taking back my bean infested plate they give me a side plate. Then I take the beans off my plate at least.

I then took a bus to San Antonio and onto Eivissa (in Spanish a ‘v’ is pronounced like an English ‘b’). I guess I wanted to see it. But when I got there it rained. Cats and dogs. Soon my map was so drenched it just disintegrated. So did my eagerness to explore the town.

Hopped on the next bus back and had an afternoon siesta after a pizza.

From the road Privilege looks rather unimpressive. The entrance isn’t even marked.

Then went Arco Mar – my favourite cafe. They know me by now. Grande Coke. Got my timesheets and extra day leave form off my back. It was standing between me and a peaceful second half of my holiday. Let Raymond know that he is seriously missing out. I invited him along first of all, since he would appreciate coming to Ibiza the most.

Back at the hotel the sun was setting and I went to the rocky beach and took some pictures.

I organised a little bit as my room was getting somewhat out of hand. I neatly wrapped all the fragile souvenirs in a Spanish newspaper while watching Sky News – the only English channel there is.

The pictures from Sydney are quite extraordinary. I don’t envy them cleaning up afterwards, but it is probably one of those once in a lifetime experiences.

Tried sleeping but my mind is all over the place. Now I’m typing this in the dark while listening to my iPod. It must have decided that tonight is Afrikaans night. It’s shuffling everything from Vreemde Stad to Byeboerwa, carefully sidestepping Tiësto.

One thing that no one is able to tell me is where all the rich and famous people stay on Ibiza. I would have liked to at least stand in front of Matthias Reim’s and Michael Cretu’s gate. Especially Matthias Reim – he’s one of my favourite artists.

Tomorrow I want to soak up as much sun as possible and find out whatever happened to the alien in New York – the Dutch book I found on Monday.

One thing I want to pat myself on the back for is the way I’m handling languages. I’m in no way fluent in anything else than Afrikaans or English, but I had a conversation with a customs official in German at Frankfurt airport – he thought I was Dutch and quite surprised to learn that I’m from South Africa. I get by with my Spanish here and rarely switch to English. But then, I’m not having the most intellectual of conversations about life, the universe and everything. Still. I could have played the ignorant tourist if I wanted to. And reading that Dutch book was just so cool.

Hopefully I will fall asleep now.