Well, it’s over. Last night we had dinner with Gloria and then dragged all six or eight of our friends to a bar called Dow Jones, in which they sell beer based on principles of yield management. It was pretty empty, which, in the end, hurt us. Then we slept on an air mattress lent to us by our friend Matthew. He bought our bed and couch, so it was the least he could do. Now we are sitting in a basically empty apartment, which helps with the closure and all that.

Barcelona, over the past month, has been a different place. No one hangs around in the summer, preferring to scoot to the country for the steamy days of August. This is a big difference from the US: people that own little stores and bars, for example, can shut down and go on vacation for a month. When we told our local wine man that no one in the US did that, he asked why. I said, “Maybe it’s a question of economy – they can’t?”

He replied that it was more likely a question of stupidity, something that rhymes with economy in Spanish. Maybe so. Either way, it’s very quiet. You can park on the street, a big deal for the people with cars. All the restaurants, even those featured in last week’s Times magazine, have tables available. Or they’ve shut down. We called everyone of Ferran Adría’s disciples on Saturday, getting answering machines at all five or so. Nothing’s going on. But you can still see everybody’s underpants.

Anyhow, we’re about twenty minutes from heading to the airport, and so that brings us to something we’ve been awaiting for months now: the blog equivalent of the clip show.

Best Spanish word: jubliación (it means “retirement”)
English word we’ve most missed: get (Sorry. But it’s so darn useful.)

Best Spanish food: butifara (It is, like everything else here, a kind of sausage.)
American food we’re most looking forward to: brunch

Best day: Hard to say. So many fun visitors. I’ll go with the weekend in the country.
Worst day: Maybe the tenth of October? Vacation time had ended, we still couldn’t communicate. We were at our pitifulest.

Best thing about moving here: Easy. New language. Or maybe sausage.
Worst: So, so, hot. So hot. Don’t listen to Spaniards: in the summer, Spain is hot. Pushing unbearable.

What we’ll miss most: The schedule. Everybody always wants to do something fun, go out to eat, zip over to the beach. Can somebody get on this in the States, please?
What we’ll miss the least: Such bad hair.

Weirdest old person: The lady who defined “blue” for me in the street.
Weirdest young person: Guy across the hall. German.

Person we’ll remember with the most annoyance: The jerky woman who was going to buy all our stuff and backed out at the last moment.
Person to whom we owe the most thanks: A toughie. José and Melissa taught us to order coffee our second day, Gloria found us an apartment, Raimon Grande sat through endless meetings trying to get us to understand our apartment contract.

Coolest new fruit: Reina Claudia plums. Not to be confused with Claudio Reyna.
Worst new food, overall: ear of pig

Most disappointing experience: Discovering that Monsoon Wedding wasn’t entirely in English.
Nicest surprise: Understanding maybe a third of my wine class.

Best trick we’re bringing home: Ask us about porróns.
Worst: Mixing Spanish and English. You can smack us if we do this.

Best idea we’ve had in eleven months: Moving to Spain.
Worst: The clip show idea.

See you tomorrow.