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UK Party at Castle Thingy

July 4 - On the evening of the 3rd, something wonderful was going to happen. We were all going to gather together with our compatriots from the UK in a real castle and drink the night away. The only problem we had was nobody was sure where the castle was, remember what it was called, or how to get there.
     Okay, so some of us might have been being a bit lame there, because as it turns out the information was there to be found in our press details. But based on the sparse information we had, we rather assumed it would be somewhere in the general area of Barcelona and so asked a cab driver to take us there. It turned out that the castle was about an hour away and wasn't even in Barcelona, being in fact located in Cerdanyola, but refreshingly the cab drivers owned up to this fact before they ran us out there at great expense. We did the only thing we could do. We bit the bullet and got the coach.

Click here to see the full movie of the UK drinks party (xDSL, cable modems and above)

The castle was beautiful though, when we finally got there. The Castell de Sant Marçal (ah!) is set in the countryside, but our view of this was tarnished somewhat by the huge traffic jam we got stuck in on the way out. When we got there someone had badly underestimated the sheer bladder-busting capacity of the English drinker, and so the beer ran out within about 30 minutes, leaving  a choice of slightly indifferent red wine or Sangria. And the prawns in the paella were microscopic. Add to that the fact that the queue for the toilet was about a mile long and you've got a lot to complain about...  in other words the perfect British evening entertainment.
     On stage the two stand up comedians were embarrassingly unfunny, but having got past all that, the main entertainment was excellent. A winning mixture of the culturally rich and the full-on sex-tastic, the Cuban dance troop wowed the mildly under-inebriated crowd with it's dizzying hip swaying dances.
     Working their way through the crowd followed by their drummers, the beautifully lithe and tanned dancers decorated with multi-coloured feathers insinuated themselves into and through the crowd onto the stage. Once on the stage they danced spectacularly, having to occasionally enjoin the stoic Brits to enjoy themselves more visually and audibly.
     Yes, it's a sad fact that at UK drinks most years there's very little dancing and a lot of standing about mildly tapping a foot with a far away look in your eye. Certain UK delegates at TechEd parties have the look of unmarried uncles who were invited to the party to see that the kids don't get too drunk.
     Tsk! Take care you crazy kids.

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