The Sunday that just passed was pretty interesting and eventful for me. It all began with an invitation from the company lawyer to go to his holiday home up in Montseny, a mountain just north of Barcelona city. Its wild boar season in Barcelona now you see, and there's this great restaurant in Montseny that is famous for hunting wild boar, aging the meat for 2 weeks and then cooking up a mean stew with it. Fresh mountain air and wild boar stew! How could I say no?
So along with my colleague Terence, we made the one hour drive to Montseny and up to the little mountain village. The booking at the restaurant was for 1:30pm and we reached there at about a quarter past one. Before heading to the restaurant, we took in the view from John’s holiday home in the mountain.
We left John’s apartment and strolled down the little lanes of the village towards the town square. It's a quaint little Spanish mountain town. It has it's own baker, butcher, wine cellar, little grocery store and 5 restaurants. It's all little cobbled lanes and there was a little area with a sunday market going on. Very rustic!
1:30pm. We went into the restaurant and took our seats. Good thing we had a reservation coz the restaurant was small and cosy but very crowded! There was also a long line of people queueing up. You can tell that this was the right place for wild boar coz there were wild boar heads all over the place!! Can you see them? They look pretty fierce and not very happy. I guess they keep the big ones as trophies. John and his wife proceeded to order the food. They ordered salad with cold cuts, snails (yummy!!!), wild mushrooms in garlic butter and charcoal roasted bread for starters. After that we had the wild boar stew. I was so stuffed after the lunch. And the lunch lasted 2 hours plus coz everyone ate slowly and talked a lot! The European way of eating and the asian way is very different. They really eat slowly, talk a lot and sip their wine. I think we should adopt that habit. I think we eat too fast. Ok maybe this advice is more for me. 
After the really full and satisfying meal, and a lot of talking about lots of random stuff, we went for a walk around the area. There are little trails all over the mountain that you can have nice walks in. There are also random springs that you can drink from! Like natural springs trickling down the rock and you just drink from it! Better than evian I reckon coz there's no weird mineral taste in the water. After about 40 mins, we finished our walk and headed back to John’s apartment for tea and coffee. It was quite nice and refreshing to have a walk with fresh mountain air after so much food. 
After getting back to John’s apartment, we all sat down and chatted a bit more while John’s wife made the tea and coffee. John and Terence were talking about politics in Spain, Singapore and Malaysia. I was feeling a bit sleepy and just spaced out for a bit. Politics wasn't really my thing. In fact, being up in a mountain, I started to daydream about swooshing around on my snowboard in white powder snow, feeling the cold wind rush by, the snow spray whenever I slice through the snow to change directions. Suddenly, there was a loud bang like an explosion from the kitchen!! I was jolted from my daydream (which ended with a volcano eruption thanks to the bang). We all rushed in and almost immediately there was water everywhere!! The water pipe in the heater unit had burst and there was water gushing everywhere! At the same time, the electricity went out and as the sun was already setting, the whole apartment was very dark. Everyone was shocked and John was frantic. The apartment was getting seriously flooded! While John’s wife was frantically calling for help on the phone, John, Terence and I were trying to contain the water by mopping the floor and throwing towels around and trying to catch the gushing water in pails and bailing them in the sink. My snowboarding thoughts were somehow replaced by one of me surfing the waves in summer now. Bizarre how my brain can still daydream in the midst of a crisis. Anyway, water was flooding the whole apartment! We were ankle deep in water! It was such a sudden and shocking event! We were probably at it for a good 20 mins before someone finally showed up and turned off the mains that was outside the building! Gosh. It was a bit funny but I felt so sorry for John. He was also feeling bad and kept apologising to me and Terence and thanked us for the help. Some of the neighbors also showed up to help mop up the water. Finally, when the situation was under control, we left at around 730pm. I got home at around 840pm and finally took off my shoes and socks that were soaked. Despite the mad end to the day, I quite enjoyed my day trip. I'll just remember to wear rubber boots and a raincoat the next time John invites me up to his holiday home again. Phew.
