While traveling through Europe last year, we stopped for a few days in Barcelona to check out the capital city of Catalonia. The hostel we were staying in gave us a flyer of interesting things to do over the next few days.

One particular entry caught our eye.

“¡Una nit de curts còmic!”

It’s written in Catalan and basically translates to “a night of funny shorts!”

That was pretty amusing to us, especially because we all agreed that Sanjin had just bought some ridiculous and funny shorts right before we left on our trip.

So we made plans that evening to set out for the bar / lounge (called the Mauma Lounge) that was hosting “funny shorts night.” Sanjin decided to pack the shorts in his messenger bag and change into them when we got there, just in case the night ended up being a bust.

When we arrived, we noticed a distinct lack of activity in front of the bar. We paid a small cover and went inside, only to find the place fairly dead. A few people sitting on couches and either drinking beer or smoking.

We decided to make the best of our time there and plopped down on a couch and ordered a few beers. After a few minutes, they started playing some ridiculous and hilarious movie. It was over within a few minutes. Another one immediately started, and it was also over within a few minutes.

One of us turned to the rest and asked, “what’s with all these funny short movies…”

Their voice trailed off and instantly, we all knew what funny shorts actually meant! We shared quite a bit of laughter over our pretty obvious mixup. We sat down, content to enjoy the rest of the evening, watching funny shorts and having some tasty Spanish beers.

Mary, Sanjin and Dave enjoying beer in a lounge

As an aside, one of the short films we saw that evening particularly stuck with me. It was an amazing stop-motion film focused on photography. Which is why I think it made such an impression on me. Ten Thousand Pictures of You.