¡Barcelona!

Sorry it has been so long between posts! The reason is Friday-Tuesday I was in Barcelona, Spain. That and my website is being difficult about loading pictures.

I went with five other girls from my group, and we stayed in a hostel off of Las Ramblas which is a famous street in the middle of downtown. The name – Hostel Paris – might lead you to believe this was a classy hostel at a reasonable rate but as we quickly learned the Hostel Paris was neither. I didn’t take any pictures because it wasn’t the sort of place you want to remember – our bathroom smelled like sewage and the desk people yelled at you if you were too loud – but it sufficed.

Las Ramblas

Another view of Las Ramblas - there were a lot of flower stands.

Our flight arrived at 10:30 and we didn’t make it to the hostel until 2, so our first day’s activities were limited to eating an “ethnic” dinner at McDonalds and going out for sangria. The part of Barcelona we were in was very touristy, so most of the restaurants advertised typical Spanish food – mostly pailla, tapas, y sangria. Kate very much enjoyed the sangria. :)

The next morning I woke up and took a stroll on Las Ramblas. I was randomly wandering when to my surprise and delight I noticed a Starbucks!! A real, live, America Starbucks with respectable size coffees! I felt like giggling the whole time I was standing in line. After the magical Starbucks experience I strolled through the rain and did a bit of window shopping. I decided to buy an umbrella, and stopped into one of the touristy stores. The umbrellas I saw didn’t have price tags so I asked the salesman how much they cost – in Spanish – and he replied in English. Four years ago when I was in Barcelona I would have thought of it as an oasis in a sea of babble but now I am a student here for the sole purpose of learning Spanish and I’ll be damned if I spent all of this money to never take the opportunity to practice my Spanish. Moreover, I feel like I am really improving and I’m not timid about speaking to people. Yet this guy wouldn’t give an inch, I kept asking questions in Spanish and he replied in English until finally I told him that I was a student and I knew Spanish. He replied, “But you are too beautiful to try.” Ugh. This, sadly, was also a typical thing I encountered – random comments from men to get your attention. Spare me, please. I’ll admit, sometimes it is nice to be noticed but it is quite a different thing when some random guy on the street will give you unsolicited comments just to try to get you to buy something.

Once everyone was ready, we embarked on our journey of the city. In the spirit of the urban experience, we took the subway around town.

Kate, in the subway, with one of her favorites

First we went to La sagrada famila which is a cathedral designed by the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí. If you’d like to know more, you can check out the website http://www.sagradafamilia.org/eng/index.htm.

Basically it is a Cathedral that started construction 120 some years ago and still isn’t finished. Gaudí was basically Barcelona royalty – he also designed the Park Güell – and he has a very distinct, modern/Gothic style. I was absolutely fascinated by the experience. When I think of Cathedrals under construction, I think of way back in the day where there was the feudal system with Kings and serfs, let’s just approximate the 1200’s. So to be see to a Cathedral being built was really quite an experience, it felt like I was witness to history.

Not only that, but it was really interesting how intricate the building really is. I know nothing about architecture, or math, but I could appreciate how detailed and difficult it was to design a cathedral.

And it all was significant in some way – for example, on the outside there were four pillars that represent the four apostles. If you look closely inside at the post things you can see that their style mimics the trees that surround the Cathedral. Pretty neat, huh?

I also loved the modernist feel to it – it was Gothic enough that it felt similar to every other Cathedral I’ve seen but the modernist twist made it interesting, with an up-to-date look that to me made it seem less like the stuffy old gloomy building where the sorrows and sins of thousands of people had gathered through wars, confessions, and fire and brimstone sermons still linger on the walls and more like a fresh start with the light, excited feeling of the thousands opportunities that the future holds.

On a whim we decided to see the Arc de Triomf.

These signs are all over Spain and I think they are really funny. Yes, I agree that cleaning up after your dog is important but with your bare hand?!

After the Arc de Triomf we went to the Picasso Museum. It is supposed to be the most complete Picasso museum in the world – which makes sense seeing as Picasso grew up in Barcelona as well as began his education there. I really like Picasso – some of his stuff is a bit too weird for my taste but the thing I really like about Picasso is his ability to take something completely normal and make it look different, as if seen through another filter. Ok, so a lot of it looks like he was high when he painted it, but I love the idea that that things don’t have to always look a certain way. There was one room with 49 paintings which were all variations of Velazquez’s Las meninas. All of them resembled the original painting, but each of them was unique. It sort of reminded me how a hundred people can witness the same event but each of them remembers the event a little differently.

I'll show you a little of what I mean. Here is the original painting -

These are a few of Picasso's takes -

Sunday morning I again made the pilgrimage to Starbucks with a paper in hand. I had been aching to spend a morning reading the Sunday paper ever since I read my friend Jay’s gmail status that said he was spending the morning reading the Sunday Times then going to the gym. I bought a paper in Spanish and secretly hoped that people near me would mistake me for a native speaker. (This seemed to be the only opportunity that I’d ever had to be mistaken for a native speaker – because it didn’t involve actually opening my mouth.) I have noticed that with the papers here in Spain, US news is always towards the front, typically the second and third pages. Their takes on events are always a bit more negative than the Times or the USA Today’s version – but I find it curious that US events are so front and center. I’m trying to decide if this is because US events have such a large impact, or maybe the Spanish consider the US happenings very important.

When I reunited with the group we took the Metro to the Park Güell. Park Güell, as previously mentioned, was also designed by Gaudí so it had the tell-tale colorful tiles as well as imaginative architecture.

The only sad part was that the famous Salamander that greets people at the entrance to the park had been vandalized by some stupid kids.

I loved the park – but it really made me miss my mom. Last time I was there was with her, and my mom loves Barcelona so it kind of felt like eating sugar-free chocolate. You get some of the same taste, but it isn’t nearly as good.

Later we went back to Las Ramblas and half of the group wanted to see the beach and Kate, Alana and I went to Europe’s largest erotic museum. It was hilarious. I wasn’t sure it if was supposed to be a historical, scholarly museum (because it did have things from all over the world!) or if it was supposed to be more of an entertainment thing. Either way, we giggled through the entire museum. I took some pictures, but this is only the really kind of appropriate one. This sculpture is from Africa – see how happy they are!

That night we went out in search of Carnival parties. Carnival is a big deal in Spain, but we were sad to discover that the parades, costumes, and parties are mainly just in the smaller towns. Barcelona didn’t have anything really, which was a disappointment. We settled on an Irish bar. We ended up meeting a bunch of British sailors who were docked in Barcelona for the week. I have quickly learned that British English is very different than American English. First of all, the accent can be really hard to understand. The biggest difference, as Kate noted, is that they have a different vocabulary. For example, in British “pissed” means drunk. So when the sailors were talking about how they were “pissed last night” I kept waiting for them to specify what they were mad about. That night I wore my new red ballerina flats which of course got me dubbed “Dorothy”. Our new friends invited us to see their ship the following day, and of course we took them up on the offer. It was really incredible to see a real, live British warship. They gave us the full tour – I even got to sit in the captain’s chair and pretend to steer the boat. I kind of find it a bit hard to believe that it was OK to let civilians on the ship, but I’m not complaining. The ship – the HMS Montrose – was even in the Iraq war. Now they are sailing around the Mediterranean doing…something. I can’t really remember what.

This is "Spanner" and I, my first ever British naval friend.

Once we were on dry land we had dinner before heading to the airport. Our flight left at 7 am, but the trains stopped working at midnight so we decided it was best to just hang out at the airport for a long time versus trying to take it in the morning and risk missing our flight. We accidentally got on the wrong train, and then the trains shut down. Oops. Thankfully, two very helpful security guards called taxis for us. They were very nice, and also wanted pictures with us. (ps, that is my new purse and I love it!)

We got to the airport at 3 am. Now I kind of assumed that there wouldn’t be many flights, but it is an international airport. It was the weirdest thing ever – the lights were off, there were no people around, and it was completely silent. This should have made for perfect sleeping conditions but I couldn’t shake the fear of going into a deep sleep and missing my flight so I poked around the airport a bit.

When 7 am came around I was so exhausted that I was ready to fall over. Once we got into Santiago we had to wait for the bus and in that moment I really missed having a car. Public transportation is great because it is cheap and you don’t have to worry about parking – but as my dad always says you are forever on someone else’s time. You can’t just leave when you want to, you have to wait. And wait we did – for an hour an a half. I made it back to my apartment at 10 and all but collapsed on my bed.

Next Monday begins our group excursion to Andalucia, the Southern part of Spain. We’ll be there for a week visiting Cordoba, Seville, Granada, and Toledo. I’m really, really excited. So expect another monster post when I return :)