Barcelona... finalmente

Hey everyone, sorry for taking so long to write something new, I've had all kinds of essays to get cracking on, but I can finally take a break before starting the next one.

At 7am on Friday, March 7th I woke up aggravated and tired as always. But it was time for a trip! The night before I had packed all my stuff as usual and I hustled out the door without waiting for the others to pack and get their stuff together after the usual long night of drinking. Carrying my backpack, faithful courier bag and my bag of bocadillos and homemade cookies (made the night before!) I showed up in the near-dark at the plaza GG (Gabriél y Galán) where the bus was to show up and soon thereafter boarded and of course when everyone sees each other for the first half to full hour it's just talking and shouting crazy pointless things as if affirming solidarity through stupid jokes and ramblings about where people had been the night before and what might have caused whatever several boys to be so late. Usual routine for us.

Soon thereafter, though, most everyone was attempting to sleep. A peaceful quiet settled on the bus, only interrupted by the occasional riotous laughter of inside jokes or whatever it might be. At lunch time we stopped at this saloon-looking place where we were allowed to take out our sandwiches and eat. Smoky and inhabited by lots of dirty and tired-looking truckers, it was very much a saloon and on the television, moreover, was the arguably redneck-y sport of motobiking, except across the Sahara desert, very interesting. It was originally in English, done by Australians, but as it was that we remained in Spain, it was overdubbed and held my interest only as long as I could stand to not be annoyed by losing what the people were trying to say that I could have understood if they just used subtitles. I enjoyed my bocadillo (because I separated the dry, wet and fat! so fresh, so good) and savored my own hand made (albeit strangly shaped) chocolate chip cookies that Kathy helped me make. Kathy is a sweet string bean with a great knowledge of cooking and a cheerful spirit, I quite enjoyed cooking with her! Alas soon we were back on the bus and I couldn't manage to sleep. I never can. Those buses are not made for people of my size, the part of the seat that is curved to (one assumes) fit into the neck of the average person hits me in the middle of my back and there's not enough leg room and I always walk out of the bus aching and sleepy. I had, luckily, figured out that I could take Bethany's blanket with me and at least stay warm and cozy even if I couldn't sleep. So I would sit and think and write and read my book (La Bodega, great book) and watched episodes of Good Eats and whatever I could think of. On our way to Barcelona, though, I discovered that I had something on my iPod that I had never listened to and really really loved! Becca had given me the soundtrack to the movie Frida starring Penelope Crúz! The more I listened to it, the more Spanish it was and the more I loved it! Of course it's Mexican, but the lyrics are in Spanish and the sound of the music mimics that of Spain rather closely.

I quite enjoyed that up until we started to see signs in Catalán about Barcelona and finally arrived! I must note here that you may not know that Spain is divided into 18 autonomous communities, several of them sporting unique people such as the gallegos of Galicia (with celtic heritage who speak Gallego) the Basques of País Vasco (Basque country, they speak Basque or Euskadi, noone quite knows what heritage they have, it predates Roman invasion, this place is home to the independence terrorists, ETA... wikipedia that) and the Cataláns of Catalunya (added French heritage who speak Catalán, site of the book La Bodega). We went straight to the hotel, which was honestly a good distance away from central Barcelona and by the time we arrived, we only had about two hours to prepare for dinner. I must note here that we always have to dress up for dinners that we eat in the hotel, although I always forget this. Luckily, however, I generally pack nice enough things anyways that it's no sweat to pick out something to wear to dinner. It's a nice feeling to be prepared.

So we went to dinner, all looking nice, and what did they bring us? I'm not sure I know how to categorize it apart from a horribly conceived pile of pasta, meat paste and white sauce. It was like something Mexican except without flavor, without tomato sauce, without chile peppers... it was flat and tasteless and rather disgusting. I had about one or two bites and just couldn't eat any more. The second plate they brought out to us was better but still poorly constructed: a baked until dry chicken breast with no seasoning whatsoever, a strong black olive puree lining the plate and unsalted french fries. Who is running this kitchen, a middle school cook? No, a middle school cook would have salted the french fries. The chicken was like putting tough sponge in my mouth and the olive puree attacked my taste buds with an insipid pungency, while the french fries washed it all down with a greasy starchiness. The vegetarians, of course, got lovely perfectly steamed asparagus tips with bearnease sauce and lovely fresh green salads. It is not often that I envy the vegetarians, but they seriously got the nice end of the deal here. Good call, veggies! That dinner was pretty disappointing... but I went upstairs and enjoyed the multilingual TV, watching National Geographic in German and some German TV shows. The Italian shows were too over the top and the French shows were kind of boring and the british shows were all news... and I wanted to hear something other than Spanish. Ya, ser gut.

Well the next morning we were up and out at a nice reasonable time to visit Parc Guell created by the famed Catalunian architect Antonio Gaudí. Visiting this place, first of all was in great weather, and second of all it's absolutely beautiful. In the moment that I stood out on the high plaza of Parc Guell I fell in love with his architecture. Everything was made in a mozaic style, but with different materials - sometimes with carefully placed stones, sometimes with multicolored tiles... An important detail of Gaudí's work is how most things are intended to imitate nature, at least to recreate the form of something natural, be it a ribcage or a tree trunk or the human form or the curved forms of animals like lizards or whatever it may be. Anothing important detail is how he managed to take national styles like the mix of Christian and Arabic architectures to create a Spain-noveau style that surpassed everything in its ornate detail and nearly impossibly perfect construction. Gaudí was married to his work and was always on site to make sure everything when according to how he liked. Learning about him in art class reminded me more and more of my sister, I remember her saying one day of her architecture models at the A school at UVA that she 'just kind of put(s) them together, (she) usually (doesn't) plan it out beforehand.' Apparantly that was also the method of Gaudí, completely inspired in the moment he would make models for the builders to give them an idea of what he wanted to do them since most of his ideas were not written in books or common practice at all. For example some of his later works (which I will talk about soon) included arcs created by hanging chains upside down from two points and adding weights wherever to point the arc or to lean it in some direction. This gravity-induced arc is mor like a parabola than any sort of semi-circle arc one might see in old Christian or Roman architecture. Parc Guell is home to his famous lizard mozaic that sits on the ascending stairs from the two entrance buildings. http://www.barcelona30.com/photo_gallery/photo_gallery_b4b5fa3b6e914640757687f43679105f.jpg
Right above that is a little sitting area where I sat and sketched the two buildings at the front and the back of the snake head above the lizard (or dragon, depending on who you ask). It's difficult to draw the work of Gaudí and to me it keeps turning out like something of my fantasy, something kind of silly, seemingly impossible to architectually realize... but no, Gaudí did it. I quite enjoyed attempting to draw the Pórtico which kind of made me think of a ribcage, and at the same time in a movie as if there were a path lined and enclosed by evenly-spaced trees. There was a circular nature to it, with pin bones or sorts sticking out fot eh sides and this incredible tunnel effect appearing like one staring down the endless throat of a giant python. The stones were placed very carefully so that they fit a specific form but the individual stones stuck out seemingly randomly to give the effect that perhaps by some odd chance this might be a natural form, a gift of nature that these rocks just happened to have settled in this way. Ladies and gentlemen, the genius of Gaudí.
Sitting on the top balcony looking over the park and in the distance seeing the blue and shining Mediterannean sea, I could hear the sounds of an old street musician playing trumpet and the gentle hum of people bargaining over the plethora of unique art vendors. There was a variety of art deco earrings, tons of ornate and jewelled hair clips, tons of hand-fitted pendants, a whirlwind of scarved, a great deal of cheap sunglasses and Fork Art! Becca I know you'd love this, it was this guy sitting there with a bunch of forks and several tools and he was twisting and pulling them into beautiful shapes as parts of necklaces or bracelets or pendant holders. I drew two of them for memory and continued walking until I took a seat to just stare at the sea. As I did so, I noticed two people right beside me taking a picture of one of them next to a little piglet figure! I guess they're travelling the world documenting the adventures of piglet, I liked that. In the distance I could also see the top fo the towers of the Sagrada Familia, and tons of cranes. Always cranes everywhere. I craved coffee and felt the need to have a picnic there. It was beautiful and breathtaking and rather relaxing. With the sun gently beating down and the wind sweeping up towards us from the sea I was content.

From there we were let loose near a cathedral to find lunch. My first goal was to find Mercat de la Boquería, the largest open air market in Barcelona! Well, we did indeed find it, Katie and Kristen and I. We found a lovely little bocadillo place and I got this incredible pork tenderloin sandwich with Kas, which is kind of the smaller brand of Spanish Fanta. There were all kinds of fruit and vegetables and fish and pork and anything you could ever ask of a market, it was there. On our way over to the market, however we saw a couple of shops we were interesting in going back to visit, but most interesting of all we passed a group of people moving a large caricature of a dragon! Yes, they were just casually walking down the streets of Barcelona pulling and pushing a 20 foot long dragon made of cloth and metal and wood with beautiful curvatures and nice contrast of a variety of reds and blacks and blues. I wish I had gotten a picture, it was just wierd. Anyways on the way back we got some nice ice cream and chocolates from a nice little chocolate shop and just savored our snacks as we wet back to meet up with the rest of the group before going into the Picasso museum.