The most un-spanish spanish city

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  Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain and Canary Islands
Monday, July 14, 2008

mood: sad!

The drive from Avignon to Barcelona was one of the more boring drives, especially since we got stuck in traffic trying to get across the border, which left us arriving at 8pm instead of 6.30pm. Though after leaving Avignon we drove through a endless miles of grape vines. You can definately tell that the french love their wine. We even went round a fairly small roundabout which had been also utilised for vines, with a few rows stretching the length. It hardly seemed worth it, but it made me laugh. Crazy frenchies.

Luckily the weather has been a lot cooler here, especially with the wind, so temps have been about 30 deg apposed to the 38´s we were getting in Rome and the rest of Italy. I have even had to put on long pants some nights - something i havent done since Austria! But it makes it nice exploring weather, as you dont come home looking like you have just been swimming. I had a fair hike from the drop off point to the hostel i was staying at in Barcelona, as finding accomodation here is a nightmare in summer and the normal hostel (which has over 400 beds) was full, so i had to go to an alternative. Its very pricy here too, you are looking at around 25 - 30€ at least for a basic dorm in a basic hostel, where as im used to paying around the 20€ mark for something decent elsewhere. The hostel i managed to get a couple of nights acommodation in happened to be in a more central location compared to the drop off point, but it was a fair hike and my pack was feeling extra heavy for some reason. For what im paying the hostel is pretty crap, im sleeping in a room with 16 beds, and the staff are very rude and unhelpful, but there is a basic kitchen and a couple of computers with free internet which is handy.

After spending so long on the bus i was feeling a little sick and exhausted so i ended up crashing out pretty early, and had a nice sleep in, waking up just in time to take advantage of the free breakfast of cornflakes, milk (which was at room temprature - ewww) and biscuits that i think were meant to substitute as toast, but looked like huge croutons, with jam. I guess it was free so cant complain.

I spent Friday doing a little bit of window shopping, Barcelona has some amazing shopping areas. The main strip of Las Rumbas, which is like a monster long Burke St but with car access to either side, is the hub of the city and the pedestrian area runs along the centre of the strip, and is lined with stalls, street performers, artists and souvenir shops. They have pet stalls, which is really random, and they sell a range of animals; rabbits, tortoises, mice, hampsters, birds, and wierdly enough - ferrets, squirrels and good old aussie budgies!!! ahhh... a touch of home. Not that they looked like they were treated well, with lots squished into tiny cages.

Barcelona also hosts a massive department store, 8 levels high and 2 levels underground. Theres a separate level for the ladies, mens, kids and teens, plus electronics, furniture, appliances, a supermarket, resturant and pretty much everything that you would ever need or want. I was bored so i wandered every level, especially taking note of the outdoor furniture haha. for those of you playing back home at tofs, it was definately harvey norman quality. not that i really care anymore anyway. I just found it slightly ammusing. But it did make me think of all you poor people back home working :P

After i had finished with my shopping or lack of, i walked back to the hostel to figure out what to do for the rest of the afternoon. I ended up meeting Ben, another melbournite, and we walked down and lay on the city beach for a couple of hours. The city beaches here are actually very nice, very big and long with propper yellowish white sand, and warm water. They are covered in a little bit of rubbish, ciggarette butts etc, but essencially are pretty spotless. What shocked me more though was the ammount of nudity for a city beach. The Barcelonians are very relaxed and laid back, which transposed onto the beach as everyone take your tops off and casually walk around. Nudity doesnt bother me, but it was clear that alot of perverts come down to sit on the beach and stare, most of them alone which is dirty and gross, and that there are also alot of families with children that hang out there. I couldnt ever see it happening in Melbourne like that. But i suppose its their culture. I have seen a lot of public nudity while i have been away, but not that many in one area. Ben seemed to have no problem with it though, typical males.

Friday night i had signed up for a Spanish cooking class, which was pretty cool. We learnt how to make traditional spanish sangria - for those who dont know, its a mixture of brandy, cheap red wine, fruity softdrink eg fanta, sugar and chunks of fruit. Once we had been shown how, we got to make our own jugs of it, and so you could pretty much make it a potent as you like. Its delicious stuff, but gives you a nasty hangover if you drink too much as its so high in sugar. We were sharing a jug between 5 people: me, Natalie + Byron (who i had just spent the last 2 nights with in Avignon), and 2 swedish guys. The boys made the first batch, and i think Byron got a little overexcited with the brandy. He loved it, but me and Nat had to water ours down as it was barely drinkable. We also made tapas - a snack introduced by a past ruler who was trying to curb the number of people getting drunk, by having a law which meant that they had to have a piece of bread before every drink. The people decided that if they had to eat the bread, they may as well make it exciting and add some fillings, and thus the art of tapas was created. Tapas means "little lid" and were also sat on top of the glass to stop the flies from getting into the peoples drinks. They are so clever. Our tapas was a piece of crusty bread which we rubbed a halfed tomato onto, then some olive oil, followed by meat that was like salami, and cheese. it was remarkably delicious, and i am definately taking up the tomato method when i return home. The lady said that the aim is to leave just the skin by the end, and it ended up being very messy but deliciously fun.

The cooking class was a little disapointing, as we were expecting to be cooking the main dish ourselves, but they hosted it in a resturant where the kitchen was being used to cook the patrons dinners, so we could only watch the lady. She was incredibly funny, but very hard to understand as she had a thick spanish accent and we were sitting too far away to be able to take notes. But the dish that we made is called Paella, a rice dish cooked in a pan almost like risotto, with seafood and vegies, and the special ingredient - saffron - which is worth more in weight than gold. There is a legend to the dish, apparently the story goes that a guy was cooking for his partner one sunday night, but didnt have many ingredients, so he put this rice in the pan with some leftover vegies and meat, and hunting through the cupboard could only find a small ammount of saffron, which he added to the dish. when he served it up, the girlfriend was amazed at how good it tasted and asked the guy what it was. He said in spainish `its paella´ or `its for you´. and now its thought to be tradition that the males cook the paella every sunday for their partners and family. such a cute little story.

We sat around for quite a while after dinner drinking our free sangria (we didnt want to waste a drop) then walked back up Las Rumbas to meet a couple of other Busabout-ians and to head out to continue the night. Barcelona has an unusual nightlife, most people dont head out for dinner till around 10pm, usually followed by a tapas bar, and then sometime around 2am they head out to a club, getting home at around 6am. Obviously they have nothing better to do except sleep during the day, but i suppose if you can get away with it then why not! But we didnt follow that tradition, we were drinking at 6pm, and the idea of another 12 hours of drinking didnt seem that feasible, especially considering that im a little short of cash in my current state. But we still gave it a good go! One of the girls had read about a particular bar in the Lonely Planet, and so we decided to try and find it. It ended up being located in the ghetto area of Barcelona, which was interesting to say the least. And i think it had been taken over by new owners as it had addopted a posh vibe, new name, expensive menu, and we were pretty much convinced it was a gay bar. I think the huge feathery fake wings suspended from the ceiling gave it away. But we stayed for a drink before hightailing out to try and find something a little more traditional and fun. We ended up finding this little local spanish bar which was quite empty, but had fair-priced drinks and was playing some awesome spanish guitar music, and after an hour the place was packed with locals. By 2am i piked as i was exhausted, and carefully sidestepped my way back through men which we have nicknamed "can men" - guys walking around with 6 packs trying to sell you a "sexy beer" which was purchased at the supermarket 3 hours ago and is discustingly warm, the gangstas and druggos, the random spew and empty beer cans back to the hostel.

Saturday i was faced with a slight dilema, as the hostel that i was staying at had no availability for that night, and i was homeless and considering sleeping on the streets or the beach. Luckily for my mother who would have had a heart attack, i hit the jackpot and managed to get a bed in another hostel not too far away. Saturday nights are hectic in Barcelona and book up well in advance, so i was lucky as there was a cancellation in this particular hostel and i got a bed in a 4bed dorm, in what i now know is the best and most popular hostel in Barcelona - i was very lucky. So i left my main pack at the old hostel, and took my small pack to the new one for the night.

I met up with Ben and some other aussie girls, and in the avo we caught the metro to whats called Guell or Gaudi park. Antoni Gaudi is an incredibly famous architect and artist who designed the most famous building in Barcelona, the La Sagrada Familia, which i will tell you about later. But in the meantime, this park is also built in his amazingly unique artistic way. Its a style which is totally unexplainable, you will have to wait a couple of days to see the photos, but its very distinguishable. The park is located on top of a huge hill overlooking the city, and features include some beautiful mosaic sitting areas, a school (he was very big on education), and some houses that look like the gingerbread houses out of hansel and gretel. The area was originally designed to be a self-contained community, but it sort of flopped, and is now a beautiful public park.We spent a couple of hours handing out, there as a guy playing spanish guitar in a huge undercover area which made for some good chillout time, before we headed back to have a late lunch and wandered past some appartments that he had built in his same artistic style. I didnt bother paying the 16€ entry fee as that would have been my budget blown for the day, but was still pretty impressed from the view outside.

I was planning on going out with everyone Saturday night but as i was getting ready it started to thunderstorm and bucket down with rain, which was really intense as its the first lot of rain i have seen in a long while. I decided to have a snooze and wait for it to pass, but woke up close to 12am and decided that i didnt want to leave my incredibly comfy top bunk, and so circumed to a quiet night in.
Yesterday i shifted back to my old hostel and then headed out to see Gaudi`s masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia. This cathedral was started in 1882, and is estimated to be fully completed in 2020. Although Gaudi died around the 1950´s, his legacy lives on and once completed, this will be the most amazing church in the whole world. Its so complicated to explain, but it has 3 differnt facades, each having a very different style, and will have something like 18 spires, with a huge spire in the middle representing jesus and the cross. the details are so intricate, its crazily beautiful, although covered in scaffolding and surrounded by cranes. I spent 2 and a half hours there just trying to take in all the detail, and then wandering through the museum housed underneath it. well worth the 10€ entry fee.

Later in the avo i headed back through the streets to one of the citys parks, which i hung out in for a while watching the families rowing hired boats around the big lake, but it was very busy so i got sick of it after a while and got a gelati and went back to the hostel to have some pumpkin soup and toast as i hadnt had any lunch. There i started chatting to one of the busabout girls - Alex, and ended up heading out with her to wander the streets to find her friend that she had lost somwhere along the way, and with no luck, we stopped mesmerised for a while by some more of the street performers who were playing the most amazing music with some very unusual instruments. It sounded very moorish or middle eastern. Then we headed back to the hostel to sort out something to do for the evening. Ben was going out with some americans who told us about what they called the Magic Fountain, which sounded cool, so we dragged along Kristian, Alex`s german roomate, at about 9pm started the fairly long walk toward the fountain, stopping on the way for some very cheap restaurant food, i had an omlette sandwich with paprika sausage for less than 4€ - bargain, and then finally reached the fountain at about 10.45pm. It was pretty spectacular. every night it does a show from like 8pm till 11.30pm, with the jets of water and lights going in time to music. We got to see the last 45 mins or so, and it was so relaxing. The music was classical, and i felt like bambi or aladdin was about to jump out, it was like a magical disney movie right in front of my eyes.

We headed back to the hostel via the metro as we couldnt be bothered hiking back through the streets for another 40 mins or more, and hung out in the kitchen area for a while, i had to charge my phone as it was completely flat and there are no plugs in the rooms, so i had to sit next to it in the kitchen cause there are alot of people stealing stuff around here. We ended up in the kitchen chatting for ages before Alex went to bed, and then me and Kristian decided that we werent ready to go to sleep and so tried to go for a walk and find somewhere to get him a beer at 2am - impossible as only the clubs and the kebab shops were open. so we sat around watching some drunk people in one of the squares for a while, there was this hilarious old guy who was obsessed by a straw filled with a droplet of drink, he would tip it one way the the liquid would wobble down to the lower end of the straw, then he would tip it the other way and it would do the same. He seemed to think it was much more impressive to attempt it while standing on one leg and stretching out the other like a ballet dancer, although he wasnt very good and kept falling over, probably not helped by the rope that was tied around one of his wrists and then connected to his belt buckle. in the end he got sick of the straw and just stood in the square trying to stand on one leg. Kristian and myself got a few good laughs out of it, before he wandered off with one of his shoes balanced on his head.

We ended up walking down to the beach after that and sat watching the ocean and the clouds and the city for ages, it was pretty cold as the wind was blowing right off the water, and we then got to watch some more idiot drunk english guys and a couple of girls go skinny dipping in the ocean. i cant imagine how cold it was, but they were in there for ages, and when a one of the guys and girls came out of the water starkers they started getting chased by one of the can men who was trying to cop a feel. it was pretty funny. We didnt end up getting back to bed until 5am, and so slept till 12ish before having a shower and doing some more wandering of the city, as its my last day here today and im not ready to leave! There is definately a liveability factor with Barcelona, apart from the fact that i dont know any spanish, but this city is amazing and its the first place that i have come to where i have stayed 5 days and wanted to stay longer, except for maybe the greek islands.

Tonight i am meeting back up with Alex and Kristian and we are having a picnic up in the park near the fountain that we went to last night, before going to watch the performance all over again, this time from start to finish. There is also meant to be some music festival up there so that might be interesting. Then tomorrow its an 11 hour busride to Madrid.

I have one thing that i need to complain about before i go, and thats the ammount of stuff that i have lost over the last couple of weeks. Im especially mad because in Nice i left one of my billabong thongs in the dorm room, so now i have only one pair!!! I am sooooo mad. Havianas are so expensive here, like over twice the price back home, so i dont want to buy any more, and there is no way i am wearing proper shoes so im so angry. i also left my mini maglite torch hanging from the bunk in Florence, my shampoo in the Kabull hostel here, and someone has STOLEN a pair of my shorts from where i am currently staying. Some people are shit. But hopefully it will make me start watching over my stuff a little more. Im still shattered about my billabong thongs though.... grrrrr :(

On a last note, its taken me over 2 hours to write this entry. I wasnt too impressed with my efforts on the last couple, but i hadnt had time to do them and had slowly been forgetting all my memories, so i hope this one is better!!

thanks for tuning in.

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