Went to Barcelona este fin de semana. Train ride there was long and uneventful, yet I still felt the need to type out this sentence (hmm). Arrived around 7:30 or so, and took the subway to Las Ramblas (tourist central) where my hostel was conveniently located near. I know I haven´t seen that many major cities in my life, but Barcelona has, by far, the best subway system I´ve ever used. It´s cheap as hell (after you buy a pass it´s around 60 cents a ride), extremely well laid out, extremely easy to navigate and really efficient. It´s light years ahead of the joke that is Boston public transportation and about 500 times less confusing than New York´s. It trumps Washington DC and London on price alone.
Anyway, my hostel sucked pretty hard. That´s what I get for booking last minute, I suppose. I go to check in at the lobby and note the attempt at trendiness in the way the place is designed. I guess they would have pulled it off if they kept the joint respectably clean. My room was a small one with 6 beds packed in (3 bunks). I tried to walk around and talk to people in other rooms but everybody gave me the fuck-off stare-of-death and one group of Brits looked like they were ready to jump me just because I interrupted their drunken banter to ask a question. Locked my camera in the safe, and my bag in the luggage room, then went off into the night.
Met up with Nicole, who´s been studying in BCN for 6 months or so now. Met up with her friend and ate at an incredible Mediterranian place. After a great meal, we were feeling pretty tired, but opted to try to go out anyway. First stop was a very chill little bar that was playing good jazz and had an extremely chill vibe. By then it was late, however, so we had to clear out soon after and move on to clubs if we wanted to prolong the night. We went to a hip-hop club that was in my mind kind of a joke. The music was pretty decent but combined with the way Spanish people dance (or rather don´t dance), the whole thing just seemed really awkward. Sometime after we got there I had remembered that I had been up since 5:30 that morning and became unbearably exhausted. Waited up another hour or so eating churros until the subway started running again. Got into the hostel at 6 or so and passed out, only to be woken half a dozen times between then and 11 for increasingly inane reasons. Needless to say, I was in a trash mood for all of Saturday morning/early afternoon.
Met up with Nicole again to see some of the city. We mostly did a lot of walking around and saw a lot of the Gaudí architecture. Gaudí was this incredible Spanish dude who, along with 2 other prominent modernist architects, designed a large handful of stuff for Barcelona during the 20th century. My favorite was the park he designed for some rich Scot. It looked like some sort of fairy-tale place (see below), and it was on a hill so it offered a great view of the city. No pictures of the view because it was crap fog-hazy out, but view pictures are usually boring anyway. Also checked out the Gothic neighborhood that was also filled with beautiful buildings of all shapes and sizes.
Saturday night out:
After another incredible meal at a tiny vegetarian place, we met up with a handful of Nicole´s friends and went out for the night. First up was this gigantic former-factory/warehouse that was converted into a bar. It was rows upon rows of tables filled with people drinking pitchers of whatever you´d like. We chose sangría because it was supposed to be good there, which it was. Somewhere around your umpteenth cup you figure out how sugary the stuff is and pretty much have to stop drinking it. I thought it was charming how they have "to-go" cups if you want to finish up your pitcher after you leave on your way to wherever - not something I think I´ll ever live to see in the United States, although I have heard such things have existed in my parent´s time. I was surprised at how much of a great atmosphere a place like that managed to mantain despite it´s hugeness. I was under the assumption that past a certain size, most places lose their character. I was proven wrong in this case, and in the case of the club we went to afterwards. I won´t bother going into a lot of detail, but basically it was a warehouse that was an entire city block and was filled with huge rooms of people dancing (for the most part) to different kinds of music. So huge but so much fun.
Sunday was void of much activity besides sleeping late and departing from the city. I didn´t really do much sightseeing on the whole (that´s why this post is lacking a bit in substance), but now I really want to go back and cover more ground during the day. Talking to other people in my program that spent the weekend in Barcelona, it sounds like there is a whole lot of great stuff to see. Even if I was trying really hard, it´d be tough to do any substantive amount of sightseeing as there is just so damn much to do.
One other thing about Barcelona is that I didn´t realize how different Catalan is from Spanish. It´s basically the bastard child of French and Spanish, and everybody in Barcelona speaks it. Definitely had some difficulty in the less touristy areas of the city, but everybody there still knew Spanish, even if they preferred to speak Catalan. In the more touristy spots, everybody seemed to know English as well, however. Catalun culture is somewhat different from Spanish culture, as I´ve learned, which explains why some people really want for Catalunya to be an independent country from Spain. I can´t say I know a ton about the subject at the moment, but I´m assuming we´ll cover that topic in my Modern History class.
Speaking of class, I started all of my regular ones this week. I´m not going to go into explaining them now even though I have plenty to say about them because I don´t have much time and there is lots to do today. That will be on next week´s post along with details about my weekend trip to Sevilla. I leave tomorrow right after class, and will be gone until Sunday night. I´ll try to take lotsa good pictures and whatnot, but I´ve found that I´m rather averse to carrying a bulky little piece of expensiveness around wherever I go. I´ll try my best, regardless.
´til next time...
