Barcelona: why not?

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The amazing thing about being a young, single guy studying abroad in Europe with lots of free time and little money is that you get the chance to see the rest of the world, very creatively (this is the part that involves little money). This past week was just such a chance: myself and the two only other male students from Biola, Kevin and Ted, decided a few weeks ago to take a mid-semester jaunt somewhere, and it just so happened that Ryanair, the cheapest airline known to man, had relatively free flights to Barcelona. In my mind, $40 and a complete lack of comfort and good service is a small price to pay for going to experience somewhere new, and so the night of November 5th (also known as Guy Fawkes Day, and a treat to experience in London-fireworks everywhere!) found Kevin and I arriving at London’s Stansted Airport at about 11:30, with a long night ahead before our 6:30 flight out.

Stansted is famed for being not just a, but the “sleeping airport”, but unfortunately, nothing could be further from a true description of the night we passed there. By 11:30, all of the “good spots” (and I use that term loosely, in keeping with my pursuit of British understatement) were taken, and we found ourselves getting creative in finding somewhere that would pass as comfortable. Our creativity, alas, was of no avail, and I spent most of the night reading, after realizing that I was neither tired enough nor creative enough to actually fall asleep. Kevin practiced contortionism for about three hours straight and then gave up around 5 a.m. After wiping the lack of sleep from our eyes, we got on the plane and hoped for the Sandman to catch up with us there.

Unfortunately, this was not to be. A row up from me were three friends, probably teens, and one of the lads had the misfortune of developing, throughout the flight, a mild case of the whooping cough. Apparently he’s never heard that this was actually cured about 150 years ago. His tendency to disrupt what could have been an otherwise peaceful flight didn’t go unaided, though. Sitting next to me was an older woman, obviously Spanish, who was a tad nervous about the whole “flying” experience.

Her son was sitting next to her in the window seat, and when she wasn’t expressing her trepidation to him in rapid-fire Catalan, she was crossing herself and muttering religious incantations of some sort. And then there was the chewing. I’m not sure what was in her gum, but it had to be something tough, because it stood up to two straight hours of intense mastication. Intense, open-mouthed, and far from quiet. And just when she would calm down by crossing herself enough, the kid up front would break into another intense session of whooping cough. Needless to say, I was a happy guy when we landed in Spain.

Thankfully, the trip only got better from there. Kev and I met up with Ted, who’d flown in the night before, and after a much-needed nap, we all headed out to enjoy a night in Barcelona. The next four days were some of the best of my experience over here yet, to say the least. My time in Barcelona was an amazing reminder of why I wanted to do this in the first place. Great food, interesting museums, fulfilling conversations, and the kind of roving freedom that comes with being a young single guy with nothing to keep me from seeing the world.

An enormous highlight of Barcelona would have to be the architecture. Antoni Gaudí is without a doubt the city’s favorite son, and his work is all over the city. Modern, flowing, avant-garde, expressive, unconventional, Suess-esque: all could be attached to a comprehensive description of his work, work that makes you rethink architecture and marvel at the ingenuity of human creativity.

La Sagrada Familia is the massive cathedral whose 100-meter spires dominate the city’s skyline; Gaudí took the commission for it in 1883, and construction is still underway to this day. Parc Guell is the “city-garden” whose realization and funding were cut short by the First World War, but which still remains an impressive monument to his style. The Milà House is another example of Gaudí’s tendency to depart from convention; its rooftop chimneys, while still serving a functional purpose, make it look more like a cartoon sculpture garden than an actual dwelling.

Another highlight was the Museu Picasso, definitely a favorite as far as European art galleries go. It displays the most comprehensive collection of Picasso’s early work in the world, thanks to his affinity for the city where he lived for much of his childhood and early artistic career. Many people write Picasso off for his “weird” modern works, without realizing that by the age of 16, his technical excellence had surpassed many of the painting’s Classical Masters. His progression as a young artist is simply amazing; he was so talented that by the age of 20 he had literally reached the point where he’d done all there was to do in art, and simply wanted to do more.

Besides the great culture, Barcelona, and Spain in general, features one of the tastiest culinary traditions in Europe: tapas. The city streets are lined with tapas bars, and we ate at a different one almost every night. Tapas are small dishes meant to be served in conjunction with larger helpings of alcohol: they last about three bites, but man are they tasty, and pretty cheap as well.

So after four days of Mediterranean warmth and Spanish culture, we headed back to London with the profound realization that we just spent four days just about as well as a young traveler can, and that we are now across the half-way point of the semester and our time here. Like death and mid-life crises, the end is coming sooner than I think. But hey, at least now I’ve been to Spain.