Barça

November 29, 2007

And so comes another week, (sorry, I wrote this last week but just never got around to uploading it.)

A Pigeon named Cresta!

I hope everyone enjoyed his or her Turkey Daze. Mine was not quite the traditional pilgrimesque Thanksgiving but we did have turkey and mashed potatoes. There was no big bird to stare listlessly at while slobbering but at least the meat was recognizable even if it was covered in an almond glaze instead of gravy. Whiskey cake holds no candle to pumpkin pie.

Friday night I headed off to Barcelona. Where to start with this story?

Okay, originally I was supposed to go to Barcelona from Saturday night until Monday night with a group of five friends. We had six tickets to the Barcelona football game that was supposed to be on Sunday night. While I was in London I received an email saying the television broadcasting company had decided to change the game to Saturday night. When I got back from London we decided to take the train Friday night in order to make it in time for the game on Saturday and then we’d leave on the flight we had already booked on Monday. Fast Forward to Friday. I go to an Internet café to print my e-ticket about three hours before the train is supposed to leave. I call one of my friends to check if they need me to print their tickets as well.

“Oh, did no one tell you, we didn’t buy train tickets, we’re not going.”

I had bought my train ticket and more importantly, I wanted to see Barcelona play. I called my friend and with only an hour to go he agreed to go with me. We run to the train station to buy him a ticket and it turns out everyone is on strike. The entire station was dark. The train was sitting on the track but the only person to get everyone situated was the owner of the station. While we’re working on getting Hunter a ticket we ran into a girl I know from one of my classes. The girl, Paige, is the same one I mentioned a while back that went to Milton. She was going to Barcelona with her friend Annaleise. It turns out that between the strike and everything they had run out of normal seats so Paige and Annaleise had to pay to get a sleeper.

Forgetting the boring details, and hour later we’re on the train heading north. Hunter and I are in the very last row of the very last coach. We head up the train to find Paige and Annaleise. We finally find their coach and we’re getting a nice game poker going when the conductor finds Hunter and me. Needless to say he kicks us out in very loud and very descriptive Spanish. He follows us all the way back to our seats. (Seats on Spanish trains are assigned.) At this point it’s probably eleven o’clock and we weren’t due to arrive until nine in the morning the next day. With nothing better to do we went to sleep. Correction, we tried to sleep. These seats don’t go back and the armrests don’t go up. When we arrived in Barcelona let’s just say I heard a very loud crack in my neck when I sat up. I hope to never do that again. Even buses are better for sleeping and I hate buses.

So, first day in Barcelona. After getting checked into all our hostels we take the day to explore before we have to meet up for dinner and to go to the game. I was going to be there until Monday night so I decided not to do the really touristy things on Saturday afternoon. Hunter headed off for the Sagrada Familia, Annaleise and Paige had some great desire to visit the aquarium, and I headed off on what I now becoming my, “first day in a new city” habit. I found an open air market, bought myself a bag of dried bananas, chocolate covered peanuts, and candied almonds and proceeded to wander around the city, seeing as much of it as possible. I walked all the way up La Rambla to Plaza Catalunya and all the way back down to the waterfront. In Plaza Catalunya I, of course, had my Starbucks. Did you know there are only four cities in Spain that have Starbucks? They would be Seville, Valencia, Barcelona, and Madrid. Not that I checked the Starbucks website or anything.

La Rambla is the famous street in Barcelona where there is street art and people posing as statues and artisan booths, etc. There was this man who was walking in a straight line down the middle with a giant sign growing out of his backpack that translated to “I Need Millions of Hugs.” I may be too cynical but to me it appeared as an ingenious plot to pickpocket.

One of the booths on La Rambla was a man with a bunch of cages trying to sell birds. As I got closer I realized he was selling pigeons. Talk about ingenious. He had a bunch of seeds out on the ground and when he didn’t have customers he catching the pigeons that had come to eat and putting then in the cages on the shelves. Pigeons are actually quite pretty birds. And in Spanish the name for pigeon is so much more attractive. ‘Paloma.’ There was this one that caught my eye. He has almost an entirely white body with a bit of grey on the top of his head that appears a bit like a mohawk. After another Starbucks and a quick chat with Lorena we decided that it would be nice to have an animal in the house. Especially one we didn’t have to walk. He now goes by the name Cresta and he lives in our living room.

I hate Catalan. It’s got to be the most frustrating language in the history of the world. If I were to travel to Italy or Croatia or Germany I’d know that I wasn’t going to understand anything and I’d be fine with it. In Barcelona the Catalan is so frustrating because it’s just close enough to Spanish and to French that I feel as though I should understand it but I don’t. Catalan is truly the principal language there. All signs and maps and advertisements are in Catalan.

Speaking of Catalan and given the fact that I just took a break to go across the street and get myself wonton soup, how is it that a language develops? In Spain there are four languages, Castellaño (the Spanish you’re all familiar with), Catalan, Basque, and Gallego. Everyone calls Catalan, Basque, and Gallego different dialects of the Spanish language but believe me, they are their own languages. In the Chinese restaurant I was thinking about how many different dialects or versions of the Chinese language there is. But when I think about English I can only really think of one version. I guess there is the Celtic thing in parts of Ireland that is somewhat related with Gallego. I know we spell things a little differently than in England and we all have different slang but really, it’s pretty much all the same.

But I digress, after tucking Cresta safely away in the hostel I wandered up to the park that was designed by Gaudí. The park is very cool. If you aren’t familiar with Antonia Gaudí I highly suggest that you google him because I am seriously in love. The buildings in the park are beyond description.

After the park I hopped on the metro and headed over to the Museu Nacional D’Art de Catalunya. (National Art Museum of Catalonia.) I had just enough time to see the Modern Art, Baroque Art, Photography, and Picasso exhibits before I had to run off to collect the football tickets. I’m not going to lie, I used to be bored as hell when we went on those class trips to art museums. This was my first trip to a museum since I’ve started my art history class and it’s so much more interesting. It’s very hard to appreciate art when you don’t know anything about it.

After the museum I had the lovely challenge of finding the pick-up point for the football tickets. I had to find the José Oriol Plaza and it wasn’t marked on the map. I went back to my hostel to try mapquest (I love euro-mapquest) but it turns out the place I wanted, it isn’t possible to drive to. I get back on the metro to try and reach the point mapquest left me at. The whole tradition of backpacking through Europe is no joke. Every single time I got on the metro I’d see more and more people in their twenties with titanic backpacks. You see backpackers every so often in Granada but we’re so far south that it’s really off the main trail, so to speak, that backpackers take through Europe. Anyway, I get as far as the map will take me and I start wandering. At this point I’m wandering through alleyways around the centre of the old city. I stop and ask a police officer where the plaza is and he has never heard of it. You know you’re headed for the edge of the map when the police don’t know where you’re going.

However, about two minutes later I look up and somehow I had wandered into the correct plaza. I grab our tickets and head back uptown to meet everyone and we’re off to the game!

I have no idea how this happened but our seats were amazing! The group ended up being Hunter, Paige, Annaleise, and I. Right before the game Paige remembered that her friend Mike Jones (yes, that’s his real name) was staying in Barcelona for the week while his parents visited. The last two tickets went to Mike and his brother Steve.

We were fifth row right behind one of the goals. Barça was playing the team from Huelva (a city in Spain right between Cadiz and Portugal). They ended up winning 3-0 and they scored all three goals when the other team’s goalie was in the goal right in front of us. Bojan, who is that 17 year-old that is the youngest in the history of the league to ever score a goal, scored the second goal. The stadium went bizerk when he scored again. This stadium is ridiculous. It’s absolutely huge and every single fan is so into the game. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but as loyal as I am to the Red Sox European football is just such a better game.

When we left the stadium we ended up running into another ten or so people that also go to the University of Granada. After the win there was so much energy and we were incredibly hyper. Let’s just say we celebrated by playing on a seesaw.

After the seesaw and a quick stint on the slides we went into the closest bar. It turned out to be a Beatles bar. It was like walking into the 1960s. The bar was very laid back so we decided to leave and find something with more energy. Hunter ended up staying because a Beatles cover band was going to play at midnight. Apparently the cover band consisted of the bartenders in wigs but Hunter says they were quite good.

The rest of us went off to look for a discothèque. We came up from a metro station where we had been told there were a good number of clubs. At the top of the stairs there was a group of people so we asked where there was a good place. They told us that they were waiting for one more friend and then we could go with them. We got to talking and it turns out they were all French but that they lived in Barcelona. The conversation changed between Spanish and English with a little bit of French thrown in.

Once the friend arrived we went to the club. Apparently there was some sort of event going on so you could only get in if you were on the list. Our new friends were on the list and so they let us in because we were “with them.” Five of us go in and then we end up having to leave because Steve is wearing white sneakers.

After this is really late and we all decide to head home. Steve and Mike walk me back to my hostel. When I get back to my six-person dormitory it turns out I have it to myself. Hunter was already gone, he had to work on a group project all day Sunday so he took a 6am flight home and had already left for the airport.

Sunday I woke up and went to the IMAX theatre. I saw a film about the Alps. I love the IMAX. Afterwards I went to the History Museum of Catalonia, which started with the cavemen and went all the way through the Civil War and Franco. After the museum I grabbed another Starbucks and headed down to the old Olympic village. I walked down the beach all the way back to La Rambla. Apparently the thing to do on a Sunday night is take a bottle of wine and head down to the beach and watch the surfers catching the last waves at sunset. From La Rambla I headed back to my hostel. I read a bit more of my ridiculous book and around 8pm I went back for the evening double feature IMAX. The two films were about Sharks and the Antarctic. After my movies I went to bed early.

Monday morning I checked out and went to see La Sagrada Familia, the church that is famous for it’s connection with Gaudí. I had decided to wait until Monday because I didn’t want it to be swamped with tourists. This place is amazing. You walk up to it and it’s as if it were alive. It’s been in construction for more than a hundred years. They are planning to complete it on the 100^th anniversary of Gaudí’s death in 2026.

After my visit I headed for the bus station. In the metro station instead of information pamphlets or flyers there are people. They wear neon-yellow jackets with giant ‘i’s on the front. They have to wander around the station answering questions all day. Fun job and embarrassing uniform.

I arrived a bit early for my bus so I read a French cinema magazine. It was in Spanish, I’m not going to pretend I could read it in French...yet. It had a very interesting debate. The author talked about picturing Iraq in the cinema. He asked the question if we should be using it in blockbusters while we still have soldiers there. He asked if it was respectful. One of his major points was whether or not it’s ethical to be putting Hollywood endings on stories of soldiers. He talked about the different between blockbusters, cartoons, and documentaries. Interesting to think about.

Monday night I finally got back to Granada around 7:30. I had just enough time to drop everything at my apartment before I had to go straight to school and to my French class. As much as I love traveling it wipes me out. I’m having so much fun seeing all these places and it’s so interesting but I get home and I’m dead. The only thing that perked me up coming home from class at 10pm was the sushi bar across the street from my apartment. I’ve walked past it four times a day almost every day and somehow I’ve never noticed it. There is a giant sign that reads ‘unlimited buffet.’ Keep it mind, it’s a sushi restaurant. Monday night I realized that under the ‘free buffet’ sign it says, ‘only limited in consumption of seafood.’

Until a few days,

Me

Ps. I’m kidding. I didn’t buy a pigeon. Until next week!