Being CS

Homage To Catalonia

Barcelona, to be precise. We've been in this lively city for two and a half days now, which has mostly welcomed us with scorching heat and sun. This does not, apparently, affect the city's native inhabitants who go (run) about their business undisturbed. Barcelona to me is large crowds of people crossing streets and running down Boulevards with shopping bags in their hands at an incredible pace. Its also a city of rather chaotic traffic, where crossing the street is always an adventure.
Our trip started out in Palma de Mallorca, on the (wonderful) island of Mallorca, Spain, which is now generally accepted to really belong to Germany. We had a stopover there on our flight to Barcelona, which gave us the opportunity to see the beautiful island from the air, while lamenting the fact that it is so overrun with party hungry tourists that visiting it without being annoyed by drunken teenagers and housewifes is not possible without a rental car (to travel to the secluded parts). We then made our way to our actual destination Airport, from which we quickly went to our Hostal. I should, however, mention that this quick trip left us completely exhausted while running through the busy streets and subway, luggage in hand, at intolerable temperatures. After getting some initial rest we started exploring the town and headed to La Rambla, problably the most famous street in Barcelona. Filled with locals, tourists, Restaurants and souvenir shops it is said to be the essence of this city. I find myself agreeing, but have to say that there are places far more beautiful nearby, such as the Plaza Reial, which is just off in a sidestreet.
At this point I should also say that Barcelona is located in Catalonia, an autonomous region in Spain that has its own language Catalan! This is great for everyone trying to remember their high school Spanish and getting horribly confused by all the subtle and not-so-subtle differences. I have seen several language students here, and they must have forgotten everything they learned in school by now.
Any time not spent sleeping or eating is spent exploring the city (sitting is only acceptable while blogging) or shopping, which is the local pasttime. During our first few hours we toured the entire gothic quarter (the old part of town), looking at buildings and shops while really looking for a restaurant. We found a decently priced one after about two hours (life as a student is tough), at a Spanish Tapas restaurant. Tapas are small appetizers; which combine to form a whole meal when you order many of them. We were quite lost as to what to order, but very happy to finally have found a place to sit so I ordered Red Mullet (apparently a fish) while Nora had baby prawns. It turns out that baby prawns are not at all related to shrimp but are more like giant red monsters with huge claws. They might not be alive, but trying to eat them is a battle nonetheless; so beware.

The following day (Wednesday, our first full day here) started rather early, with a tour of the harbour. The harbour itself was completely redesigned and rebuilt for the 1992 Olympic games, making it into a very modern place for strolling around or watching movies in one of several movie theaters. We then continued to the Placa de Catalunya, where the extreme heat put a quick end to our sightseeing plans. We found a supermarket and retreated to the Hostal, where we waited for it to get colder and planned out what to see next.
By around four O'Clock the rain had cooled everything down to a habitable temperature and we took the metro to the Arc de Triumph (every European city must have one), took a few pictures and then again to the metro to the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona's most famous church. This incredible building, originally constructed by Gaudi, is still under construction and will probably continue to be unfinished for at least another hundred years. Gaudi himself planned for about 200 years of construction time, and never made detailed plans for the entire building, he wanted future generations to continue building it in their own style. The result was something completely out of the ordinary, very organic and beautiful. The area around the Sagrada Familia is also home to some of the nicest tourist stores in Barcelona (very different from the annoying and trashy stores found on La Rambla), which sell lots of Gaudi inspired ceramics, as well as Barcelona books and t-shirts. We spent quite some time there, before taking the Avenida de Gaudi to Barcelona's most famous hospital, which itself is an incredibly beautiful piece of architecture. Sightseeing inside the grounds of a hospital definitely felt a bit weird, but there quite a lot of other tourists, and it was easy to get around without disturbing anyone, due to the immense size and spread of everything (think Stanford campus).
Newly tired we took the bus back to the Placa de Catalunya and went shopping into Les Cortes Ingles, Barcelona's most famous department store. We emerged two hours later with tons of groceries, to realize that it had been raining again for quite some while, so we decided to eat at the Hostal. We got onto a Bus in the wrong direction (when its raining such details do not matter much), and getting back took considerable time, so we were able to eat at around 10pm; very Spanish indeed. Though our tourist booklet stated that the Arc de Triomph is a popular gathering spot at night, this is clearly not the case, we saw about five people, all of which probably had the same tourist book as us.

Today's temperature was a lot better than yesterday's, I would guess somewhere around 27 Celsius, which made walking around a lot more comfortable. We meticulously visited every building that Gaudi has ever built, which is a lot of buildings, all of which were very impressive. I was, however, most impressed by a building that was actually not by Gaudi, which had a weird but massive scultpure made of aluminum wires on top, sort of like a giantic array of TV antennas. After that we embarked on a voyage to travel to the faraway Parc Guël (by bus routes at least), that ended rather aprubtly when we could not find a bus of particular importance to our journey. Instead we opted for lunch: Baguette with Camembert and Ham (the informed reader will notice that last year's country of travel was France; old habits die hard). We paid a quick visit to the Placa the Espanya, which was, however, under massive construction and this combined with the midday sun made us decide to come back at some later time. Instead we went back to the Gothic quarter, which its small streets and shops, where we were able to walk around in the cool shade. We then embarked on a futile attempt to visit tourist stores on La Rambla, which ended in us leaving every single store annoyed at the people working there, and aware that things are much cheaper in other places. With this newfound knowledge I bought two t-shirts from the nearby Nike store, which I am quite happy about. While I was in there, nobody pressured me to buy anything, I hope to tourist store clerks will one day learn a lesson from this.
After some more shopping and strolling around we had amazing salad for dinner (we bought a bottle of olive oil for the occasion, which was probably one of the best ideas of the week), and then went back into town to see some more of Barcelona at night. Since most stores were already closed we decided to catch up on emails and blogging, so this is where the story comes full circle, and we are were we begun, at an Internet cafe.