Odds and ends

So. I leave Barcelona tomorrow. This is kinda it. The blog's going out with more of a sputter than a bang because I've been running around like a mad woman all week trying to get packed.

I'm sad to leave. Barcelona really grew on me, and the six months flew by. But I get to spend the next four months traveling around Spain and Portugal so I can't feel too bad. The general route of the trip is Aragón, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, Madrid, Castilla y León, Portugal, north coast of Spain. Then back to Barcelona for a day or two and then the Camino de Santiago. By then I should be completely broke, so back to the real world.

I'll post updates but probably not daily. I wish I had something more thoughtful to say. But I'll have lots of time for deep thoughts once I get packed and hit the road. Oh, and here are pictures from my Croatia trip. Adios, Barcelona!

¡Venga Torres!

Fernando Torres is a Spanish angel. He's precious. And Zinedine Zadane is a big scary machine. I'm so bummed that Spain is out of the World Cup. It was really fun to watch them here, and their team is so cute. (Their average age is 24, though, which makes me feel super old.) Damn futbol.

"I very much like your friend. And you are like your friend."

While we were at the beach for the Saint Joan festival, my friends met these Italian guys who are visiting from Naples and made plans to go out for dinner the next night. The friend who actually speaks Italian ended up bailing, so last night I had dinner with a friend, this girl who goes to the same dentist as my friend (none of us speaks Italian), and these three Napolian (Neopolitan?) guys who don't really speak English or Spanish. So random. It was the kind of bizarre social situation that would never happen to me in the US, but happens here all the time. We made it work, kind of, and my friend's got me sold on the idea of travelers' karma. I'm gonna be on the road for a while pretty soon--I hope I end up having dinner with strangers who make an effort to communicate with me even if we don't really share a common language.

Anyway, tried to go cava (champagne, they call it cava here) tasting today. Bought train tickets to Sant Sadurni D'Anoia, where the cava place is. The problem with taking trains here is there are often no routes or schedules posted. They have screens that show which trains leave from which tracks at what time, but the information only shows the final destination of the train. If you're getting off at one of the many stops en route, you often don't know the final destination of your train. So you usually have to ask someone. But Sant Sadurni sounds a lot like Sant Celoni. And Sant Celoni is a much bigger city and more people have heard of it. By the time we realized we'd been following directions to Sant Celoni rather than Sant Sadurni, we were an hour away from Barcelona in the wrong direction. With Sunday train schedules and the fact that we didn't really know how to get to the cava place once we were in Sant Sadurni or how late it stays open, we decided to cut our losses and go back to Barcelona and watch futbol. I don't really even like cava that much, but I was all set to start liking it today. Oh well.

TNT, dynamite

I'm not entirely sure what we were celebrating last night. It was the feast of Sant Joan, which coincides with the summer solstice and is celebrated by staying up all night and setting off fireworks. You can buy real fireworks for personal use here, and the DIY scene at the beach rivaled the small town Fourth of July fireworks I grew up watching. There were so many that the air never really cleared; I spent the whole night in a haze of firework smoke. They really like the loud ones, too--I think the city must be a little desensitized now after all that noise. (Actually people set off loud fireworks all the time here, usually just not so many and not for hours on end.)

It's funny, all Americans have the same reaction: This could never happen in the US, and someone could get hurt. If the scene at the beach last night somehow happened in the US, I think the police might respond with tear gas. And little kids were lighting fireworks--they really could have been hurt. I almost got hit in the head with one. That near miss aside, though, it was fine. Anarchy never broke out, even though it felt like it could have, and I'm pretty sure nobody died. Americans can be pretty uptight.

You gotta move

Nothing makes me hate myself quite like moving does. Why do I have so much crap? And why can't I bring myself to get rid of it? Every time I move I swear that from now on, in the new life I'm about to move to, I'll be better about acquiring things. I think I have gotten a little better. I acquire less than I used to, but still too much.

Anyway, I wasn't even planning on packing today. I was home this afternoon doing laundry and watching the Spain-Saudi Arabia game, and then I was gonna go in to my office to use the internet. But I couldn't find my office key. Before I started freaking out about it I realized that I'd probably put it in the wash, and I was right. But right after I had finished my laundry, I started the washing machine again with nothing in it to try and clean out the soap dispenser. (Admit it, you're fascinated by all this.) Once you start my washing machine the door locks, so my office key was stuck in the washing machine and I had some time to kill. That's when I started packing.

The bigger of my two suitcases is now bursting at the seams, and getting it to my office (where it will live for the next four months while I travel) is gonna be a really sweaty job. And I still have almost all of my shoes, some clothes, hand bags/purses, and all my office stuff to try and shove into my smaller suitcase. It's not gonna work. I knew it wasn't gonna work; my stuff didn't fit in two suitcases when I came here, and I have more stuff now not less. Ugh. I hate moving. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it. Okay, I feel a little better now.

With god on their side

I'm happy for Ghana. I'm not just saying that, I really mean it. They're all over the US in terms of who has more to gain from the World Cup. And I can stop trying to think of a good response to "The US has everything, why do you want them to win the World Cup, too?" I've been asked variations on that a lot. It was fun cheering for the US; it was fun to get excited about the US instead of just feeling ashamed of it. And now I can just cheer for Spain with no divided loyalties. (Well, I'd also like to see Korea do well, and Spain and Korea may play each other in the next round. Es complicado.) And the Spanish team is cute.

What's less okay is that the Italians beat the Czechs, but I guess having a team to cheer against makes things more interesting.

Deep thoughts

I think that if I were a flamenco dancer, after each show I'd end up having sex with the first person to cross my path. It's just that passionate.

The itch

Okay. All this gushing I've been doing lately about Barcelona and my neighborhood and Spain and my apartment? It still holds. It does. But. If it's gonna work long-term with me and Europe, they've got to move their window technology into the mid-twentieth century. For god's sake, install some fucking screens, Europe! I tried to convince myself that it's more natural or rustic or authentic or something to have open windows lead right to the great outdoors, but fuck that. Screens keep the bugs out and let the breeze in and they work really well and I really, really miss them. It got hot here, I have to have my windows open. So now I am covered in mosquito bites. I couldn't sleep the other night because I couldn't stop scratching them. I finally broke down and went to the pharmacy yesterday to buy something to put on them, but it doesn't work very well.

Apparently there are these bad Asian tiger mosquitoes here, but I don't think they're what's getting me because the tiger mosquitoes apparently give bites that are really painful. If only I hurt instead of itched. Itching can nearly make you go insane. It's awful. Plus it's pretty embarrassing to be out in public and constantly scratching yourself (at least the bites are pretty much confined to my feet, ankles, and arms). So now I've started using my heavy-duty 95% DEET bug spray that I bought for Russia (St. Petersburg was built on a swamp), but it's really scary stuff. It has disposal instructions. I may die or grow a third leg or something, but at least I'll hopefully stop itching.

Bloody as hell

My friend and I tried to recreate our Basque country adventure tonight by making a cider house-like dinner. Well, she made dinner; I just showed up an hour late with some bread. Whatever. It's hard to get good steak in Barcelona. (Well, that's what I'm told anyway. I didn't even help with the shopping. I suck.) But still, we had cod and big pieces of very rare beef and cheese and walnuts and cidre. Very good. No singing or bread throwing or Basque boys with unpronounceable names, though.

And we started planning our next trip to that area, which will be on foot in September as part of the Camino de Santiago, a religious pilgrimage across northern Spain. We're not religious, but it's a cheap way to keep traveling and it's supposed to be beautiful and life-changing, even for heathens. I'm also hoping to lose some weight. Anyway, we decided that we don't need sleeping bags or wide-brimmed hats, and confirmed that we'll be starting from Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees. This may be even more half-assed than the Croatia trip was, but still, progress was made.

Road to nowhere

No one ever tells you much about Gala Dalí, except that she liked sex and her husband Salvador was obsessed with her. Even the Castell Gala Dalí, the castle that Dalí bought and designed for her, doesn't have much actual information about Gala. She was Russian, married to Paul Eluard, left him for Dalí. What did she do, what were her interests, what was she like? I dunno. But she did live the last ten or so years of her life in this castle in Púbol, a tiny town in northern Catalunya not too far from Cadaques/Port Lligat, which is where Dalí was living at the time. She had the place to herself, and Dalí only came over when he was invited. The Gala Castle is almost boring compared to the Dalí museum/house in Cadaques--no cricket cages or Michelin men or photos of Stalin. It's mostly just really nice: some Dalí paintings and drawings, some tapestries, a nice terrace and beautiful garden. Oh, and a giant stuffed horse when you walk in (made me think of Catherine the Great, I can't help it). And she's buried downstairs. This is Dalí, after all.

Getting to Púbol was more interesting than the museum itself. My guidebooks were no help at all. The museum's website said to take the train to Flaça, that Púbol is 4km away, and if you don't want to walk you can take a taxi. Okay. I figured there would be signs or information of some sort at the train station, but no. The woman working at the station said I should take a cab, but had no information on how long it would take or what it would cost. Also, there don't seem to be any cabs in Flaça. I waited for a while at the alleged taxi stand, but none came. Tried to walk to the city center but Flaça doesn't seem to have a city center; it doesn't seem to have anything besides a train station, two banks, and a closed pharmacy. The only map at the train station was of bike paths around Girona province. There was a bike path to Púbol, which passed through another place called La Pera, and there was a sign near the train station that said La Pera and had an arrow and a picture of a bike. Following a vague sign into the Catalunyan countryside seemed like the path of least resistance. So I started walking. 4km isn't so far. I had my compass. What could happen?

For once, walking blindly in what seemed like the right direction actually worked. The path went through woods and fields, with very few sings for La Pera, and even fewer sings of human life. For a while I was pretty sure I'd made a wrong turn and might never find my way out of the wheat fields, but then there was La Pera and from there there were signs for Púbol. The walk to La Pera took about an hour, during which the only humanity I saw was a bus full of Russians (there was a sign on the front of the bus written in Cyrillic). As I was leaving the museum, Russians were going in. Between La Pera and Púbol I passed some cars. Everyone seemed to be lost; they kept stopping and looking at maps and looking around confusedly. Dalí definitely found a remote place for her. A few houses, a church, the museum, a gift shop, and a restaurant are all that seem to be in Púbol, and the gift shop and maybe the restaurant are only there because of the museum. La Pera is a little bigger, more houses anyway, but doesn't seem to have any stores or restaurants or bars at all. Or people. There were signs of life, like cars and clothes hanging out to dry, so it clearly isn't an actual ghost town, but it felt like one. It was cute, just deserted on a Sunday.

I wonder how the Pubolians felt about Gala Dalí moving into their town's castle. This is definitely the most remote place I've been in Spain so far. I saw several tractors today.

Trying not to make a spring break reference

I'm not that into clubs, or electronic music, or DJs. But there's this Sonar thing that's going on this weekend (a big modern/multimedia art and "advanced" music festival), and I was interested mostly because it's a big deal. People come from all over. Last night some of the Sonar DJs were spinning for free at the beach, and it was perfect. It wasn't smoky, or hot, or even that loud, or crazy crowded, because the beach is pretty big so you can spread out. Way more laid back than your typical club scene. I liked the music, too--maybe I like electronica but I'm just very selective? And it was a really mixed crowd which is always fun. There were the requisite scantily-clad beautiful people, but there were also old people and goths and dorks and this one guy who looked a lot like Ozzy Osbourne (who, now that I think about it, is kind of an old goth dork) and a French Belgian in a pink cowboy hat. Very cool. And of course Pakistanis selling cans of beer for half the bar price. They must have made a killing last night.

The festival of Corpus Christi is going on now (there's always some kind of religious festival happening here). I don't really know anything about it, but during the festival, in the cloister of the cathedral, they have this fountain with an egg balancing on it. It's just one stream of water shooting up (think kitchen sink faucet turned upside down), with a hollowed-out (chicken's?) egg dancing on top. The egg rolls and moves around a little bit, but it stays up. That's some kind of trick, right? An egg can't just balance on top of a little stream of water. Right?

Skip a life completely

I wiped out so bad walking up the steps out of the subway today. I guess I slipped or something (I think maybe I tried to skip up the stairs after hearing the word skip in a song on my iPod) and I fell forward on my hands but then my hand slipped and I fell on my elbow and then my foot slipped and I started sliding backwards. My iPod hit so hard it bounced (that thing is unbreakable) and skipped to the next song (speaking of skipping). Un desastre. Between being embarrassed, laughing at myself, and writhing in pain, I had a hard time convincing the passers-by that I was okay. It really did hurt, but I'm still cracking myself up over how comical I must have looked.

Anyway. It's pretty rare that I find myself in situations that legitimately feel like they might culminate in orgy, but tonight was one of those oddities. My friend lives with an artist, and on Friday nights he and his artist friends do these "jam sessions." There's a girl dancing in front of a screen that she's also being projected onto, and the artists paint on the screen. I use the word dance loosely; they call it modern dance but it looked more like very casual yoga (tumbling?). She didn't necessarily follow the beat of the music (I'm also using the word music loosely--for part of the time it just sounded like people fighting and then it switched to a tennis match) and she was smoking the whole time. The artists got started by painting some of her silhouettes on the screen though, so she served that purpose. It lasted over an hour, with the artists painting over things and adding to and changing each other's work, and the audience of maybe thirty people sitting in a few chairs but mostly on the floor drinking 1.50€ cans of beer. It was really intimate to watch the creative process from the start and to see a painting knowing how it came to be. I'm in awe of artists anyway, but to be able to perform spontaneously yet on demand and in front of an audience (and really well) is just beyond my comprehension. Towards the end the music had this pretty intense beat and the dancer was putting her foot on this guy in the audience and these girls next to me started making out and--Okay I made up the part about the girls making out, but it wouldn't have been out of place. No orgy either, but it felt like it could have happened. So Barcelona.

Roque and a hard place

My ranking of World Cup teams:

1. USA
   
2. Spain
   
3. Teams from Spanish-speaking countries
   
4. Of the two teams currently playing, the one whose country would benefit more from winning
   
5. Of the two teams currently playing, the one with cuter players

So I was definitely cheering for Paraguay over Sweden tonight. The Swedes are tall and blonde and that's kinda cute, but their uniforms are all yellow so they look like giant bananas running around the field. Surely Paraguay needs more of a lift than Sweden does. And there's this guy Roque Santa Cruz who plays for Paraguay. Mmmm. I think I'm in love.

So I was bummed that Paraguay lost. The good news is, cute boys aside, I've kinda gotten into futbol. It's really exciting, and it helps with the baseball withdrawal.

Not Aragorn

I saw one of my students from last semester today. Wearing a Hooters shirt. Weird.

Anyway, I'm going to Aragón (it's just west of Catalunya). The lease on my apartment ends at the end of the month. After that I'm gonna hit the road and wander around Spain for a while, but I wasn't sure where to start. I was waiting for inspiration. Then I went art shopping with some friends, and one of them bought a painting of a scene in Aragón by an Aragonese (Aragonian?) artist. The painting is of a desert with trees, and apparently those kind of trees only grow in the Aragonese desert. So I'm off to the desert to find the trees. Very exciting.

The woman who sold him the painting is also from Aragón and knows the artist. The whole transaction was very good Spanish practice because my friend buying the painting doesn't speak Spanish and the woman selling the painting didn't speak much English. It got really confusing filling out paperwork to get the tax refunded (when Americans and maybe others buy expensive things in Eurupe they can sometimes have the tax refunded but you have to fill out forms and stand in a line at the airport), but it would have been a confusing conversation even in English so I didn't feel so bad.

And isn't "I decided to go to Aragón after a friend bought an Aragonese painting" the perfect opening line for something (not sure what yet)?

The love fest continues

I love my neighborhood. It's wonderfully gritty and full of character and free of tourists. There's a ton of construction going on (someday I'll be able to say "I lived in Poble Nou back before....") and it's noisy and the construction guys call me guapa but it's okay because they call everyone guapa. I can get jamón serrano right next door. And isn't this the best vacant lot ever? (It's right across the street from my apartment.) It's the quintessential vacant lot (that's a mattress in the middle, just behind the orange noodle-y thing).

One of the English-language weeklies had an article this week about bars in my neighborhood, and had this to say about P.K.2, which is just down the block from me: "As we were walking in, strippers were walking out--always a good sign. The business card does state 'Todo tipo de celebraciones.' Beyond the strippers the beer/sangria bongs are worth a stop." I went to P.K.2 once with this preppy French guy (long boring story) and I was a little afraid he was gonna end up served on a platter. The beautiful people don't come here.

I can lay on my bed and look at the sky (more a property of my apartment than the neighborhood, but whatever).

And. I saved the best for last. I live across from a mental clinic (it's right next to the vacant lot). With a homemade sign. Priceless.

Andre Agassi circa 1990

I like to think that I'm, if not smooth, at least functional at European double-cheek kissing. But it feels absolutely ridiculous to me to do it with other Americans. I guess I haven't been here long enough. Aside from some unnecessary cheek kissing, tonight was about as American as Barcelona gets. I took off work early to drink beer and watch sports in a bar where everyone spoke English, and then ate fried bar food for dinner with Americans. I did have to ask the English bartender to repeat herself three times before I understood that she was asking me if I'd had a soda earlier, though. Accents are hard, a fact that is somehow both reassuring and demoralizing for my troubles with Spanish. And I was sitting next to a Red Sox fan, who confirmed that there is no baseball in Spain.

There's futbol, though. The World Cup would be a lot more exciting if the Americans hadn't gotten their asses kicked by the Czech Republic. I have to admit, though, my heart wasn't fully in it; I've got no hatred for the Czechs. With the Italians, though, it's personal. Don't fuck with my friends, otherwise I'll cheer against your futbol team.

Like a boil

I slept in really late today. I woke up around 10:00 and went back to bed. I never fell completely asleep after that, staying just conscious enough to bask in the fact that I could stay in bed as long as I wanted. It was great.

Anyway. It took 5+ months, but I officially and completely realized today that I love Barcelona. I didn't even do anything particularly interesting: walked around a little, read at a cafe, went to the beach. But today it all finally clicked. It took a while. Just in case I didn't make it abundantly clear, either intentionally or inadvertently, I was a little miserable when I first got here.

Barcelona has three tall buildings. The Torre Agbar looks like a giant condom. (A friend pointed out recently that condom is kind of a euphemism; it looks more like a penis than a condom. Okay, so it looks like a giant penis.) It lights up at night. The other two are right next to each other down by the beach; people call them either the twin towers or the two towers. (I stick with two towers--there were only two twin towers and these aren't they.) From my apartment, the Torre Agbar is to the northeast and the two towers are to the south. I used to sometimes pretend that the Torre Agbar was the Empire State Building and the towers were the twin towers, and that I lived in pre-9-11 Chelsea, not winter 2006 Barcelona. I never do that anymore.

I don't necessarily love Barcelona in a "need to stay forever" kind of way. Maybe more in a "we'll always have Paris" kind of way. It grew on me. I love jamón serrano and outdoor cafes and how cheap good wine is. I love the art scene and the beach and the mullets and piercings. And flaky as they are, I even kinda like the people. They're pretty patient with my bad Spanish and nonexistent Catalan and are always telling me to calm down when I rush myself (tranquila is a word I hear a lot). I like cities that have an energy or a mood that you can feel. I felt New York's right away; Barcelona's took longer, but it's definitely there. I'll always have 2006.

Blog-icide

If anyone's still paying attention, yeah, I disappeared for a while. Trust me, you didn't miss much. The only people who would be amused by Benidorm stories were there. I'm glad to be back. Don't ever go to Benidorm.

Anyway, today I went to this festival called Hamaka (Spanish for hammock). It's about bringing artists and audiences together, and with a lot of relaxing. Getting there wasn't at all relaxing: The festival was happening at a castle on the far end of Montjuic, this mountain at the southwest corner of Barcelona, and we had a hard time finding it and it got hot on the (really long) walk there so I was way overdressed and sweaty. But once we finally found the place, there were portable lounge chairs set up and we ate ham while reclining and it doesn't get too much better than that. There was music. First was this guy Bitxe whom they refer to as the Catalan Bob Dylan (lots of harmonica, oh joy oh bliss); he played a bunch of his own stuff and then did Visions of Johanna with a Catalan accent and it was adorable (think Viss-ions of Yohanna). Then there was a really good jazz band. There was a guy on a bike riding around among the lounge chairs pointing at people and taking them for rides in a little seat attached to the back of his bike. There was a guy wearing pants made out of newspaper. If you sat in his chair, he'd blindfold you and massage your feet and put scents in front of your nose. There was a beer guy walking around with a keg of San Miguel on his back. And it was almost entirely noncommercial; except for the beer, everything was free. The musicians weren't even selling CDs--kind of a bummer actually because I probably would have bought one from the Catalan Bob Dylan, but still the blatant lack of money-making was nice. And it was so Barcelona, in its creative, weird, laid back way. Finally things are back to normal.

You should write that down

Benidorm kinda feels like the set for some weird western film. There are mountains in the background, and the city in front of them looks fake. And the movie is full of statisticians....

We went on a little hike today; hike is kind of a strong word because it was all through neighborhoods and on paved streets, but it was uphill. The sea really is pretty here, and the mountains are nice. I'm trying to be a little more positive--it's only working a tiny bit, though.

...and this conference is killing my blog. I'm trying to have interesting observations and fun stories, but I'm at a statistics conference in a lameass resort. It's hard. It is fun, but only because my friends are here. Last night a bunch of us got drunk and ate these really awful kebab sandwiches and talked about masturbation in the hotel basement. That's all I got.

Pretend you're somewhere else

One more thing about Croatia (I'm taking a break from hacking on Benidorm). Remember their currency is the kuna? Well. They have two-kuna coins and on the back of the two-kuna coin is... (wait for it)... a tuna! A tuna kuna! It's my favorite coin ever, and it's pure coincidence that it's so funny because it's not funny at all in Croatian. (The Croatian word for tuna is tunj, which doesn't rhyme with tuna, and the Croatia word for two is dva, which doesn't sound like tunj). Sometimes you just get lucky.

Benidorm is not Spain

Gibraltar is England inside of Spain in a way that's kind of okay. The signs are in English and there's fish and chips, and there's also jamon serrano. And monkeys. There are no monkeys here in Benidorm, just crappy food and British tourists. I had a ham sandwich for lunch (it wasn't great ham but at least they have ham) and they put butter on it. Butter. There's no butter in Spain! Okay, I guess they put butter on toast sometimes, but ham sandwiches are made with olive oil. Period. Who are these people? And. The hotel cafeteria (in no way is it a dining room) doesn't serve coffee at dinner, only at breakfast. I've gotta get back to the real Spain.

Paradise prison, without the paradise

I hate Benidorm. Oh Christ, I hate Benidorm. Even the guidebooks say it sucks. It's ugly high-rise buildings and theme parks and British tourists. And that's it. Well, and the beach, but even the Mediterranean doesn't save it. And the fact that I'm here for a statistics conference definitely doesn't save it. The weather's good. But that's as positive as I can be.

I feel all defensive about Spain here, like I need to tell everyone who will listen that this is so not Spain. I may turn into a giant pain in the ass.

Self-service

I do like coming home to Barcelona. Uh oh.

Anyway, on the one day in town between the Croatia trip and a statistics conference (ugh) we went to CCCB, Centre de Cultura Contemporània Barcelona. It's a confusing collection of buildings with exhibitions on all kinds of stuff; the main one now is about Chernobyl or, as they write in Catalan, Txernòbil. About as uplifting as a Holocaust museum, but very interesting. I know it's a colossal understatement, but what a tragedy.

Russian humor is really dark. The exhibition talked about how people used humor as a coping mechanism and had some sample jokes. One was something like "Reagan calls up the Pentagon and tells them to stop the nuclear program against the USSR--they've gone self-service." Ouch. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see that going over very well in an American museum. It seems like the sort of thing that would offend people, or people would think it would offend people. Especially since a lot of the jokes used the words shit and fuck.

Also, they showed some really graphic pictures of babies and animals born after Chernobyl with all kinds of severe problems. I just don't see that happening in the US.

And I'm kind of disturbed by the fact that I don't remember the Chernobyl accident's happening at all. I was eight--that's plenty old enough to remember something so monumental. What the hell was I doing?