Let’s Govia to Segovia!

Location: Segovia and Madrid, Spain

Friday May 28 2010

Our first IES excursion away from Madrid was to Segovia, a historic town about 85 km away from Madrid. Its most famous landmark is the 15 km aqueduct that runs across the town. We took a scenic motorcoach ride around the countryside first, to see all of Segovia from the highway. If you imagine a scenic, old Spanish town full of salmon-coloured buildings surrounded by green plains, then you’ve got Segovia.

The group splitted into two for two different tour guides. Our guide, Jesus, was very clear in explaining things and had many interesting legends, Biblical stories, and how-things-came-to-be stories specific to Segovia. Hopefully, he was more honest than Yale’s tour guides. Haha. From what I could catch, it seems that most of the legends featured el Diablo and the characters’ fear of him. Segovia’s history was also heavily shaped by the conflicts between the Muslims and Christians.

Segovia’s gothic cathedral is gigantically beautiful. It’s probably the biggest building, outside the castle, in the town. We only had a ten-minute (but what we thought was twenty-minute, oops…) break, but I could have spent at least half an hour admiring the outside building. Alex (rising-sophomore at Harvard), Valentina (rising-senior and fellow Morsel), and I wanted to go inside, but it cost 3 € and we didn’t have very much time. From what I could see through the door, the inside is even grander, with impossibly high ceilings and beautiful stained-glass windows. Did I ever mention that I love SPACE? And was there space in that cathedral! It could almost make me religious. Almost. Sigh.

My favorite part of the tour was visiting el Alcázar, the castle. Built between the twelfth and sixteenth century, el Alcázar de Segovia was my first castle ever! Other than the one in Disney… Haha… which totally doesn’t count. The castle is on the outskirts of the town, on the edge of a hill, separated by a legit deepdeepdeep moat.

The bottom floors were open to the public for viewing and set up to be displayed like a museum. All the rooms were luxuriously decorated from top to bottom, not an inch of wall or ceiling space was left without a tapestry, painting, or special design. I snapped photos and photos of beautiful Islamic-style decorated ceilings. The views from the windows (presently covered with regular glass) were spectacular. It’s so strange to think that past kings looked from those same windows over the countryside to admire the same view, or past queens powdered their noses in the blue and white room that we walked through, or past princesses and princes prayed in the same dark wooden chapel and looked at the same religious triptych that I snapped a picture of.

The main receiving room had statues of generations of past kings and queens mounted on surrounding walls. There was a portrait of the current king of Spain, Juan Carlos I, looking all Kokoum-like in a suit. It was fun quickly looking to and from Carlos’s portrait and an old king’s portrait just on the other wall to the left. What a change from the past kings centuries ago!

After the castle, we took a treacherous hike down the hill to la Catedral de Veracruz. This dodecagonal cathedral, now only used for marriages and burials, looked very simple after a tour of the castle. Jesus told us a story about how that one night, a soldier was having a funeral in the cathedral, and the night before, the funeral people kept him on the second floor space. The most common birds in Segovia (I can’t recall the species’ name) flew in and started devouring the corpse. The church people somehow shooed the birds away (probably by praying, most stories related to churches or religion or Spaniards in general usually involves praying of some sort…) and miraculously, not one of those birds have been seen in the second floor of the church ever since.

On our way back to Madrid, the whole IES group stopped to have lunch at a restaurant called El Rancho. We stuffed ourselves with pimientos, croquetes, patatas con salsa, tostado con tomate, bread with olive oil, baked chicken, tuna salad, and ponche de Segovia. By the time we ate our appetizers, we weren’t even hungry for the intimidating chicken. The ponche, a traditional dessert of Segovia, was superbly fabulous. Nomnomnomz.

Oh, Isabella...

That night, a group of ten people met at the Café y Te to pregame. We were under the wrong impression that liters of sangria were cheap there. False. We almost got ripped-off when the waiter wanted to charge us 20€ for a pitcher, until he found out that the price was actually 15€. We headed to the hopping Cave Bar or El Chapandaz, where a few us got shots. The bar’s specialty drink was this giant milk drink that pours from special stalactites from the ceiling. As the spotlight-lit milky liquid poured into a giant glass, the bartender generously poured various types of liquor into the glass then serves it with a few super long straws.

Our group took the metro to Bilbao to meet Alex, Nikita (rising-sophmore at Harvard), and Valentina to hit up Independance Club. Being a decent-sized group of girls with only a few boys, we got a card to enter in for free from a lady working a corner a couple of blocks from the club. The club played rock music, which was very different to dance to. I prefer dancing to pop/dance music that I can obnoxiously sing along to. Yeah, I’m that girl. The crowd was pretty young, mostly people in their teens and twenties, plus a few old men lurking around the dance floor of the club (a cross-cultural phenomenon!). Spanish people do love their American rock music. They were going crazy for it. The dress code was very chill; many were dressed as they would for a concert. I got really excited when I spotted an Spanish über hipster with long messy brown hair, extra long teal flannel shirt, huge ironics, and skinny jeans dancing drunkenly on the stage with her fellow hipster friend who was also rocking his own pair of ironics. It got obnoxious when these guys kept trying to mosh. At first, other people thought they were being funnily drunk, but then they just wouldn’t stop. When the most obnoxious guy got onto the stage, he would just literally push people off. Where’s a bouncer when you need one? Apparently el Independance is a pretty well-known club, because one of Celia’s tutor (I think for literature and English) whom I met the next morning (and whom I greeted with two kisses and bad morning breath -.-“) knew of it.

Calle de Codo es Como un Codo

Location: Madrid, Spain

Thursday May 27, 2010

Talks had been in the works for visiting Portugal during next weekend, because it’s a five-day weekend (with national holiday on Thursday and no classes on Friday). I’ve found that communication amongst the IES students is tediously slow via Facebook groups/messages because people don’t check it often enough. I researched flight prices and travel information the night before to Lisbon, but when Lauren (my IES neighbor) and I researched after Spanish class, the prices had shot up. Dammmn. So we looked up flights for Porto instead. It is the second-largest and supposed to be historic and beautiful. Booking through Ryanair (referred from Sidestep, i.e.: the best flight search engine EVAH, my friend, Isabella, immediately fell in love after I showed her), Lauren and I booked then and there, because there were flights with only a few seats left. It felt so fun and spontaneous to just do it, instead of waiting for a slow group decision. I hate this whole “well… I’ll go if everybody else is going…” mindset that’s so popular here. I guess I understand, nobody likes going out on their own and missing out on what the group is doing. Yet sometimes you just gotta go for it, especially when a group this size, about 30-40 people, will take forever to reach a consensus. But maybe I’m biased from meeting too-cool-for-school solo travelers like German Lisa (from a volcano tour in Costa Rica) and German Britta (from the Barcelonan youth hostel). I want to be bad-ass like them! Taking action was good, because other people naturally hopped on, and as of right now, our group is about 10 or more people. We’re on different flights going but the same flight heading back. The people with flights also booked the same hostel. So things are pretty much set. I love how this group trip quickly organized itself in a span of one day and two nights. Success.

That afternoon, I went on un Paseo Histórico, a tour of the historic district led by the IES-hired tour guide, Mario.

We saw most of the main landmarks and buildings, including: el Palacio Real (where the Spanish monarchy used to live, but now the king and family live elsewhere while el Palacio is reserved for state ceremonies)

Catedral de Madrid (common opinion: “Es muy fea,” too modern, I guess)

Restaurante Sobrino de Botin (world’s oldest restaurant: “Pero, no tiene no precios de estudiante”)

La Plaza Mayor (where they use to host bullfights or corridas de toros back in the day with balconies reserved for aristocrats and a special one reserved for the royal family)

and more.

I love going on guided tours, because you get so much more fun facts, cultural stories, and historical information than just walking around with a camera. God knows, I’d just be taking pictures of banks built to look old and fancy. Only glazed over by history textbooks, the seemingly constant conflict between the Muslims and the Catholics influenced a lot of the historical buildings. Mario pointed out Islamic, Roman, and Gothic architecture, focusing on the tell-tale signs of the arch-shapes in the buildings. We visited this hidden public garden enclosed with walls and blooming roses where people picnic and take siestas. The smaller streets of Madrid have funny names. In the historic district, they have specially decorated tiled signs mounted onto the side of the buildings. Calle de Codo, with the painted picture of a knight’s elbow, is named after it’s sharp crooked shape. In the past, single ladies used to trot around Calle de la Pasa (whose sign is decorated with women walking on the street), looking for potential novios. The saying goes: «El que no pasa por la calle de la Pasa, no se casa». I guess the single ladies then had a different attitude than Sasha.

After our tour, we asked the guide for a recommendation for a tapas place for dindin. He gave us a few options that he didn’t never told us. Winkwink. I guess IES doesn’t want the tour guides to be selling the students anything. We went to one of his recommendations, and it was greattt. The tapa servings were quite large, so each student really only had to eat one for a meal. I got myself some carne asada en jugo. We passed our food around so everyone could try all different types of tapas. Served from heavy glazed clay pitcher (like the one I made in pottery class, don’t make fun of me now, Angie-pie!), the sangria was perfect to wash down the meal. Our big Paseo HIstórico group broke up and I headed over to Fredd Fredd with a smaller group for gelato. We also tried samples at a chocolate place. That’s when Isabella (a fellow rising-junior Yalie) and I found my future calling: food-writing/food-critiquing, because I could pick out the marmalade in the piece of sample chocolate we were offered. Hey, I wouldn’t mind eating for a living. Haha.

Then I went to hang out with another group that was having dindin around the area of La Plaza Mayor and churros con chocolate after. I didn’t eat again, but it was fun hearing about how one girl, Liza, now has a creepy semi-stalkerish fireman named David in her life, because she lives across or at least very near the local fire station. When they met on her very first day in Madrid, he asked if she wanted to see his fire truck, i.e.: take a tour of the fire station, which she did, giving him the wrong signal. So now he keeps texting her to play. Shouldn’t that line “do you want to see my fire truck?” set off alarm bells in her head already?

“Medusa, 1597!”

Location: Madrid, Spain

Wednesday May 26, 2010

First day of class. My Spanish teacher is quite cute. She’s a ‘tweener, not that young to party with but not old enough to be middle-aged. Our class of about twelve people started with Spanish icebreakers. We learned had to guess/learn five things about our compañero and then present them to the class. A good use of the second-person and third-person conjugation, I guess. After coming here, I’ve also been getting a lot of vosotros practice. I never took vosotros seriously, because all my past Spanish teachers were from Latin America. So now it’s surprising just how much I use the second-person plural in conversation.

Other than the lispy accent, Spaniards also use the word “vale” a lot. It’s their equivalent “okay.” But they use it much more than we use okay. Spaniards say “vale” as much as novice Spanish-learners say “sí” in Spanish class. And that ‘s a whole hell of a lot. Carmen taught me what vale meant. When I used it later that day, Miguel was very entertained and said that I was starting to assimilate into the Spanish culture. I bet my broken Spanish with the Latin American accent sounds incredibly harsh to my host family.

My second (and only other class) is Arte en el Prado. For the first day of class, we met in an IES classroom rather than in the Prado, which is what we would be doing on Tuesdays and Wednesday. The professor seems pretty chill and wants us to appreciate and understand art. I think I’m going to have a hard time expressing myself during discussions, because so much of art appreciation and sharing requires fluffy, descriptive, emotional, and art-specific words: vocabulary that I do not know. Could you imagine Nemerov giving his fantastical musings in a language he wasn’t fluent in? However would he say, “The artist is but instead ruminating on his dark apartness from that culture” (March 24, 2009) or “The orgiastic brushing of the wheat field… creating a quivering aura…” (April 2, 2009)?

After doing research online, I decided to buy a temporary cheap-ass phone from Movistar for this month and a half to make it easier to communicate with my host family and other IES students. The sales lady, who only spoke Spanish, tried to rip me off by charging me 20€ for a phone and a SIM card containing a credit of 12€. I argued with her, because another Movistar location was offering a phone and a card with some credit for 14€. Once she knew that I wasn’t going to pay that much for the ghetto flip-phone, she lowered her price to 15€. So essentially, I got the phone for 3€. It’s a prepaid plan, so every time I use the phone, it takes money off the pre-bought credit. It feels so weird not texting people, like, throwing it back old school when I used to have only 200 texts a month, even that would cost me 30 €, i.e.: $37. Yikes. But I think the sales lady probably did rip me off, because I just received a text last night (May 29) about how I had less than 2€ on my credit, even though I’ve barely used my phone: made short phone calls only during evenings, super-minimized on texting, and avoided U.S. numbers (why do students insist on using their U.S. numbers when international roaming is so expensive?). Bitches.

That evening, Celia showed me her family on Los Sims 3. She only has one family comprised of her best friend and herself. But apparently the new Sims comes with many premade people for you to be friends with. Kids are mad lazy nowadays. We used to make our own characters in order for them to make friends to get promoted/be cool. I told her about the Bears and how I used to play all the time back in the day. Oh, and the Spanish Sims still speak the same Sims language. There’s no special Spanish accent or anything, jsyk.

Boring Administrative Stuff

Location: Madrid, Spain

Tuesday May 25, 2010

Carmen walked me to el Hotel Husa Princesa for our IES orientation. We spent all morning introducing ourselves, getting information on Madrid and the IES program, and watching role-play on how to avoid pickpockets. The administrative staff actually acted out scenarios or tricks pickpockets use to distract tourists, such as: asking you for directions with a big map while they steal under the map, dropping money so you will bend over so they can steal your wallet in your butt pocket, passing a newspaper/some other object over a table to take the phone or iPod lying there, or stealing in a crowded metro and handing the wallet to his “colleague” who immediately sneaks away.

A three-course catered lunch complete with wine followed the orientation. My table bonded over the afterschool cartoons of our childhoods. No matter where each person grew up in the states, everyone watched shows like Pokémon at some point. One girl, Brooke, claimed that she was a hardcore Poké-addict. Nintendo was quite smart to choose “Gotta catch ‘em all!” as their slogan, because Brooke had to catch them all. She had binders full of collected cards, glass cases for the ones that were deemed “rare,” and separate decks for battling. I’m surprised how nice and normal Brooke turned out to be despite of all that. Haha. Jkzzz.

After a placement test, I returned to my Madrid house to eat a light dinner of jamon y queso sandwich. Celia and I bonded over dance. She has been dancing el flamenco y el clásico (ballet) for seven years and now attends a Conservatory in the morning and then goes to an afternoon school. It’s a shame that she hurt her knee seriously during ballet class a few days before my arrival. So she’s been wearing a full thigh-high cast since and then switched to a more liberating brace. Because of her injury, she hasn’t danced, but I’ve watched a Youtube video of her company. In exchange, I showed her Hide and Seek, one of my favorite Cavalettes videos. Celia’s conservatory specializes in flamenco, but she likes ballet a more. I guess I could show her videos of Groove and RB, also… but I’m not sure something like Harvard-Yale would be so appropriate. Omg, the Pon de Floor part would be so awkward.

Príncipe Pío

Location: Mataró, Barcelona, and Madrid, Spain

Monday May 24, 2010

Getting up at 3:00 am to catch a flight was a bitch. It’s funny. Because it was earlier than when we turned in during the previous nights. I ended up hurrying to the bus stop outside of the campsite to wait in the pitch-dark bus stop on the side of the highway. When I saw the bus coming in the distance, I waved at it with my flashlight, hoping to get the bus driver’s attention. Apparently, that didn’t work so well, because it didn’t slow down as it approached the stop. So I had to wave my arms wildly in its headlights like a wild goose as it passed me. And it finally stopped twenty meters away. Thank god. If I had missed that last night bus going into Barcelona (an hour away by bus from Mataró), I would’ve been screwed for my 9:30 flight out.

BCN:

I felt very scrubby, wearing my dark blue skinny jeans and my forest-green STEP hoodie on the plane. Apparently, people dress up for European flights? Most women were quite stylish and wore heels. One girl looked fab with her Enid Coleslaw glasses and European scarf. Most men wore suites. It was a domestic flight though, so perhaps they were going/coming back to Madrid for business, or they just like being fancy J.

MAD:

I arrived in Madrid an hour before we were supposed to meet with IES (the program that I’m doing here) after sleeping through my entire flight (think: falling asleep as the cabin doors were closing in Barcelona and waking up as pilot announced local weather in Madrid). When I came out of the arrival gate with my check-in suitcase and backpack carryon, I happened upon a lady with a binder and correctly guessed that she was from IES. The IES lady called over a small lady (probably measuring around 5 foot or a little under) and introduced her as Carmen, mi señora. Super friendly and motherly, Carmen looks in her late forties, has light hazel eyes, light brown almost reddish hair, and an average body type. She kissed me on both cheeks and immediately took me under her arm to lead me to the taxis parked outside. What a shock to dive in to speaking Spanish right away. Carmen doesn’t know English and only knows phrases from movies or from the TV. So I can no longer say, “¿Como se dice...?” whenever I don’t know how to say something in Spanish, which is so different from Spanish class.

After giving me a sort of tour of which bus to take and how to go to La Universidad Complutense/Centre de iES, Carmen took me to her home and gave me a grand tour of her medium-sized apartment. She also introduced me to her amarido, Miguel, and her daughter, Celia. A grey-hair retiree, Miguel looks about mid-sixties, stands about 5’ 5”, has a pot belly, and as far as I can tell, likes wearing checkered shirts. Very pale with long and straight blonde hair, Cellia, is fifteen, is a little less than 5’, has light-blue eyes and a ballet body with long thin limbs.

I guess their four-bedroom apartment is very average in size. It has a great view of el Parque del Oeste from the front. Then the rear opens up to a courtyard, facing other apartments. Carmen usually hosts two students, but this year, she’s only hosting me. So my bedroom light-blue-and-white themed room has a bunk bed. I also have my own beautiful bathroom complete with a bide. The only thing that intimidates me is the super neatness of the house. I’m supposed to keep my room tidy, which I do. But sometimes when I get home, I find that my señora has straightened up the things on my desk. Am I supposed to keep everything militaristically lined up with not one thing out-of-place? She also sometimes remakes my bed... maybe it’s not tucked in tight enough for her…

Carmen walked me to the nearest metro stop, Príncipe Pío, an old train station converted into a metro stop/shopping mall. It’s a weird juxtaposition of the old and new. At Príncipe Pío, I met and walked around with two other IES students who live by me: Lauren, a white and tall dirty blonde from University of Chapel Hill, and Selena, a short wavy-haired Asian from Cornell. Both of them were pretty confused about what was going on and dazed that they were in Madrid. I’d have to admit: my señora’s the best out of all the señoras, because she explained things so clearly that I already knew how to take the bus, the metro, and so on. Yay for good housing placement!

Aw, We Should’ve Talked to the Old Man. ☹

Location: Mataró, Spain

Sunday May 23, 2010

Catching the 12:45 bus into Mataró centro, Jo and I decided that we should have a picnic on the beach. So we walked up and down Mataró’s streets in search for the supermarket, looking like whores in our bathing suites, shorts, and short-sleeved (but there were sleeves, mind you!) shirts while all the townies wore their Sunday best from Mass that morning. Passing by closed shop after closed shop, Jo and I came to the conclusion that really nobody works on Sunday in Mataró except for waiters at cafés. Instead, everyone just sits, hangs out, and people-watches. Only one market was open, the one where I bought milk from the day before, aka the-only-mercat-that’s-open-on-a-Sunday-in-all-of-Mataro. We got bread, salami, and “sandwich cheese” (it actually says that on the packaging and nothing else). And it was supa tasty! I have to admit, I made a killer sandwich with sandwich cheese.

Sunday’s beach crowd was much bigger. I guess that’s where people go to take off their Sunday’s best. On the way to the beach, Jo stopped at a magazine kiosk to buy a magazine in order to practice reading Spanish. She bought one magazine that featured many trends from the spring/summer runways. Jo was also suckered into one magazine’s, Elle’s (maybe?), marketing tactic, also. The magazine came with a free bikini. No, it wasn’t your typical American magazine marketing that offers a free gift if you buy a subscription and send in the request into the company (something that, I assume, a majority of subscribers forget to do, like claiming rebates). The bikini was actually included in the packaging with the magazine. So Jo bought the magazine with the free bikini for the regular newsstand price of the magazine. She tried the top later on at the beach. And it fitted. Yay! We flipped through the magazine together, and we learned our Spanish clothing words, como drapeado, agodón, cuello, terciopelo…

After getting enough beach-time, we people-watched back in the center of town, on a road lined with olive trees. At one point, an old man in a tweedish outfit (I don’t remember if it was a

suit or not) came over from a group of old men sitting on benches on the other side of the pedestrian-only street. Being used to being crept on guys in Barcelona, we got into a habit of ignoring all uncalled for advances. So we stayed silent as the old man tried to speak with us in Spanish. None of us said anything as he went on asking where we were from and how we were enjoying Spain so far. After a while, he gave up by saying that we must not understand Spanish and that he was sorry for bothering us. He slowly walked back across the way to talk to his friends. We immediately felt really horrible after he left, because we (at least Jo and I, Nat doesn’t speak Spanish but speaks French) did understand him and he was actually nice. We probably hurt his feelings by being rude and ignoring him. But we can’t help it if creepy Barcelonan men scarred us.

We ate dinner at a strange German family restaurant. There were actually specified German cartoon characters in the menu. We were confused with the Catalan, even though technically if Nat and I put our heads together, we should have been able to figure it out. But Nat asked for an English menu. She realized that the seafood salad she was about to order contained greens on a “bed of baby eels.” Mmmm… what sounds more appetizing than that? Our server looked very Spanish with his nice facial structure and dark, strong eyebrows (but not crazy, strong but not crazy). Nat commented, ”He’s the first Spanish guy that I’ve found remotely attractive.” Haha, what a compliment.

Who’s Up for Topless Paddleball?

Location: Mataró and Barcelona, Spain

Saturday May 22, 2010

We woke up in our beautifully spacious red and black tent on our cozy plot, C10, of Camping Barcelona. I was actually quite surprised at how nice the facilities were. There’s a clean bathroom with a lot of showers and toilets, rows of sinks dispensing clean drinking water, a grocery store, a restaurant, and so on. Camping Barcelona has a free day bus that runs to and from Barcelona and one that does a route traveling to the Beach Club, Mataró Centro, and so on. It was a very different vacation feel than in the center of Barcelona. So much more chill!

We started the day in town, because it wasn’t quite warm enough to sunbathe. For lunch, we tried some Spanish hamburgers at a German Frankfurt place, which were prepared quite differently. The meat was a mixture of beef, pork, and spices, needing little additional seasoning or sauces, served on a long hotdog-like bun. We amused the server/cook with our curiosity of the new food and drinks.

After walking around the small town for a bit, looking at all the shops that were closed (it was siesta time), we decided to head to the beach once the sun came out. The Mediterranean was surprisingly cold. Not bone-numbingly cold like Oregonian waters, but not bath-water warm like Costa Rican waters. We spent most of our time sunbathing and just relaxing on the beach, swimming briefly once or twice. [Hacer clic to make bigger!]

Yes, European beaches are more liberal (surprising, since they dress more conservatively than Americans in the city). Some women wore thong bikinis and many wore nothing on top, especially in the older crowd or for the groups of girlfriends. There was even a girl playing an active game of topless paddleball with her novio. How different! Jo, Nat, and I tried it ourselves when lying out. No naked paddleball for us, no. We snacked on biscuits on the beach, so I began to crave milk. We bought some at a Mercado. Cartons of milk sat on the shelf in the store. Jo and I were wondering for a while whether or not the milk was real or good to drink. Later, I found out that Europeans only refrigerate their milk after opening the packaging. I enjoyed my fresh milk at the open-air café while Jo drank an espresso, and Nat tasted her first Irish coffee. Look at the amount of whiskey! Phew.

That night, we decided to head back to Barcelona again (maybe or maybe not for a certain French-speaking Swiss boy…) to go out, this time, more dressed up with dresses and heels (we wore clubby shirts and jeans last time). I wore a grey cotton drop-waist dress that hits right above the knee (I didn’t swing the Q-pac way) with Joanne’s 4-inch gladiator heels. Fitting snuggly being supposedly size 5.5, they were comfortable at first… but let’s just say they made me want to cut my feet off by the middle of the night. Natalie left her makeup/jewelry bag in the bathroom as we were getting dressed in the tent. And someone stole it. ¡Que lastima! She had over $400 worth of makeup and jewelry in that bag. :( Let’s just say she wanted to get drunk that night, starting with the hour-long bus ride there, where we pregamed with our last bottle of wine, which didn’t actually taste that bad for 3 €.

We met Swiss Boy at an Irish bar for the beginning of our bar crawl. He gave us a discount for the crawl, which included three bars and a club at the end. We started at an Irish bar, made and furnished with dark wood and decorated with Irish things like green t-shirts and Irish paintings. Drinking our complementary Heineken and rum and coke, we met three German 19-year-old girls, Anna, Domi(que), and Cata(rine), who were taking their end of high school trip in Barcelona and in other parts of Europe. Anna was the most talkative, and light blonde Domi looked very much like Bethany Jackson from Clackamas, maybe just a bit more petite (which I didn’t think was possible).

As we were heading out, Jo found a brown leather wallet on the ground where we were sitting. I found a credit card in the wallet that said Benjamin. We turned it into the bartender, who asked where we were sitting. Apparently the wallet also contained the guy’s passport, so the bartender was keen on seeking this Ben character out before he left the bar. When we joined bar-crawling group of twenty or so people, I asked if there was a Benjamin the group, because his wallet was inside. One brown-haired guy in a brown striped shirt checked his grey jacket pockets and immediately went to reclaim his wallet. When he returned, Ben gratefully told me that he owed me a drink for finding his wallet. I told him Jo found the wallet, so she should get a free drink too. Haha. We also met a group of rising sophomores from Atlanta in our group. One shaggy-haired Atlantean wasn’t drinking much that night and talked with us for quite a bit. Nat realized that two of the guys in the group crept on us at Catwalk the other night. How did she remember? Because the guys loudly yelled “Oooooh!!!” when Jo and I rejected them. Wow.

Our next bar was Espit Cupito, which is famous for its 2 € shots that are lit on fire and 4 € specialty drinks, such as the Monica Lewinksi, (served from a dildo… apparently…). We had buy one get one free shot pass here. But it was mad crowded. I ended up giving up to sit outside with Shaggy Hair Boy as Jo and Nat fought for drinks. When they finally got the bartender’s attention with the help of Swiss Boy after thirty to forty-five minutes, they took orange liquor shots that the bartender lit on fire. Next, we took free orange and vodka shots at Guru (the bar where I drank a bit too much). Ben, who’s French, was around, so I asked, “Where’re our drinks?” When I told him I wanted a mojito (hey, his passport was in that lost wallet…), he laughed and said I was expensive. He said yes only on the condition that I dance with him. I said I would allow him one dance, which is a generous offer, seeing that I could have stolen all his cash and bought my friends and myself drinks with that instead. So we went to the main bar. Ben bought Nat and me mojitos and Jo a sex on the beach.

As we walked to the last club, Ben told me that he was in Barcelona with some friends from Genova, where he works (he’s originally from France). He got his MBA in Maine, where he practiced most of his English, Yikes, I don’t even want to know how old he was… Apparently, one (or maybe it was three?) of his friends works as a buyer for Always for Europe, Africa, and Asia. I was confused at first, until Ben said that his friend tests and decides what material to buy for “the part that touches the woman’s body.” And then I realized he was talking about the feminine hygiene product. Hahahaha. Wtf, right? Ben said that he was working in human resources for Renault, a European car company. When I said I wasn’t familiar with it, he said that the company produces Nissan in the states. He was very determined that I had at least seen Renault cars around and that I would recognize its logo. I kept saying no, so he took my hand and led me around Plaza Catalunya, in the hopes of finding me a Renault car. He didn’t. But what a sly charmer, right? He would do that so I would walk around Barcelona while holding a French guy’s hand.

The club, City Hall, had an older crowd, mostly 20-30 year olds. The top floor had a bar and a dance floor in a dark, red wallpapered room blasting American rock music. On the lower floor, there was a much bigger bar, lounge, and dance floor with more lights with loud European dance club music with a constant, fast beat. Embarrassing moment: when I was washing my hands after peeing, a couple of ladies came over to me to speak to me in Spanish and to point at my butt. That’s then I realized that my dress was tucked into my lime green underwear. Sexy, eh? A whole bathroom of tipsy women saw my undies. No biggie. I’m here all week, Ladies.

Back on the main dance floor, Shaggy Hair Boy and friend came over to stand awkwardly by Jo and me, even though we weren’t dancing. Did they think we were going to randomly start dancing with them or something? How awk! Haha. I think they got the hint after a while (too long), because they left. Then Ben found us, and I gave him his dance. Other than being hard to dance to, European club songs apparently don’t actually end. One song blends to another. So Ben must have benefited from that dealio. I think the Atlantean boys walked by at one point. Pobrecitos. I left to find Jo, who had escaped from Ben’s friend who was too gropey on the dance floor (Nat was with Swiss Boy at this point). We were both pretty tired and decided to catch the night bus back to Camping Barcelona. When I went to say bye to Ben, he said it was too early for us to leave at 4:00. Too bad.

Before getting on the bus, which took us forever to find, since it wasn’t directly on Plaza Catalunya, we went to La Rambla to look for some drunk food for Jo. I was still trotting around in great pain in those 4-inch heels, but Jo had already given over to wandering down La Rambla barefoot in search of 1 € simosas (ones that Stevie had said were quite questionable in their ingredients and in their freshness).

When we were on the N82, we kept a lookout for Camping Barcelona to come up as the propa parada on the screen in the front of the bus, but it never did. We talked on and on about dreams, scary movies, and childhood memories. Before we knew it, Jo and I were the only two left on the bus when it came to the last stop. We explained to the driver that we needed to go to Camping Barcelona and didn’t know that we had already passed by the stop. The bus driver told us we should have asked him or told him to say something, Jo and I were both worried that we were stranded here in this other town east of Mataró. But the bus driver was nice enough to drive us back to our stop, three towns away, provided that we pay another bus fare. On the way to the campground, Jo and I found out that we both slept in the same exact bed when we were little: a red, metal bunk bed with a queen-sized mattress on the bottom and a twin on top. How cool is that? Staying up and talking until 7 in the morning, we found it difficult to fall asleep to the noise of the morning birds.

Blocks à la BSG-style

Location: Barcelona and Mataró, Spain

Friday May 21, 2010

We hurried and checked out of the hostel in the morning by 11:00. Thankfully, the hostel allowed us to store our luggage until 4:00 pm, so we took advantage of the time to explore BCN for a bit more before heading to our next destination, Mataró, for beach camping.

Question: is it bad that I fall in love so easily when I’m on vacation? Where is this coming from? From me falling in love with the street performer who was working on La Rambla right outside our hostel. He played Edward Scissorhands, complete with the costume, hair, makeup, and fake scissors for fingers. It was crazy, because he got Edward’s innocent expressions and awkward mannerisms down pat. Imagine Edward Scissorhands played by Johnny Depp. Yep, that’s it. Just that. And you’ve got this street performer. He was that good. Jo can attest to my swooning.

Why is this entry entitled so? Simply check out aerial view of Barcelona:

Sí, sí, the blocks are square with the corners cut off. So the cross walks do not actually extend from the same corners. If you want to cross the street and then cross it again (going from diagonal to diagonal), it takes a bit longer, if you can imagine. Check out the similarity to the paper of BSG (I’m listening to the soundtrack of season 1 as I write this):

We walked to another house designed by Gaudí, as we finished our fermented fruit from two days ago. The house was amazing from the outside, and it was not only appreciated by us but also by many other tourists crowded on the sidewalk, taking pictures, pointing at this and that, and sketching with large sketchpads. Apparently Gaudí had a fascination with building crazy balconies to make the buildings look way out-there. There were so many details to ponder. Jo or Nat commented that it was like looking at some crazy architecture in Disneyland. And yes, it did look like that. It was also similar to Disney, because it wanted to rip us off by charging us 15 or 18 or whatever euros to go inside La Casa. (We didn’t.)

Oh, I forgot to include in the previous entry that after La Pedrera on Thursday, Nat went to visit el Mercat Boqueteria by herself while Jo and I visited El Museo de Picasso. We were worried that an hour and a half to two hours wouldn’t be sufficient time to visit the museum, but it turns out it was the perfect amount, because the museum was small/medium size, since most of his art is in private collections/museums. Getting there was a bit of adventure though. We took the metro during rush hour. I ran on the train as it was about to leave, sardining myself into the mass of people. Jo had less luck, because the door was closing on her, so she backed away. I told her to meet me on our destination platform. She made it two and half minutes later. Yes, they run that fast. C’mon NYC subway! Get with it! Here’s Jo getting off the train:

Jo had also gotten on a fully packed train. She felt someone touch her large, red Longchamp bag from behind, so she immediately clenched down tightly on it with her right arm. When she got off the train, she noticed the zipper was unzipped to the brown leather snap. But thankfully, she had placed her black cardigan in her bag when she got into the metro, because it covered all the shit inside her bag, making it difficult for the thief to find stuff. Nothing went missing. I told Jo that she should put the zipper in front and hold it, as I do with my bag. She replied with that she doesn’t like carrying it on the left shoulder. I said she could just flip the bag around, as long as she were okay with keeping the leather snap against her body, which would probably be safer anyway. But Jo didn’t understand that comment until a couple of days later, when she finally realized my spatial logic. Haha. Oh Jo, you space cadet.

The Picasso museum was quite nice. It was arranged chronologically from his start as a child through his trials of different styles though his development of Cubism. I tagged along with an English-speaking tour group (is that a form of stealing? I’m pretty sure the group had to pay for the guide) that had a lady who spoke of specific pieces and anecdotes into a headset that transmitted to the green earbuds that the old people wore in the group. Hey, I can’t help it if I happen to be in the same room all the time and that the tour guide spoke pretty loudly… It was a franker form of tour-crashing than the form we executed in Monteverde, CR when we would peek into other people’s trained bird-watching telescopes. The lady had interesting things to say. But I also took some time to wander off by myself.

My favorite was his series on Velázquez’s Las Meninas. In the beginning of the exhibit, the museum had a great video the original, and it would zoom in on to specific characters then slowly transform to Picasso’s version of those characters or parts of the painting. Sometimes it would change to one of Picasso’s studies of the entire painting. In the entrance of the exhibit, the first room held a giant black-and-white rendition of Las Meninas in its entirety. After that, a large blue room (in the space of what was originally a courtyard) holds the series with Picasso’s initial sketches. It’s crazy seeing the classic through Picasso’s eyes. What a fascinating remix.

On our way back from the Picasso Museum, Jo got herself some churros con chocolate from a little blue and white café that specialized in the dish, because it smelled so appetizing on our rush to el Museo. Walking back to the hostel, we were approached by a group of Italian tourists in a large plaza who desired to take pictures with “las bellas.” After taking it with them, they insisted that we get one too. And the guy on the left wanted to take a picture of his friend taking a picture of us. Haha.

Anyhoo, back to Friday. We got to la Catedral de Barcelona only to find out that I was too whoreish to get in with my tanktop. So we explored the historical neighborhood of Barcio (the original name of Barcelona when it used to be enclosed by a stone wall/aqueduct).The buildings were beautiful with courtyards that were open to the public and beautiful bridges.

We walked down La Rambla to the beach, where I got my first glimpse of the Mediterranean. After, we found that Mercat Barcelona was quite disappointing. It was a bit bigger than Mercat Boquetaria, the one close to our hostel. But it was quite a walk away and turned out to be all indoors, pricier, and just more commercialized. It did not have the cool-I’m-totally-shopping-at-a-market feel. I might as well have been buying groceries at Albertson’s or something. We returned to Mercat Boquetaria, where I bought myself some food for beach camping.

English Boy in Purple Trousers

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Thursday May 20, 2010

Worse. Hangover. Ever. You would think that slice of “toast,” watermelon, and water Jo made me choke down would do me some good. But no. Those just ended up in the toilet bowl of the

hostel. You would think that taking a warm twenty-minute shower (yeah… sorry environment!) would help. But no. I still felt like shit. You would think that dressing up in a pretty floral dress and getting fresh air on La Rambla would make me feel better. But no. I ran off the metro two stops early to empty the rest of my stomach contents in a trashcan on the platform. You would think hiking up to see the breath-taking Park Güell with the rock columns, buildings with facades made entirely of colourful mosaic, the famous winding mosaic bench, and so on would cheer me up. But no. My

nausea was a total pooper. I told Jo and Nat to go explore the rest of the park without me, so that I could sit as still as possible for at least an hour or two in the shade. And that worked! Yayayayayyyy. By two o’clock I was all myself again: a cheerful, hungry picture-whore.

We visited La Sagrada Familia. The architecture was amazing with so many detailed statues carved on the walls of the huge cathedral. We also visited Gaudí’s La Pedrera. Having walked five million kilometers to visit those places, we rested back at our hostel, eating fresh fruit that I could actually enjoy this time. Our American English attracted another American girl, Sapna, who was visiting from Prague (where she’s been working for a year). Apparently meeting up with her U.S. friend in Barcelona was a big-ass fail, because they booked tickets for different weekends [sweatdrop]. When Sapna told us she’s from Arizona, I was tempted to be very unPC by saying, “Oh no ways! My South Asian friend from school is also from Arizona! Lawlz. What’s up with that?” But I refrained.

We invited her to our nighttime festivities that evening. We decided to give Catwalk another go, this time with actual directions and information on what night bus to take there. While we were riding the N0, a club promoter approached us telling us to come to Shoko before going to Catwalk, because Catwalk was usually empty before 2 or 3 am. Having been approached by so many of these club promoters on La Rambla, we were weary at first, but we ended up agreeing since there was no cover charge and no required drinks. Decorated in Japanese style, Shoko actually turned out to be pretty tight with random Japanese and weird American videos playing to American club music. Three breakers/poppers danced onstage, drawing most of the attention as clubbers started the night. The three dancers: Asian (good with hat tricks), muscle-ly black (hard-hitting), and skinnier black (smooth-moving), reminded me of Justin, Jeff, and Muata from RB. It was very strange that their dance styles were so similar to the three guys, although I’d have to say that our RB boys are better at listening to the music. The performers were too keen to do tricks and look hard that they sometimes didn’t perfectly match the beat or the details.

We moved next-door to Catwalk at 2:30. It was less classy, but the dancing was better. Maybe people are drunk enough by that time? The three male performers also migrated with us to perform at Catwalk. Joining them, two female dancers slowly and “seductively” moved in their heels and leotardish outfits in cages. We kept saying no to constant predators until Nat found herself a cute preppy boy: dark blonde hair, blue eyes, nice bone structure, tall enough, and light-blue button-up shirt. He, later named “Swiss Boy,” turned out to be a new French-speaking club promoter fresh from Switzerland. A very persistent young Spanish guy, later named “Smiley Boy,” pursued Jo, who refused him the entire night (¡Pobrecito!). At one point, he even executed the bring-in-my-friend-with-the-real-dorky-dance-moves tactic to humour us, but alas, it didn’t work on Jo.

After getting some help from a white Australian boy (why does everyone have hot accents around here?), Jo and I took the N2 bus back to the top of La Rambla. We didn’t expect to meet anybody but peddlers and creepers at 4:00 in the morning. A tall English boy (+ one) asked us for a light. Instead of just saying no and avoiding eye contact (i.e.: strategy to avoid unwanted attention in Spain), I told him he shouldn’t smoke because it’s bad for him. After hearing my persuasion, the English Boy flipped his unsmoked cigarette into the air, causing me to accuse him of littering, which could arguably be worse. And thus, our beautiful friendship with Stevie (“the new, improved Steve”) in multiple necklaces and purple trousers and his friend “Grizzly” (“because he looks like a bear, so huggable! But don’t get the wrong idea or anything. I don’t swing my bat that way. I don’t play on the wrong team.”) began.

Oh man, I could go on and on about Stevie, probably because the newly (and by newly, he meant a month ago… but his eight friends and he were “celebrating” his b-day anyways in BCN) 21-(or was it 23?)-year-old spoke/joked/made references a million miles a minute so that it was a bit difficult to catch them all. Imagine a dialogue between Lorelei and Rory Gilmore running for, like, an hour. Out of breath from laughing the whole time, I might have fallen in love. He was keen to tell Joanne that LA was a great disappointment when he stayed on Sunset Boulevard, because he failed to find his dreams or that Hollywood glamour. Stevie and Grizzly tutored us on our British words (rubbish, torch, lift, Brouhaha, balderdash, and so on) and on our English accents with sample sentences, “Have you taken tea with the queen in Buckingham Palace today?” They said that even though mine had a bit of an American twang, it wasn’t actually bad. Yesss! Suck on that, Melbearrr! Grizzly and Stevie shared an awkwardly tender embracing moment, causing me to bring up the common “Is he gay or European?” question. Stevie got quite defensive but then admitted that the fact that he was wearing purple trousers from Tommy Hilfiger probably didn’t help his case. I think the weirdest reference he made that night was when he asked Jo if she would press her chest against a pane of glass if he were to have one on hand. The reference to Midnight Express was clearly lost on the present audience. At one point, a homeless man came to ask for money. Stevie, being the helpful boy he is, pointed him to the metro station, “Yes, you should go over there. You see Liceu? Yeah, that’s right. I think I saw some lady, she was a red-head, yeah, that’s right a gingha, passing out stacks of money. Yeah! Just handing them out like they were nothing, stacks of it! Can you believe it? I couldn’t believe it myself when I saw. But she’s definitely the one to hit up, not us. Go on. Go on. Don’t wait for too long before she gives it all out!” The very confused (and probably drunk) homeless man wandered off toward the metro station.

While we were standing there, different people came in and out of the circle. Some were Stevie’s friends, who were also walking on La Rambla, and some were strange men who Jo and I thought Stevie knew and Stevie thought we knew (Grizzly had left at that point). One such person from the latter group was this short, abrasive, obnoxiously American, Texan in a crème-coloured blazer. It’s funny how embarrassingly rude Americans can seem in Europe. Before the American entered our circle, Stevie said to him, “So are you going to join us, or are you going to keep circling us like a shark?” The American proceeded to laugh at (not with) Stevie’s fittingly 3-inch long messy hair, which Stevie claimed looks just so when he wakes up, but I countered with it takes him a few hours to sculpt each day, and that the American should respect true art. Sticking his potbelly out, the American laughed at Stevie’s energy and said that he was a piece of work. “I’ll take that as a back-handed compliment…” When the American said he never met someone who talked so much in his life, Stevie replied, “Well, I would certainly hope you don’t meet a mad English man in purple trousers everyday!”

Jo and I got pretty annoyed at this Texan, who made the entire situation unfunny and uncomfortable. As if reading our minds, Stevie, Jo, and I excused ourselves and walked to the hostel. When we got the hostel’s front door, Stevie said he didn’t want to be a creep or intrude, but he had too much energy to go to bed. And asked if he could entertain us for a walk around the block. As we were taking our walk, we laughed about how abrasive and unpleasant the shark was. Stevie said, “He’s so typically American! Like this guy here is so stereotypically Indian!” as an old South Asian man walked by in a white linen Kurta. I gave him ear-plugged silence for that racist comment, as I had given him disapproving looks after he joked about mass death. Giving us each a “cuddle” at the door of our hostel, Stevie was quite disappointed to hear that we were leaving La Rambla tomorrow afternoon. And believe me, I was too. It’s not often you meet and fall in love with character like that.