Study Abroad
Day 77
April 4th, 2006
10:01 PM

Hello devoted readers!

It’s Tuesday night, I’m sitting in my room at the Fundacion, listening to Gwen Stefani and wondering: what exactly is a “hollaback girl”? The reason I have time for such leisure is that I finished my 10-page paper about Picasso’s Guernica this afternoon, with time to spell-check and proofread before I sent it off to be graded. I feel good.

This shit is bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s.

I am sorry.

This past weekend was wonderful. Amy, Danielle and I headed to Barcelona to meet up with Megan Sherman (who came to visit us a few weekends ago, ‘member?) and Chelsea, who is also from AKPsi.

Danielle and Amy, to their delight, didn’t have their business class last Thursday so we were able to leave Toledo right after lunch. We took the train into Madrid and spent the afternoon shopping a little. Amy celebrated the spring weather by buying some sandals.

We took the night train to Barcelona, which meant BEDS. We were packed in their like sardines, six beds three bunks high, but at least we could lie down. I was actually really comfortable and got some solid sleep while the train made its way to Catalunya. We were especially grateful for our beds when we found Tatiana and some other groups had to spend the night in regular seats that faced each other, seats so close together they had to intertwine their knees.

We got to Barcelona just before 8, went to the Tourist Information booth just as it opened for a map and directions to our hostel. We hopped on the metro and spent a good hour walking around trying to find the hostel (with a stop for breakfast). We finally found it (duh, it was just off Las Ramblas) and left our bags. Since the weather was beautiful and we’d been on a train all night, we decided to walk all the way to Sagrada Familia, which was quite a hike, but beautiful.

Danielle said she’d been wanting to see Sagrada familia since 7th grade and I was looking forward to seeing it for a second time. The basilica has been under construction since the late 1800’s (pausing for the civil war) and isn’t expected to be completed until at least 2020, so I was excited to see the progress they’d made on it in the last six years. In the art history class I took last semester, my professor was very upset that they’d continued construction on it after Gaudi, the architect, died. I went to his office hours to ask him more about it, and he told me they weren’t even using the same materials as when they started the project. I also learned that Gaudi’s original plans had been lost and they’ve continued building based on sketches.

But none of the politics of the structure could take away from actually seeing it. It kind of takes your breath away. It towers over you with these long spires that reach toward the sky. Gaudi’s architecture is very distinctive, and it colors Barcelona. Basically it’s like a giant doodle. I can’t get enough of it.

We met up with Megan there, who had come in the night before and stayed with Jenna, a friend of hers that is studying here and lives in an apartment nearby. We went in together and discovered that construction makes it difficult to enjoy the inside, and taking the elevator to the top would cost us 2 euro and a two-hour wait. So we called up Chelsea, who was just getting out of class and wanted to meet us for lunch.

We met her on Passeig de Gracia and decided to get some lunch at “Tapa Tapa” where we ordered a bunch of different stuff (seafood salad, garlic shrimp, chicken wings, tuna sandwiches, calamari) and rotated. Mmm.

We headed from there to the beach, because it was fantastic weather. We spread ourselves out on a grassy hill because Amy has a thing about sand (she says she doesn’t like to get her feet dirty. I say you suck), but I promptly ran off to feel some sand between my toes and some salt water in my blisters. We lay around in the sun and salt air all afternoon, getting up only for some delicious peachy ice cream. Those of us who didn’t wear sunscreen are one step closer to skin cancer. Chelsea’s friend Katie met us there, along with their Spanish friend Valentin who speaks English (which all of us understood), Spanish (which most of us understood), French (which Megan understood), and Catalan (which none of us understood). He, like every person in Spain, had a horrific mullet.

After the beach trip we went to pick up Megan’s stuff at Jenna’s apartment (which was amazing—I can’t believe she gets to live there as a study abroad-er). Then we made our way back to the hostel (had some pasta dinner en route) for showers and primping for going out. Chelsea led us to the places we needed to go—first, La Oveja Negra, which Megan and I decided was brilliant and necessary in Minneapolis. It was a big industrial building with a bar and rows and rows of tables and chairs cafeteria styles. You could get a big pitcher of sangria and crowd a big group around a table and just chill. Katie and Valentin came, and Megan’s friend Jenna came with a whole crew of people. A couple of girls from the hostel who are studying in Florence tagged along. And a guy that Megan had met the night before came. His name was Jakobo and he didn’t speak a word of English, while Megan only speaks English and French. So Danielle and I tried to translate for them.

Our next stop was Razz-ma-tazz, which has been described as the Kapital of Barcelona. But I must say I liked it better for many reasons, the main one being the live band! It lacked the extensive seating and cooling mist of Kapital, but it was smaller and had outdoor areas where you could sit. We explored for awhile, danced, tried to find Amy’s camera when it fell over a balcony into the crowd and sat outside. It was, as usual, pretty crazy.

We left the club about a half hour before it closed at 6 and had to wait for awhile to meet Megan, who had split off with Jakobo. We located her and made it back to the hostel—at 7:30 AM. Seriously, I’m getting the hang of this whole Spanish lifestyle.

We slept for a couple of hours then got ourselves together for some breakfast. Then we headed over to the Picasso Museum. I just finished the Picasso unit in my art history class last week, so I was actually able to offer some factoids about the paintings to the other girls. The museum contains mostly Picasso’s earlier works, including a lot of sketches Picasso drew as a child. It was really interesting.

After Picasso, we picked up some sandwiches/falafel and ate them on the ground in the square. Then we got on the metro and headed over to Parc Guell, another Gaudi creation. Valentin explained to us that the park was going to be part of a big urban design, complete with fancy apartments for the rich people of Barcelona to buy. Unfortunately the project fell apart when the Barcelonians didn’t really “get” modernism or Gaudi, but now we can all walk around and see the park. I love it: lots of mosaic tiles, colors and again, a big giant doodle.

We went back to the hostel for a little descanso (and a big bowl of 1 euro pasta) before going out again. Saturday night was the big, intense Barcelona vs. Real Madrid soccer game. The entire city was wrapped up in it, and every bar we passed was packed. We went to Kennedy’s Irish Pub in the Olympic Village, where we squeezed in and watched the second half of the game.

I told Danielle, “I don’t know who I want to win. Is that okay?”
Danielle replied “Not if you’re standing in here.”
“But I really want them both to win,” fearing riots from any other outcome.

And in the end I got my wish—the two teams tied 1-1 and people started to clear out peacefully. We stayed to listen to a band that Jenna recommended to us, The Child, who she said did some amazing covers. Truer words were never spoken—this band, originally from Argentina, basically played all my favorite songs: U2, Coldplay, Oasis, White Stripes, The Killers, Scissor Sisters, even Prince. Rachael, you would have peed your pants. They were just so good. I spent the whole night singing along at the top of my lungs. An Irish guy came over and said “I was over at the bar and I noticed you knew the words to all the songs” so we talked for awhile about music and Ireland. I also talked to a British guy who told me about strawberry picking in Denmark: “You can pick as much as you want AND eat as much as you want!” Danielle had fun talking to an Australian who was apparently “such a dork” and Megan and Jakobo spent another evening speaking their secret love language to each other. I just love Irish pubs.

We got back at about 4 AM, caught a couple of hours of sleep, got up and showered in time to check out of the hostel at 11. We got breakfast and walked down Las Ramblas, shopping and people watching. Then we spent about an hour sunning on the docks, putting off saying goodbye to Barcelona. We checked our flight time and discovered we actually had an extra 2 hours to get some lunch before we had to head to the airport, which was brilliant. We went to a place called Sandwich & Friends, where they had good sandwiches (!) but I got a mini pizza with goat cheese on it which was amazing.

Amy, Danielle and I said goodbye to Megan and Chelsea and headed off to the airport. Our flight was delayed, so we had a lot of airport time to sit in the best airport seats I’ve ever sat in. We headed for the bus station as soon as we landed and caught the 10:00 bus back to Toledo. We ran into J.J. and Melanie who were just getting back from Paris, but were nowhere near as exhausted as we were. Danielle and I were giddy with lack of sleep, and nothing we said until I fell into my bed at the Fundacion made a lick of sense.

All in all, it was an incredible weekend. The weather was perfect, I got to see everything I wanted to see plus more, and I got to hang out with my new friends. I absolutely love Megan, who arrived back in Montpellier to find an e-mail from Jakobo that was clearly pieced together with a Spanish-English dictionary. So cute! And Chelsea is such a sweetheart—she showed us all around Barcelona and made sure I didn’t get lost or stepped on or burned by a cigarette or cough up a lung from all the smoke at Razz-ma-tazz.

My only regret (aside from leaving at all) is that I didn’t get to see Owen. We had serious cell phone problems all weekend and just couldn’t get a hold of each other. I was bummed, because I’d hoped he and Awbrey could come out to the pub with us or something. I also didn’t get to see Kate Gallagher, who is studying right now in Barcelona (with Chelsea, actually) and I didn’t think to e-mail before I left.

The rest of this week is bound to be long, not only because I’m not in Barcelona anymore, but because I have to wait until Saturday morning when my FAMILY comes. 3 more days! I’m so excited to see them and also to have some time off of school. When I get back I have one more week of classes, then a week of finals, then the semester is over!




Pictures from Barcelona:

http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2070238&l=d8741&id=13900469

http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2070240&l=97628&id=13900469

Some random Toledo pictures:

http://minnesota.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2068226&l=708f0&id=13900469


Hey, and let's all pressure Andrew to post a link to his spring break album--I started laughing at them really hard in the computer lab today. It was awkward.