WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS ADULT
CONTENT THAT MAY BE INAPPROPRIATE FOR YOUNG READERS (the main offender is the
last few paragraphs of Day 3).
When we last met, I had just reached
Barcelona. The move was a welcome escape
from Madrid, and I initially reveled in the joys Barcelona had to offer. But there is a darker side, both to the city
itself and to my experience, and as time passed both these dark sides became
more and more apparent.
DAY HALF
Barcelona does not start with the typical
first day write-up because I didn’t actually arrive in Barcelona until quite
late in the afternoon (3:30pm if memory serves). The first task I faced was to get to my
hostel from Barcelona Sants station. The
hostel was in the Plaza Catalunya, right at the northern end of La Rambla (for
those not in the know, La Rambla is the big tourist street that borders the
west side of the gothic quarter).
Barcelona Sants is a very, very large
station, or at least it seemed that way when I first entered (the wrong way – a
Spanish lady kindly directed me to the other side of the seemingly pointless
balustrade). There are thirteen
platforms, all of which are entered from different points depending on whether
you are catching a fast train, an international train, a regional long distance
or a suburban train. I had a vague idea
that I needed to catch the train to the hostel, but then couldn’t work out how
to get onto the platform – trains should be free for me, but all the ticketing
is automated, so you can only get to the platform if you have an actual
ticket. Seeing a big sign reading ‘M’ I
decided it would be quicker and easier to catch a metro.
The Barcelona metro has a very, very, very
simple automated ticketing machine.
Basically one trip is two euros, and you can get a ten trip saver for
9.80 euros. I got the saver, thinking
that it was likely I would want to travel across the city quite quickly for
various reasons.
Knowing Barcelona’s reputation I watched my
pockets and bags very, very carefully.
Either the pickpockets picked up my wariness or there weren’t any in my
carriage. I didn’t feel unsafe like I
had in Madrid, and nothing went missing.
The hostel was really easy to find – it was a place called St
Christopher’s Inn, which had been recommended to me by Astrid in Lisbon. It is worth mentioning something about St
Christopher’s compared to the other places I had stayed at – it is a chain
hostel, appearing in London, Paris, Brussels, Barcelona and many, many other
places. So far I had been avoiding chain
hostels and had had reasonable success in finding places that breached my
comfort zone, for better or worse.
St Christopher’s is not a place like
that. I booked it seeing that it offered
private curtains and a power socket for each bed (both of which I had sorely
missed in Madrid) and concluded that I was likely to get a decent night’s sleep
there. I was feeling really quite sick
by this point, so sleep was high on my agenda.
Now for the flipside: St Christopher’s is
not going to give you a cultural experience (for any given definition of that
term). It is connected to a bar called
Belushi’s which is as close to an Australian bar as you can get (think
something like a cheaper version of The Glen, for those who know it). When I got there they were advertising an
Australia Day party, for Christ’s sake.
Thank God I left before the 26th.
Anyway, back to the story. I went to my room as quickly as I could (the
hostel staff speak English by default, making the process rather painless) in
order to lock my things up and do some computering. A girl was there trying to charge her phone
or something. In any other hostel I
would have immediately struck up a conversation, but I was feeling a bit of
austerity in this place and so kept clammed up.
It wasn’t long before she was asking if she could borrow my ipod charger
– hers had been damaged by a power surge or something. Anyway, long story short, it didn’t work, so
she decided she had better go to the Apple Store across the street. It all felt very normal.
She was Russian, and with the ice broken I
started to ask the typical questions.
Typical questions asked, another girl entered – Ruby. Ruby was an Australian. More specifically, Brisbane. Most specifically, Cleveland. When I heard the not-quite-nasal accent I
thought – no. But yes. The first Australian I had met on the road!
We went downstairs to the bar to have some
dinner together. The closest they had to
legit Spanish fare was meatballs in tomato sauce. I had a burger with fries and felt guilty
about it (it was fairly inexpensive and tasted good though).
Ruby had noticed some fliers advertising a
flamenco and tapas excursion and suggested we try it out. Her “suggestion” went something like this:
“Oh my God, we have to do the Flamenco, I wanted to do it in Madrid…” (PS. She
had just come from Madrid that day as well), “…but it was like fifty
euros. But this is only
twenty-four! How cheap!”
We all agreed it was very cheap, mainly
because we didn’t have much choice on that front. Trundling to the reception, we went to book
tickets.
“What day should we do it?” (Ruby)
“Well, Friday’s my last day. It might be a fun thing for me to do on my
last night.” (Me)
The lady at reception nodded and smiled and
somehow upsold us to do a cocktail class and club night straight
afterwards. (“You get four cocktails,
shots and free club entry for only eighteen euro! So cheap!”)
Luckily I had the common sense to change the day from Friday to
Thursday, knowing there was no way I should be clubbing with a train trip early
Saturday morning.
The Russian girl whose name started with
‘B’ had told us that the bike tour was worth doing so Ruby and I started to lay
out our plans for the time we would be there.
DAY ONE
And so it began. I ate some breakfast (real orange juice. REAL ORANGE JUICE) and got ready for my bike
tour. And this is where it starts to get
strangely irritating. Waiting in the
foyer for our guide, an Irish bloke came up and asked if I was there for the
walking tour. I said no, the bike
tour. Ah, he responded, the guide for
that’ll be here soon. He liked my camera
and asked if I was doing video of all the bike tours around Europe. I quite liked the sound of that, but as I
hadn’t done any bike tours in Lisbon or Madrid (hence why I am still alive) it
seemed a bit late (I still filmed the whole bike tour).
Our guide arrived. He was Australian. Ruby and I were joined by three others from
the hostel. All three were
Australian. We went to the other meeting
point. A girl came up to join us. Australian.
The guide said there was a group of three or four others who had said
they wanted to come. All Australians
(they arrived late like true Aussies).
In fact, I’m fairly sure there were only three people on bikes that day
not from Australia – two Germans (who were together anyway) and a guy from
Belaruse, which I’m only vaguely aware is even a real place.
At the time I was all like, “Hey,
neat! Look at all these Aussies.” We giggled about all the weird s*** Europeans
do, made snide comments about Barcelona versus Australian cities, paid out the
cities each of us came from and compared anecdotes of drunken exploits.
Having said all of this, the tour was very good. It was a ‘free’ tour, though the bike hire is
five euro (if you have your own bike you don’t pay) and the guides live off
tips. The guide was fantastic, despite
being Australian (he had lived in Barcelona for four years, and in Europe for
eight or thereabouts). The purpose was
supposedly to cover the key Gaudi structures, but we started with a pleasant
ride along Baceloneta, the beach (which was created for the 1988 Olympics using
sand from the Middle East).
Our guide, who I’m going to refer to as
Chris, even though I’m not sure that was his name, had majored in civic
engineering and knew all about how cities worked and grew. Barcelona was really built around three key
events – the World Expo in the late 1800s, the World Expo in 1926 (or thereabouts)
and the Olympic Games in 1988. A lot of
the statues and buildings are apparently supposed to evoke the ocean. Because Barcelona is on the ocean. What visual poetry and imagination they had!
We continued past the Olympic Village,
which Chris told us contained one of the only cinemas in Barcelona screening
films in their original language (the Spanish dub most movies). This becomes important later. Though not very important.
Barcelona has really nice bike paths that
go from the footpath to the road in a surprisingly clear and ordered fashion
(for Spain). It was a little
disconcerting when the bike path veered into the middle of the road, but it was
quite safe and gave a fantastic view.
The only point that was a little nerve wracking was when all us cyclists
had to take up an entire lane of a dual lane carriageway (this is apparently
legal in Barcelona). Well… let’s just
say the bikes were not built for speed.
Chris warned us earlier to ignore any honking horns, since Catalunyan
drivers are arseholes. There was
definitely some honking going on.
We stopped at the bullfighting stadium,
which is now a museum. There was still
red paint on the floor where protesters had thrown it on people buying
tickets. In Catalan, bullfighting is now
illegal. As in, it was made illegal last
year. Hence why the ring is a museum.
Next we moved on to the Sagrada
Familia. The Sagrada Familia (or ‘Sacred
Family’) is the most impressive building I have seen. Ever.
And I only saw the outside. AND
it isn’t even finished yet. It was
designed by architect Whatever-His-Name-Was Gaudi, and is scheduled tentatively
to be completed in the vicinity of 2024 I think. The 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s
death, anyway. The response from most
people? “Good luck with that guys.”
The building is rich in religious allegory,
containing three separate facades representing the thingy, the Passion and the
Glory (the thingy is the thingy where Jesus was born and thingy). The thingy and the Passion have basically
been completed (Passion not so much, but getting there) while the Glory is far
from done. In what seems a real s***ty
move, the Anarchists of the early 20th century burned Gaudi’s plans
for the Sagrada Familia, representing as it did the Catholic institution, which
of course Anarchists were against.
Still, the dude spent his whole life doing that. Douchebags.
We moved on to some kind of apartment that
Gaudi had designed. It was alright. Very curvy.
Then we went to the modernist trifecta (that’s not what it’s called – I can’t
remember what it’s called). Basically
it’s three modernist buildings that reflect different aspects of
modernism. One of them was done by
Gaudi. It’s meant to look like a
dragon’s lair, paying tribute to St George, who is the local saint. The roof looks like a dragon’s back, the
windows look like skulls, and all in all he did a pretty good job. The one next to it is meant to look like a
gingerbread house. Go figure.
On our way back we went past the Arc de
Triumf. Yeah, they’ve got one of those
in Barcelona. Apparently not because of
any particular triumph, just because they felt left out and were having the
world expo. The street leading up to the
Arc used to be part of the wall that the EVIL SPANISH KING had built to prevent
the poor Catalanian people from building their city. At the first opportunity, the Barcelona city
council smashed it down and replaced it with a really big boulevard. There was also a castle that was brought down
since it was constantly bombing the city.
Anyway, that’s enough history.
We finished in some kind of park, which was
almost as good as the Parque de el Retiro in Madrid. It had a really, really beautiful fountain.
After the tour some of us went with Chris
to the Travel Bar (who arranged pretty much all of these outings) to get a one
euro pint and chat. He managed to rope
us into a Spanish cooking class that night, and there I met some more
Australians – Chloe, Ben, Andrew (not me) and Chloe’s sister. A cool Argentinian chef took us first to the
famous market on La Rambla (shut up, I’m writing this on the train so don’t
have any internet to check names) and bought some fresh seafood. They had crabs and lobsters lying on the ice
still moving around. Everyone took
photos (I was a bit surprised none of them had seen a live lobster or crab
before…)
Passing the butcher, the chef tried to
gross us out by showing us the various things Barcelonians cook with – tongue,
brain, liver, lung, cock, balls, whole lambs heads. Most of the girls squealed a little before buying
one of the SUPER CHEAP ONE EURO juices one of the vendors was flogging (as a
“special price” for those in the cooking class).
We all trundled back to the Travel Bar
through the narrow side streets of the Gothic Quarter. A number of simple tapas were spread out, and
we were shown the correct way of preparing them (grate a halved tomato into a
thin slice of baguette, dribble with extra-virgin olive oil, whack on a slice
of hard Spanish cheese, whack on a bit of meat – chorizo, salami or ham – and
add either a cocktail onion or an olive.
Voila!) I ate a lot of them. Then Mr Chef prepared a seafood paella in a
GIGANTIC curved frying pan. Paella is
made with Arborio rice, which, for those in the know, is the same kind used in
Italian risotto. The difference between
the two is that with risotto you stir it constantly, creating a very creamy
texture, while paella is left sitting and soaking, giving it a bit more crunch.
The seafood included shrimp, king prawns
(unpeeled), mussels and clams. The bar
had been constantly serving us jugs of sangria, and I had been downing them
quite enthusiastically. We were then
shown how to make Sangria (a third red wine, a third orange juice, a third
lemon soda and eight counts each of rum and vodka. Or if you’re Australian, fill the jug halfway
with wine, juice and soda and then fill the remaining with spirits). We drank some more.
Chloe was meeting a friend out later, but
time began to get the better of us and it was soon an hour after the time she
was supposed to meet. We staggered off
to find the bar anyway, walking down La Rambla and any seedy little side street
we could find. At this point it is
probably worth noting that I had ensured before going out that night that I
left anything valuable at home or had it hidden in a completely inaccessible
point on my person. There, I’m not
totally stupid!
Unfortunately, one poor Taiwanese girl was
that stupid. There we were, staggering
around completely lost and basically having given up on finding the bar when a
German girl who had been at the cooking class ran around the corner, shouting
out to ask whether we had seen someone running with a bag. We hadn’t.
She stopped to let us know that her Taiwanese friend (also at the
cooking class) had had her bag snatched and had gone running after the
culprit. A few locals were hanging
around on the streets and vaguely communicated concern to us, and let us know
that the police had followed the culprits as well.
A moment later the Taiwanese girl returned,
glum, flanked by two plainclothes policemen (their disguises were fantastic –
they looked like the kind of tough guys you would avoid in the street).
After making sure the Taiwanese girl had
checked the police officers’ IDs (this was met with a ‘nah, duh’ glare) we let
them take her to file a report. I
suppose they must be fairly used to these things. I had, of course, already met the Korean who
lost his passport, and this girl had been carrying her credit cards, passport
and cash together in her handbag (in all fairness, surely she knew that was a
bad idea). Chloe’s gang told me, as we
returned to the hostel, about their close encounter when a friend of theirs was
pickpocketed the night before. Unfortunately
for the pickpocket, this Aussie was fast, and found the guy cowering behind a
bin. He got his stuff back – pickpockets
aren’t looking for a fight.
Back at the hostel we all went to the bar
and… played drinking games. There I was,
in Barcelona, surrounded by Australians, playing drinking games. We played “Never Have I Ever” long enough for
me to ascertain that none of the people I was playing with were virgins and
that a number of them had been having sex in the hostel – and there I was
innocently assuming the privacy curtain was to keep light out when people came
back late at night. The game kind of
dissolved fairly quickly, as most of them tended to just use the game as an
opportunity to flaunt all the crazy stupid s*** they had done (you know what
I’m talking about – saying something crazy and then drinking to it yourself. Showing off, basically).
The bartenders invited us out to a club,
but it was 2am by that point and, as is often the case when I play Never Have I
Ever, I hadn’t gotten very drunk, certainly not enough to make any really bad
decisions. So I went to bed.
DAY TWO
Wanting to take full advantage of being in
Barcelona, and still really quite enjoying it (the cynicism that you may have
detected in my descriptions of day one had not begun to take root at that
point) I went online to find out where the Picasso Museum was. It was in the Gothic Quarter, so I planned a
trip to check out La Rambla, the Picasso Museum and the Gothic Quarter. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I am
actually a really good navigator. After
beelining directly to the door of the Picasso Museum (those of you familiar
with my experiences in Madrid will probably remember that by ‘museum’ they mean
‘art gallery’ it took me a while to work out where to go. See, the Picasso Museum is sort of spread out
across a block within the Gothic Quarter (which is complicated narrow streets
lined by three-storey old apartment blocks) and it is difficult to work out
exactly which entrance is the REAL entrance.
The answer was the one with the sign saying
“TICKETS” pointing at it.
Unfortunately the museum was half closed
(well, they said half closed. Unless
it’s a really small museum, I would say more like 80% closed). Two sections were open, covering the very end
of Picasso’s life. I had the audio
guide, remembering the mistake I had made in the Reina Sofia. This time, however, having the guide was just
as confusing as not having it, since it referred to Picasso’s history without
explaining it (ie. I missed the beginning, so the end didn’t make sense). So… yeah.
Picasso. He did art and stuff.
Walking around the Gothic Quarter, I saw
some Roman ruins by accident. I then
went looking for more Roman ruins and came across an enormous cathedral by
accident. This sort of thing is really
only possible in Europe, where buildings commonly block the view of the
surroundings and you can round a corner and suddenly see something big and
famous.
There’s not much more to say about that – I
went around, saw nice old buildings, then went back to the hostel. I pretty much slept the whole afternoon until
I was woken up by Ruby and the Russian.
Something I had neglected to mention: the day before we had bought
tickets to the FC Barcelona vs Malaga game, mostly influenced by the Russian’s
enthusiasm. You could get 9 euro
tickets, which I thought was pretty good.
Sure, they were right at the back of the stadium, but that commanded a
fabulous view over the field.
One thing about the stadium is that it is
the only stadium I have ever seen with a special booth for tourists. That’s where I had to go to pick up my
tickets. I’ve got to say, it made me
feel a bit of a… tourist.
Getting into the stadium required a full-on
cavity search (well, maybe not that bad, but the guard certainly made me spread
my legs and patted down my crotch). The
game was weird. Malaga scored first (we
were next to a bunch of maybe six people who were probably the only Malaga
supporters in the stadium). Then
Barcelona was like, “Oh, maybe we should play properly,” before scoring twice
in less than five minutes. Then no-one
scored until pretty much the final minute, during which Malaga scored again,
ending the match in a 2-2 draw. It
didn’t feel like a particularly spectacular match. The group of Americans behind us (clearly
tourists are seated together…) had no idea what was going on, loudly professing
their ignorance of the game’s rules.
It was around this point that I realized
that Barcelona had taken every single thing it had and turned it into a tourist
attraction. The city made it almost
impossible to discover the ‘authentic’ Barcelona, because Barcelona is
authentically fake. It’s like an adult
Disneyland. Let’s be honest – as
spectacular as the Sagrada Familia is, for example, it serves no real function
other than as a tourist attraction (apparently it takes church services, but
it’s tourist dollars funding the build, not the Vatican). The football, a European passion, is
something that blasé tourists go see because of FC Barcelona’s fame. The tapas, the paella, that I had had, all
dressed up to be tourist friendly. I had
very rarely seen a restaurant without an English menu.
Worst of all, I was playing into the
touristy schemes. I was doing the bike
tour, the cooking class, was staying in a flashy chain hostel instead of a tiny
family-owned hovel. A week into my trip
I had sold out.
(To be clear, I’m not suggesting that
everyone in Barcelona is a tourist and no-one actually lives there – I’m just
bitching about how hard it is to escape from all of the established tourist
safety nets. I am well aware that, had I
bought my tickets somewhere other than a tourist information centre, I would
have been sat with the passionate Spanish football fans, but I had naively
assumed the tickets were identical wherever you bought them.)
Leaving the game we got to see a bit more
of the authentic Barcelona – in the rush to leave we spied a man working his
way through the crowd holding a pair of scissors. I wonder how many got home without their
purses that night. Then, just at the
hostel, two men were following two younger women. When they saw us coming in the opposite
direction, me holding a camera, they turned and disappeared off.
I went to bed that night intent on trying
to leap off the beaten track the next day.
DAY THREE
Leaping off the beaten track began with
rolling out of bed at 10am, just after breakfast had finished being served (in
all fairness, the damn game finished at 11:30pm, so it wasn’t exactly an early
night). At first I was a little put out,
but then I saw how I could use this to my advantage.
After my failure in the chocolate con
churros department in Madrid, I resolved that today was the day. I would have chocolate con churros before
leaving Spain, god damn it!
This time I had a plan. Instead of wandering aimlessly, hoping to
find somewhere good, I would look up places online, choose one with good
recommendations and then just go. So I
did.
The place was in the Gothic Quarter –
again, close, but tricky to find. Unless
you’re me, in which case very easy to find.
Rounding a corner I could see it a little way off. I walked up to the door…
…and kept going. The place felt a little upmarket, I was
feeling self conscious about not speaking the language and being by
myself. And there was no English to be
seen.
But no.
I had had enough of all that. I
wouldn’t let Barcelona massage me into chickening out. Back I went and, with only a brief pause at
the door, entered.
The waiter smiled and waved at a seat. Slowly taking it, I mumbled “Chocolate con
Churros?” He babbled in Spanish. I sat down with a stupid, plastered grin on
my face. Seeing that I had no idea what
he was saying, the waiter nodded and walked off (probably muttering “turista!”
to himself). Moments later I had a
thick, steaming cup of chocolate and six churros (which were cold, having been
taken from a display cabinet). It was
delicious.
Reveling in my newfound success, I mimed
for the bill. Actually, this was
possibly the proudest moment of all, as I was simply not used to asking for the
bill and had felt extremely nervous about doing so. But it wasn’t long before I had paid and
left.
How, then, to continue the success of that
morning? I was interested in climbing
Montjuic, a kind of national park-esque thing on a hill that overlooks
Barcelona. Importantly there was a castle
on top. I like castles, but I knew I had
to earn it, so I decided to hike it instead of taking the cable car or
funicular.
The first thing you see when you walk down
the huge street leading to Montjuic is the imposing National Palace, which
houses MNAC, the Museu Nacional de Artes Catalunyan or something. It basically contains art from Catalan, and I
will go a bit more in detail later.
The second thing you notice is the Magic
Fountain, which is supposed to put on a spectacular light show each night. I say ‘supposed to’ because it actually
didn’t. It was broken. They were cleaning it. Something was not right, anyway, and
therefore: no show.
For the small climb up to the MNAC there
are a few options. One is the
stairs. One is the escalator. One is trying to climb up the massive
fountain that trickles from top to bottom (I don’t recommend this method). I started with the stairs before deciding
that I could climb stairs anywhere, but an escalator in a national park was a
new experience. At least, that’s my
story and I’m sticking to it.
Despite intending to go straight to the
castle before seeing what else there was, I ended up going in the opposite
direction to start with and coming across the Olympic Stadium and other Olympic
monuments. They were big and impressive,
but I have to say it takes more than twenty-five years to impress me now.
In the distance I could see the castle, a
huge, imposing stone wall that cut all the way along the horizon. Off I plodded toward it. Only, it wasn’t a castle. It was a cemetery. Huge stone walls contained the bodies of
thousands of people. Even up close it
looked like a damn castle. Feeling a
little ripped off (no disrespect to the dead, but they didn’t really appeal at
that point) I kept going, discovering fantastic vistas over hideous industrial
docks and airy forest areas.
Finally I came across what looked like a
military base, so I started treading carefully until I came across a tiny
massive intersection.
Yes, you read that right. I was looking at this mass of roads,
confused, when I realized it was a play area.
For children. Concluding that
no-one in their right mind (not even the Spanish) would build a children’s play
area next to a military complex I continued on with a bit more bravado. That is, until a rifle shot pierced the air,
a bullet whizzing past my head.
No, just kidding. No military complex. Really.
What had looked a bit like a military
complex was actually the very edge of the castle. It stretched on for quite some way, but as it
was more of a fort than a castle what you saw this far from the main complex
was basically just crumbling walls.
The main square of the castle housed a
number of cannons ranging from (at a guess) late 19th century to the
second world war. They were all pointed
towards the ocean, for what I suppose are very obvious reasons.
The castle itself was more of a large stone
square surrounded by walls and stuff.
The walls contained barracks, and some of these barracks contained free
exhibitions. Well, two of them did. One was an exhibition of photographs of the
Catalonian president of the Second World War, or thereabouts, and the other was
a photographic documentation of the uncovering of a mass grave perpetrated by
the Franco regime. The story was told vaguely
through the true tale of a teacher who had promised to take his class to see
the sea at the end of the year.
Unfortunately he ended up in the grave, and the remains of the promise
lie in a booklet created by the students at the time imagining what the sea
would be like.
It wasn’t particularly well presented, I
have to say, but the subject was extremely moving so that didn’t matter so
much. I walked down through the
(beautiful) gardens on the mountain, mind preoccupied by massacres and
graves. The whole place had a more
somber air about it now.
I attempted, at this point, to follow the
signs to the Ethnographic Museum, but failed abysmally and ended up at MNAC
again. Oh well, I thought, if they have
an audio guide I’ll just do that instead.
They did, so I did.
The museum is divided up into four key
sections: Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque, and Modern Art. To see all the sections you need a full
day. To give you an idea, I was there
for around three or four hours and had to rush to see all of the bottom floor
(there are two floors) which got me half way through Renaissance, missing
Baroque and (tragically) Modern Art.
The guide was very good, providing plenty
of detailed information that I promptly forgot.
The Romanesque section is a series of gigantic model churches onto which
have been carefully copied the frescoes (as in, they took the paint from the
ancient churches and stuck it exactly as it was upon a model church within the
museum) of numerous Catalonian churches from the Dark Ages and early Medieval
period. Many were very beautiful, most
were incomplete, and I just kind of wandered through the space in a bit of a
daze. The gallery is so huge that it
could hold hundreds of people while still feeling completely empty.
I won’t go into too much detail on the
Renaissance and Gothic stuff, as they were fairly typical of art (and almost
everything was related somehow to faith, God and Christianity). The placed closed at 6pm, so I was kicked out
just as I was about to move on to Baroque.
When I got back to the hostel, Ruby was there, mulling over what she had done that day. Apparently she had been craving 'Western food' and so had gone to McDonald's for lunch. Um... What? That made me feel a whole lot better about my various touristy transgressions.
It was Thursday, which, if you have been
following carefully, you will realize was the day of our flamenco show and
cocktail classes. We were shepherded to
the dance, watched it (it was fun and lively – not a bad show, but almost
certainly not totally authentic) and were taken to the Travel Bar for some
tapas and paella. I won’t lie – the
tapas was awesome. And plentiful. I felt stuffed very early in the game, and
plates kept coming out. Some of our
number were vegetarians, and others were allergic to seafood, so it basically
fell upon me to finish up enough food for a small army. I especially want to mention the mushroom
soup. So. Good.
Feeling a bit ill and a lot tipsy (the
bartender never stopped refilling our Sangria, and I never stopped drinking it)
we moved on to the cocktail portion.
Most of the cocktails I already knew how to make – Pina Colada, Sex on
the Beach, Mojito and Long Island Iced Tea.
We were able to drink them after we made them, but I could only finish
the first two before I started feeling really queasy. It was at this point that I took off my money
belt and put it in my front jacket pocket to give my stomach a bit more space.
We raced off to the bar, leaving my Mojito
and Long Island Iced Tea resting on the bar, as it was now time to go to the
club (1am). I specifically checked the
name so I would be able to tell you all which club it was, but it’s been half a
week now and I’ve forgotten. Sorry. It was on the beach, about fifteen minutes
from the bar, and it was actually under the road. You entered a large glass cabinet containing
stairs leading down to the dance floor.
They had a cloak room, but when I heard that it cost two euros to leave
your coat there I decided to give that a miss.
So, how does a club in Barcelona compare to
a club in Brisbane?
…Erm.
Pretty similar, really. Maybe a
few decibels louder, and maybe a few flashes crazier, but this place played a
lot of the same songs (Gangnam Style, for God’s sake) and had a similar smoky
smell and feel to a Brissie club. Main
difference was the bartenders were all in their undergarments and extremely
attractive (the male in particular was extremely well toned).
Well, I danced, but I was pretty much sober
by this point. I think my queasiness may
have been due more to overeating than overdrinking, and the brisk walk combined
with the sweaty dance floor (and me still in my thick jacket, sweating the
booze out) managed to squeeze the alcohol out of my system. The others, though, seemed pretty drunk
still. They decided to climb up on the
podium at one point, dragging me up as well.
In my effort to climb up I managed to tear my jeans just under the back
pocket. I now have two pairs of jeans
with the exact same tear, so by the time I reach Bulgaria I will probably have
icicles growing off my bottom.
By 2:30am I was ready to leave, though I
was the only one feeling that way. Fine,
I could make my way back myself.
It went ok until I reached La Rambla. Now, I had walked La Rambla a few times, both
during the day and during the night.
Sure, it was touristy, but it had never felt dangerous. A couple of beer fairies offered me cans of
beer (they sell them on the streets – illegally of course) but once I declined
they left me alone.
No, the problem was prostitutes.
The first hooker I ‘met’ came up and
grabbed my arm.
“You want sex?”
“No, gracias.”
“Why you no want?”
There were any number of reasons I did not
want, one being that I suspected that her hooter was probably a festering pit
of black death, but mostly because prostitution is something I have absolutely
no intention of ever having any part of.
With some effort I managed to shake her off
and continued down La Rambla. As I
mentioned before, I was completely sober, so was completely aware of everything
around me. I managed to avoid most
people (there were a lot of guys selling what I assume were drugs who would
call out to me – “Amigo!” – but they didn’t follow). I was maybe three quarters of the way along
the street, hostel almost in sight, when I realized that walking directly
towards me – taking up the entire street – was a line of hookers.
I moved to the side of the pedestrian
street, hoping to avoid them, but one peeled away from the rest to corner
me. She looked exactly the same as the
last one – in fact, the whole row of them could have been clones as far as I
could tell. She spoke in Spanish this
time, so again with the, “No, gracias,” (though I may have gotten over saying
“Gracias” by that point).
I took me quite some effort to shake this
one off, and as she fell by the wayside she made a desperate grab for my jacket
pocket. I slapped her hand away and kept
moving purposefully forward, feeling around my person to ensure nothing had
been taken.
I realized my money belt was no longer around
my waist. Oh, no. It had my travel money card, my English
passport, 80GBP, the key for the lock I had used on my bag. All that important stuff. Then I remembered I had taken it off and put
it in my pocket during the cocktail making.
It was still in my pocket. Phew.
Fortunately there are no other incidents to
report from my walk up La Rambla, but it was the start of a transformation of
that street. It would only be the next
day that I would get any real understanding of what La Rambla was transforming
into.
DAY FOUR
I managed to get up in time for breakfast
this time. Woohoo! Not that I needed much. The others I had gone out with had apparently
returned around 4am, so were looking sick, tired, and hungover. I actually felt pretty fresh, though I wasn’t
entirely sure what I would do that day.
I actually spent the first part of the day
checking train times and trying to work out the best way of getting to
Lyon. I had managed to get in touch with
Astrid over Facebook and needed to give her an accurate time for my
arrival. As it turned out… Well, that’s
for later.
I kind of just felt like wandering for this
last day, as I wasn’t sure if there was anything that I really, really had to
see at this point. After walking a short
way I started to crave the cinema, and remembering from the bike tour that
there was a cinema with films in their original languages somewhere around the
Olympic Village, I tried to make my way there.
The walk was a lot further than it had felt
on the bikes, but once I reached the village I realized it had been turned into
a shopping centre. I assumed correctly
that the cinema would be inside the shopping centre, and so in I went.
Well… the cinema was closed. Spanish cinemas don’t open until 3:30pm (it
was about 2:30 at this point). I went to
the supermarket and picked up some bread, cheese, meat and mushrooms for
lunch. As I went to the counter, a
security guard (I assume he was a security guard) waved his arms in a not
unfriendly way, babbling in Spanish.
My brain, having come to the supermarket
specifically NOT to have to interact with anyone, kind of went
“Blurblewurblewurble.”
Somehow I managed to communicate that I
only spoke English, at which point the guard went “Ah,” smiling and
nodding. He seemed to consider for a
moment, then gave up and waved me to a checkout. By the time I left the supermarket the cinema
was starting to gear up, but I couldn’t tell which films were in the original
language (they all had ‘VOCE’ written next to them, which I thought must mean
something like ‘dubbed’ but I guess I could have been wrong). Anyway, I went back to the hostel, packed,
had a lonely and somewhat safe final dinner of pork ribs (they were actually
really delicious, but I still felt guilty about having yet another meal in the
hostel bar).
Of course I walked up La Rambla to get back
to the hostel, and the changes were really starting to kick into gear. There were a lot of tourists now, with more
English spoken on the street than either Catalunian or Spanish. There were street performers setting up their
stalls and the place was really starting to bustle. I guess it was in preparation for the
weekend, as it was Friday by this point.
When I returned to my room I was kind of
surprised to discover two Germans chatting and drinking beer. I had pretty much finished packing and, even
though I really wanted to sleep, I stayed up a little while chatting with
them. Somehow I had lost my little lock
for my large backpack (I think it fell inside the backpack and I will have to
dig it out – I’m kind of pissed off at myself for losing it since it would have
been so easy just to lock it to something instead of leaving it sitting on the
bag in the safe) and the Germans found that incredibly funny.
They offered me a beer and I managed to
froth it so that it overflowed. They
found that very funny as well.
“Who needs entertainment when you have an
Australian,” is what one of them said.
Anyway, I was tired and went to bed. I knew I would need to be up early the next
morning for the train… but that tale is for next time, as this is now
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