This was about the time I discovered some major white girl problems: I put on sunscreen and then would sweat it off within minutes of being outside. Plus, no one wears sunscreen here and everyone is ridiculously brown—low demand yields a high price for a bottle of sunscreen, a whopping €14 for what most Americans would call a small to average sized bottle. There is only so much a white girl can do.
However, summer clothes are fun: sandals or flats, billowing skirts, flowing dresses, thin tops, and hair haphazardly tossed up in a bun. Most of the Spanish girls have beautiful, perfect skin and they hardly wear a spot of makeup. So, it’s pretty easy to locate the American girls with their foundation melting off their faces. Attractive, I know. Luckily, I don’t wear foundation, and in the summer, less is more with the exception of sunscreen and water.
The tap water is not exactly tasty. I’m really not picky when it comes to drinking water and even I can taste the difference. So, everyone buys bottled water. Fortunately it is super cheap at grocery stores (not at restaurants, don’t ever ask for water because they will bring you a €7 bottle). One can pick up a 1.5 L bottle for under €0.50. I felt really stupid for lugging around a bottle that large until I drank it all in one day. We refill our bottles with filtered water in the dining hall or some people have water bottles with built-in filters. Fancy, huh?
Also, it’s totally acceptable to carry a fan around everywhere. The afternoon heat makes everyone like the Wicked Witch of the West faced with a bucket of water (“I’m meeeeeeeelting!!!”), so all the women waiting for the metro to arrive whip out their fans. I got a super cute one at Parc Güell and bring it everywhere. It became particularly handy when we started classes later that week in un-air conditioned classrooms. Yay, character building!
Monday was a whirlwind adventure of Antoni Gaudí’s finest works: La Pedrera, la Sagrada Família, and Parc Güell. I wish I could remember all the juicy details about these mind blowing buildings, but like the structures themselves, it is difficult to grasp and process everything.
La Pedrera, aka la Casa Milà, is situated on the Passeig de Gràcia, the most elegant street during the enlargement of Barcelona. Gaudí, a very devout Catholic, combined religious symbols, images of nature (God’s most perfected creation), and references to his patrons to build La Pedrera in the early 1900s. The wavy façade and chunky balcony fences instantly remind one of the ocean and seaweed. Even the sidewalk tiles are decorated with octapi, snail shells, and roses. The window sizes are different on every floor.
Look, it's wavy like the ocean
Balconies kind of remind you of seaweed
Snail shell
Octopi with only six legs. A sextopi...? Que incómodo...
A rose is a rose is a rose...
Upon entering the building, one realizes that the middle of the building is completely open air, so every piso (floor) is a giant circle, like a doughnut. Columns have a bark-like texture to resemble trees and the door has iron bars to make it look like coral. Staircases (seven floors worth) zigzag up the building to the labyrinth-like attic, which is constructed of a series of stone arches (inverted parabolas, thanks trigonometry). One more flight of stairs leads to one of the best views in all of Barcelona.
I guess you can say that this is the doughnut hole. And I wonder why I'm hungry...
The doorway looks like coral.
Columns that look like trees and pretty paintings on the wall
The attic. Check out them inverted parabolas.
Up here, Barcelona stretches as far as the eye can see and beyond. Gràcia throws itself in one direction, Mont Tibidabo vaults itself skyward, L’Eixample and the spiky tips of la Sagrada Família sprout up in another direction while the Passeig de Gràcia lazily stretches below. Over L’Eixample, one can see interior patios, bits of green in this urban jungle.
Patio
La Sagrada Famillia in the distance
Passeig de Gracia
The detail even on the roof is astounding. The pathways are undulated and arches give way to views of this slopping city from the sea up to the mountains. Crushed bottles of cava (a type of champagne) create green mosaics. Glossy tiles on spiraling chimneys catch the light and smokestacks look like knights or ghoulish faces. They are human-like enough for Facebook to ask me if I would like to tag them as friends.
Wavy pathways
Arches
And to think Facebook though that this was a person...
Bottles of cava... you can even see the head of the bottle on the closest one.
Fancy smoke stacks... note the way the grey one catches the light
Gaudi used two kinds of stone: glossy stone to catch the light on the outside of the spiral (lower) and matte to create a contrast on the inside of the spiral (upper).
Gaudí even designed whacky furniture. It hardly looked comfortable, but apparently it was rather ergonomic. One of the pisos was decorated according to the era. It was decadent, opulent, and very bourgeois/new rich. The large windows were designed to show off the interior—drapes were hardly bothered with, considering they were counterintuitive to displaying the Milà Family’s wealth.
Down the street from La Pedrera (which means “stone quarry” because it looks rather like a lump of rocks—a pretty and interesting lump of rocks, but a lump nonetheless) is Casa Batlló, also by Gaudí. It depicts San Jordi, one of the patron saints of Cataluyna, as he defeats a dragon. Skulls and bones are eerily etched into balconies and columns. Overall, it sticks out like a sore thumb and is undeniable Gaudí.
However, la Sagrada Família really sticks out like a sore thumb over the Barcelona skyline. This visit, after seeing La Pedrera and learning more about Gaudí, made it easier to understand the ornate architecture of the building.
Little known fact: Gaudi was also a die-hard fan of Star Wars... ha ha, just kidding, but Darth Vader is definitely on la Sagrada Familia.
Next, we were off to Parc Güell. I was most excited to see this attraction, but we were only given about 45 minutes to explore. It was probably for the best. The heat wiped us out, our bocadillos (sandwiches) were long digested, and most of us had neglected to bring water because we had not expected such heat. Parc Güell was massive enough so that we could have spent hours there if we had the time or inclination. I will certainly return when I have both.Nonetheless, I did enjoy my time there and recognized many typical Gaudí elements. His attention to detail is truly astounding from the bright mosaics, the textured columns, the seamless blend of natural and artificial elements, and the abundant light that glosses over the park. The view was amazing as well. It was beautiful to see Barcelona slide down from the hills to the ocean, the streets, parks, and buildings looking serene in the pre-siesta dash home.
If this wasn’t enough for one day, about a dozen of us decided to go get phones. We were recommended the carrier Vodaphone and single-handedly commandeered the store. We took forever debating plans as we waited to talk to a sales rep and in the meanwhile asked about a million questions. I felt bad for the workers because they had to explain everything multiple times, but they were really nice and understanding.
Fact: a lot of people in Spain are not exactly outrageously polite and many Spaniards will confess and sometimes take pride in this. We talked a lot about this in my conversation class and even read an article in a newspaper about the issue. We compared our experiences in Spain versus the States and came to a few mutual consensuses. We discovered that people don’t say “excuse me” or “sorry” when they bump you on the street or metro. Waiters aren’t tipped so the customers are not their #1 priority. (Read: costumer service in Spain sucks.) Catalanistas—not to be confused with Cataláns, who are less extreme—will mock anyone who speaks castellano, the official language of Spain. It’s kind of a weird vibe because us foreigners are the ones jostled around and we’re also the ones doing the apologizing.
However, many people are still kind. I always see people vacating their seats on buses and the metro for older people, mothers, and children. I have met a number of very nice, open people whose generosity and genuineness is extremely refreshing. A few people (including Spaniards) have mentioned that with the Spanish, there is a bit of a cold front to get past, but once they’re your friend, you’re in for good.
We got our phones and shuffled back to the residencia for a much needed siesta before going to an Irish pub around the corner to watch the Barça game. I know, you’re thinking, “You’re in Spain but you went to an Irish pub? Really, Courtney?” but in my defense, I really just wanted a Guinness and to watch the game. And I got both, so I’m counting it as a win. (Simple minds, simple pleasures.) Barça won as well, 5-0, and the group stayed at the bar chatting for hours after the game.
On Tuesday, possibly the second hottest day of the month, we were put on a bus and sent to the old part of the city. The exhaustion from our first excursion day had set in, so we were all rather tired. Indeed, Tuesday is a little fuzzy in my memory, but it was still quite interesting. We shuffled through the Barcelona History Museum (which I went to while I was at the hostel), but I still enjoyed looking at the artifacts and listening to our lovely tour guides.
Outside the museum
Courtyard next door to the museum
After, they beckoned us outside to walk through the narrow streets of the old city. This area certainly has its own character with the sun barely reaching street level and the lines of balconies on the old buildings. Personally, I would not want to live there, but it has its own charm.
The cathedrals were massive and very—well, Gothic, especially the Gothic Cathedral. Novel concept, huh? There were some pretty interesting decorations, including some gargoyles that resembled genetically mutated dogs. Well, no one in Spain had ever seen an elephant or a lion or any other cool, menacing animal outside of Europe, so they took the general shape of a dog and made it terrifying. Hey, the imagination has to start somewhere. Also, there definitely was a little angel blowing air into another angel’s butthole. Not very angelic, me thinks, but very hilarious. Apparently it was supposed to inspire fear, but it instead inspired giggled from the group of 20-year-olds. The sun hit the churches at such an odd angle that everything looked even more ominous than it already was in the first place.
Pretty fear-inspiring, huh?
It's scary until you reallize that the gargoyles (well, this one in particular), looks like a dog-bull-beast. Cool.
And then there are the angels using a billow to blow air into another angel's butt. No comment.
It's big
The details on the facades are insane
History hangs in the air like humidity before a thunderstorm. In this city, everyone is very aware of the past and the errors made. In my culture class (more on ILP classes in the next post), we began to examine the Spanish Constitution and almost every clause sneaks a wary glance back toward the Franco era. It’s hard to forget the Roman walls and columns, the haunted, whispering streets, and the lingering, musty smell of the streets. This was especially prevalent in the Jewish quarter, which held its own story of death and superstition.
Jewish quarter
Roman columns
We wound out of these streets and into another tangled web of history. Just in front of us rested the entrance into the Boqueria, a large open air market along La Rambla. Here, our senses went into overdrive as they took in the vibrant produce stands, fresh bread, seafood, meat, spices, and sweets. I was paranoid about keeping track of my purse in these busy pathways, but all of the produce was very reasonably priced—even the locals did their grocery shopping there. I bought a few yummy nectarines and shamelessly devoured them once I got back to the residencia.
After two days of excursion-ing, everyone was quite tired. Yet, the next day would bring a new adventure: classes for the Intensive Language Program (ILP) at la Universitat de Barcelona. And even though in our minds it was still summer , everyone sheepishly admitted that they were excited to go to school.
