So, I’m going to take you back to Thursday, September 8th… okay, that’s probably closer to three weeks ago. (Bad, Courtney, bad.)
It was my last day of classes for the Intensive Language Program and it was a little bittersweet. All we had to do was just show up to class essentially and it still felt like summer, despite the late Sunday night homework binges. Alas, these nostalgic days of yore were over and we would be serious students by the following Monday.
But before that, I had to prepare my piso for my impending move-in. We all know what that means… IKEA TRIP!!!
Ikea was actually on the other side of town and took over an hour to get there from an odd combination of public transportation and walking. I was rather confused upon my arrival: the Ikea was different. I know, one expects all Ikeas to be universally the same because Ikea is universally wonderful, but this is not the case. There was a showroom and then you actually picked up the stuff you wanted to buy downstairs. So here I was, going slowly through the showroom and writing down exactly what I wanted, only to realize that all the info was also downstairs.
About five years later I exited Ikea looking pretty much like a boss. I had bought a few ceramic bowls and mugs and had wrapped them up in paper and nestled them among my pillow and blanket in one of those giant Ikea bags. Then in my hands I had a six pack box of wine glasses. Glass wine glasses. Fragile, breakable, glass wine glasses. I know, with my track record and all the grace that has been genetically bestowed upon me (Thanks Mom!), it pretty much spelled disaster. I’ve tripped over my shadow before.
My stuff was heavy, so I booked it in the direction where I thought the bus stop was. Key word “thought.” I started walking down some street and suddenly felt like I was being watched. Well, I was, by a bunch of men in the back of their sketchy trunks. I walked faster and kept my head down, waiting for the evitable, “Hola guapa.”
Which brings us to the lesson on the many facets of the word guapa.
In most contexts, it is a rather nice thing to hear. It can mean anything from “pretty” to “attractive” or in general is used as a term of endearment. Hearing “Hola guapa” from a roommate, friend, or cashier is positively normal and usually makes me grin like a loon. Who doesn’t like being called pretty? And then there are always the dear vendors in the market who say, “Hola guapa” and then proceed to tell you all the bargains they have and yes, just for you guapa, they will throw in an extra nectarine for free. And yes, they are just after your money, but I’m a sucker for flattery. And yes, I think I will take that extra nectarine.
The negative side of guapa is when you are just walking down the street in your normal street clothes and there is some creepy (possibly old) man (or men) that watch you very intently as you are going by. These men are 99% harmless and only look before dropping their typical line (“Hola guapa.” Cue cringe.) as you pass, but it doesn’t feel fabulous. Then again, these are things I would have to deal with in Isla Vista (“Hey babe! Where are you going?), so it is completely manageable.
But here I am, caring an Ikea bag full of stuff, I’m sweating like a dog, and I get an “Hola guapa.” Really now. Really???
I make it to the corner and consult my map. No help. I find a bus stop and locate a map. This is about the time when one begins to improvise: I knew that all I had to do was find a bus that could take me back to Plaça Catalunya and I could navigate the metro from there. As it turned out, there was a bus stop right in front of the Ikea. In this process, I learned the proper use of one of the many swearwords in Spanish when one girl missed her bus. Life lessons, right there.
With an Ikea bag on my shoulder, my purse on the other, and a box of wine glasses in my hands, I trekked from bus to metro to my piso without breaking anything. Can you say éxito (success)?
After moving my stuff in, Abel took me grocery shopping.
I like food. I really do. I like cooking food, eating food, watching food be cooked… yeah. Food is good. I think grocery shopping is fun because you can just wander through the aisles and decide what you want to eat for the week. I think that Costco is a beautiful creation and that Nutella should always come in packs of two.
Food shopping in Spain is a little different. Back in ye old days, everyone used to shop at their local mercado, open air markets that are in every single distrito. Fresh everything, amazing sights and sounds, and great prices, these places are really fun to go as long as one keeps an eye on their purse. The mercado tradition is in the process of being revived in Barcelona since the boom of supermarkets.
But by “supermarkets,” we’re talking about stores less than the size of Trader Joes. Which brings me to the next point: I miss Trader Joes. There is something awesome about getting everything you could possibly want under one roof at a decent price and knowing that what you’re eating is most likely not made of crap. The only “super” part about the supermercados is the prefix in the name. Really nothing to be excited about. At all. Additional pitfall: there is no peanut butter in Spain because it’s really expensive and needs to be imported. It was a sad, sad discovery to know that I won’t be eating a PBJ any time soon. My only consolation to this thought was that grilled ham and cheese sandwiches do exist… they are just called bikinis. One does not question these things when hungry—one only eats.
However, the one exciting thing about grocery shopping is the specialty stores. You can’t go more than a few blocks without running into a fruit and veggie stand or a bakery. Bread here is pretty much its own food group and fresh bread is highly valued. I’ve become such a bread snob and I already have favorite little bakeries in different neighborhoods. So yes, bread is always purchased at bakeries. One thing to grow accustomed to at the produce stands is that there are flies. Yes, most Americans would be freaking out that there are bugs within a fifty foot radius of their food, but this is normal.
That Thursday night brought a pleasant surprise. With some of my friends, we decided to celebrate our almost last night by having a metro adventure. We grabbed a camera, walked to the nearest metro stop, I spun around three times and pointed to a random spot on the metro map. We were to go to that stop and then figure out how to get home.
I ended up picking Sagrada Família. At first it was a bit of a buzz kill because we had all been there, but then we realized something important… we hadn’t been there at night. Once again, my mind was blown and I was humbled by this amazing building. Flood lights made the building glow, illuminating details I had never seen before.
To make the night pass with laughter, we decided to have a hipster photo contest. Now, for those of you who do not know what hipsters are, it is a very difficult concept to explain. Hipsters are people who try very hard at not trying hard at all. One can identify a hipster man by his flannel shirt, horn-rimmed glasses or Ray Bands, skinny jeans, and his retro film camera. He will probably be riding a bicycle. A female hipster may be identified by her billowy skirts, eclectic print tees, hippy headband, retro striped sweater, nerd glasses without the lenses, and her organic soy latte made from locally grown ingredients and contained in a recyclable/reusuable mug. Yes, hipsters sound a little like hippies, but their concerns are not with saving the whales or humanity and free love, but instead they enjoy all things retro and not mainstream. Hipsters are people who take pictures of flowers while denouncing the bourgeoisie and ranting about how the public university system is destroying the creativity of their generation on their blog before skipping off to Spoken Word club. Not that I have anything against spoken word… it’s actually super cool, but I feel like hipsters congregate at these sort of things.
And YES, there are hipsters in Spain too.
So, what does a hipster photo contest actually entail? Taking pictures of things that aren’t mainstream, or so mainstream that they are actually hidden jewels, or anything ironic. Because the hipsters like things only ironically, whatever that is supposed to mean.
Anyway, below is a mixture of some of my favorite pictures of the night. We all had a turn with the camera, courtesy of my awesome friend Gema.
Next update: move in and my first big Barcelona night. J
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