Getting lost and watching cars

Yesterday was interesting. I went out for a short stroll, just wanting to do some shopping, and ended up going for about a four mile walk. How, you might ask? Well, I’ll tell you. Even if it ends up being a humbling story (nothing wrong with being humbled, right?).

Remember when I first got here, took a wrong turn, and ended up walking halfway to France? Well, I did it again yesterday. As in, the exact same walk. All of the stores were closed when I set out (accidentally leaving in the middle of siesta), so I decided to just walk in a different direction than I’d gone last week and explore another part of the neighborhood. I walked around long enough for siesta to end, and did some shopping in a newly-reopened grocery store. When I came out of the store I was completely disoriented, and usually in those situations I just set out walking confidently, so I appear to the outside world that I know what I’m doing. In the end, I probably added a good two miles to my walk, and ended up in the exact same place I got lost last week. Good times. But really, I enjoy long walks and this certainly qualified. That’s what I keep telling myself at least. It’s really quite funny, getting lost in the exact same place twice, even though I started from two locations roughly 1.5 miles from each other.

Today was interesting, too. I planned to go explore a huge park on the northern edge of town, one from which you can see the whole city spread out before you, but when I woke up, Oisin (new roommate/landlord) informed me that we had plans. He had acquired some tickets to the Formula 1 racetrack outside town, and invited me for an afternoon of watching cars drive in circles. Turns out it’s a two day affair: today was the warm-up, and tomorrow is the actual race (series of races actually). I’m not going to go tomorrow, but today was actually a lot of fun and a completely new experience. We drove out to the track and walked around to different vantage points over the course of the afternoon, watching four different races of consistently more impressive cars.

It started with the kind of racing cars that you wouldn’t notice on the street (except for all the decals of course). Just souped-up street cars. Then, it was souped-up street cars, only with spoilers and blowers. Finally, we saw the things-de-resistance; Formula 2000 (one step down from Formula 1, I learned today) cars. The ones that look like rockets. God almighty. If you’ve ever watched these things on tv (I rarely have), you always hear the announcers talking about how loud it is, how they can’t hear the questions of the studio hosts, etc. Well lemme tell you. Dem mofos is LOUD. Ell-Oh-You-Dee god damned loud. And fast. Wow. They seriously fly. I’m not the kind of person who gets geeked out by cars, by any stretch of the imagination. But seeing these things in person, I have to admit feeling a weird gut-excitement, like going to the circus when I was a little kid. It was a lot of fun.

So now it’s Saturday night, and I was thinking of going out but I just had an enormous dinner (fried potatoes with chicken and vegetables) and several glasses of wine. And I really did walk around a lot today. So I’m tired, content, and have plans to go check out that park tomorrow anyways, so...I’m just going to stay in tonight, rewatch "The 40 Year Old Virgin" on the laptop, and get up early-ish tomorrow so I can study for a few hours before heading out to the park. As I’ve said many times before, one of the best things about living in, rather than just traveling through, a foreign city is the lack of urgency. I know I can relax tonight and be content with what I’ve done today, rather than thinking I need to fit in as much as I possibly can in every spare hour. Much more my speed.

In closing: I have an exciting new game for everyone. It's called "drink half a bottle of wine and then hang your newly-laundered clothing on clothlines suspended over a 30 foot drop." Seriously, it's a lot of fun. It's like an old atari video game. Burgermaster or something.

The mouthwash here tastes like fruit punch

Other than that, so far not a whole ton is different. There are little things of course: I had an interesting experience with a kilo scale the other day, for a couple hours I thought I’d gained ten pounds. And of course you don’t have to worry about getting shot, which is a big if abstract difference (in my world at least).

It’s not that Barcelona isn’t completely different than Seattle of course. This early in the game, though, before I’ve really gotten to know the city well, things aren’t nearly as alien as you might think. Sad as it seems, modern cities aren’t that different the world over, as far as I can tell. Walking down one of the super-developed city streets here, I can zone out and almost believe I’m in the states. One of those cities where everyone speaks Spanish, of course. But still.

I fear it’s the spread of American capitalism that’s causing this destruction of uniqueness. One of things I’ve noticed since I’ve been here is that one of the most common activities is to go out to the bar after work and complain about how much you hate your job. And a lot of people have to work too many hours. And they don’t get long enough breaks.

Okay, here’s a huge difference that I haven’t personally experienced, just talked about with residents: People here only have to pay something like 8% of their income in taxes. And the benefits are all state-sponsored. Free medical, dental, they take care of you when you retire, etc. And it only takes about three seconds to figure out how that can work here but not at home: the military-industrial complex. Not that we didn’t already know it, but doesn’t it give you the warm-fuzzies to be so blatantly reminded that we pay from 1/4 to a 1/3 of our income to allow amazingly rich men to enjoy unspeakable profits by waging wars all over the world? And not just obvious wars like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan; the cultural wars that convince people in Spain that they have to get up at 7am and work 12 hours a day. And eat at McDonalds of course.

What else...oh yeah, the food is much cheaper here. It doesn’t cost much to eat pretty well if you don’t go out (and the perceived difference is heightened by the conversion rate; even though I know it’s worth more, I still unconsciously think of a Euro as a buck when I see the prices of things). And the real estate business is very different, too, at least from Seattle. It’s almost impossibly expensive to buy an apartment in the city, most of the people who own homes have had them in the family for decades. And it’s not super expensive per month to rent an apartment...except that you have to sign a five year lease, put down a monster payment up front, and buy all your own appliances. Dustin had to buy a refrigerator and a washing machine when he moved into his place. In Seattle we’d complain if we had to come up w/ first, last, and a damage deposit (maybe 3 grand)...well, here you have to have like 10G Euros to rent your own place, even if a two-bedroom apartment is only 650E/month or so.

I guess all this is my point. When I say something like “things aren’t that different here,” I’m not being pessimistic. Maybe I haven’t fully taken advantage of being in a new city yet, of course. What I’m saying is, all the cities I’ve been in are different in some big and some small ways, but they’re also the same in some fundamental ways. Of COURSE there are parts of this city that are truly old in a way I’ve never encountered. Of COURSE the people speak a different language and perceive the world in a completely different way. But then again, just like everywhere else I’ve been, there are some happy, friendly people and some surly unhappy people. There are people walking dogs and kids spazzing out in schoolyards.

Of course, I've left out the one big thing that separates cities from each other all over the world: weather. It's still nice and sunny and warm here. It occurs to me every so often that I've successfully escaped Seattle winter. Maybe my head will explode without the enforced hibernation, I don't know. But it will definitely be interesting to find out.

One last big difference: the little guy on the exit signs is in a way bigger hurry here than he is at home. Seems significant.

A room of one's own

Just completed a long and productive weekend. Saturday Dustin and I went out in the early afternoon to check out a room for rent. It’s in the same neighborhood as D and Esther live, San Andreu; it’s where I wanted to live when I first got here, but then I changed my focus to some areas closer to the main downtown...so of course this room turned out to be pretty much perfect for me. It’s owned by a 29 year old Irishman named Oisin (pronounced "O-sheen") who has lived in Barca for 17 years. He speaks English perfectly but still has an Irish accent. And he knows where to get good beer, too, which is a big deal here (most places only have crap Spanish beer). It’s nice and quiet, and he works during the day so I have the place to myself right now. And it’s close to two metro lines, one of which goes directly to the beach. It’s a good set up.

After renting the room, we went down to the beach to meet some friends and ended up staying out all night. We saw some good student jazz at a local club at the music school, had a nice late dinner (a platter of about six different kinds of pork, some sardine-like fish in vinegar, and the tradional bread of Catalan, baguette rubbed w/ olive oil, garlic, and mashed tomato), then ended the night at a different bar. I was excited, they had Chimay there, a good Belgian-style beer. It was the first good beer I’d had since arriving. I switched to wine for the most part, at least when drinking at home, so I’m not complaining or anything (not too vehemently at least). I stayed w/ D and E on Saturday night (Sunday morning is more like it) because we never got around to moving my stuff, and then yesterday when we got up and around we took everything over here and dropped it off.

We walked back to D’s place and picked up a delicious lunch of roast chicken and potatoes, had lunch w/ Esther and their friend Nicolas, and then played a couple games of Carcassonne (I won the first one and Esther won the second). By then we were all sleepy and happy (and a couple other dwarves: Dustin was sneezy and I was dopey, for example), so I grabbed a few last things that were still at their place and headed home. I did a quick run around the neighborhood looking for a mini-mart (the only places open on Sunday night where you can buy groceries), bought a frozen pizza, some beer, and yogurt (to bide me over this morning before I went shopping for real), and then came back to relax in my new place for the first time.

Last night was the FC Barcelona-Real Madrid soccer match, I was hoping to watch that but it wasn’t on free television. To watch matches in a bar you have to get there at least an hour early (especially one this significant, it’s akin to a Red Sox-Yankees game except they only play a few times a year), and by the time I figured out the game wasn’t on, it was too late. I was tired anyways, and I’ve discovered an online service that streams a bunch of channels (international for here) for free. So I was able to watch some futbol Americano instead. All the early games start around 6pm Sunday night here. I cooked the pizza (very tasty, actually better than US frozen pizzas I think), drank a few beers (surprisingly good, I got the standard Spanish lager only w/ lemon juice added; it makes it a lot better), and then went to bed early.

And now here I am. Monday morning, in my own place for the first time, and ready for the next thing. I have been breaking this entire experience into more manageable chunks: first chunk was finishing work and moving out of my apartment; second was living in Edmonds, seeing everyone, birthday, last minute preparations for the trip; third was the trip itself; forth was staying w/ D and E, getting my legs under me, figuring out where I wanted to live and looking for my own place...and now this is the fifth chunk.

It’s funny, most of the rooms I called about (okay Dustin called) were already full, no matter how quickly we got on it. Either that or nobody answered. The ad for this place had been up for awhile, but O’sheen said nobody had really called about. It’s very odd, but I’m taking it as a good sign that this is indeed my place.

Okay, I’m off to explore the hood and do some shopping. More soon.

Ciao.

More random observations about Barcalona

Like in Seattle, there are pigeons here. Unlike in Seattle, there are no Laundromats. Or clothes dryers for that matter. For someone coming from a damp climate, this is completely and utterly alien to me. Everyone has a washer, but then just hang their clothes up outside to dry. Dustin and Esther have about half a dozen different ways to hang up wet clothes: there are the crisscrossing clotheslines on both verandas, the portable stand that you can whip out if it starts raining or you have a lot of clothes, the set up by which you can extend a series of metal rods from an apparatus in the shower (my personal favorite)...it’s pretty amazing.

I was reminded when I went to the Barca-Chelsea match the other night that the drinking age here is like 9. Okay, maybe it’s 18. But as a 32 year old American, it sure felt like there were a bunch of toddlers hanging out in the bar. Pretty disconcerting. It hadn’t really come up before because when we’ve gone out we’ve traveled to the city center, and as I said before this neighborhood (Sant Andreu) has more families. Lots of teenagers and grandparents. Anyways, it felt like I was watching the match at a daycare, only the kids could drink beer and smoke.

Dustin explains the insanity associated with trying to find a room in Barca: there are roughly 50 million people in Spain, and two major city centers. Let's do the math: that's 1/6th the population of the US (18%)...and what, 1/100th (1%) the number of cities? So all the kids who live in the country stream to Madrid and Barca in droves every day, looking for places to stay. Some of them live in apartments owned by their grandparents and make money renting out the spare rooms for a fat profit. Buying is not an option (unless you have E300,000 lying around for a two bedroom flat). I'll probably end up in the Barcelona equivilent to Burien.

Final thought: these Spaniards have a different word for freakin’ everything.

Ciao.

The Haps

I’ve been playing this new game quite a bit since I got here called Carcassonne. It’s this map building game in which you draw pieces out of a bag, one at a time, and then place them on a growing map. You can build cities and roads, and once you have two ends to the road or enclose a city you can score points based on the length of the road or size of the city. You have to have placed the most pieces to score points. Anyways, it turns out I’m pretty good at this game. I won the first time I played and have now won seven out of eight times. Dustin is even actually trying now, and I’m still knocking him around. Good times.

So, this weekend, I went out for a walk on my own to try to get to know the city better. I brought a map and some water, and had planned out a way to try to get to the Mediterranean. I won’t bore you with too many details. Suffice to say I set off walking the wrong way down the street I had determined would take me in the general direction of the water (south). So I was basically walking to France. In any case, it was a nice walk and that was really the point. And I did get a better feel for the neighborhood. Especially once I oriented myself enough to figure out I wasn’t actually on the map anymore...but I digress. The point is, on my walk I discovered a big athletic complex, with an Olympic sized track, basketball courts, and various other cool things. I went back today to try to figure out how to get onto the jogging track and discovered it’s actually a gym. Instead of trying to figure out how to join, I thought it made more sense to just run laps around the outside of the entire complex. I decided to consider it 1/3 of a mile (even thought it’s probably more like a ½ mile) and ran six laps. It was great to get a good jog in. AND I didn’t get lost once. I walked straight to it, and straight back (along a different route no less).

I’m basically trying to settle into a good routine around here. We’re not going out all the time; a big part of that is trying to save money since there is very little inflow at the moment, but it’s also that I want to get to know Barcelona in a different way than that. I was in Europe in 2001, and even though I loved it I got really tired because we were running around so much, trying to fit in everything. Well, I also got tired because I was with my dad and brother and we started drinking at 10am every day. Regardless, I decided then that, when I came back here, I wanted to do it this way. To actually move into a city and get to know it as more of a resident than a traveler. To find all the equivalent things here that I love in Seattle; all the great little secret restaurants, the grocery stores where you can get the best stuff, how to use the mass transit system effectively...not to say that I also don’t want to know where to go to dance and drink, of course. But it’s a small aspect of a much larger goal.

I've started the process of looking for my own place; D and I are going to check out a nice spot tomorrow, about a mile away from here. It's pretty expensive but it looks really nice, and I've always been willing to spend a bit more for the right place. Besides, I guess it's a Manhattan-style free-for-all when it comes to housing here; you basically have to show up at the appointment with a big wad of cash in your pocket and be ready to throw it down at that moment, or else the person breathing down your neck will. We'll see...

Gonna go watch the big futbol match tonight, Barca vs. Chelsea. A huge match-up, even w/out Peter Cech (who got his head broke in a recent match). We’re going to go out to a bar w/ a couple of Dustin’s friends, I’m excited to check it out.

Ciao.

Random thoughts from and about Barca

One thing real quick; I want to assure everyone that just because I'm keeping this blog, it doesn't mean I won't respond to emails or comments posted to the blog. For those of you who received the big bad group email, my point wasn't that the only way you could keep up with me was through my blog, so don't bother trying any personal correspondence; I was actually trying to reassure everyone that I wouldn't be sending out only group emails, that you could follow my adventures by checking out the blog but also, please, feel free to get at me. I will definitely write back. Anyhoo, on to some observations...

I’ve been drinking the tap water here, which I think is a good way to get to know a city. You are actually consuming the water of the place, rather than bottled water that is the same everywhere. Of course, when I get intestinal parasites you call say “I told you so.”

***

I really need to get my hair cut, but I’m a bit reticent to go into a barbershop and try to explain what I want. In the states, I always start out with, “short on the sides and in the back, slightly longer on top.” What makes me nervous is the proliferation of mullets here. The Euro-mullet is in full effect in Barca. There are the fashion femullets, the crew-mullet, the ever popular soccer mullet...basically, enough mullets around that I would be nervous going into a barbershop and muddling my way through anything that even remotely sounded like “short on the blahblahblah and longer in the yaddayadda.” I am afraid I would walk out with “el negocio en la frente, el fiesta en la espalda.” Never a good thing.

***

Of all the differences between Barca and Seattle, or any other US city I’ve visited for that matter, the hardest to get used to is the store hours. The idea of going out at any time to get something you need isn’t an option. You can’t get hungry at 1am and make a run to the 24-hour grocery store, for example. And siesta messes with me, too, because you either have to go shopping in the morning or the early evening. Everything closes during the day except the Muslim or Korean stores, generally. And those are the equivalent of 7-11s, you wouldn’t go there to do any actual shopping. (I just asked Dustin, "so, are there any places that are open 24/7?" He responds, "yeah, there are some." "Like, stores or whatever?" "Oh no, nothing like that...some bars maybe..." So there you go.)

Here’s a perfect example of the difference: you rent a video from the local video store (which is the only one you can get a membership at). Not only did you have to go there expressly at a specific time to ensure they are open, but the next day you have to also go back at a specific time to return the video...BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO ACTUALLY HAND THE VIDEO TO THE CLERK TO RETURN THE VIDEO. Seriously, wtf? There are no slots in the doors to slip your movie into if you happen to drop by when they’re closed (say, all day Sunday and Monday or from 2-5 the rest of the week).

***

Anyone tries to tell me I’m not living in the coolest-ass city in the world, I’m gonna drop this on’em:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_of_Aragon

Are you kidding me? “The Crown of Aragon”??? I love this place!

Speaking of Lord of the Rings, I’ve been binge-watching Lost for the past few days, a couple episodes a night before going to sleep. (I'm still staying up til 3-4am...I can't tell if it's the jet lag or just that I'm on vacation.) Why, when people were trying to sell me on the show, did nobody ever say, “oh yeah, and it’s got Merry from LotR…?” I would've checked it out months ago had I known. That’ll be one of the first things I tell people if they ask about the show now.

Ciao.

Fun in the sun

Happy Friday the 13^th everyone.

My buddy Jamie loaned me his backup digital camera for the trip, and I’ve actually been doing a good job of taking pictures. Unfortunately, either I forgot to get or I have misplaced the cable I need to attach the cam to my computer. I’ll get a new one asap, but for the time being my entries will be sans photos.

Where to start. Since I have so much time here, I haven’t felt compelled to try to fit everything in at once. Tuesday and Wednesday were spent mostly catching up with Dustin and wandering around the neighborhood. We live in Sant Andreu, a neighborhood that everyone says is on the outskirts of the town, far from the city center. I like it out here, though. Coming from the states, a 10 minute cab ride or 20 minutes on the train isn’t far at all. It’s much quieter out here, too; more families, and the feel of more permanent residents. Not that the city center isn’t great, it is; it’s just that I’d rather be able to come and go as I want, and have the place where I live more like this. I’m planning to look for my own place in this hood, as well.

Some of the best things so far:

1. The food of course; this town’s all about cured pork and seafood. That’s a little bit of okay with me. There are lots of great little markets everywhere, in the traditional model--a meat shop, a fruit and vegetable shop, a bread shop--and everything’s fresh and local.
2. Dustin and Esther. D and I haven’t lived in the same town for a long long time, so it’s a pretty special occasion just for that reason. And meeting his fiancé Esther is very cool too. It’s perfect, she’s learning English while I’m learning Castilian. We can almost barely communicate. But it’s great fun of course, Dustin is exhausted from trying to translate two sentences at the same time but he’s been undyingly patient. He’s gonna get pissed off one of these days, I know it.
3. The terrace. La terrace. They have a top floor apartment with an enormous sunny terrace, 15x20 feet or so. Lots of beautiful plants, and a view overlooking the huge square across the street. I’m sorry I can’t post any pictures yet, I’ll put together a nice photo montage once I get the right cable.
Anyways, I went out and bought some mostly adequate equivalent of a yoga mat and used it today to practice on the terrace in the sun. For some reason the makers of this mat coated both sides with a slippery, plastic, sprayed-on substance. Thereby negating the entire purpose of the yoga mat, as far as I can tell. Ah well. But it’s fine, it works better than the stone terrace floor, and I know I’ll get garroted by my friends and family if I complain too loudly about the weird plastic crap the Spanish spray on their yoga mats, which makes it tougher to practice my yoga on the sunny Barcelonian terrace. In any case, I plan to spend a lot of time out there. Which brings me to...
4. The weather. Ahhh. It’s been mostly sunny and warm, with a nice pleasant breeze. I’ve been going out in shorts and t-shirts. It rained on and off from Wednesday evening through yesterday night, starting with a beautiful big lighting storm and culminating with us downtown getting soaked when it rained the hardest. It wasn’t a cold rain, though. It was nice. It will get colder of course, but not that much colder.

All sorts of things are in process. I met Marc, one of D’s friends, last night downtown. He’s a jogger, so I’m going to start running with him soon. He is also pretty new in town, so he’s going to give me some info about his language tutor. I hope to start working with her or someone else she can recommend early next week, for a couple sessions a week to start. The language thing is going alright, I have found myself going brain-dead whenever somebody speaks to me in Castilian but it’s getting better. And it’s really interesting in Barcelona because a lot of the signs are in Catalan. Which can get kind of confusing. It will most likely get worse as I actually learn Castilian, because then I will have the opportunity to be mislead by the signs. For now, I can’t speak anything so it’s a-okay.

I wish I could show you a picture of this funky apartment, there’s this deathtrap of an entryway with three levels; you step into the apartment, then have to step up one stair to get to this sort of small landing that encloses the area immediately around the front door. Once you’re on the landing (second level), you can either step down to the right to the bedrooms, bathroom, and kitchen (this is on the same level as the area immediately around the front door), or up to the left into the living room (which leads out onto the terrace). So I’m staying in the living room. First night here, I wake up at 6am (9pm to me) and stumble off to the bathroom. Suddenly, the ground falls out from under me, not once but twice. I kind of lurch around, running into stuff and trying to right myself while having to continually step up, down, and sideways. I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to break my ankle or smash my head open on my first night in Barcelona.

Guess that’s it for now. I’m going to have the place to myself this weekend (D and E are visiting her parents outside of town), so I’m sure I’ll have some interesting stories.

How are you supposed to end a blog entry that’s more letter-like, anyways? I guess I should come up with a standard sign-off. For now, I’ll just say...

Ciao.

Barcelona

Well. Since my last entry began something like, "I haven't written in this thing for a month," I guess I'm doubling the time between entries every time. Expect another update sometime in February.

Anyways, I'm here. In Barcelona. I'm visiting my very good friend and host Dustin. I do not speak Spanish.

One of the first things I learned here was that you don't call it "Spanish." Barcelona is in the Catalan region, which has its own language and everything. Calling Castillian, the language of all Latin American countries (besides Brazil of course), "Spanish" to a Catalan is something like calling U.S. English "American" to somebody from Mexico. They generally won't get upset about it, but your life will be easier in small ways if you make the effort.
I had an uneventful trip, from Seattle-Philly-Frankfurt-Barcelona. I will add some more content about the trip and first few days here later in the week. For now, I just want to add something short and get this thing going again.

Much, much more to come.