barcelona

man, TOTAL weather-related drama last night related to runja's flight to NL. it is amazing to think that snow in washington d.c. can make one person in holland fight with one person who is in new mexico. BUT things have worked out in a nice way that will be detailed in the next post concerning WEATHER, including an up-to-date report on the weather conditions here. OK, now on to a warmer topic...

SO

NOW

barcelona



what did you expect? barcelona was awesome. i spent 4.5 days there last weekend soaking up the scene. again all of my photos are on

FLICKR

so you can see too many photos there.

i had to fly ryan air to barcelona which means that the flight was cheap but getting to and from the airport is a pain in the ass. ryan is a cheap irish airline that cuts costs by flying to small airports outside metropolitan areas with lower fees and by having the worst service and worst seats i've sat on in a long time. plus my flights left in the early early morning both ways and that is a total pain as it ruins both the night before and the day after the flight. and you have to pay a lot to get to the airport. i flew out of eindhoven, a city in southern NL. the train ticket to get there and back, without the discount because it is in the morning, is 30 euro! and the bus from girona airport (over 100 km from barcelona, halfway to france practically) is 21 euro! so even if the flight is 10 euro, i still spent a total of 61 euro just getting into the city of barcelona, not to mention all of the time it consumed. so is flying ryan air worth it? if you are young and able to sleep through anything and don't mind all the transit switches (bike > train > train > bus > airplane > bus > subway), then yes! otherwise suck it up and fork over the extra 30 euro or so to fly AMS-barcelona direct.

i feel like i am repeating myself, but barcelona is gorgeous. it is a classic city form like rio de janeiro or even LA situated on a coast and then stretching up into the hills. but like LA the coastline isn't the main center of the city, it is an afterthought, merely a nice addition to an already badass city. there are stretches of beach but a lot of the coast is industrial and dedicated to marinas. in barceloneta the street grid runs at an acute angle to the shore, so that the short end of the rectangular blocks abut the beach; the beach frontage isn't even maximized as property. instead, the real center is further inland, somewhere near plaza catalunya i'd say. the city's medieval city center, the gothic neighborhood, is a winding maze of palaces, plazas, cathedrals, markets, and african men on every street corner whispering in broken english to tourists, trying to sell hash. no! i don't want to buy hash! and especially not from you. raval is the other old neighborhood and is way more gritty (there are more hash sellers), filled with immigrants and cool stores. then the next layer is cerda's famed square block plan (now 150 years old) and the nice areas of passeig de gracia and the avenida diagonal. at the north end of the avenida diagonal is a new developing area, started by the caixa forum building, a purple spray-concrete moon rock by herzog and de meuron (more later). further above that, moving into the hills, is a city scale between the gothic and cerda's blocks, and supremely comfortable. this neighborhood is gracia. i stayed here because my host lived here, a bass player named alex whom i met through UNT. he is studying abroad here for the term before graduating in the spring. gracia is hip but still not really gentrified, tons of bars, shops, pedestrian streets, good scale. there are obviously tons of other neighborhoods but this is where i spent most of my time. also the parque montjuic is awesome, rising by the ocean. there is a university neighborhood at the inland end of avenida diagonal and neighborhoods sprawling out up and down the coast and into the mountains but i didn't visit those. the closest i got was a beautiful hilltop above gaudi's park guell, where the photo above was taken.

OK now highlights:

-when i arrived, the weather was gorgeous. i wore a long sleeve shirt and the sun was so strong. i hadn't seen the sun in weeks. i sat in a park and watched this dog play fetch, simply bathing in the sunlight warming me on a concrete bench. at the end of the day i walked all the way down to barceloneta and just sat on the beach, eventually falling asleep, waking up as the sun was setting. as beaches go it is ok but pitiful for any aquatic experience save swimming. it got chilly on saturday and colder on sunday, but thursday and friday were unusually warm and a great gift. milk duds from heaven.



-alex and his friends are there in the city to play music, so we went to a jam session on thursday night at a club only a few blocks from his apartment that he shares with a pianist and a catalan poet. it was high-level so i didn't play but alex & friends played well. i was super stoked to find out that the jam session was run by jorge rossy, a spanish drummer well-known for being in brad mehldau's trio for a long time. he was there, playing piano and schmoozing with friends. at the end of the session he thanked everybody for coming and then, drink in hand, proceeded to croon a chet baker tune with a medium rare spanish accent ("joo'd bee so eezy to laav"). que barbaro! brutal! puta madre!

-SAGRADA FAMILIA


spent an entire afternoon combing this building from top to bottom. its construction has been continuing off and on for over a century and will probably continue for at least another 200 years at this pace, thanks to the immense costs involved and the laid back spanish mentality. i was overjoyed to see the frequent use of ruled surfaces throughout the building. anybody who has taken ochsendork's class would have appreciated it. and such steep spiral staircases! the structural details are immaculate and the ornamentation everywhere, from the elliptical bulbs where columns meet to the facade depicting the immaculate conception.


it was also both terrifying and great to pay the extra 2.50 euro and go up to the top of the spires where you can examine the ongoing construction and gaze out at the city. i had a few moments of vertigo but overall i was fine. there are bridges between the spires that you cross over and narrow staircases that some americans wouldn't be able to fit through sideways. ironically, i even ran into a dutch person in the top of the spire. you can never escape the dutch. the final plan calls for a higher spire in the center with a cross that can be occupied. the building is also supposed to extend across a street for its main entrance but that block is now a dense apartment block. what will happen? when will it be finished, if ever? who knows!


-la boqueria! colorful market off of la rambla in raval. it has tons of delicious everything, from mantecados (almond holiday candies that start as a powdery thing and instantly aggregate in your mouth to rich wet goodness) to all types of vegetables, fruits, cheeses, cuts of meat, candies, and even all the disgusting meat products that vegetarians love to stare at and be thankful they don't eat those things. like this:




-food. i ate a lot of falafel in barcelona, including a hat trick at the maoz store on la rambla. it is so good and all vegetarian. they have a buffet where you can totally load up on toppings and actually get full. TASTY. but you can only sit there for 20 minutes before they kick you out. and the skinhead that works there always plays this addictive ricardo villalobos minimal techno shit that will rot your teeth. also ate a pizza without having to pay like 12 euro like in holland. also cheap good wine. it was fun to cook at alex's house too.



-lifestyle. i am well-adapted for the spanish late-night lifestyle. eh, we'll eat dinner at 10:30, that's cool. i guess we'll go walk around a bit at 1, no big deal. on friday we were at a concert at an old palace in the gothic area that didn't start until 10. it was traditional music and people were all doing large pagan circle dances and laughing while pakistani men weaved through the crowd trying to sell you estrella for 1 euro a can. sometimes it worked. this was somewhere close to a palace built on top of roman fortifications leftover from their empire. the concert didn't end until midnight, at least. and i think bars stay open until 3? that is nice. i missed going to secret bars because they are open super late and in the old neighborhood and by that time in the night i was already tired and in gracia or at alex's apartment. next time!

-montjuic is a big hill near the ocean. it has a lot of cultural destinations as well as facilities from the olympics in the early 90s (1992?). i started on saturday at the bottom and walked up, seeing this big catalan museum, botanical gardens, and the mies van der rohe pavilion.



the mies pavilion was worthwhile. of course the stone was exquisite, etc. it was overcast and i was the only person there at the time. it is a nice space. i wanted to sit on the chairs like i did in the neue nationalgalerie in berlin but the signs told me not to. the mixing of inside/outside and the ambiguity are nice. good bookstore too. there was an installation by AI WEIWEI too, with milk in the pool. it didn't smell but it looked good. the olympic facilities were OK, now sort of abandoned and windswept with a calatrava communication tower looking like a medieval tool for lancing adolescent acne. my favorite part of montjuic was the jardin botanico de barcelona, the botanical garden featuring mediterranean biomes from across the world. it is really well design with angular cortens steel walls everywhere and nice seats. the main pavilion are some angled planes and there is a pond that must be nice in the summer but is now a placid puddle. the botanical institute building sits uphill above the garden and is a clean austere building, with a glassed first floor and a second story that looks out on the city, also finished in corten. the plants were fascinating too, of all shapes and sizes. i crumpled eucalyptus leaves in my hand from australia and was instantly transported to the hills north of addis ababa where i had completed the same act only 11 months ago (ethiopia imported these trees from australia in the late 19th century to combat deforestation). perhaps the mediterranean is the toilet bowl of western history?



also eating a questionably vegetarian sandwich in the courtyard of sert's miro museum and riding the funiculare down to raval from montjuic. i didn't go see the castle, a decision i now regret but it is ok (next time).

-park guell. hit this on sunday with alex. an amazing wonderworld of gingerbread houses, leaning columns, comfortable benches, and scenic views. horribly faceted, tiling everywhere, even a didgeridoo playing some cromagnon circular breathing grooves in one of the caves by the entrance. lots of tourists of course but gorgeous work. the plantings were a bit average and the park seemed normal after you climbed above the main terrace, but nice. i saw gaudi's house! also alex and i hiked up to a scenic vista above the park where i took the first picture of the post and also the following panorama.



then time at the picasso museum which was free on sunday but not that impressive. large gaps in the collectionand a circulation pattern that was confusing and ambiguous. ew. they had a ton of his early work and then only a series he did while living near barcelona and some ceramics and etchings. there was also an exhibit on picasso's japanese influence including a heavy dose of erotic art that awkwardly contained some book plates of a pair of giant squid making love to a woman. double ew. i think there was some analogy between the mystery of the deep sea and the sexual mystery of women? but still. thanks. the museum is in some antique repurposed manor with interior light wells. they left one room, some salon, unchanged with gold entablatures and mirrors and a chandelier that probably cost more than my house.

-caixa forum area. tons of construction relating to this area in the northeast of the city, at the end of the avenida diagonal. of course the herzog and de meuron forum, a sprayed concrete floating monolith with some expectedly cool perforated triangle cladding but deserted, now only the property of skateboarders kickflipping down its inclined areas under the building. this is a cool area to wander around in. it was frigid and the wind was whipping off the sea when i visited. cool marina with some cor tens and a huge solar array. impressive but deserted. also i recognized the FOA park with its curving crescent concrete pavers. it looked so overgrown and poorly-maintained now. i walked through the EMBT parque diagonal. it had the feel of an abandoned amusement park with rails everywhere and coiled steel sculptures that supported giant floating planters. it seemed wasteful. maybe i don't understand their work enough? their market downtown was nice though. with factories around and construction and weird pavilion space, it was an exciting area. maybe a future node of the city? we'll see. regardless, windswept and intriguing.



-language. whereas in holland the language is hard for me to understand because of the throat sounds and compound nouns, i got along well in barca with my spanish. i was surprised that some of it came back a bit once in the city and listening to other people speak. of course i am not good at it, but i could carry on a bit of a conversation. also it was intriguing to hear catalan, a mix of spanish and french sort of. i am definitely more partial to the romance language sounds of portuguese and spanish but maybe i am biased because of my early childhood experience in brazil or something.

-politics. coming from holland, the city seemed quite politically turbulent and aware. holland, although its government is shifting more right in the recent history like most of western europe, is a country where anything goes and politics aren't at the forefront of discussion. regardless of the actual laws, anything goes basically. all the spoils of liberalism are here. i was surprised to learn about barcelona's history as a center for anarchism and radical politics throughout the past century. i also knew nothing about catalan history before going or the interest in seceding from spain to become a separate nation. apparently some people are serious about this. the catalan state makes the most money in spain and some are angry that their tax dollars go to supporting poorer states throughout the country. there is a theory too that christopher columbus might have been catalan as some of his journals were discovered to be written in catalan.

spaniards even protest late at night. on saturday after dinner around 11 we were sitting around when we heard screams and loud sounds. moving onto the balcony (barcelona is a balcony culture like paris), we saw a parade of people marching down the street with big signs, chanting, and a poster of a local politician. they were also carrying communist flags with the hammer and sickle. the story is that a local cultural center is set to be destroyed to make way for new development and people are angry about this. later at night we walked through a square where there was a benefit concert to save this center. the event was over but young people were milling about, the pakistanis still hovering like vultures hoping to sell more estrella. one group of boys were jostling a port-a-potty with a friend inside. you could here the liquid sloshing around and the guy yelling for them to stop. when he finally emerged (unscathed by waste), he slipped one of his arms into a crutch and hobbled over to his friends, angry but laughing.

-walking. of course this goes for any city, but walking is the ultimate joy. you see everything, the people, the tiles falling off the buildings, the shitty electronics stores, every bodega and old woman. raval especially is a great place to walk, a potent mix of second hand stores and immigrant culture. there were stores for halal meat, indian ingredients, african food, and asian markets. i saw a combination laundromat and internet cafe (a super smart mix). i saw design studios, artist spaces, booths set up on la rambla de raval. i stopped in the open door of a cultural center to hear a quartet of drummers playing samba in the late afternoon, rehearsing for an evening performance. in the gothic area alex showed me the side of a cathedral where there was bricked depression, like a pond that had been drained. here was a monument where the french had dug a low spot and installed a drain. they proceeded to execute a large amount of spaniards/catalans, their bodies piling up and the blood draining efficiently to the sea. nearby i passed a man eating at a open air bar, his dog sitting in the street watching obediently, his marbled fur wrapped at the neck with a red bandanna. the joy here is not to wander between museums and gaudi buildings, but to walk with open eyes and see every little piece of each street, even if the reality escapes you and all you are left with is the scent of a memory.

there is so much more but i will stop here because it is dark and i am hungry now. barcelona was tan guapa in its rough luxury, in its heavy city blocks and thin streets, in its sea breeze and nightlife. i hope we will meet again someday soon.