Una pausa

Queridos amigos, tengo que regresar a los Estados Unidos la semana que viene para "una pausa," como se llama aqui. Visitaré a mi familia en California. Si haya aceso al internet escribiré mas, pero probablamente esperé hasta la semana después, cuando regreso aqui otra ves. Hasta luego, y que os vaya bien.

I´m returning to the US for the next week to visit my family in California and will not post, most likely. I´ll be back to Barcelona on October 8 or so, so check back. Best wishes to all.

Waning Summer

I've mostly recovered now, but being sick made me start to think that Barcelona is a little too much like New York. After all, a crush of people in any city can be exhausting. And a metro is a metro is a metro. But here are my top five reasons why Barcelona is not New York:

5. Ubiquitous mullets. And we're talking serious mullets. Pittsburgh's got nothing on Barcelona. I was pretty shocked by the trend until I found out that it's a mark of regional pride among Catalan men. For some reason, wearing a mullet sets them apart from "Spanish" men. This certainly became apparent when the football game between Valencia and Barcelona aired. The shaggy/clean-cut contrast made team jerseys superfluous.

4. Folding bikes. All the rage.

3. Topless sunbathing. Enough said?

2. Okay, so Barcelona was founded by the Carthaginians in about 230 BC, and has some old buildings (well, not quite that old) to prove it.

1. Yesterday a pack of us were rushing for a train when someone's cell phone dropped onto the tracks. Lost forever in New York, right? Not in Barcelona. A ticket-taker kept us off the tracks by reminding us that we had mothers and fathers, while another summoned "el jefe de la estación" who, though taciturn, eventually shut down the train line while he fetched the cell with a special fetching contraption. Even here, in surly Catalan Barcelona, Iberian hospitality runs strong.

And as for me, I'm settling into a routine. Six hours of language classes, cycling, yoga, a lot of buying groceries and trying to cook, and occasional evenings out with a varying pack of europeans. Doesn't leave a lot of time for sight-seeing, but for now, I'm content.

La Mercè

I had been wondering what kind of cultural imagination it takes to let a manic genius like Gaudi loose in a city. I don't have many pictures of Gaudi structures for you yet. But they are striking. They twine like vines. They drip. They curl in upon themselves and then splay out quickly in knots and streaks. They yawn open, they hover over you, they coil for a spring.

In La Mercè, Barcelona's biggest annual festival, I am starting to find an answer. This culture faces fear head-on. Or, at least, this culture honors rituals of facing fear.
I guess I already had some clues: the bull-fights--a man alone in a ring with a bull. Or the "running of the bulls" in Pamplona and elsewhere, where men test fate running in the street with packs of the beasts.

Barcelona frowns on the bull traditions these days, but carries on danger rituals of its own. Such as the "Carrefoc," an exuberant, dramatic fire parade in which people dance in the streets costumed from head to toe in devil kit, or otherwise wrapped against the fire, to the sound of drum beats and exploding firecrackers.

I kept creeping to the front lines, then losing my nerve and jumping and running with the crowd when the firecrackers exploded and fire started raining down from everywhere. I caught some fire on my hands bringing you this picture. Ouch.

It's all great terrifying fun, and there's certainly something cathartic about running into fire. But I've been puzzling at how dark the Carrefoc is. After all, the name of this festival means "mercy." The legend goes that the citizens prayed to St. Mercè to save them from a plague of locusts. The locusts disappeared and Mercè became the patron saint of the city. So why celebrate with drums, fire, devils, dragons, dark fantastical creatures? I don't really know. Any ideas?
Today I encountered a different sort of confrontation with fear, watching the castellers make human towers.

The ideal is nine levels, I've been told. The castellers are progressively smaller, of course, and the top couple are little kids. One group had a tiny little kid who looked like no more than 4 years old. They shimmy up the backs of the rest to the top of the stack, throw up an arm, then quickly slide down. The kids wear helmets, but a couple of years ago one died falling from the top (shiver). I actually saw a couple bomb to the ground, but I think they were okay. The crowd is so thick.
This red group had trouble. I never saw them make a perfect castle. The second time they tried they got up to about 7 levels before the whole structure started shaking, with the crowd gasping in sympathy. Then, suddenly, they all collapsed, like so.

All this is just a sliver of La Mercè. There are also dozens of bands, street performers, hot air balloons, sky fireworks, kite shows, a swim in the harbor, a city run, a bicycle parade, booths for used book sellers and public interest organizations, dances, street games, horse cavalcades; all the museums are open for free, the metro runs 24/7, and the rest of the city is closed. It's quite an event. But that's it for me; I'm out of energy and going back to bed to nurse this cold.

On the brink

...of a storm, and a fiesta of staggering proportions. And I am in bed, sick as a dog, with an ear cocked to see which will hit first.



Strangely, the first sign of the fiesta was the appearance of these second-hand book booths--perhaps 50 of them--flanking a main street.

In preparation for the storm, the fiesta, the raging cold, I went shopping.




A sometimes delightful....











...and sometimes rather disturbing experience.


















And, for a more mannered picture (?), this was the view out my window this morning.
Happy weekend, everyone.

Montjuïc

The view from Montjuïc, or so I have just discovered, after pointing this clumsy mountain bike unsuspectingly up an inviting hill this afternoon. The Olympic stadium from the 1992 games is built here, and a funicular connects the hill to the rest of the Olympic village on the shoreline, down below. There are gardens and museums on the hill as well, but I was mostly interested in the city views, like this one behind me, the city center from the southwest with the ocean out of the picture to the right.
Here it is between these trees.


And here is the imposing castle at the very top of the hill, constructed, I was told by the taciturn guard, in the 16th century. It now serves as an armaments museum. Chillingly, it was used as a political prison up to the Franco era.


And now I'm starting to sound like a guidebook so I'll leave you for the night with a shot of my street.

Details

This city hides its secrets in plain view.

El amor hace que brille el sol

...or, love makes the sun burn brighter.
My first impression is that Barcelona is an ingenious mezcla of California and New York. Mountains spoon the city on one side, while the other spills out into a long beautiful coastline. Santa Barbara, anyone? The air is dry, the sky open, and the pace, well... Spanish. Supermarkets and street markets offer melons, figs, oranges, peaches, plums, tangerines, berries, cherimoyas by the bushel, and fruits I've never even heard of.
But the architecture is that of a big, grand old city, with the remains of Roman structures appearing unexpectedly in side streets and Gaudi's peculiar mirth apparent everywhere. And despite the beach and sun, Barcelona manages a fully urban energy and cosmopolitan feel. So yes, this is day two after the first date, still the fresh blush of infatuation.

Barcelona, day 1

I'm already in love.

Salamanca

My four month liminal adventure began in Salamanca, a small university city two hours by bus to the west of Madrid in the Castilla and Leon portion of the country.

I'd been lured here by pictures of the Plaza Mayor, a broad open courtyard in the center of town, which, I had been assured by the guidebooks, "is widely considered Spain's most beautiful central plaza," perfect for frittering away hours in the sun with cafe con leche.

To my great surprise, there were no peaceful hours to be frittered away last week. I unsuspectingly stumbled into Salamanca's two week fiesta. The city was packed with returning students and other fiesta-seekers; full of life, music, energy from noon until dawn. The central square hosted a variety of bands--this was the winner of Spain's equivalent of American Idol.

And, as you can sort of see from this picture, scores of "casitas" made up the bread and butter of the fiesta, dotting the streets throughout the city and selling tapas and thimble-portions of beer, wine or sangria, seemingly 24/7. The casitas were continually surrounded by university students who, I'm told, circulated a map of the city detailing which casita offered which tapas. Bar-hopping at its finest.

I spent most of my time here, at the language school I'm attending throughout my stay in Spain. I could not have been happier with the school. It is beautiful, well-organized, and attended by a wild variety of students. My class alone had a retired French hairdresser, a girl who grew up in Curacao and now lives in Holland working as a lawyer, a Cambridge civil engineering student, an 18 year old fashionista from Germany who had just left home for the first time, and a Swiss student who wants to work in the travel industry.

I fell in early on with Maria, from Belgium, and we spent the week speaking nothing but Spanish--broken, error-strewn, enthusiastic Spanish. It was great fun and I miss her already.

This is one of the city's landmarks--the University, which was founded in the mid-13th century, and at its peak during the 16th and 17th. This is the stone tapestry over the door. There are busts of Fernando and Isabel in the center. However, it is not the grandeur of the stone carvings that draws visitors and new students to stare long and hard upon this frieze "como las vacas al tren" (or with mouths wide open). Rather, it is the small frog.

Here it is, on the right-hand column. A tiny little frog on the head of a small skull. If you find it unassisted you will have luck--in exams, in love, in whatever you wish for. If not, well, let's just hope the consequences are not too dire because I absolutely could not find it unassisted. There are similar odd touches hiding in stones around the city, such as a tiny astronaut near the front door of the cathedral, in a restored portion of the stone frieze. I wish I had a picture of that one for you.

And the university library is covered in conch shells, like so.

After five days I moved on from Salamanca, ready to make a cambio de aires. I had arrived jet-lagged, exhausted and without luggage to a city that was mostly closed down in favor of a party zone for college kids. Fun, yes. Beautiful, absolutely. But now, jet-lag cured by wine at all hours, and in great desire of a bicycle, Barcelona was calling.