Oh! Barcelona

Beth and I saw these guys in front of a market while we were walking home one evening. I am pretty sure nothing has ever made me happier. Enjoy. Pictures will be coming soon.

Scatterbrains

Hallie got here today.
I am listening to 36 Chambers while Gonz reads the Economist.
Tonight we will most likely go out on the town looking for some jazz.
Today's dinner menu: Spicy Spaghetti with Clams and Red Bell Pepper, using the leftover clams from last night's Clams with Chorizo, Peppers, and Potatoes.
Here is a hypnotized dog that made me laugh.

So long for now.

Uvas

We all finished up with the mandatory 3-week proseminar (consisting of 15-hour classes in Spanish, Catalan, and Cataluñan history and culture) yesterday. Perhaps as a celebration, the program directors scheduled a wine tasting for us last night.

Not only do I now know slightly more about wine than I did before, I have discovered a delicious treat. The Spanish feed this to small children: take a slice of bread, pour red wine over it so that it is more or less soaked, cover it in sugar, eat. It was either Mischa or Cliff who described it as alcoholic jam.

A mighty wind

When I finally left my residence hall at 5:30 today, the wind had picked up quite a bit. It was somewhere in the vicinity of 60 or 65 degrees yesterday, but these winds blew in a cold front comparable to, say, a late October night in DC (not necessarily a rarity in these parts, but noteworthy nonetheless). When Beth and I were in the supermarket buying groceries, she got a call from one of the administrators of her program asking if she was OK. "I think they just called me because of the wind." "The wind?" Turns out that yes, the wind posed something of a threat today. After dinner Beth left and I logged onto NYTimes.com. I found this there.

I'm pretty sure we've had worse in Providence. We just reinforce our goddamn roofs better. (Unless they shelter swimming pools.)

These streets won't sing but everyone else will

Some observations and comments:

You walk down La Rambla and 4 guys hold out Estrella Damm beer, yelling, "Cerveza, cerveza!" In between these proclamations, they mutter, "Hash? Hash?" People on either side of you are drinking these cervezas while city workers spray the streets down, washing away the inordinate amount of filth and human vice that has accumulated in piles, puddles, and pools over the past couple of hours. A friend of yours trips over a vomit slick that some unfortunate soul has recently deposited on the sidewalk. This is as much a weekend as a weekday scene.

You leave an overpriced club - 10-Euro cover charge, but a street hocker has handed you a 3-Euro discount ticket - at 4 a.m. A line is still building up at the door as tourists and natives alike blaze through the night.

You sit in the park behind La Estación de Autobuses Barcelona Nord and a thousand seagulls rise into the air and swirl like a swarm of locusts. You hope you don't get crapped on. Because this is a miraculous city, you don't.

Conspirators, All!

Last night found me eating dinner and going back to the absinthe bar with Cliff, Mischa, Henderson, and Beth. A good group, to say the least. Totally worth the four hours of sleep I subsequently got.

Oh, and it seems that there is no problem sneaking people into la Residencia overnight.

A 5-Month Vacation

So I got up late today, predictably. I should invest in an alarm clock. My roommate Gonzalo and I had to find UPF by ourselves, which was a bit complicated, as it was our first time there.

We took a Cataluña history class there. After a 2-hour lecture and a movie about the Spanish Civil War, he assigned the homework: 1.5 pages of 1.5 type on what interests us in Cataluña history; 2 pages of reading. My plans for tonight? A nap, and a good dinner with friends. So far, this place has called for nothing else.

Also, the afternoon's activities consisted of walking around this place.

Absinthe

Tonight was absinthe night #1. An interesting process: drop a sugar cube in the absinthe, pick it out with a fork; lay the fork across the top of the glass, put the absinthe-drenched sugar cube on top of it; light the sugarcube on fire; wait for the fire to go out, begin spraying the sugar cube with water (bottle with a hole punched in the top); after the sugarcube dissolves, keep spraying the side of the glass until it is full with 85% liquid; drink, preferably slowly, though this is optional.

It tasted like black liquorice distilled with some sort of hard, rough alcohol. Two drinks in and I was set. What a Tuesday.

Swine!

Pigs. All anyone eats around here are pigs. It's a beautiful thing. In the spirit of the country, I made this last night. It's not exactly a Spanish recipe, but the bacon was nevertheless delicious. And Cliff was cutting up some sort of sausagy thing, putting it on bread, and sticking a bit of cheese on top for an appetizer. The wine we had was a bit too sweet though. It seems to have been of the grape juice variety.

But so much of the meat that is eaten here is pig that Beth has had to break her no-pork dietary rule. I'm very impressed with Spain. Even I wouldn't have been able to get her to do that.

Ditto

Another long night last night. I ended up falling asleep around 5 a.m. My wanderings took me, among other places, to a bar on La Rambla that was playing American football on the TVs. A good dose of home.

Nightcrawlers and other oddities

Today is day two in Barcelona. I got in yesterday about two hours late thanks to the Heathrow delay. (Apparently a snowstorm in Madrid caused it - on the cover of La Vanguardia today was an article about "Caos en Madrid"). We were given hotel rooms for the night and told that we would move into the dorms the following day. The program people gave us good food and wine, and then about ten of us, including Mischa and I, went out to a couple of bars. It is a fun-looking city; just about every block has multiple restaurants, and every restaurant is also a bar.

We got back around 2 a.m. It was early for this city, at least as far as I could tell. We all needed sleep though, so we called it a night. We moved into the dorms when we woke up. They seem pretty nice. My room is about twice as spacious as everyone else's. However, the shower is incredibly tiny.

Heathrow is a monster that eats her children

In England, with a delayed flight, on no sleep.

But I did get a chance to (re)watch "Vicky Christina Barcelona" on the Atlantic Crossing (just like the Pilgrims did!), so all is not lost.

Also, because I am using a wacky English keyboard at a pay-to-play internet terminal, I feel this is merited: £££. I looked around for other cool ones but I can't find any.

Departures

Hello, all. I yet remain in NoVa, but I am due to leave for Dulles in about half an hour. From there, it is London, and then Barcelona.

Needless to say, I stuck a small towel in my suitcase, per Douglas Adams' advice, for good luck.