una americana en barcelona

So I no longer have a place to live when I get back from Barcelona--yeah. If anyone knows anyone who wants to sublet so I don´t have to live in the Reg, lemme know. Almost as sad, I won´t have access to a piano. :(

On the HAPPY side, Becky and I are leaving for London tomorrow! (P.S. Becky is very excited about being in ¨my story¨. P.P.S. She says I do my exclamation points weird.)

The End.

This is a silly post because even as I speak the alarm is going off to tell everyone to get out of the GSB, but I just realized I haven´t posted in forever and wanted to let everyone know I haven´t gotten hit by a scooter...yet. Hasta luego (and YAY ´cause I finished my paper)!

I would like to take a moment to complain about Easyjet. Last week I made reservations for Becky and I to go to London over our first break, getting back early Monday morning and probably missing class because it's a heck of a lot cheaper than coming back Sunday night and I didn't want to come back early Sunday morning and give up an entire day in England. I used my credit card for both our reservations to avoid paying an extra 6.50 pounds in credit card fees. At my peril ignoring the warning that popped up saying, "Check your info carefully before clicking 'okay' or we'll charge you obscene fees to change your reservations," I clicked 'okay' without checking and therefore it was too late when I realized that I had put in my name instead of Becky's for the second passenger. When I went to change the booking, I found that I was going to be charged 10£=14 euros=~$18 PER FLIGHT (to and back) to change the name. Foolishly thinking that perhaps someone would be understanding of my plight, I emailed Easyjet's customer service and explained my teeny tiny mistake that was going to cost me 28 euros. I received a very form response telling me that what I could do about it was what the website told me I could do about it, that is, pay the fees. Resigned to shelling out what could have bought at least one of us a more reasonably timed flight, I went to change the name and lo and behold discovered that I was going to have to pay not only the 28 euro name change fee but also another 20 euros because cost of the flight I ALREADY HAD A TICKET for had increased in the last few days!! ARGH. So the moral of this story is "there's no such thing as a cheap plane ticket" or "always obey the pop up warnings" or "if you're Lindsay, accept the fact that you will screw things up". The End.

Our first test and paper approacheth, and our teacher isn't going to give us a topic. Granted, I hardly ever write on the topics I'm given in soc or hume, but it's nice to have one to refuse to conform to (and I suppose to give me SOME sort of direction). Our profesora keeps mentioning how people use the past to serve their own ideologies, which might be an interesting starting point. She told us that when she was a girl in school and Franco was in power they were taught that the Iberian peninsula was unified in ancient times to justify unity of Spain; now, Catalan children are taught about the unity of people in Catalonia vs. the rest of the continent, etc. Neither of which seems to be supported by hard facts (i.e. pieces of pots and sculptures of body parts--not kidding, they were offered up to the gods for some reason--dug up in the ground).

Tomorrow, another bus trip--this time south, to Tarragona. Hopefully it'll be a little warmer than it has been (whine, whine, whine, I know, everyone reading this has to wrap their head in a scarf when they go outside so as not to lose his or her nose to frostbite) because we'll undoubtedly spend a large part of the day walking around 2500 year-old ruins, when we're not in a museum looking at the objects that were dug up in "grapes" (according to la profesora). :)

Today's lesson from civ: the origin of the word "ostracize." Once upon a time, the ancient Greeks lived in polises (I'm sure there's a proper plural of that--poli?), which they conceived of not so much as places but of groups of people who were all equal except for women and foreigners and slaves. Once a year all the citizens would gather at the assembly, undoubtedly lured by fliers posted in the agora advertising "FREE FOOD!!!", and vote as to whether they thought there was someone in the community who posed a threat to their democratic system. If there were a majority of "yay"s, everyone wrote the name of who they thought was the Most Likely to Tyrannize the Populace on a piece of pottery called an "ostracam". The winner got a year's supply of free baklava and a forced 10-year exile to the vacation spot of his choice. Hence, "ostracism." Feel educated.

Personal notes: I'm going to ROME for the second break! Also exciting to those who know me, I actually made myself take advantage of the month-long state rebajas (sales) and bought a pair of pants in the hippest store I think I've ever been in, "Replay", which featured an atmosphere kind of like a primieval desert fairy island (pools, cargo nets, giant illuminated bugs, and dressing pods--no, not dressing rooms, dressing pods. Use your imagination).

Today we took a bus tour to Empuria, the first Greek and Roman settlements in the Iberian peninsula. As awesome a city as Barcelona is, I was really glad to get out for a day--I was beginning to feel kind of stifled by the narrow stone streets and was thrilled to see dirt and trees and grass again. Plus, I guess the 2500 year-old ruins were kind of cool. :)
The countryside at times really reminded me of PA, lots of farms and deciduous trees and mountains. Only in PA we have the Appalachians, not the gigantic, snow-covered Pyrenees in the distance.

Here are some quick updates in list form:

Interesting things I learned/saw today:

1. Roman women weren't allowed to associate with men outside their families.
2. Archeologists know what texts written in the Iberian alphabet sounds like but not what they mean, clearly from the discovery of the famed Ancient Iberian Tape Recordings found in Neaopolis in 1993.
3. U of C students act like 5th graders on a bus field trip after being given wine at lunch. Without wine, they are still highly amused at the phallus carved into the gate of the Roman city ruins (to symbolize strength, fertility, pride that they managed to find the place without asking for directions...) Ok, I admit it, I got a pic with the digital camera too.

Things that will seem weird when I return to the US:

1. $1 bills.
2. Bathrooms with partial doors--almost all the loos in Europe have full doors, it seems.
3. Free water at restaurants (and oh, how I will appreciate it)! It's almost as cheap (perhaps even cheaper, depending on the restaurant) to order a bottle of wine as to get water for the table.

I realized, not for the first time, that this is an amazing city on Friday night, when Becky, Lorenzo, Jeremy and I were engaged in urban foraging* and emerged from one of the many narrow stone streets to find ourselves in the shadow of the looming Catedral de Barcelona in the Barrio Gotic. I know this doesn't sound particularly unique, but the plaza was fairly unpopulated compared to the hoardes of people that seem to crowd some areas of the city at all hours, and I just got a sudden feeling of ancient grandeur. This kind of thing happens all the time in the extensive "old city"; round any corner and you may find yourself standing in a spacious palm-treed plaza or at the foot of some grand old building or super-ornate modernist creation.

It almost seems as if there are two Barcelonas--the skeleton of the city, buildings, streets, monuments, and the life and commerce that currently inhabits it. Although you have imaginative, colorful modernist buildings right next to more somber contemporaries, and these not too far from centuries-older edifices, there is something about the color, or the design, or an unplaceable characteristic that gives them some degree of unity. And then you have the elements of "now": people, dogs (lots of dogs--I've seen maybe three cats since coming to Europe), businesses, shoe stores (more shoe stoes than dogs, I would be willing to bet), nightlife that inhabit quite comfortably their historical surroundings.

But enough of my pseudo-metaphysical waxing, or whatever that was. There are good times and good weather to be had here, and I've been trying to take advantage of both. On Saturday morning Becky, Lakshmi and I walked down La Rambla to the sea and went jogging along the Mediterranean ("I run for fun in the hot, hot sun"--Dr. Seuss, anyone?). Then Saturday night we checked out the nightlife. The hotel concierge gave us free tickets from a club called "Las Palomas"--The Pigeons--that might be a renovated theater and, as it turns out, has ballroom dancing until 1:30 when the DJ starts playing classics like "Burn, Baby, Burn." The other place we went to, the name of which I can't recall, had several rooms including one featuring columns shaped like palm trees with coconut lights. Everyone says that clubs are a great place to practice one's Spanish, but I can hardly understand people even when they're not being drowned out by heavy bass and an electronic voice chanting "Let's get funky," so I'm not convinced.

*the name I give to the popular activity among students in the Program of wandering the streets of Barcelona with no particular destination, simply the goal of finding something edible and cheap that isn't one of the three McDonald's in the area. (I popped into one of them walking home one day, curious to see if there were any locally-influenced additions to the menu, as I hear that in Korea they serve McRice Burgers. No such luck here.)

Today was the first day of class--"The Making of Iberia: colonial encounters in the Western Mediterranean". Our first prof is a native Barcelonan, an archeologist 'by formation' (which I think translated from European terms means 'training'). She's muy interesant and has quite understandable English (she's married to a Scotsman), though she throws in many "bueno"s and "no se"s and always says "pero" instead of "but", which I really like--makes the experience more authentic. :)

After class we went on a bus tour of the city and I got to swoon over some more Gaudi architecture. His name is the root of the word "gaudy" and you can kind of see why when you see the incredibly detailed surface of the unfinished Church of the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family)--one side is the Christmas story and another the Easter Story (with very planar figures that, as our tour guide said, might have been the inspiration for George Lucas's stormtroopers). The bus then climbed Montjuic, the huge hill in the middle of the city upon which sits a former military fortress--during the Franco regime, they used to drop bombs in the streets to quell the rebellious Catalans, who were protesting Franco's suppression of the Catalan language and culture. Now it's a museum with an awesome view of the city--progress, I think.

In case anyone wants to send me letters, care packages, dinero, etc., here's my address at the hotel:

Hotel Atlantis, Room 201
Pelayo, 20
Barcelona 08001
Spain

So here I am in Spain, attempting to let you the world in on my fantastic adventures--se preparen (prepare yourselves)...for feats of extraordinary courage, unbelievable cultural experiences, and really bad Spanish grammar.

I guess I'll start at the very beginning, my unceremonious arrival at the Barcelona airport. Didn't even get have to go through customs. (Insert joke about me actually carrying some incredibly illegal substance, self-censored so the authorities don't come drag me out of my hotel while I sleep.) My first adventure was dragging my two enormous suitcases onto the airport bus while wanting to shoot myself for not listening to everyone who had ever traveled, all telling me to pack light. I blame the fact that I had to have sweaters to brave the Bavarian winter while Dad and I trekked around southern Germany.

It should surprise no one that I missed my bus stop and was very sad to hear "no, pasado" when I asked the bus driver at the next stop, where everyone was being forced off as it was the end of the line, whether this was the Placa de Universidad. As it turned out, however, this was a Good Thing, as was my decision not to just hail a taxi. Yeah, it was kind of embarassing to have to play the Ubertourist, lugging two suitcases and staring down at my Plano de Barcelona, up at the absence of street signs, back down at the map, etc., but this stop--the Placa de Catalunya, was at least as close to the hotel as the other, and it was gorgeous. Did I mention the blue skies, sun, palm tees, and magnificently temperate weather as I got off the plane? Well, the plaza also had crowds of people and pigeons milling around, vendors selling balloons, and a sculpture that looked like an upside-down staircase. Plus, when I was wandering around later--don't fall off your chairs, now--I actually was able to keep my bearings and know where I was and how to get back to the hotel. Apparently this sense of direction is solar-powered, as when we went out that night I got completely turned around, but I take what I can get given my usual complete lack of direction sense.

Chapter 2: The Hotel. I'll put up pictures when I can figure out how to do so. The best part about the hotel is its location. We were able to watch the big parade for Dia de los Reis (King's Day) that night from our room's balcony. It seems like everything is within walking distance--a bunch of plazas bordered by beautiful old buildings and huge, fat new ones, La Rambla, the broad street that goes all the way down to the Mediterranean (also within walking distance) and is one long street market, and more shoe stores than I've ever seen in my life.

Chapter 3: Parc Guell. Since everything was closed for the holiday yesterday, we decided to go to Parc Guell, which was designed by art nouveau (here called Modernisme) architect Antonio Gaudi, who is my new hero. I can't adequately describe the place except to say that it kind of reminded me of Myst or Riven except for all the tourists. Dreamlike--everything was curved and either decorated with brightly colored mosaics or seemingly organic. We walked around in a constant state of "Wow".

Okay, the sunshine is calling me--I figure I should go see some more of Barcelona instead of just writing about it. But I will try to update this with some regularity.

Hasta luego,
Lindsay