Sunday, February 29, 2004
Una Americana en Italia, or Rome-ing Around Europe (heh heh heh...)
I could also entitle this "Thank God My Cheap Airline Didn't Crash Part II". No, to be fair, RyanAir flies 737s and they are a heck of a lot nicer than EasyJet too (of course we didn't tempt fate by being late for our flight--or I guess in the case of our London return we downright seduced fate since we actually missed the flight). At the beginning of our journey we did wonder if perhaps RyanAir was just a front for a psychological experiment testing how much human beings are willing to go through for a cheap flight. First, we had to catch a bus on Passeig de Sant Joan at 4 in the morning. 'Nuff said. Then as we were trying to sleep despite the loud Spanish women sitting behind us cold air started blasting on us, a highly efficient way of cooling the bus considering there was also heat coming up through the floor vents. We thought of suggesting that next they release a flock of mosquitoes into the bus. Be that as it may, we got to Girona airport in plenty of time, caught our flight, and landed in Roma no problemo.
Our first glance of Rome out the airplane window was amazing—the city is so old, not a skyscraper in sight, and Capitoline hill rises up in the middle, green and covered with massive ancient ruins (the Coliseum, the forum, etc.). We trekked to Yellow Hostel, an English-speaking lodging near Termini, the main train station in Rome, slightly ghetto (they requested that you throw toilet paper in the garbage can instead of flushing to avoid clogging the toilets) but still vastly better than Dover Castle in London if for no other reason than we knew what we were getting into with this whole hostel thing. Then we set about the formidable task of sightseeing on zero hours of sleep.
The first day in Rome, probably at least partially due to the aforementioned lack of sleep, I was impressed but not enchanted. The place is SO touristy (of course we three non-Italian-speaking American college students weren’t contributing to the problem) and everyone’s out to take advantage of it. Some entertaining fellows dressed in ancient Roman centurion garb let us take pictures with them…and then demanded five euros for the service and insisted that we delete them from our digital cameras when we wouldn’t cough up (we managed to save one or two). We trudged around the Coliseum, through the forum, to the Vittorio Emanuel monument built in 1870 to celebrate the unification of Italy (the one historical fact I picked up that day), to the Pantheon, the Fontana di Trevi, and the Spanish Steps, and into probably seven random grandiose ornate cathedrals (in one of which Becky actually fell asleep and started dreaming while leaning on my shoulder for two minutes). I think the best part of the day was skipping dinner in lieu of the most awesome ice cream I’ve ever had at a Gelateria called Tartufo near the Pantheon (the first in a series of gastronomic “la mejor”s)—their chocolate was almost the consistency of brownie batter. Or maybe it was when Karan pointed at a seagull and announced “That’s the biggest pigeon I’ve ever seen!” We had planned to go clubbing that night but since the prospect of walking was unattractive, not even mentioning that of trying to keep up with the super-chic Italian women in dance clubs, we crashed at 9:30 instead.
DAY TWO: Naples/Pompeii
I’m starting to think that train rides through the countryside to smaller cities are a really good way to be a “traveler” rather than a “tourist” (a distinction recently made by our new professor as we were reading a travelogue by an Italian coming to Barcelona for the first time and pronouncing it “the least Spanish of Spanish cities” before having seen any of the rest of Spain—someone commented that tourism is all about wanting to see all the things you’ve heard about so you can reinforce your preconceived notion of what a country is like, which is why, as Prof. Monagal pointed out, there are tourists walking around wearing Mexican sombreros they bought from kiosks on Las Ramblas). It was kind of rainy and gray on our way to Naples but the weather complemented the very fertile Italian landscape (if you get the idea that Barcelona is a bit dry for my tastes, well it is, or rather was until we had three days of rain upon our return).
The train station in Napoli is in the part of the town that the tourists don’t see unless of course they arrive by train. The street outside our hostel there (Hotel Pensione Mancini) was strewn with trash, including a mattress, which luckily did not reflect the state of the hostel itself except that it did in fact have mattresses. This made us feel as if we were having a more authentic Italian experience—luckily not so authentic that the hotel staff did not speak English, however. We hopped on another train to Pompeii and spent the day exploring this town that has, as I punned, “ruined me for ruins”. Har har. It’s incredible, truly—whole frescos on the walls have been preserved (including the requisite God of Fertility painting which, as the guide book says, shows the deity “resting his enormous member” in on a scale balanced with a pile of fruit). They also have plaster casts of the victims huddling in the city when the ash fell.
We dined in Naples that night. Karan had looked up all the “traditional” Naples dishes, which included mozzarella taken fresh from a big pot in the dining room and fried, pasta with marinara and anchovy sauce (which we probably would have liked better without the anchovies, but hey, that’s the price you pay for authenticity), this ricotta cheese and wheat cake pastilla, and limoncello, a liqueur made of lemon rinds.
DAY THREE: Naples/Rome
The receptionist at our first hostel warned Karan that he should probably not risk coming back to Rome the day of our flight home because of the overly frequent train strikes and Becky and I experienced one attempting to return while he spent the day on Capri. Our train was “Soppresso,” which we eventually found out meant “isn’t going to leave, likely due to demonstrations by the union workers”. While trying to figure out how to change our tickets, however, we found out how darn nice Italians are. This middle-aged gregarious businessman with a full head of gray hair and very good English heard us talking and proceeded to help us through the entire process, exchanging our tickets at the counter and even leading us to the right platform and making sure the train was going to leave on time. Then these two girls in our car on our train taught us some Italian phrases (helpful ones like “What are you doing tonight?” and “What’s your phone number?” so I can pick up a hot Roman and take him home with me).
Before we left Naples, however, I had the best piece of pizza that I have ever had (this was such a great food trip). We had gotten up early to go walk around the port, which is the nicer, more touristy part of Naples since that’s where the cruise ships dock (also, I suppose, since that’s where the Castell del Ova—literally “Castle of the Egg” named for the shape of the jut of land it’s on—the palace/city hall, Galleria Umberto, and all the other old/impressive stuff is), so we were hungry for lunch by around 10 am. The famous “Brandi’s” that has supposedly been serving pizza since 1870 (or is that 1780?) didn’t open until 12:30 so we just picked up a slice from a take-away stand called Ciao Pizza. Super-fresh tomato sauce, huge chunks of fresh mozzarella….ooooohhhhh my goodness it was sooooo good. The closest you can get to heaven for €1.80. Then, after failing to get gelat from TWO places that advertised with giant ice cream cone signs, we picked up these sfagiotellas on our way out, pastries that I had seen advertised all over the place (amusingly Napolitanas seem to be much bigger in Barcelona than in Napoli), and that was another little piece of paradise.
A note about Italian: All you really need to get by as a tourist in Italy is “Grazie,” “Quanto costa?” (how much?), “il conto” (the check), and “Prego.” As has been noted by many others, the Italians use “prego” to mean anything, including “what can I do for you?”, “you’re welcome”, “no, you go first”, etc. As Jeremy told us prior to our trip, if you want to ask when the next train to Rome is tomorrow, it’s probably something like “Prego train?”
DAY FOUR AND FINAL:
We figured we had to hit Vatican City before ciao-ing so Becky and I headed across the Tiber. We stood in line for an hour to get into the Vatican Museum, where they keep the Sistine Chapel, and it was so worth it—the amount of art those popes have collected over the centuries is astounding, and wisely you have to walk through all of it to get to the Big Kahuna. They have this room filled with huge lavish map paintings from the 1500s and another apartment now displaying modern religious art and something like 50 other rooms including a LOT more ceiling paintings…wow. Then we popped into St. Peter’s which is the biggest, most ornate, overwhelming church I have seen and likely ever will see. Again, not really able to convey the hugeness (I wish I had some representative statistic like the one on the hunger quiz I randomly took online: 1. How many children in America are hungry? A: 13,000 B. 1,300,000. C. 13,000,000. Answer: C. 2. If these children were to line up hand to hand how long would they stretch across the United States? A. From Washington D.C. to Seattle B. Chicago to NY. C. Houston to San Francisco. D. None of the Above…Answer D: They would stretch 4X across the US. Now don’t you feel edified?).
We then walked around Trastavere, a quiet neighborhood on the river where the U of C Rome civ program stays, and I had the best tiramisu ever (the third “best” food in two days), then back to the Forum for pictures (Becky is a digital camera fiend) and Tartufo for more ice cream, where we actually ran into Karan, who had been exploring on his own for the day. It’s a small city after all.
I might try to repost this with links to pictures of a bunch of this stuff, but I'll cease for now. Stay tuned for accounts of Carcassonne (or "The Worst Wine Ever") and how we saw snow on the beach at Sitges this weekend!
I could also entitle this "Thank God My Cheap Airline Didn't Crash Part II". No, to be fair, RyanAir flies 737s and they are a heck of a lot nicer than EasyJet too (of course we didn't tempt fate by being late for our flight--or I guess in the case of our London return we downright seduced fate since we actually missed the flight). At the beginning of our journey we did wonder if perhaps RyanAir was just a front for a psychological experiment testing how much human beings are willing to go through for a cheap flight. First, we had to catch a bus on Passeig de Sant Joan at 4 in the morning. 'Nuff said. Then as we were trying to sleep despite the loud Spanish women sitting behind us cold air started blasting on us, a highly efficient way of cooling the bus considering there was also heat coming up through the floor vents. We thought of suggesting that next they release a flock of mosquitoes into the bus. Be that as it may, we got to Girona airport in plenty of time, caught our flight, and landed in Roma no problemo.
Our first glance of Rome out the airplane window was amazing—the city is so old, not a skyscraper in sight, and Capitoline hill rises up in the middle, green and covered with massive ancient ruins (the Coliseum, the forum, etc.). We trekked to Yellow Hostel, an English-speaking lodging near Termini, the main train station in Rome, slightly ghetto (they requested that you throw toilet paper in the garbage can instead of flushing to avoid clogging the toilets) but still vastly better than Dover Castle in London if for no other reason than we knew what we were getting into with this whole hostel thing. Then we set about the formidable task of sightseeing on zero hours of sleep.
The first day in Rome, probably at least partially due to the aforementioned lack of sleep, I was impressed but not enchanted. The place is SO touristy (of course we three non-Italian-speaking American college students weren’t contributing to the problem) and everyone’s out to take advantage of it. Some entertaining fellows dressed in ancient Roman centurion garb let us take pictures with them…and then demanded five euros for the service and insisted that we delete them from our digital cameras when we wouldn’t cough up (we managed to save one or two). We trudged around the Coliseum, through the forum, to the Vittorio Emanuel monument built in 1870 to celebrate the unification of Italy (the one historical fact I picked up that day), to the Pantheon, the Fontana di Trevi, and the Spanish Steps, and into probably seven random grandiose ornate cathedrals (in one of which Becky actually fell asleep and started dreaming while leaning on my shoulder for two minutes). I think the best part of the day was skipping dinner in lieu of the most awesome ice cream I’ve ever had at a Gelateria called Tartufo near the Pantheon (the first in a series of gastronomic “la mejor”s)—their chocolate was almost the consistency of brownie batter. Or maybe it was when Karan pointed at a seagull and announced “That’s the biggest pigeon I’ve ever seen!” We had planned to go clubbing that night but since the prospect of walking was unattractive, not even mentioning that of trying to keep up with the super-chic Italian women in dance clubs, we crashed at 9:30 instead.
DAY TWO: Naples/Pompeii
I’m starting to think that train rides through the countryside to smaller cities are a really good way to be a “traveler” rather than a “tourist” (a distinction recently made by our new professor as we were reading a travelogue by an Italian coming to Barcelona for the first time and pronouncing it “the least Spanish of Spanish cities” before having seen any of the rest of Spain—someone commented that tourism is all about wanting to see all the things you’ve heard about so you can reinforce your preconceived notion of what a country is like, which is why, as Prof. Monagal pointed out, there are tourists walking around wearing Mexican sombreros they bought from kiosks on Las Ramblas). It was kind of rainy and gray on our way to Naples but the weather complemented the very fertile Italian landscape (if you get the idea that Barcelona is a bit dry for my tastes, well it is, or rather was until we had three days of rain upon our return).
The train station in Napoli is in the part of the town that the tourists don’t see unless of course they arrive by train. The street outside our hostel there (Hotel Pensione Mancini) was strewn with trash, including a mattress, which luckily did not reflect the state of the hostel itself except that it did in fact have mattresses. This made us feel as if we were having a more authentic Italian experience—luckily not so authentic that the hotel staff did not speak English, however. We hopped on another train to Pompeii and spent the day exploring this town that has, as I punned, “ruined me for ruins”. Har har. It’s incredible, truly—whole frescos on the walls have been preserved (including the requisite God of Fertility painting which, as the guide book says, shows the deity “resting his enormous member” in on a scale balanced with a pile of fruit). They also have plaster casts of the victims huddling in the city when the ash fell.
We dined in Naples that night. Karan had looked up all the “traditional” Naples dishes, which included mozzarella taken fresh from a big pot in the dining room and fried, pasta with marinara and anchovy sauce (which we probably would have liked better without the anchovies, but hey, that’s the price you pay for authenticity), this ricotta cheese and wheat cake pastilla, and limoncello, a liqueur made of lemon rinds.
DAY THREE: Naples/Rome
The receptionist at our first hostel warned Karan that he should probably not risk coming back to Rome the day of our flight home because of the overly frequent train strikes and Becky and I experienced one attempting to return while he spent the day on Capri. Our train was “Soppresso,” which we eventually found out meant “isn’t going to leave, likely due to demonstrations by the union workers”. While trying to figure out how to change our tickets, however, we found out how darn nice Italians are. This middle-aged gregarious businessman with a full head of gray hair and very good English heard us talking and proceeded to help us through the entire process, exchanging our tickets at the counter and even leading us to the right platform and making sure the train was going to leave on time. Then these two girls in our car on our train taught us some Italian phrases (helpful ones like “What are you doing tonight?” and “What’s your phone number?” so I can pick up a hot Roman and take him home with me).
Before we left Naples, however, I had the best piece of pizza that I have ever had (this was such a great food trip). We had gotten up early to go walk around the port, which is the nicer, more touristy part of Naples since that’s where the cruise ships dock (also, I suppose, since that’s where the Castell del Ova—literally “Castle of the Egg” named for the shape of the jut of land it’s on—the palace/city hall, Galleria Umberto, and all the other old/impressive stuff is), so we were hungry for lunch by around 10 am. The famous “Brandi’s” that has supposedly been serving pizza since 1870 (or is that 1780?) didn’t open until 12:30 so we just picked up a slice from a take-away stand called Ciao Pizza. Super-fresh tomato sauce, huge chunks of fresh mozzarella….ooooohhhhh my goodness it was sooooo good. The closest you can get to heaven for €1.80. Then, after failing to get gelat from TWO places that advertised with giant ice cream cone signs, we picked up these sfagiotellas on our way out, pastries that I had seen advertised all over the place (amusingly Napolitanas seem to be much bigger in Barcelona than in Napoli), and that was another little piece of paradise.
A note about Italian: All you really need to get by as a tourist in Italy is “Grazie,” “Quanto costa?” (how much?), “il conto” (the check), and “Prego.” As has been noted by many others, the Italians use “prego” to mean anything, including “what can I do for you?”, “you’re welcome”, “no, you go first”, etc. As Jeremy told us prior to our trip, if you want to ask when the next train to Rome is tomorrow, it’s probably something like “Prego train?”
DAY FOUR AND FINAL:
We figured we had to hit Vatican City before ciao-ing so Becky and I headed across the Tiber. We stood in line for an hour to get into the Vatican Museum, where they keep the Sistine Chapel, and it was so worth it—the amount of art those popes have collected over the centuries is astounding, and wisely you have to walk through all of it to get to the Big Kahuna. They have this room filled with huge lavish map paintings from the 1500s and another apartment now displaying modern religious art and something like 50 other rooms including a LOT more ceiling paintings…wow. Then we popped into St. Peter’s which is the biggest, most ornate, overwhelming church I have seen and likely ever will see. Again, not really able to convey the hugeness (I wish I had some representative statistic like the one on the hunger quiz I randomly took online: 1. How many children in America are hungry? A: 13,000 B. 1,300,000. C. 13,000,000. Answer: C. 2. If these children were to line up hand to hand how long would they stretch across the United States? A. From Washington D.C. to Seattle B. Chicago to NY. C. Houston to San Francisco. D. None of the Above…Answer D: They would stretch 4X across the US. Now don’t you feel edified?).
We then walked around Trastavere, a quiet neighborhood on the river where the U of C Rome civ program stays, and I had the best tiramisu ever (the third “best” food in two days), then back to the Forum for pictures (Becky is a digital camera fiend) and Tartufo for more ice cream, where we actually ran into Karan, who had been exploring on his own for the day. It’s a small city after all.
I might try to repost this with links to pictures of a bunch of this stuff, but I'll cease for now. Stay tuned for accounts of Carcassonne (or "The Worst Wine Ever") and how we saw snow on the beach at Sitges this weekend!
Friday, February 20, 2004
Okay, here's another link to pictures (again not taken by me but I think I was with Jeremy for a lot of them). This first slideshow has pictures of the parade our first night in Barcelona (for epiphany), Casa Mila, designed by Gaudi, our dinner at the sketchy Indian restaurant, and Parc Guell, again designed by Gaudi. Things to note: Behind me and my wine is Karan, who's going to Rome with Becky and I, and if you don't think that the two little kids bundled up in puppy dog coats at Parc Guell are the most precious thing you've ever seen, then you are a heartless person.
First of all some PICTURES!! These are Becky's--I haven't decided to take on the technological battle and figure out how to get mine online yet. You might have to become a Webshots member to view them but it's free.
Park Guell
Park Guell 2
Now do you see why I love Gaudi? Okay, I know that wasn't that exciting; Becky took a lot more but I want to make sure the links work before I put them up.
Here's one of the Sardana (that's Diana, a not terribly flattering picture of me, Irene, and Christine playing tourist in front). This is Catalonia's "passionless" national dance (according to my guidebook). According to Henry Kamen, the Sardana dates back to the middle ages but was eventually banned by the church because it was too "sexy" (try to imagine a very dignified middle-aged British man saying this). Now look at that dance again (if the picture didn't work it's a big ring of people holding hands and doing dainty little kicks)--I don't know about your definition of sexy but mine doesn't take place in the big open plaza outside the Barcelona cathedral. Ah, but this is because at the end of the 19th century, when Catalan nationalism was reemerging, they basically reinvented all of these "Catalan" traditions to rally behind. The church was one of the main proponents of the movement so they took the name of the Sardana but created a very moral dance and new music to go with it. Amusingly, Jeremy and I went to the Museu de les Artes Decoratives today and saw a early 20th century stain glass window showing medieval Catalans doing the Sardana, perhaps as a sign of resistence against the disapproving Castilian guards who were looking on. Propaganda at its finest. And now, a disclaimer: Henry Kamen has a style of teaching I like to call "dismissive," which usually takes the form of:
Student: "Blah blah such and such about the French Revolution/Spain/the King of France?"
Henry Kamen: "There was no French Revolution/Spain/the King of France"....(explanation)
I guess you could call it somewhat deconstructivist, too. It's pretty useful for making you look at history in a different way but sometimes I think he comes off as a little more flippant than he actually believes and expects you to catch on or take his more extreme claims with a grain of salt. Apparently at the beginning of the course he said "We're going to cut through the biases like newsprint" (I wouldn't know because of missing the first half of class thanks to the whole EasyJet fiasco described below) and this is his method.
Hmmm...mas, mas...on Sunday I went to a misa (mass) in the little church behind our hotel to interview people for a Spanish presentation on religion (I ended up doing it on AIDS, but at the time I didn't think I could get an interview with the head of the volunteer center in time). Que interesante...I interviewed four people from the same church on the same day and got four fairly varied responses. One lady, when I asked her "What role does religion play in your life?" responded "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual," told me she believes in all religions, and said that she thinks people now are less religious but more spiritual. Then there were the hard-core fundamentalists--a middle-aged woman and a portulent elderly man who greeted me with "Hola, guapa" [Hi, pretty (girl)] which is par for the course if you're a female walking around the city alone. He missed the days of Franco, telling me that everything was "mas tranquilo" under the dictator and everyone was Catholic, young and old, whereas now the youth don't believe "nada". This is pretty impressive considering Franco bombed the city and wouldn't let them dance their sardana or speak catalan. Lastly there was a friendly retired guy from the country who was here on vacation and was "mas o menos religioso", although he said none of his 13 nephews go to mass now. It made me kind of reconsider making sweeping sociological generalizations, at any rate.
Well, off to get ready for Roma--hasta luego!
Park Guell
Park Guell 2
Now do you see why I love Gaudi? Okay, I know that wasn't that exciting; Becky took a lot more but I want to make sure the links work before I put them up.
Here's one of the Sardana (that's Diana, a not terribly flattering picture of me, Irene, and Christine playing tourist in front). This is Catalonia's "passionless" national dance (according to my guidebook). According to Henry Kamen, the Sardana dates back to the middle ages but was eventually banned by the church because it was too "sexy" (try to imagine a very dignified middle-aged British man saying this). Now look at that dance again (if the picture didn't work it's a big ring of people holding hands and doing dainty little kicks)--I don't know about your definition of sexy but mine doesn't take place in the big open plaza outside the Barcelona cathedral. Ah, but this is because at the end of the 19th century, when Catalan nationalism was reemerging, they basically reinvented all of these "Catalan" traditions to rally behind. The church was one of the main proponents of the movement so they took the name of the Sardana but created a very moral dance and new music to go with it. Amusingly, Jeremy and I went to the Museu de les Artes Decoratives today and saw a early 20th century stain glass window showing medieval Catalans doing the Sardana, perhaps as a sign of resistence against the disapproving Castilian guards who were looking on. Propaganda at its finest. And now, a disclaimer: Henry Kamen has a style of teaching I like to call "dismissive," which usually takes the form of:
Student: "Blah blah such and such about the French Revolution/Spain/the King of France?"
Henry Kamen: "There was no French Revolution/Spain/the King of France"....(explanation)
I guess you could call it somewhat deconstructivist, too. It's pretty useful for making you look at history in a different way but sometimes I think he comes off as a little more flippant than he actually believes and expects you to catch on or take his more extreme claims with a grain of salt. Apparently at the beginning of the course he said "We're going to cut through the biases like newsprint" (I wouldn't know because of missing the first half of class thanks to the whole EasyJet fiasco described below) and this is his method.
Hmmm...mas, mas...on Sunday I went to a misa (mass) in the little church behind our hotel to interview people for a Spanish presentation on religion (I ended up doing it on AIDS, but at the time I didn't think I could get an interview with the head of the volunteer center in time). Que interesante...I interviewed four people from the same church on the same day and got four fairly varied responses. One lady, when I asked her "What role does religion play in your life?" responded "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual," told me she believes in all religions, and said that she thinks people now are less religious but more spiritual. Then there were the hard-core fundamentalists--a middle-aged woman and a portulent elderly man who greeted me with "Hola, guapa" [Hi, pretty (girl)] which is par for the course if you're a female walking around the city alone. He missed the days of Franco, telling me that everything was "mas tranquilo" under the dictator and everyone was Catholic, young and old, whereas now the youth don't believe "nada". This is pretty impressive considering Franco bombed the city and wouldn't let them dance their sardana or speak catalan. Lastly there was a friendly retired guy from the country who was here on vacation and was "mas o menos religioso", although he said none of his 13 nephews go to mass now. It made me kind of reconsider making sweeping sociological generalizations, at any rate.
Well, off to get ready for Roma--hasta luego!
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
The University doesn’t arrange a whole lot of activities for us here, but I can’t complain about our day trips—sure, we get to see more five-hundred-year-old ruins than you can shake a Roman phallic symbol at, but even better are the free lunches. Last Tuesday we took a bus trip to two monasteries that might have been the same monastery—we were all a little…umm… “happy” from the free bebidos provided at lunch (one table of seven or eight finished as many bottles of wine) and I don’t think I would have noticed. I was pretty thrilled that when the guide at the second monastery conducted the tour entirely en castellano, I was able to at least follow what he was talking about if not exactly what he was saying about it. Fun fact to know and tell: The monks at Poblet (which is still an active monastery) don’t make beer, they make wine, chocolate, and liqueur. Best monks EVER.
This weekend Karan and I trekked out to the northwest corner of the city to see Palau Reial, this palatial mansion built in 1929 to house visiting dignitaries. Franco lived there for a while, which may explain why there was hardly anyone visiting. (That and the fact that all that’s there now is the Ceramic Museum and the Decorative Arts Museum.) But there was a gorgeous park out front and I honestly felt about as tranquila (not a typo—it’s a favourite word of the Spanish…hehe, the computer spell check just ‘corrected’ the spelling of ‘favorite’. I’m not in Kansas anymore, apparently) as I have since coming to Barcelona. Guess I’m not a city-girl at heart. The hotel is right in the center of the city and it’s all stone and crowded sidewalks. There’s Parc Guell “arriba” (no one uses cardinal directions here; it’s either “arriba”—up, toward the mountains—or “bajo”—down, toward the sea) and Parc de la Ciutadella, but they’re more like carnivals than parks when it’s nice out. The area around Palau Reial, on the other hand, is a nice, quite, residential area populated by some office buildings, lots of BMWs and Mercedes and, as Karan said, some pretty “pimp” houses. The thing that was so soothing about it, though, was how quiet it was. It was a kind of peculiar sensation, actually.
We then decided we were going to hike up to Tibidabo, an amusement park and super-guay lookout point over the city. We made it as far as the bottom of the funicular that goes up there, which had a pretty spiffy view itself, but by that time we’d been hiking around for hours (okay, we had nothing going on the guy we passed BIKING up the hill, whose calves competed with those of the ancianos dancing the Sardana outside the Cathedral every Sunday) and the sun was setting, so we decided just to walk back down to the hotel. I’m so out of shape—I had trouble falling asleep that night, my legs were so sore.
Lastly, at the risk of invoking the wrath of our professor, who "[doesn't like to be quoted]" (oh the irony)...Henry Kamen on the Inquisition (commenting on the perception that it was much more evil than it really was): "The Inquisition did not happen because the Bishop of Carcasonne got up every morning and ate babies for breakfast."
Chau for now!
This weekend Karan and I trekked out to the northwest corner of the city to see Palau Reial, this palatial mansion built in 1929 to house visiting dignitaries. Franco lived there for a while, which may explain why there was hardly anyone visiting. (That and the fact that all that’s there now is the Ceramic Museum and the Decorative Arts Museum.) But there was a gorgeous park out front and I honestly felt about as tranquila (not a typo—it’s a favourite word of the Spanish…hehe, the computer spell check just ‘corrected’ the spelling of ‘favorite’. I’m not in Kansas anymore, apparently) as I have since coming to Barcelona. Guess I’m not a city-girl at heart. The hotel is right in the center of the city and it’s all stone and crowded sidewalks. There’s Parc Guell “arriba” (no one uses cardinal directions here; it’s either “arriba”—up, toward the mountains—or “bajo”—down, toward the sea) and Parc de la Ciutadella, but they’re more like carnivals than parks when it’s nice out. The area around Palau Reial, on the other hand, is a nice, quite, residential area populated by some office buildings, lots of BMWs and Mercedes and, as Karan said, some pretty “pimp” houses. The thing that was so soothing about it, though, was how quiet it was. It was a kind of peculiar sensation, actually.
We then decided we were going to hike up to Tibidabo, an amusement park and super-guay lookout point over the city. We made it as far as the bottom of the funicular that goes up there, which had a pretty spiffy view itself, but by that time we’d been hiking around for hours (okay, we had nothing going on the guy we passed BIKING up the hill, whose calves competed with those of the ancianos dancing the Sardana outside the Cathedral every Sunday) and the sun was setting, so we decided just to walk back down to the hotel. I’m so out of shape—I had trouble falling asleep that night, my legs were so sore.
Lastly, at the risk of invoking the wrath of our professor, who "[doesn't like to be quoted]" (oh the irony)...Henry Kamen on the Inquisition (commenting on the perception that it was much more evil than it really was): "The Inquisition did not happen because the Bishop of Carcasonne got up every morning and ate babies for breakfast."
Chau for now!
Monday, February 02, 2004
The American Goes to London: A Comedy of Errors
The tag-line: "You get what you pay for."
Our tale begins just prior to the take-off of the extremely shaky EasyJet, which seemed to me to have a wingspan only slightly longer than that of Venus or Serena Williams--impressive for a tennis player, not so much for an airplane. A bit of ribald humor, in the spirit of Shakespeare: Our flight attendent Phillipe demonstrates putting on his lifejacket (in case of a water landing). The pull-string hangs down from the jacket, ending in an arrow next to his crotch that reads, I kid you not, "Jerk to Inflate"...Becky and I, having been out until positively Spanish hours the night before, are a little giddy and giggle hysterically for a bit.
Unfortunately, by the time our plane touches (or perhaps "thuds" is a better word) down at Stansted and we get off only to realize that I have forgotten my bank card in the hotel in Barcelona and have absolutely no way of getting cash, the giddyness has worn off a bit. We attempt to sleep on the hour and a half ride into the city. I realize that the address I brought with me is not for Dover Castle Hostel, where we have reservations (for ten pounds a night in a 8-10 bed room) but rather for my friend Liz's flat. We are also without a map of London. I begin to wonder if perhaps I tortured a lot of cute furry animals in a past life. A stop at an internet cafe solves the problem (although we are quickly realizing that although the exchange rate is almost $2 to the pound, the Brits use the pound in about the same way as we use the dollar in a lot of relevant circumstances, food being one of them).
I was able to sleep that night in the Hostel only because I had had maybe 2 hours of rest the night before--not that the blaring music from the next room and the fact that the lights had to stay on because there were 6-8 other people staying in the room didn't soothe me like a lullabye. The set-up of the hostel is exquisitely designed to make sure that you are getting exactly what you pay for. There are two toilets (without sinks) per floor; the sink is in the same room as the one shower per floor (to be shared by ~20 people, I would guess) so you cannot access it if anyone is taking a shower. The hallways smell so strongly of eau de cigarette that I was tempted to stick something minty up my nose. Three of the guys from the program were staying there too; after spending the night in a room without heat and taking showers in cold water they decided that two of them, who had gotten sick, were about as likely to recover staying in the Trafalgar Square fountains as in Dover Castle so they opted to move to a hotel and offered to let us go in with them on a room. Imagine that "gratitude" and "relief" were allowed to reproduce like rabbits for a couple years, and their progeny approximately describes my feelings at that moment. Becky and I also chickened out of coming back late to class Monday after we discovered that the guys who were originally going to as well got earlier flights, so we bit the bullet and made a rather pricy change to a Sunday evening return.
This point in the trip marked the beginning of our two days of relatively stress-free fun. We did the tourist thing--saw Big Ben and Parliament, the British Museum (the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon Friezes) and the National Gallery (Van Gogh's Sunflowers), forwent the new Rod Stewart, Queen, and Jerry Springer musicals but saw the Reduced Shakespeare Company (all the plays in 97 minutes--"And they all lived happily ever after except for a minor character in Act II who got eaten by a bear", drank tea at Harrod's and ate fish and chips in pubs that actually gave you free water from the tap (party time!). And we rode the Tube. A lot. We failed to get inside Parliament (open Mondays and Thursdays) and Westminster (closes at 1:45 on Saturday) but saw Beefeaters at Buckingham palace and, most exciting of all, ate TWO homecooked meals in Liz's flat.
Brief interlude for a true Tube story:
Guy in London outside the Tube (after giving us directions): Has anyone ever told you you have a beautiful nose?
Me: Umm...no, but thank you!
Guy: Do you mind if I kiss that beautiful nose of yours?
Me: (covers it) Uh, no, it's mine (runs away)
Well, maybe I didn't run. Anyway, I love London, I love Londoners, British accents, the works. But if getting there and getting settled wasn't exactly half the fun, though, leaving was definitely negative fun. Remember that story about how I was really mad at EasyJet even though it was, when you come down to it, my fault? And how I was never ever ever going to take chances with plane tickets again? Well, basically we failed to give ourselves quite enough time to get back to Stansted (not helped by my time-consuming failure to find my return bus ticket, as we were getting catastrophically low on cash), the bus was a little late, and we got there literally 5 minutes after check-in closed and were told, along with a few other hapless latecomers, by the check-in lady (who was still down at check-in, mind you) that we were out of luck until the flight that left the next morning--the one for which we had originally had (much cheaper) tickets.
After banging our heads against everything in sight we settled in for an exhilarating 16 hour overnight at Stansted. Calmed once I was resigned to our inevitable fate, I took advantage of the bookstore and read most of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, which I highly recommend. Becky and I then read aloud to each other our readings for today's class. We organized our fellow travelers into a jazz rendition of "Kumbahyah," to which the exiting flight attendents tap-danced in their ugly shoes....okay, maybe I was overtired and hallucinating at that point. The situation became somewhat less adventurous by 2 am, when the seats had completely filled with travelers-to-be stretched out sleeping and I was attempting to get comfortable laying on my coat on the chilly floor. Even better, a cute-looking couple sitting across the row were holding a lengthy and animated conversation in a language I could best identify as Chipmunk. I'm reminded of my first overnight camping experience, except that there were thankfully no outhouses involved. I think that outhouses would have broken me.
But all's well that ends well, and although the plane took off 45 minutes late, it was much more stable than the first one and we made it to more than half of class, foregoing showers for a few hours longer as we took a taxi directly from the airport to the GSB (I'm sure our classmates appreciated our unbathed presence, but c'est la guerre). I must say, though, that one way to feel more at home in one foreign country is to travel for a weekend to another. Home may be where the heart is, but more importantly, it's where the private bathroom is.
And I'm off to find food...yup, definitely back in Barcelona. Chau!
The tag-line: "You get what you pay for."
Our tale begins just prior to the take-off of the extremely shaky EasyJet, which seemed to me to have a wingspan only slightly longer than that of Venus or Serena Williams--impressive for a tennis player, not so much for an airplane. A bit of ribald humor, in the spirit of Shakespeare: Our flight attendent Phillipe demonstrates putting on his lifejacket (in case of a water landing). The pull-string hangs down from the jacket, ending in an arrow next to his crotch that reads, I kid you not, "Jerk to Inflate"...Becky and I, having been out until positively Spanish hours the night before, are a little giddy and giggle hysterically for a bit.
Unfortunately, by the time our plane touches (or perhaps "thuds" is a better word) down at Stansted and we get off only to realize that I have forgotten my bank card in the hotel in Barcelona and have absolutely no way of getting cash, the giddyness has worn off a bit. We attempt to sleep on the hour and a half ride into the city. I realize that the address I brought with me is not for Dover Castle Hostel, where we have reservations (for ten pounds a night in a 8-10 bed room) but rather for my friend Liz's flat. We are also without a map of London. I begin to wonder if perhaps I tortured a lot of cute furry animals in a past life. A stop at an internet cafe solves the problem (although we are quickly realizing that although the exchange rate is almost $2 to the pound, the Brits use the pound in about the same way as we use the dollar in a lot of relevant circumstances, food being one of them).
I was able to sleep that night in the Hostel only because I had had maybe 2 hours of rest the night before--not that the blaring music from the next room and the fact that the lights had to stay on because there were 6-8 other people staying in the room didn't soothe me like a lullabye. The set-up of the hostel is exquisitely designed to make sure that you are getting exactly what you pay for. There are two toilets (without sinks) per floor; the sink is in the same room as the one shower per floor (to be shared by ~20 people, I would guess) so you cannot access it if anyone is taking a shower. The hallways smell so strongly of eau de cigarette that I was tempted to stick something minty up my nose. Three of the guys from the program were staying there too; after spending the night in a room without heat and taking showers in cold water they decided that two of them, who had gotten sick, were about as likely to recover staying in the Trafalgar Square fountains as in Dover Castle so they opted to move to a hotel and offered to let us go in with them on a room. Imagine that "gratitude" and "relief" were allowed to reproduce like rabbits for a couple years, and their progeny approximately describes my feelings at that moment. Becky and I also chickened out of coming back late to class Monday after we discovered that the guys who were originally going to as well got earlier flights, so we bit the bullet and made a rather pricy change to a Sunday evening return.
This point in the trip marked the beginning of our two days of relatively stress-free fun. We did the tourist thing--saw Big Ben and Parliament, the British Museum (the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon Friezes) and the National Gallery (Van Gogh's Sunflowers), forwent the new Rod Stewart, Queen, and Jerry Springer musicals but saw the Reduced Shakespeare Company (all the plays in 97 minutes--"And they all lived happily ever after except for a minor character in Act II who got eaten by a bear", drank tea at Harrod's and ate fish and chips in pubs that actually gave you free water from the tap (party time!). And we rode the Tube. A lot. We failed to get inside Parliament (open Mondays and Thursdays) and Westminster (closes at 1:45 on Saturday) but saw Beefeaters at Buckingham palace and, most exciting of all, ate TWO homecooked meals in Liz's flat.
Brief interlude for a true Tube story:
Guy in London outside the Tube (after giving us directions): Has anyone ever told you you have a beautiful nose?
Me: Umm...no, but thank you!
Guy: Do you mind if I kiss that beautiful nose of yours?
Me: (covers it) Uh, no, it's mine (runs away)
Well, maybe I didn't run. Anyway, I love London, I love Londoners, British accents, the works. But if getting there and getting settled wasn't exactly half the fun, though, leaving was definitely negative fun. Remember that story about how I was really mad at EasyJet even though it was, when you come down to it, my fault? And how I was never ever ever going to take chances with plane tickets again? Well, basically we failed to give ourselves quite enough time to get back to Stansted (not helped by my time-consuming failure to find my return bus ticket, as we were getting catastrophically low on cash), the bus was a little late, and we got there literally 5 minutes after check-in closed and were told, along with a few other hapless latecomers, by the check-in lady (who was still down at check-in, mind you) that we were out of luck until the flight that left the next morning--the one for which we had originally had (much cheaper) tickets.
After banging our heads against everything in sight we settled in for an exhilarating 16 hour overnight at Stansted. Calmed once I was resigned to our inevitable fate, I took advantage of the bookstore and read most of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, which I highly recommend. Becky and I then read aloud to each other our readings for today's class. We organized our fellow travelers into a jazz rendition of "Kumbahyah," to which the exiting flight attendents tap-danced in their ugly shoes....okay, maybe I was overtired and hallucinating at that point. The situation became somewhat less adventurous by 2 am, when the seats had completely filled with travelers-to-be stretched out sleeping and I was attempting to get comfortable laying on my coat on the chilly floor. Even better, a cute-looking couple sitting across the row were holding a lengthy and animated conversation in a language I could best identify as Chipmunk. I'm reminded of my first overnight camping experience, except that there were thankfully no outhouses involved. I think that outhouses would have broken me.
But all's well that ends well, and although the plane took off 45 minutes late, it was much more stable than the first one and we made it to more than half of class, foregoing showers for a few hours longer as we took a taxi directly from the airport to the GSB (I'm sure our classmates appreciated our unbathed presence, but c'est la guerre). I must say, though, that one way to feel more at home in one foreign country is to travel for a weekend to another. Home may be where the heart is, but more importantly, it's where the private bathroom is.
And I'm off to find food...yup, definitely back in Barcelona. Chau!
