 |
| La Placa de Catalunya |
After dropping my hiking backpack at the St.
Christopher’s Inn hostel (it was a good one!) we started in the direction of
Genevieve’s homestay. Walking through the Placa de Catalunya, Genevieve
explained that we were about to walk down a street called Las Ramblas. A rambla
is the center area separating two streets. The most famous rambla, Las Ramblas,
was lined with market booths, outdoor restaurants, and trees. Halfway down Las
Ramblas, tour guide Genevieve took me into the Boqueria: a huge food market. I
fell victim to the overly priced chocolate at the very front and discovered wiener
schichten: chocolately, fudgey goodness. However, it wasn’t until walking
through the Vienna market that I discovered the German name for this delectable
piece of chocolate. As I taste tested the different chocolates, we walked
through the market. The most notable, and repulsive, foods we located in the
meat section. There were cabeza de corbeno, lengua ternera, and sangre ternera
(head, tongue, and blood of a cow eeek!).
After the Boqueria, we continued down Las Ramblas in the
direction of the beach. Pointing us in the direction at the end of Las Ramblas
was the statue de Crisoforo Colom. My friend Christopher, whose house I visited
in Genoa, stands tall in the middle of a roundabout and points in the direction
of the New World. The statue serves as a tribute to Queen Isabella I and King
Ferdinand’s funding of his legendary trip. After saying hi to Chris, we walked
parallel to the beach passing a large piece of artwork by Picasso. El Cap de
Barcelona, a modernistic face, is said to be the face of Barcelona, welcoming
those who come from the sea who came for the 1992 Olympic Games.  |
| Reunited! |
Next, we hopped on the metro and went to Genevieve’s
homestay. While as she described, her room was like a closet, the apartment she
shared with her Barcelona mom, Anna, and
her friend, Akriti, was really cozy and homely. I was also lucky enough to meet
her homestay mom, who spoke enough English to triumphantly respond “a little!”
after I told her “hablo poco espanol.” Though I was unable to adequately hold a
full conversation, I felt content with my complete understanding of Genevieve
and her mom’s conversation. While learning Italian has confused my knowledge of
Spanish, fortunately, as my time in Barcelona continued, conversation came more
naturally to me. After blowing a fuse twice, Genevieve, Akriti, and I went to a
restaurant where we ate pinchos. Once at the restaurant, we met up with
Genevieve’s friends Jimmy and Caroline (visiting from studying abroad in
Copenhagen!) I venture to say that this meal my favorite Spanish dish of the
weekend. Following dinner, we capped off the night at BB+ and the jungle-themed
club, Suntra.
Saturday’s lunch marked my reunion with guacamole and
Mexican food. We left lunch in pursuit of La Sagrada Familia, the number one
tourist spot in Barcelona which Genevieve and Akriti had waited to visit until
Caroline and I were visiting. Coming up the escalator from the metro, I
experienced what it truly felt like for my jaw to drop; I had never seen a
picture of the breathtaking church before witnessing Gaudi’s architecture with
my own eyes. The church, under construction since 1882, was equally as remarkable
on the inside as it was on the outside. I could’ve spent all day in the church
but unfortunately we had to breeze through before it closed its doors. With
twinkling eyes, we found ourselves again eating after visiting the church.
Paella, hummus, olives, and tequila sangria were followed by the famous
Espirito Chupitos and professional Russian tennis players in the VIP platform
of the nightclub Shoko. 
Genevieve’s schoolwork allowed me to spend the day
exploring by myself and thus completing the Yacup challenge. For the first time
since August, I had the freedom and the time to leisurely stroll through a
magical European city. I walked at my own pace with no particular purpose other
than exploring… the feeling I enjoyed by walking a city, not at warp speed,
allowed me to relish, yet another time, just how truly lucky I am. I found it
appropriate, after visiting a tile factory, park, Port Vell ship yard, Mare Magnum
mall, and an incredible sunset, that I found a pair of earrings on Las Ramblas
that embodied my days as a traveling student abroad. One earring is a sun and
the other is a moon. While some would look at these symbols as awake and sleep
I look at them with the way I take cities. Ever-exploring, I waltz through the
streets of Europe during the day and choose to wander through magically lit
cityscapes at night instead of sleeping. After a fantastic day of sightseeing
solo, Genevieve met me at my new hostel, Kabul, in the Placa Riel and we walked
about two feet to Las Ramblas for dinner. We decided to eat at one of the
outdoor restaurants on la rambla. The waiter gave us blankets and strategically
placed us next to the outdoor space heater. We both ate tapas and paella which
are traditional Spanish foods… yum!
After three days without my normal traveling crew, I was
excited to see everyone when they arrived at Kabul Monday morning. However,
after traveling all night, arriving 18 hours later than expected, and
discovering that we had to leave Barcelona 14 hours earlier than anticipated, the
Spanish transportation strikes had depleted everyone’s enthusiasm for when they
greeted me. Resolute to make the most of their now shortened stay, tour guide
Stefanie stepped into the room to help everyone use their time efficiently. I
circled major places to hit and gave transportation advice so everyone could
make the best use of their time. One destination I darkly circled was the
sandwich place Genevieve tried to take me twice before with no avail, Bo d B.
The hole-in-the-wall shop was well worth the four sauces, unlimited vegetables,
and chicken on a messy sandwich.
 |
| Guadi's house |
 |
| Freshly squeezed juice in La Boqueria |
With sandwich in hand, I took people to my
favorite spot where I wandered the day before, Placa de Colom, and then up Las
Ramblas to Boqueria. After finally buying freshly squeezed raspberry and peach
fruit juice (delicious!) we walked through hundreds of pigeons in the Placa de
Catalunya to Passeig de Gracia. This street offered three houses comprising
Barcelona’s Illa de la Discordia, or Block of Discord. The block was named such
because the houses, Casa Lleo Morera, Casa Amatller, and Casa Batllo, were
designed by four architects who used very different styles that clash not only
with each other, but also the surrounding neighborhood. We left Guadi’s
architecture to visit the park where his house is located, Parc Guell. The park
looked like gingerbread houses out of a fairytale like Alice in Wonderland. My
favorite part of the park was the top of it. Here, there was an extraordinary
view of the city of Barcelona stretching to the beach where the waters of the
Pacific meet the beach sand. Thanks to Daylight Savings which had taken place
the two nights prior, we were forced to speed our pace as we visited
Barcelona’s Arc de Triomf and a very dark Parc de la Ciutadella and Olympic
village.
 |
| The Block of Discord |
 |
| The view from Parc Guell |
Tuesday bid the perfect ending to my favorite city. In
hopes of buying the ideal crepe of bananas, nutella, and strawberries, that I
had discovered a few days before for David and I to finally eat, we found the
crepe shop’s doors closed. Happy to settle otherwise, David, Sam and I went to
Bo d B for a second time. Under a cloudy sky, we attempted to take a cable car
up to the Montjuic district from Port Vell. In spite of our optimism for a line
which was to last an hour, in the time it took for me to take some pictures by
the beach and go to the bathroom, David and Sam had not moved a foot in line
and we decided to part ways. The boys headed to the fantastic Sagrada Familia
and I wandered through the Olympic village in daylight, metroed to an
unexciting Placa de Estacio, and then to Placa de Espanya.
There was so much to
see in the Placa de Espanya; it was definitely my favorite plaza of the trip! At the top of an old bull fighting arena turned mall, Las Arenas de
Barcelona, I was able to savour a 360 degree view of both the plaza and the
city. Walking through the Torres Venecianes, I faced the Four Columns, Magic
Fountain of Muntjuic, and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. These four
columns symbolize the ideals of Catalan and were previously demolished along
with other icons of Catalunya for the 1929 Universal Exposition. After sitting
on the steps of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and listening to a
musician, I hurried my step up a walkway leading to the side of the museum.
 |
| The view of the stadium from Olympic Park |
…But wait there’s more. Spanish transportation strikes
left us waiting in the rain for a bus which arrived at 2:00, an hour late, to
take us to the border of France so we could catch a train home. To our luck, we
arrived in France to be greeted by full fast trains, hour long delays, and more
cold rain. We were forced to take regional trains in the direction Switzerland.
Several trains, and twenty four hours later we arrived in Luzern at 0:00 on
Wednesday, October 31: Halloween. Instead of dressing up, we were able to live
out our costumes in reality as homeless people. We scattered throughout
McDonalds with eight Franc burgers until we were kicked out at 2:00. If anyone
has ever said that homeless people can sleep in ATM rooms either successfully
or comfortably, that person was wrong. Before security guards kicked our group
of fifteen out of the surprisingly large ATM room, drunken people yelled, sang,
and threw food and money at us as we huddled in as many clothes as we could
layer on our bodies. In search of warmth, we found refuge (in the loosest sense of the term) in a
glass-enclosed stairwell in a car garage for an hour until a cop with a huge
dog woke us up by making the dog bark. I was terrified. The bark was so loud
and the security guard was furious while I was freezing and in disbelief that
we had exhausted all of our possible shelters in the train station. After being
rejected from the waiting room of a health clinic, we found a train which was
supposed to leave at 5:00 that had open doors! Here we sat until the train
neared departure; we were then in the home stretch. Ordering hot chocolate to
keep warm in the fifteen minutes before a waiting room was unlocked in the
station, we were again laughed at people dressed up for Halloween who were
ending their night by buying a hot pretzel. Needlessness to say, when our seventh
train rolled into Riva San Vitale at 9:15, fifteen minutes after our first
Management class with a new professor was supposed to started, we were
delirious, but relieved.
The Progressive Shelters of the Homeless
No comments:
Post a Comment