When I woke up I could have sworn I’d died and gone to purgatory. In reality it was ten hours later and I was still trapped in the train car. I thought the ride was bad earlier, what with the scalding hot temperatures, no air circulation, and awkward bunkmates. Now the car was pitch black, except for a thin strip of light coming from the corridor. We were in a tunnel and when we exited another thin strip of light splintered the darkness on the other end of the cabin.
Using this as an opportunity to see something other than sheer black, I broke our my little sketchbook and began to make notes.
‘Where’s my passport?’
‘I wonder how Susie is?’
‘Hot. Like being put in a meat smokehouse.’
‘Is this Barcelona? No, only Girona. Balls!’
These are a few of the notes I wrote down, along with a sketch of the cabin, and notes about two dreams I had. One where I was reunited with my family, and one where the man on the bottom bunk went on a murderous rampage that woke me up in a cold sweat. At one point I broke out my phone and sent my third text message ever, and by far the most expensive.
‘Are you awake? Save me!’
I punched in the letters in desperation for freedom from my cell and for other human contact. The Russian man across from me had not moved in a good twelve hours, and I was fairly certain he was dead. When I walked into the corridor earlier not a soul was to be seen, though a beautiful view of the hillsides of France and sea was a pleasant surprise. A few moments later a little knock came at my door. It was Susie! We went and ate a small breakfast (a cocoa and donut for me, a coffee for her) for two hours in the dining car. Anything to be out of my cell!
Susie said she was have a nice time. I’d like to say I’m exaggerating for comedic effect about my experience, but that’s the best part, its not exaggeration. It was something unique, and very amusing in retrospect. I enjoy humorous rants. Anyway, we enjoyed a nice long respite in the dining car before going to our respective cells and packing up our things. At half past eleven we had arrived in Barcelona, two hours late.
Susie’s roommate, a Spaniard, said she could get us a discount at the least for the inconvenience of being late. All we had to do was complain to the ticket agent. I’m never a fan of complaining to service agents, since I used to work in the service industry as a cashier. I can tell you I got my fair share of stupid complaints, so now I always feel a little bad for yelling at someone who’s just doing there job. That aside, Susie, the Spaniard, two Japanese girls, and myself all went to the ticket agent and go 20% off the ticket price. It worked out to close to eighteen euros off the total price!
Now we had to figure out how to get to the hostel from this station, which wasn’t the central station. I used very broken and rusty Spanish to ask a café cashier where the nearest metro was, and with a little luck and lots of hand gestures, we found the station and rode it all the way to near our hostel. Finding the actual hostel was a little more difficult, since the directions got more ambiguous. ‘Next to a Caixa Bank and across from a Consum grocery store,’ they said matter-of-factly. That situation should be pretty unique we thought, Instead, there were banks and supermarkets everywhere, and it took a frustratingly long time to find Sant Jordi Sagrada Familia, our hostel.
Once we finally did we were relieved. Atlast! We rode the elevator up, as instructed by the little old lady receptionist. Wrong floor. We rode it back down, asked again, then rode it up to a different floor. It was getting very obnoxious lugging this huge bag around, but we finally found the reception. A very helpful woman gave us a map that outlined the major things to do in Barcelona before we checked in to our room.
The hostel had a unique set-up. Traditional hostels have huge rooms of 10,12,14+ people and a common room downstairs. This was the set-up of our hostel in Brussels. Here, we had our own apartment. We shared it with something like six other people, but everyone had a two or three person room to themselves, along with a living room, a kitchen, and a laundry balcony (that included free washing!). I neglected to take any pictures sadly, but we really didn’t spend any time in the hostel, except to sleep and eat breakfast or the occasional dinner.
Outside, a balcony opened onto the little triangular park below. Our roommates included a British student on ‘permanent holiday,’ an Asian foreign exchange student, two Frenchies, and later a guy from Colorado. We didn’t interact with them too much because, like I said, we didn’t spend many waking hours at the hostel. We went downstairs with our map to try and figure out where to go for the rest of the afternoon. Sidenote: The hostel had a pet Chinchilla I think. Either that, or one of the tenants had the cutest little fuzzyball running around the main common room.
Its been a few days, so I’m looking at my pictures right now to try and remember exactly what happened from here. I believe we took the metro to the city center. Susie really wanted to explore the Gothic Quarter. I wanted to pick up our concert tickets for the following evening at the palau della musica. Since they were near each other, we decided that’s how we’d spend the rest of our first day. The rest of our friends weren’t going to arrive until the next day anyway.
We picked up our tickets at the concert hall, which I’ll describe to you a bit later. We walked past a building that was only the façade, it looked like some sort of extreme renovation. Then it was off to the Gothic Quarter, which is akin to the oldest parts of Rome. Small streets, stone roads, and old buildings characterized what was once a Roman colony town. We walked into a few exhibits around here that were free, one about art and one that had lots of things written in Catalan Calligraphy. I found the little squares and pathways much more interesting, especially if you juxtapose them with the big of new Barcelona and the modern metro we rode to get to this part of the city.
We decided to skip the Cathedral in the old city because it was six euros to get in. Instead we saw a few more courtyards, including one that housed an ancient Roman city wall. Then we grabbed another Kebab at the delicious and relatively inexpensive Pita Inn. I just talked with Joe and Caryn, who also went to Barcelona, and they also visited/loved Pita Inn. It was the best/last kebab I had on the trip, and the first soda I had bought in awhile. I missed Fanta. I shoved my pita full of vegetables and sauces after the little man had it bursting with meat. It was the first thing I’d eaten since the donut on the train.
We walked around more, seeing cool markets, the Royal Palace and plaza, some interesting sculptures, and then met up with Las Ramblas. The Rambla (which I believe means stream) is the main street in Barcelona. It can’t be longer than two kilometers, but it’s packed with stores, street performers, restaurants, and streams of people. Ramblas is all about the movement of people, probably where it gets its name. We walked to the end where Ramblas turns into Ramblas del mar, the promenade that leads to a mall, cinema, harbor, and beach.
A very scary she-man prostitute was the only bad experience I had with Ramblas that day. Later in the week we ran into some sketchy people trying to sell us individual cans on beer on the beach and on the Ramblas. Other than that, I can see where the street gets its reputation as the heart of Barcelona.
Perhaps just as interesting are the streets that meet up with Ramblas. They are just as lively, with little shops and markets on them as well. On this day however, we decided to walk down to the beach. The swoopy metal girders of the promenade guided us into the mare magnum (mall and cinema complex). Susie really wanted some leather boots, so we looked around in here for a while. Then we continued down to the waterfront, through a small beach community and past some kids playing ping pong with a soccer ball. The community, whose name escapes me right now, was very low-rise, very rectilinear, but very lively. The beach went right up to the edge of it, sometimes with sand blown over the boardwalk and onto the streets.
The Barcelona beach is gorgeous, and its because of this part of the city, that I am reminded of the beaches of California. Mountains in the background, palm trees in the foreground, surfers and boats riding the waves, all capped by a long boardwalk past harbors, small neighborhoods, and a few high-rise modernist towers. On the one end of the beach, a cable car takes you down from the neighboring mountain (mountjuc) and a Dubai styled tower is rising from the beach. On the other end, two towers mark the Olympic Port, and in the distance you can see some factories and industrial port facilities.
Today, we decided to walk towards the Olympic Port, because our receptionist recommended it.
We took our shoes off and walked past some kiddies playing soccer, and what would be a club we would visit later that week. I climbed to the top of a cargonet sculpture, and after some more putzing around a pretty empty Olympic Port, we headed home. From what I remember, other than Susie getting mad because I ran her into a column accidentally, the rest of the evening we cooked for ourselves and planned other parts of our trip before heading to bed exhausted.
