More Barcelona

Well, I don’t know where the time went, I was going to finish about Barcelona a while ago. I have not been lounging around eating bonbons, either. I have been playing travel agent, a bit. It takes a long time to make arrangements on line. I’m going back to Rochester in July, and doing that trip took about 5 hours – searching for the best fare, everything’s expensive. There were no frequent flyer awards to be had through United. I think they just block out the whole summer, 6 months before. So I’m flying Lufthansa Munich-Boston, and even the commuter flight Boston-Roch had no award travel possible. Sheesh. And, there’s a last minute trip to Italy with some girlfriends this weekend (yay! The sun shines there!) and the next weekend, Paris with my roommate. (Flatmate, they say here.)

I can’t believe I haven’t been home to California in over a year. It seems remote and fuzzy to me. I don’t even have many pictures with me, to remind myself. I am trying to take more pictures of people here, to add to the memorabilia. “More people, less stuff” may be a new motto.

I am gearing up to start looking for work, too. I like it here & want to stay, and will need my own residence permit for that. I have been looking at the web sites of American companies that I see here, to see if they have need for people in Munich. And if anyone else has a good idea, let me know!

Back to Barcelona.
Ewa and I got there on Sunday the 14th. We settled into the place, got to know Nicholas & his schedule – Theresa & Mark and baby Alex had left the day before, so they left the key with a colleague and lots of notes.

Walking up the street to the house


That evening, we went to visit Gina & Tyler, friends of mine from California who had moved to Barcelona for Tyler’s work about 18 months ago. I wish I had taken pictures of their apartment, it is absolutely beautiful. They made pizza with fresh peas, asparagus and green onions for dinner. It was delicious and I need to remember to write them and ask for the recipe!

We passed on Gaudi house on the way there & back, Casa Batllo. The façade is beautiful.


Monday the 15th we met a friend of a friend of Ewa’s, a Polish woman who’s been in Barcelona for 3 years now. She’s a PhD in Spanish and will get back to doing translating when her son is older. She met us near Sagrada Familia, I toured the church while she & Ewa chatted. Sagrada Familia was heaving with tourists. It is a monstrously large cathedral, another Gaudi. The inside is estimated to be finished in about 75 years. It’s all being financed by donation. Gaudi’s style is a twist on Art Noveau, I find it absolutely beautiful and compelling. I went up inside to the first level of the towers, after that the way was blocked and I needed to meet Ewa again, so I headed back down. Someday I’d like to get there very early in the morning & get all the way up to the top.

We walked down to the port, sat enjoying the sunshine.
Ewa in sunshine at the port.



Abe Lincoln graffiti on the way out of the park. Random and wonderfully weird to see.



Tuesday morning we went to the local supermarket first – it had been closed Monday for inventory, and we really needed food for breakfast & water. The water there is drinkable, but tastes bad. It’s heavily processed. We then tried to get into the Picasso museum, but the lines were too long, and we were meeting Marcello, a friend of a friend that afternoon. So we shopped a bit – there are great boutiques with unique clothing & shoes all over the place there. (Most suited to the local climate. I’m glad I resisted the pretty, light, fluttery stuff because I can’t wear it in Munich, it’s too cold!)
Street in Del Born area



Ewa by a very cool door



On the way to our meeting point, we finally got to La Bocaria, the well-known open air market. Beautiful produce, meats, fish. Strawberries for 99 eurocents a kilo.







We met Marcello at Café Zurich in Placa Catalunya, he then toured us around the University district and told us about clubs to go to in the evening. Sadly, on the way home, Ewa’s husband called to tell her that her cat died. That was a shock.

Wednesday the 17th we started earlier and got into the Picasso museum. This features much of his early work, through his Blue period and into Cubism. I like exhibits like that as it’s great to see the artist’s progression over their working life. Afterwards we caught the funicular to Montjuic, a very large park that is the legacy of the 1992 Olympics; many of the facilities were built there. It’s a hill to the west of city center.


It also contains Poble Espanyol, a large complex with buildings representing architecture from all over Spain, from the 1929 Universal Exposition. Inside the buildings are artisan shops.



We walked in, and found a café. And Sangria. The afternoon got very silly after that, what fun!

Ewa at the café


We stopped at a rooftop restaurant to get coffee. That Sangria went down so easily, and everything was funny now.




As we were camping it up for these shots, Ewa noticed that the bartender was on break having coffee and mugging too. We laughed, went back to our conversation. On the way out, we stopped to take some pics over the rooftops and he reappeared to play along some more.







After the afternoon dog walk, we set out for La Paloma, a club Marcello had recommended. He thought they had dinner there on Wednesday nights, along with dancing. We got there at 9:30 and it was closed. So we walked back to las Ramblas, stopped in a tapas place near La Bocaria and ate dinner while the crowd standing on the sidewalk next door, peering at the TV, roared its support for Barcelona, who beat Arsenal that night for the European Championship. What pandemonium ensued! We had been warned to avoid Placa Catalunya in case of a win, and we were very near there. Las Ramblas filled with celebrants, dancing, singing, setting off M80s and other strings of fireworks.

Barca wins!







We hung out there until 11:30 or so, then walked against the crowd and got to the Del Born area again. Found the tapas place we’d really preferred to have eaten at, called Teller de Tapas, and a place called Bugo that does the most beautifully created desserts. Ewa had remembered them from her visit to Barca in March. We ducked into an Irish pub (they’re all over Europe, I think they’re spawning) had a drink and met Pete, a maritime engineer on one of the yachts in port. Had a lively discussion about Linksys routers and their problems, Pete’s learning networking by doing. The owner of the yacht has an ISP business in London, so the ship has all the latest networking gear. Sounds like it gets interfered with, and hangs, regularly. When we left the bar, the subway had closed so we ended up walking back home. It was a long walk. And the entire time, people were walking past chanting the Barcelona cheers, driving honking with flags hanging out of the cars, carrying on. All night long, apparently. Our neighborhood was quieter.