August 13, 2004
BARCELONA -- Fresh off the boat, I headed out to the tourist center of Barcelona in search of a room. The old city, Barrí Gotic, is the main center of the famous Barcelona "scene", and the center of Barrí Gotic is the km-long pedestrian avenue called Las Ramblas. Unfortunately, 3 p.m. in mid-August is not the best time to come off the boat in Barcelona. Most of the walkable, easy-to-find hostel beds have already been snatched up by that time, and what's worse, it's the siesta, so finding a place to buy a local phone card is not simple (and paying for public phones by coin is an enormous chore). I tramped up and down main streets and alleys for a good hour before finding the tourist office, and discovering that they sell phone cards. I then set out for a public phone, but on the way there stumbled upon a hostel that actually had a free bed. This hostel had been opened recently, probably within the last few months, and so wasn't on many of the hostel lists (though I did talk to several people who had made internet bookings). Granted, the price wasn't the best, the kitchen was insufficient, and the common room was extremely hot (which makes it harder to meet people, since no one ever hangs around the hostel), but I was in no position to haggle.
Having completed that ritual, I headed off to explore Las Ramblas. "Explore" might be too grand a term for walking up and down a straight avenue, but there were in fact plenty of things to discover. In the summer, Las Ramblas is pretty much a 24-hour urban carnival, with human statues, jugglers, buskers, hawkers of various kitch, breakdance troupes, and the odd puppeteer, spread out amongst the sidewalk cafés and pet shops (!), all for the benefit of the droves of tourists -- you can be sure the number of actual Spaniards at these times is pretty small. (This is all ancilliary to the many shops, restaurants, bars, and museums which line the street. I found a free contemporary art museum with an exhibit entitled "Videos, Posters, and Other Stuff." All the posters on display were advertisements for the exhibit.) I have to say, as street performances go (and living in Boston you see more than a few of them), Barcelon's are really top notch. Just among the human statues there were such bizarre sights as a gold-painted rapper who freestyles when you put money in the jar, a man in a suit and bowler hat who drops his pants and sits on a toilet, a high-quality contact juggler (remember the movie Labyrinth?), and several I never could figure out.
I characterized Las Ramblas as a "24-hour" affair, and though I can only vouch for about 17 of them, I feel confidant that there really is something going on out there all the time, with the possible exception of the very early morning hours. In Spain it is customary to keep late hours. Everyone knows about the siesta, when nearly all shops close from about 3 to 5 to accomodate a long lunch and subsiquent rest. This means that dinner is often pushed back until 9 or 10, and that a lot of the nightlife doesn't really get started until midnight or well afterwards. Part of the reason for this, I think, is that the daylight stretches on a very long time in Spain -- while they operate on the mainland European time zone along with France, Italy, Germany and the rest, Spain is actually slightly to the west of Great Britain, which sets its clocks an hour back. Spain also uses daylight savings time in the summer. So in August there is light in Spain until nearly 10 o'clock, which makes it difficult to feel that the day is done even at midnight.
All this notwithstanding, I restrained myself a bit to make an early start the next day and avoid the heat, since my plan was to do more than a little walking. North from the Barrí Gotic is the gridded neighborhood of L'Eixample, conceived as a multi-class utopia but actually given over to the bourgoisie early in its existence. The highlight of L'Eixample is without doubt the architecture. Modernism flourished here, and the icon of the Barcelonese style is Antoni Gaudi. Apparently a man who couldn't say no to molded concrete, his apartment buildings Casa Battlo and Casa Mila are some of the most photographed places in the city, and with good reason.
Without a doubt, though, the grand-prize winner is the world's most-visited construction site, the Temple de la Sagrada Familia. This behemoth was the project that occupied most of Gaudi's time throughout his life; he worked on the designs for about 40 years, until his death, during which time his style continued to evolve. This is why the sacristy, which was the first part to be completed, looks totally different from the rest of the building. The remainder of the church benefits from slightly more aesthetic integrety, mainly because it is still hypothetical: the construction has been going on for 122 years now, and the architects presently in charge guess that it may be done in another 20. Maybe. Gaudi knew from the beginning that he would not see the finished product, and indeed characterized it as a work for multiple generations. In fact, he was aware that the necessary technology to build the church did not even exist in his time. It still might not: architects are still trying to figure out how to realize Gaudi's grand vision. He left behind 3-D plaster models in various scales, but some of them were damaged during the Spanish civil war. Thus, a potent combination of artistic sense, archeology, and engineering will be needed to pull it off. I don't recommend that anyone hold their breath on this one, but it will be seriously amazing when it is finally finished.
Having spent two evenings mostly doing nothing, partly as the result of a poor hostel design and partly due to my own fatigue, I resolved to spend the next morning trying to switch to a new hostel. Despite my getting started at about 9:30 a.m., none of the nearby hostels had vacancies, and I didn't feel sufficiently put upon to go hunting very far afield. Instead I turned my attention to the prospect of getting further into Spain. Apparently everyone else decided to do this too. I wanted to get down into Andalucia, the southern part of Spain once under Moorish rule. I waited at the train station for nearly two hours only to be told that all trains from Barcelona to anywhere in Andalucia were booked solid until August 22. It was a little frustrating. When I found another hour-plus line at the bus station, I threw in the towel for the day and stomped back to the hostel in defeat. In fact, I had fortunate timing: my new dorm-mates were in the process of moving in, and they included a Brazilian and two French Canadians who were looking for new travel pals as much as I was. While the Canadians set off in search of lunch (after a comical scene in which I spent about five minutes trying to correctly pronounce one's name), the Brazilian Anna and I climbed up the nearby Montjuďc, looked in on the old Olympic arena, and commisserated on the the cons of solo travel. It was worse for her: having booked all travel and lodgings ahead to save money, it was impossible for Anna to change her plans, but so many of her nights were spent on sleeper trains and in budget hotels that she had gone more than a week without meeting anybody. We returned to the hostel a couple hours later to meet up again with the Canadians, who brought along two more of their number (this time the English-speaking kind), met previously in the subway. The six of us set off to the famous Park Guëll.
Park Guëll is another of Gaudi's works. It was originally the private estate of his friend and benefactor, whose name the park bears, then a commercially unsuccessful housing enterprise, and was finally given to the city as a public area. Like most of Gaudi's other stuff, the park is by turns whimsical, incredible, and surprisingly calming. I unfortunately forgot my camera, so I hope the reader will settle for a stand-in. The park lining the terrace, the world's longest, is truly remarkable.
We returned to the Barrí Gotic in search of dinner, and I directed us to a restaurant not one minute's walk from the hostel that had been pegged by my travel book as one of the best, and also most popular, restaurants in Barcelona. It serves up gourmet-class food (or at least food that looks gourmet-class to the likes of me) on a backpacker's budget, and I will not reproduce the name here to keep the crowds from getting any worse (though the reader may try to bribe the name out of me by private correspondence). We got there 15 minutes after the place opened for dinner, and still had to wait an hour for seating. This turned out not to be so bad, as it gave us all an opportunity to shower and change (having six people makes it possible to do this and stand in line at the same time), and afforded us a genuine Spanish 10 o'clock dinner. We had quite a good meal and a good time. Especially the Quebecois girls: they would speak to each other in French, which no one else at the table understood very well, and break into fits of giggling. I'm pretty sure it had something to do with my dinner, but they never would let on exactly what was so funny. Perhaps it's for the best -- they may have known something I didn't and would prefer not to, or at least they acted that way. Well sated and well entertained, we rambled over to the local internet café at around midnight (see comments on nighttime activity above) and then back to the hostel for an "early" end to the night.
The next day I finally got my bus ticket to Granada. Just in time, too: the hostel had booked up for the next night, and I was being thrown out that morning, along with the French Canadians. We met up again in the afternoon, after I had perused one more of Gaudi's works, the Palau Guëll, spent some time on the beach (whose water is not as clean as one would like), had a "Mark's Last Day in Barcelona" dinner, and I dashed off to the bus station, hopped on my bus at 10:55, and by 11:05 I was off. Lulled to sleep by a Spanish movie, I awoke in Analucia.