Cambio de marcha

La Vida Normal

2007-01-03T23:38:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year! Greetings to whoever is still checking this. After several weeks discovering Morocco with my brother, and a holiday week or so in California with family, I'm returning to New York on tonight's red-eye and will re-enter, re-start, resurrect a New York existence.
In the meantime, here, in what may be the last post on this blog, are a couple of shots of the Africa trip. I'll direct you to my brother's blog for the narrative (www.redecho.org). I was pretty sick through most of the trip and couldn't muster the energy to check in here. (Sick eventually developed into sinusitis, bronchitis and some sort of digestive malady, but thanks to powerful American drugs, I'm finally getting the upper hand.)
Thankfully, being under the weather did not prevent a pretty amazing trip. Though we spent some time in Fez and Marrakesh--vibrant, bustling cities whose Medina districts layered nearly medieval ways of living with modern ones--the highlight was the time we spent in the Sahara.
We serendipitously came upon a couple of Berber brothers, Brahim and Omar, who treated us more like guests than tourists, spending a full week showing us around the shifting sentient sand dunes with nomadic hide-outs in their folds, feeding us warm hearty tajines and smuggled wine, telling stories in a wild but surprisingly comprehensible mix of Spanish, English and Berber, and putting our fingers to the pulse of their small frontier town, Merzouga.
Everything here was supremely different: Our friends wore thick camel-wool robes and turbans. Women were heavily veiled and tucked out of sight, still baking bread crouched around communal stone ovens in tiny mud rooms. Merzouga had only had electricity for a couple of years, and our "hotel" was a small mud-brick affair with barely existent hot water--and it was one of the only hotels left after a freak flood washed the others away last May.
And yet despite all of the stark otherness, this desert town felt the warmest and most home-like of any on this whole four month adventure. I could have gotten lost there, with those people, in the bewitching pastels of sunset across the dunes.

But that was the end. Back to real life. New job, new bar, new place, new season, new outlook. Thanks for following along.

Hasta Marruecos

2006-12-04T12:36:00.000+01:00

I´ve pruned down my three months into a backpack and my brother and I are at an internet lab waiting for the next bus to Algeciras, from which we'll jump on a ferry to Tangiers. We've heard that Tangiers is more or less Tijuana, so we're hoping to spend the night a little further down the coast. But we will see what we can swing. From now on it's all uncharted. No reservations, no itinerary, no clear idea of what this country will hold for us. Just backpacks, phrasebooks, and a bundle of days.
For all the looking forward to my brother's arrival, I've hardly spent any time thinking about actually going to Morocco. Here comes the sheer adventure part.
We've spent the weekend skipping around Granada re-seeing in one weekend all that I've seen in a month. Tapas, hookah, the Albaicín, the Alhambra.... There are so many stories to tell in all that, and some staggering beauty slivered in photos. I hope to tell you and show you all some of that. But these stories will have to wait--over Christmas, for some of you, or maybe, for others, over a good American drip coffee, or a post-bar attempt at tapas in my living room in the spring.
For now, we are boarding a bus and heading towards the desert. Maybe there will be more posts from Morocco, or maybe none until Christmas. In any event, thanks so much for following my travels here thus far; I've enjoyed taking pictures with an eye towards showing them here, and appreciated feeling cared for by all of you who've read, followed, been here with me.
The pictures here are simply what I had uploaded previously--Cordoba. The last two are of the enormous Mezquita, a mosque built in the 10th-14th centuries and later rechristened as a Christian cathedral, as--lucky for us--the 16th century Christians didn't have the funds to tear it down and create a giant cathedral from scratch, as they did in Sevilla. But the mix is confounding. Huge triumphant angels guard the altar just 100 yards from the 99 names of Allah, here, in the final picture.

Nine notary publics later...

2006-11-29T23:32:00.000+01:00

I'm officially registered for the New York bar. Here's the story: on Tuesday night, with the registration deadline 48 hours away, the firm confirms that I should take the bar in February. And thus begins the mad scamper through Granada's roster of notaries public. After getting the hang of the office hours (scant and unpredictable) the next trick was to find an office with a notary in carne y hueso, rather than solo en the door plaque.
On day two, the first real live one informed me that he could not confirm my signature without understanding the language the document was written in. (This despite the fact that the document in question was merely a one page summary of all my vital information.) Same story at the next four. Hmm. I could, I was told, submit the document at a government office for an official translation, which would take about a week, and then return to get that notarized. Hmm again. In the office of Notary 8, minutes before the hours of siesta, hours before the postmark deadline, I lost it. But I was gifted with the magical word "tranquila," usually a cue that some sort of generosity is imminent.
And it was. Notary 8 began calling through her entire directory until she found Number 9, who reads English, handed me a map and a few reassurances, y ya está, my luck had turned. Tengo vergüenza decerlo, pero estuve en punto de llorar. Mente en blanco. On only my second trip to the offices of Number 9, the honorable himself sat me down for a fascinating discussion of how Spanish notaries fit within the legal system here and how they differ from US notaries.... and he notarized my document.
His secretary then kindly informed me that I had to find a second notary to affirm the notarization of the first notary in order for the first to be valid in the US... but I have the immense pleasure of reporting that it's postmarked and off and all is well. And I have two pages of complex official seals and affirmations to prove it.
My other mind numbing pile of logistics has involved my bicycle, which inspired the series of pictures in this post. Vale la pena? Creo que sí.

Still...

2006-11-26T18:22:00.000+01:00

in Spain.

And the country continues to be beautiful.

And the time full.

And the rides big alive remember-forever.

I am more than grateful.

But the Spanish has slogged to a stop.
And today the snow came down to my ride.

So, it is time.
My brother arrives Friday.
(Can't wait can't wait can't wait.)

We head to Morocco.

Jamón

2006-11-23T13:23:00.000+01:00

If you were here you could be having this for dinner.
Jealous?
I didn't think so.
Happy Thanksgiving.

Cuentos de Andalucía

2006-11-20T20:46:00.000+01:00

Sevilla: una ciudad en la que, a partir del siglo octavo, tres grupos distintos vivían juntos.... and continued to do so throughout the next nearly eight centuries, with a sometimes harmonious and sometimes tumultuous history, until 1492, when the Reyes Catolicos came to the height of their power. Then the Christians took over definitively, forcing the Jews out of the country and forming an accord with the Muslims that, although overtly pacific, led to forced conversions and massive burnings of Arab books. Perhaps not surprisingly, most Arabs decided not to stick around. The story has been Catholic ever since. But those years between 711 and the turn of the 16th century have marked southern Spain--Andalucía--profoundly. Sevilla draws a bold yellow marker over the mix. Standing in the central plaza you can turn around in one spot and see (a) the world's biggest gothic cathedral, built in a display of excess in the 15th century on the site where the city's main mosque previously stood, (b) the Alcázar, a complex palace made up of a fascinating maze of buildings, courtyards and gardens, originally constructed by 11th and 12th century Muslim rulers and updated by rulers of both religions throughout the ensuing centuries, and (c) the entrance to Barrio de Santa Cruz, a tangle of winding streets that served as the medieval Jewish quarter, before the tragedies of later centuries. The first three of these pictures are portions of the Alcázar. In the second you can see how this palace complex folds together layers of history... the bottom levels are Muslim, the top Christian, built to mirror the style below. The third shows the Muslim women's room--note the screens in the second level. I was struck by a few miniature faces in the detailed plasterwork on the lower level. A guide explained that these were probably made as a joke or provocation by Christian slaves employed by Muslim rulers, as it is (was?) against the Islamic faith to create human images. The fourth is a tiny little sliver of the confoundingly huge cathedral (the third largest in the world after St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London). You can get a sense of its size by looking at the miniature people at the bottom of the picture. The fifth is a shot of the gardens. Some 17th or 18th century king (I forget which) built the long second-story corridor so that his queen could take some fresh air without being exposed to the sun--an important consideration for anyone wishing to preserve their status as a blue-blood. (Is it common knowledge that the word blue-blood originated by people distinguishing between the aristocracy and common folk by color of skin? Brown signified fieldwork while naked blue veins under white sunless skin carried status.)
And enough history. The last two are this post's gratuitious shots. This past weekend's ride. Sheer unparalleled being alive.

Sierra Nevada Mountains

2006-11-14T21:02:00.000+01:00

First: super close.
Second: cool rocks.
Third: check out the picture.
Enough said?

This is an artificial lake that provides Granada's drinking water. Roads snake along both sides of its source river up towards the snowier parts and back down the opening valley towards Granada, at the base.
Can you see how beautiful this is?
Fall sun. Glinting raucously off yellow, green, brown; skimming sidelong around almost-sentient rocks; just missing bitter breezy folds of living shadow.

Granada

2006-11-10T13:21:00.000+01:00

I'm still in Granada, but have been derelict about posting on account of a small lack of joie de vivre. (Which, of course, I feel more than a little silly about. I'm at a language school in Spain, with time and life on my hands. What more could a person want?)
But by now I could kill for a cup of vegetarian chili, an American coffee or a paper version of the Sunday Times. And after ripping up perfectly serviceable roots in Barcelona to come down here, I was greeted by wet dark days, an empty apartment, and a language school dominated not by the twenty/thirty-something European amalgam I'd grown accustomed to in Barc, but by a large troupe of barely-old-enough-to-vote UMass students on their semester abroad. And living the elections vicariously through the NY Times at internet cafes got me homesick fast. I miss you--people who would be thrilled to talk about the why and when of Rumsfeld, for instance.
But I think I've just been rescued from this bout of gloom by a lively Iranian-turned-Swiss woman on leave from her work with the Red Cross in the Sudan and full of stories that she's glad to tell in her month-old, month-to-go Spanish. The first night we went Salsa dancing, or rather, she did, and I watched from the safety of the bar. The next night we went to a Scandinavian movie dubbed badly into Spanish in what turned out to be a makeshift theater that doubles as a nightclub on the weekends. So we understood little but did so from the relative luxury of shiny gold couches.
Good enough. I mustered up the energy to unpack and am ready to dig in my heels and see what the next month has to offer. After all, all reports of Granada have been amazing. This weekend I think I'll point my bike in the direction of the Sierra Nevada mountains and see what happens.
As for these pictures, the first is a corner of the Albaicín (barrio with narrow winding streets, a mosque and teahouses, first developed in the 8th century when the Moors invaded the Iberian peninsula) from through a small hole in the door of the second. The third is untitled, the fourth is a door to nowhere hiding in the medieval city wall, and the last is my wannabe postcard shot of the Alhambra. More on that later.

Montserrat

2006-11-06T17:11:00.000+01:00

"Truly weird rock pillars" seems apt enough, no?
I got there on a cablecar strung up the side of the mountain on a wire. Fog drifted in the windows. I gaped at the sand castle rocks and stumbled unsuspectingly into high mass at the monastery, lured by the sounds of a boys' choir--a throng of 10 or 12 year olds in Catalan mullets shuffling around with arms tucked into sleeveless robes and, counterintuitively, sounding ethereal. (They study there on the mountain, at reportedly the oldest music school in Europe.)
And then I left Barcelona. (Picture to left.)
And am here in Granada. (Not picture to left.)
Feeling fork-in-socket culture shock.

Al final

2006-10-31T22:41:00.000+01:00

I'm down to the last few days here in Barcelona and already sad to go... despite the fact that I've been looking forward to moving on for a while now. Barcelona's a tough city, like New York. Tough to get to know people, to get into the flow of the place. And there are so many foreigners that often it seems you could be in any big city: London, New York, Amsterdam... And, much as I love the wilds of northern Catalunya, rather than feeling happy about my Spanish, I've mostly just been embarrassed to not speak a word of Catalan (the widespread push for Catalan independence makes language a matter of political import here). So I've been looking forward to moving on to Andalucia, with its smaller towns and its reputation for warm hospitability, for being "real Spain."
But I'm ambivalent. The guys at the bike shop have finally gotten around to inviting my on their rides. I know the folks who run the corner store. I can time the stoplights on my ride into school. And, the hardest thing: I just said goodbye to my Bikram yoga teacher. The studio opened days after I arrived in Barcelona, and I've been a regular ever since. I've learned a lot there (all the body parts in Spanish?), wrung out the exhaustion I carried away from New York, and have some budding friendships there that mean a lot to me.
I'm going to Grenada next, where I would be lucky to find any kind of yoga studio. But the city is cradled by the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It showcases a mix of Spain's three religions, reflected in strikingly varied architecture (the Alhambra, for instance). There are coastal towns to discover. And it will be very much not New York.
Until then, a few more days in Barcelona. Tomorrow is el dia de los santos, yet another national holiday. I'm going to Montserrat, a 1000 year old monastery up in the hills not far from Barcelona that was erected in 1025 after someone had a vision of the Virgin there, was wrecked by Napoleon in the 19th century, rebuilt, and now is home to a community of monks. The guidebook tells me there are "truly weird rock pillars" on the mountain; who could resist that?
And here's another picture of Girona. The city, an easy train ride from Barcelona, is hands down my favorite place in Spain so far. It has a medieval warren of narrow streets with small arches, winding staircases and flower boxes. It has a city wall, crumbling at parts, with ivy curling out others, showing views of the national park (with volcanoes!) in the distance. It has a city park with what seem to be the remains of old old buildings at odd and crumbly angles, mostly overgrown. It has two cathedrals that ring out the hours in cacophonous harmonics. It has a river running straight through the center separating the old city and the new and spanned by too-picturesque-to-be-true stone footbridges. Surprisingly, despite all this, the city feels like Seattle. It's overrun by students in dreads and various configurations of metal. There are athletic supply stores at every turn, vending all manner of equipment to be used in the outdoor cornucopia a stone's throw away. It is, of course, a celebrity spot for cyclists, and the ocean is not far. There is music. There is energy.
And (sigh) a lot of Catalan.

Girona y Catalunya, otra vez

2006-10-29T17:09:00.002+01:00

Beautiful, lonely...

Güell, sort of

2006-10-25T00:39:00.000+02:00

Here's a picture of the people I'm spending a good slice of my time with these days. Left to right: me, Alicia (one of my morning grammar teachers), Xian from China, and the two Marianas, both from Brazil. The four of us have been in class together for over a month now, though various other students have passed in and out. Today we went on an excursion to Park Güell because Alicia has an appointment with a dentist tomorrow during class time. We persuaded her to persuade the "jefe" of the school to let us go for an excursion this afternoon to make up the time. (Rather than have a substitute in--who wants that?)
We've just started level C1, which is billed as "superior," but really just means that we have superior knowledge about how badly we speak Spanish (or how badly Xian and I do--the Brazilians are better than us and have a lilting accent that's really fun to listen to in Spanish). But we all know more than enough to get by, which made this excursion giddy fun. We flitted through the park on a picture-taking spree that turned out way more pictures of us than of the oddly beautiful surroundings.
I want to go back to the park though. There's a lot to ponder. For example, a shiny stained glass alligator splayed out over a staircase. A gingerbread(ish) house. A lot of bright mosaics. And those muddy swoops and chunks that somehow look more natural than the trees and rocks around.
I don't think I'll ever be able to do Gaudi justice in photos. Here's another stab at description: bright sprightly joy in a thin veneer over ugly. It's a little circus-clown spooky. Or maybe fairytale eerie: equal parts sweet and garish, and sometimes unsettlingly true (if you can get away with calling architecture "true").

Of Stupidity and Serendipity

2006-10-23T17:38:00.000+02:00

Saturday morning I was standing by this volcanic lake 10 miles or so from Girona, with picture perfect rowboats, early morning sun glimmering off the water, and the Pyrenees guarding the distance, all of which would, I suppose, have felt rather remarkable if it were not for the fact that I was way too frustrated to enjoy the scene. I had gotten up super early to begin a ride that was much more ambitious than it was feasible, and immediately spent the first two hours getting lost no less than half a dozen times, turning circles in Girona and ending up on a endless stretch of harrowing highway, trucks and all. On top of which, I had inexplicably decided to leave my bank card at home, only to find that the pension I had chosen didn't take credit cards, leaving me with so little cash that I knew I was facing a long weekend of hunting through remote pueblos in search of that one restaurant with menus in enough languages to offer me a "tonnyfis sandwic" for 15 dollars, and yes, to accept a visa. And I was feeling the Octoberish lonely, wondering why the hell I thought it was a good idea to be here, alone, miles away from anything and anyone who cares about any of the above.
Pero bastante, no? Si. Hubo un cambio, por supuesto.
A troupe of middle-aged cyclists on sturdy mountain bikes rolled up out of the blue and stopped to ask me a few questions about my cyclecross. At first I thought they were just interested in the bike, but it soon became clear that they were trying to figure out whether it could manage the trail they were headed towards. When they decided it could, and to my immense relief and delight, they invited me along. I spent the next four hours being treated to all the wonders of a gorgeous valley, history included. These folks were amazing. They spoke Catalan with each other, but were kind enough to switch to Castillian whenever I was in earshot. I was regaled with stories about Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis, both of whom keep houses in Girona and frequently train in this valley and in these hills. I heard about how the people in the valley sheltered people from Banyoles (the cyclists' town) during Franco's sweep of the region during the civil war. They told me about the evangalists from the United States who had taken up residence in the valley, and asked whether it is true that estadounidenses don't believe in the virgin. They pointed out a miniature "golden gate bridge" dating from the 10th century, told me how the colors in the valley change with the seasons, and took me to a natural fountain with (they assured me) potable water (I was not so sure the next day). And when we came to a particularly tricky rocky descent that was iffy for my cyclecross, they all got off their bikes and walked down with me. We eventually parted ways, they giving me advice for the road ahead and passing on extra energy bars, me summoning up every expression of joyful gratitude I could muster in Castillian.
Afterwards, I returned quickly to the effects of my over-ambition. 80 miles into the first day I was thinking: four more times around the park--I can make it (and then beginning to fear the hill--utter stupidity, oceans away from the park). I think I cycled around 150 miles this weekend (and today can hardly climb stairs), but I'm not so proud of that figure, seeing as I was suffering too much to enjoy 11th century monestaries tucked into hills along the way.

I did, however, enjoy an exquisite moment back in Girona at the end of Sunday, sitting in the old cathedral (siglo XIII, spire here to the right) when a choir shuffled in to practice, sending marrow-harrowing echoes off the old old stone walls.

Que suerte tenia, que suerte.

Today I am back in Barcelona, in class, throwing out mistakes with every phrase. October again, como siempre.

Figueres, Cadaques

2006-10-17T00:18:00.000+02:00

I took a train Saturday morning to a town called Figueres, a couple hours north of Barcelona by train, with bicycle in tow.
Wait, rewind. This trip to Spain was another shot at immortality, as much as anything. Not immortality, strictly speaking, but teleology. That is, I'm always trying to scramble, more or less frantically, up the sheer vertical angles of an emptying hourglass, in fear of leaving behind this small, miraculous, bit of consciousness without...
something.
What? I don't know. But I can't shake the feeling that a life, yours, mine, is "for" something, in the most Aristotelian sense. Something more than talking of Michelangelo.
Now what, please? I would like to know. And I suppose I thought, when I came here, that maybe I'd make another stab at figuring it out.
I'm not making much progress, as far as the hourglass goes. But this past weekend I had a few moments of pure existence. You know what I mean? Those moments when just to breathe is enough.
Here's how it all went down. The trip started inauspiciously enough. I had kept myself up all night Friday with nervous excitement and so started out on two hours of sleep. And no sooner did I arrive in Figueres but my bike pump broke and I realized that I had forgotten my gloves. After finding a bike shop to replace the aforementioned, and two kilometers into my ride, my cell phone flew out of my back pocket and got run over, leaving me heading out into the mountains without any means of communication, solo. Stupid? Possibly, but would you have turned back?
I spent the next two days in the saddle and here are some of the moments that happened: I spent a lot of time going up mountains. The kind of mountains that make your heart audible. The second picture, up there, captures a moment where taking a picture was as good an excuse as any to stop for a second. But when I got to the top of a big rise and looked down--see the third picture--I started laughing like a wild woman and thus began this fit of existentialism.
The fourth picture is a moment at dawn on Sunday, when I was rolling over flat farmland making discoveries at every turn. Like an old man raking leaves on his farm into a giant bonfire. Like the sun rising over that old old monastery up there hiding behind an unremarkable cluster of trees. Like rounding this bend and seeing the ocean slap up against these rugged rocks near a place called Llanca, up near the French border. Cool, quiet, beautiful. The next picture is of Cadaques, a whitewashed fishing village near the easterly tip of Spain. Cadaques was beautiful, but I was particularly happy to find it because I had to climb a particularly beastly mountain to get there--which made the arrival all the sweeter.
So in short, I rode hard, and I lived hard, and found a few moments that were mine, as Ani DiFranco puts it.
of beauty blinding and unsurpassed/make me forget every moment that went by/and left me so half-hearted/cuz i felt it so half-assed.
That would be the end of the story, except the coda is Salvador Dali.
Who, it seems, likes to think about time, and our frenzied attacks on its passage. Have you noticed all the melting clocks? And forks and human flesh, of course... This picture to the right shows his house, peeking out over trees in Port Lligat. And the one above is the view of the cove in front of his house--these rocks and this bit of ocean figure into the background of so many of his paintings.
So there's a lot more that I could say about this weekend--here, in this next picture is a piece of Figueres, an overly touristified town that nevertheless is remarkable for its theater-museum housing all sorts of bizarre Dali splendors.

But for now I am back to a few more minutes of counting out my life in coffee spoons, albeit sans a little frenzy. Speaking of which, does anyone know how to cook fish or eggs? I am un cero a la izquierda (completely useless) at this, and having trouble feeding myself. Help? I have a pot, a frying pan and a gas range.

And here is a sweaty exhausted self-portrait, really damn happy.

The Fourth of July

2006-10-14T01:54:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was the Twelfth of October. El dia de la nacionalidad. The legendary day Columbus discovered the Americas. (That's him, in the picture, high on a pedestal surrounded by angels, triumphant soldier figures and lions. A detail below.) Columbus is a big deal around here, of course. Well, actually, that has surprised me. While celebrating Columbus makes sense here, after the vast expansion of Spain's empire in the 16th and 17th centuries, I hadn't realized the extent to which Spanish national pride is still linked to those years of empire.
In Madrid, there's a big parade. But it was a strange holiday here in Catalonia. The streets were virtually empty, save tourists, cops in full combat gear and circling helicoptors. Barcelona's parade was egged a few years back and that, apparently, was the end of that. The cops were out to prevent riots, in case anyone cared to display some nationalist sentiment. No one did, it seems.
I spent the day in Sitges, a town on the shore just south of Barcelona. The place is overrun by tourists in the summer, but the beaches were empty on this rainy fall day and the town seemed real, and beautiful. The town was hosting an international film festival; I was there with a couple of friends from school to see what we could see. Our first discovery was an Irish flick about vicious genetically modified exoskeletal cow fetuses that snuck around biting people. Thumbs way way up. The next left us stunned. It's called "The Fountain," by Darren Aronofsky, director of Requiem for a Dream. The Fountain is also about mortality, and provocatively so, but this film is as beautiful as Requiem was dark. The soundtrack alone is reason to see it.
And here, to close, is a gratuitous Gaudi picture. Slung mud; somehow also stunning.

Estoy aqui, ahora

2006-10-10T23:49:00.000+02:00

After a week cavorting with siblings (this shot, top to bottom: Joanna, Carolyn, Timothy, Abigail, Olivia, Jeanine; the next shot: me cowering in fear of robot-Timothy (halloween costume fashioned by big brother Mars), with little sis Abigail looking on) and otherwise visiting family in California, I'm back to my Barcelona life, plowing back into this ever-elusive project of catching a language and keeping it.
To this end, I've been gulping down a half dozen cafe cortados daily to survive six hours of classes in the middle of a California night.
But the jetlag ain't all bad. This morning, after two or three hours "en blanco" (sleepless), I crept out to ride, sneaking past a swath of not-so-savory nightlife, and finding my way up to the hills behind the city in the pre-dawn full-moon hush. I finally found my way to a ridge overlooking the city. And then... Let me tell you: there should have been a soundtrack. Just then, the sun sprang. Color shimmered through the overcast sky. And as I stood there breathing, streaming sweat, happy, I thought: I'm here, now, and the rest is preamble.

Una pausa

2006-09-29T19:00:00.000+02:00

Queridos amigos, tengo que regresar a los Estados Unidos la semana que viene para "una pausa," como se llama aqui. Visitaré a mi familia en California. Si haya aceso al internet escribiré mas, pero probablamente esperé hasta la semana después, cuando regreso aqui otra ves. Hasta luego, y que os vaya bien.

I´m returning to the US for the next week to visit my family in California and will not post, most likely. I´ll be back to Barcelona on October 8 or so, so check back. Best wishes to all.

Waning Summer

2006-09-27T17:39:00.000+02:00

I've mostly recovered now, but being sick made me start to think that Barcelona is a little too much like New York. After all, a crush of people in any city can be exhausting. And a metro is a metro is a metro. But here are my top five reasons why Barcelona is not New York:

5. Ubiquitous mullets. And we're talking serious mullets. Pittsburgh's got nothing on Barcelona. I was pretty shocked by the trend until I found out that it's a mark of regional pride among Catalan men. For some reason, wearing a mullet sets them apart from "Spanish" men. This certainly became apparent when the football game between Valencia and Barcelona aired. The shaggy/clean-cut contrast made team jerseys superfluous.

4. Folding bikes. All the rage.

3. Topless sunbathing. Enough said?

2. Okay, so Barcelona was founded by the Carthaginians in about 230 BC, and has some old buildings (well, not quite that old) to prove it.

1. Yesterday a pack of us were rushing for a train when someone's cell phone dropped onto the tracks. Lost forever in New York, right? Not in Barcelona. A ticket-taker kept us off the tracks by reminding us that we had mothers and fathers, while another summoned "el jefe de la estación" who, though taciturn, eventually shut down the train line while he fetched the cell with a special fetching contraption. Even here, in surly Catalan Barcelona, Iberian hospitality runs strong.

And as for me, I'm settling into a routine. Six hours of language classes, cycling, yoga, a lot of buying groceries and trying to cook, and occasional evenings out with a varying pack of europeans. Doesn't leave a lot of time for sight-seeing, but for now, I'm content.

La Mercè

2006-09-24T16:00:00.000+02:00

I had been wondering what kind of cultural imagination it takes to let a manic genius like Gaudi loose in a city. I don't have many pictures of Gaudi structures for you yet. But they are striking. They twine like vines. They drip. They curl in upon themselves and then splay out quickly in knots and streaks. They yawn open, they hover over you, they coil for a spring.

In La Mercè, Barcelona's biggest annual festival, I am starting to find an answer. This culture faces fear head-on. Or, at least, this culture honors rituals of facing fear.
I guess I already had some clues: the bull-fights--a man alone in a ring with a bull. Or the "running of the bulls" in Pamplona and elsewhere, where men test fate running in the street with packs of the beasts.

Barcelona frowns on the bull traditions these days, but carries on danger rituals of its own. Such as the "Carrefoc," an exuberant, dramatic fire parade in which people dance in the streets costumed from head to toe in devil kit, or otherwise wrapped against the fire, to the sound of drum beats and exploding firecrackers.

I kept creeping to the front lines, then losing my nerve and jumping and running with the crowd when the firecrackers exploded and fire started raining down from everywhere. I caught some fire on my hands bringing you this picture. Ouch.

It's all great terrifying fun, and there's certainly something cathartic about running into fire. But I've been puzzling at how dark the Carrefoc is. After all, the name of this festival means "mercy." The legend goes that the citizens prayed to St. Mercè to save them from a plague of locusts. The locusts disappeared and Mercè became the patron saint of the city. So why celebrate with drums, fire, devils, dragons, dark fantastical creatures? I don't really know. Any ideas?
Today I encountered a different sort of confrontation with fear, watching the castellers make human towers.

The ideal is nine levels, I've been told. The castellers are progressively smaller, of course, and the top couple are little kids. One group had a tiny little kid who looked like no more than 4 years old. They shimmy up the backs of the rest to the top of the stack, throw up an arm, then quickly slide down. The kids wear helmets, but a couple of years ago one died falling from the top (shiver). I actually saw a couple bomb to the ground, but I think they were okay. The crowd is so thick.
This red group had trouble. I never saw them make a perfect castle. The second time they tried they got up to about 7 levels before the whole structure started shaking, with the crowd gasping in sympathy. Then, suddenly, they all collapsed, like so.

All this is just a sliver of La Mercè. There are also dozens of bands, street performers, hot air balloons, sky fireworks, kite shows, a swim in the harbor, a city run, a bicycle parade, booths for used book sellers and public interest organizations, dances, street games, horse cavalcades; all the museums are open for free, the metro runs 24/7, and the rest of the city is closed. It's quite an event. But that's it for me; I'm out of energy and going back to bed to nurse this cold.

On the brink

2006-09-22T18:24:00.000+02:00

...of a storm, and a fiesta of staggering proportions. And I am in bed, sick as a dog, with an ear cocked to see which will hit first.

Strangely, the first sign of the fiesta was the appearance of these second-hand book booths--perhaps 50 of them--flanking a main street.

In preparation for the storm, the fiesta, the raging cold, I went shopping.

A sometimes delightful....

...and sometimes rather disturbing experience.

And, for a more mannered picture (?), this was the view out my window this morning.
Happy weekend, everyone.

Montjuïc

2006-09-20T22:52:00.000+02:00

The view from Montjuïc, or so I have just discovered, after pointing this clumsy mountain bike unsuspectingly up an inviting hill this afternoon. The Olympic stadium from the 1992 games is built here, and a funicular connects the hill to the rest of the Olympic village on the shoreline, down below. There are gardens and museums on the hill as well, but I was mostly interested in the city views, like this one behind me, the city center from the southwest with the ocean out of the picture to the right.
Here it is between these trees.

And here is the imposing castle at the very top of the hill, constructed, I was told by the taciturn guard, in the 16th century. It now serves as an armaments museum. Chillingly, it was used as a political prison up to the Franco era.

And now I'm starting to sound like a guidebook so I'll leave you for the night with a shot of my street.

Details

2006-09-19T23:41:00.000+02:00

This city hides its secrets in plain view.

El amor hace que brille el sol

2006-09-19T15:52:00.000+02:00

...or, love makes the sun burn brighter.
My first impression is that Barcelona is an ingenious mezcla of California and New York. Mountains spoon the city on one side, while the other spills out into a long beautiful coastline. Santa Barbara, anyone? The air is dry, the sky open, and the pace, well... Spanish. Supermarkets and street markets offer melons, figs, oranges, peaches, plums, tangerines, berries, cherimoyas by the bushel, and fruits I've never even heard of.
But the architecture is that of a big, grand old city, with the remains of Roman structures appearing unexpectedly in side streets and Gaudi's peculiar mirth apparent everywhere. And despite the beach and sun, Barcelona manages a fully urban energy and cosmopolitan feel. So yes, this is day two after the first date, still the fresh blush of infatuation.

Barcelona, day 1

2006-09-17T21:50:00.000+02:00

I'm already in love.

Salamanca

2006-09-17T00:36:00.000+02:00

My four month liminal adventure began in Salamanca, a small university city two hours by bus to the west of Madrid in the Castilla and Leon portion of the country.

I'd been lured here by pictures of the Plaza Mayor, a broad open courtyard in the center of town, which, I had been assured by the guidebooks, "is widely considered Spain's most beautiful central plaza," perfect for frittering away hours in the sun with cafe con leche.

To my great surprise, there were no peaceful hours to be frittered away last week. I unsuspectingly stumbled into Salamanca's two week fiesta. The city was packed with returning students and other fiesta-seekers; full of life, music, energy from noon until dawn. The central square hosted a variety of bands--this was the winner of Spain's equivalent of American Idol.

And, as you can sort of see from this picture, scores of "casitas" made up the bread and butter of the fiesta, dotting the streets throughout the city and selling tapas and thimble-portions of beer, wine or sangria, seemingly 24/7. The casitas were continually surrounded by university students who, I'm told, circulated a map of the city detailing which casita offered which tapas. Bar-hopping at its finest.

I spent most of my time here, at the language school I'm attending throughout my stay in Spain. I could not have been happier with the school. It is beautiful, well-organized, and attended by a wild variety of students. My class alone had a retired French hairdresser, a girl who grew up in Curacao and now lives in Holland working as a lawyer, a Cambridge civil engineering student, an 18 year old fashionista from Germany who had just left home for the first time, and a Swiss student who wants to work in the travel industry.

I fell in early on with Maria, from Belgium, and we spent the week speaking nothing but Spanish--broken, error-strewn, enthusiastic Spanish. It was great fun and I miss her already.

This is one of the city's landmarks--the University, which was founded in the mid-13th century, and at its peak during the 16th and 17th. This is the stone tapestry over the door. There are busts of Fernando and Isabel in the center. However, it is not the grandeur of the stone carvings that draws visitors and new students to stare long and hard upon this frieze "como las vacas al tren" (or with mouths wide open). Rather, it is the small frog.

Here it is, on the right-hand column. A tiny little frog on the head of a small skull. If you find it unassisted you will have luck--in exams, in love, in whatever you wish for. If not, well, let's just hope the consequences are not too dire because I absolutely could not find it unassisted. There are similar odd touches hiding in stones around the city, such as a tiny astronaut near the front door of the cathedral, in a restored portion of the stone frieze. I wish I had a picture of that one for you.

And the university library is covered in conch shells, like so.

After five days I moved on from Salamanca, ready to make a cambio de aires. I had arrived jet-lagged, exhausted and without luggage to a city that was mostly closed down in favor of a party zone for college kids. Fun, yes. Beautiful, absolutely. But now, jet-lag cured by wine at all hours, and in great desire of a bicycle, Barcelona was calling.