Spain: The Novel

Same old bicycle, always drinking...

After the second longest shower on earth,* the longest hot dog on earth and what I like to call "The Big Sleep," I finally have enough time for a decent chat about all that is Spain.

But first the good news: Carrie and I have been allowed to move in together into my apartment, thereby splitting the rent down the middle and saving us both nearly a thousand dollars. This means I get to eat. C'est fantastique!

Because I've seen more and done more in the past five days than I did all semester in Shreveport I'm left with the terrible decision of what to tell and what to leave out from my three busy days in the actaul city itself, the two days of in transit alone have enough to write a thousand words. Suffice it to say that I slept not more than nine hours in that five days time.

Barcelona is a city steeped in the works of Antoni Gaudi, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and a number of street preformers who range from brilliant to rediculously insipid. Our first discovery on Thursday morning was that our hostel, hastily chosen from studentuniverse.com was actually situated directly on La Rambla, the main thoroughfare and heart of the city. In direct proportion to everything we wanted to see: we were the center. (Now may be an excellent time to mention that among the first things our little group noticed was an odd and immediate annimosity between Cody and the woman who worked at the front desk of the hostel. This annimosity will fester and boil during the entire duration of our stay there.)

In fact, it may be a good idea to give a brief description of our five travel companions in order of when they decided to join Carrie and I for the trip.

Katherine is from one of the Carolinas and like to doodle in her sketch book and listen to her iPod. She smiles a lot but isn't particularly bothered with making plans or communicating per se.

Cody is from Memphis and is a PIKE, a member of some fraternity who's letters aren't available on this keyboard. He's great fun when he's sober and feels like making your life easy; when he's drunk he's like being around a large, obsintant poorly trained circus animal.

Erin is from Buffalo and is decidely more mature than most of the world.

Josh is from who knows where. He's a remarkably decent guy who has studied abroad before and who likes to sell his hand-made hemp necklaces to stores and drink forties. He has Milroy's disease and is therefor one of only twenty families in the world with congenitally fat feet.

Gisel is Dominican and Puerto Rican and can speak Spanish so well that she often thinks in it. She's also rediculously good looking. These too things combined made her the Spain Trip's MVP.

It was with this group or some combination of the above that I discovered the Mediterranian ocean, La Pedreras, the Barcelonian tourbus system and my love for Paella. Also beer vending machines, discothéques deserted spanish villages and the intricasies of the Belgian rail system.

If any of you has never heard of Antoni Gaudi I suggest you look him up on the internet because I'm afraid not even my marvelous photography skills can do his creations justice. I never realized that a city and it's people could so totally be defined by the architecture of one man, who was in turn defined by his love of color and his fascination with the aquatic life of the Mediterranian sea and with mythology and symbolism. Among his works we were able to see many but visit only four: La Sagrada Familia(only the outside), La Padreras, Casa Batllo (also only the outside) and Park Guell. Gaudi, considered the son of Barcalona, did most of his work in the early 20th century but his buildings are amazingly timeless. They truly look as though there were taken from another planet, a sort of Dali/Dr. Seuss type place where everything is made of flowers and icecream and the world really does rest on the back a sea turtle. The construction hours alone on these structures are enough to make you want to wrap Barcalona in bubble wrap and hope nothing ever happens to it. In the style of the old world when things were built to last a people rarely saw their own life's works ever completed, the Sagrada Familia is an enormous and awful (as in "full of awe) gothic cathedral begun in 1882 which is still under construction today and is not expected to be completed for another 80 years. These people have my complete respect.

Park Guell is where I will get married. Start saving for a plane ticket now. If anyone would like to marry me there it is an open invitation; in fact, I'd be happy to have as many weddings there as possible. Carrie and I thought about exchanging vows the day we were there but we couldn't find a priest. The wedding party will be photographed in front of the giant lizard. The ceremony will take place on the snaking terrace that overlooks the city and the mountains surrounding it.

The works of Gaudi are not the only brilliant works of art I had to refrain from touching while in Barcelona. The Picasso museum, the museum of contemporary art at the Olympic grounds, and a monastary that is still functioning where also destinations of marked beauty and jawdropping dumbfoundedness. Places I didn't get to go and am saving for my next trip are the erotica museum (naughty), the wax museum (cheesy), the Salvador Dali museum (pricey) and the elevator that goes to the top of the Columbus Monument.

Colombus isn't from Barcelona and the statue is facing Italy (where he actually is from) and not the new world so that's all I have to say about that silly monument to a huge jerk.

But the elevator inside of said monument does overlook the Barcelona Aquarium where I got to communicate with Octopi for about a half an hour and learn about the mating habits of sharks. If anyone wants an example of how Disney is trying to take over the earth and succeeding admirably one need only stand before the Austrailia tank at any aquarium in the world and listen to the little children screaming "Nemo! Nemo!" and pointing to the animal formerly known as the clown-fish. Forever known as the Nemo, the way a baby deer will be forever known as a Bambi.

"Enough of this sight-seeing crap," you say. "What about all those adventure-type things you try not to tell your parents about so they don't worry about you and buy more insurance plans?" In all truth, the biggest adventure in Barcalona is just trying to deal with the people. Not the Barcalonians who are just trying to drink a lot and sell you things, but the group of British business men who are on football holiday and want to talk politics and buy you a pudding. (They paid half of our dinner, by the way, an 80€ conversation about how crap our president is). It's the Brazillians who say they want to dance but actually want to lick your neck. It's the drunk British skateboarders who tell everyone their Australian and bite you before passing out in your bed (thanks a lot Greg, you deserved to get punched) . It's the Scott who buys everyone roses before passing out while all his mates get to talk to you. It's the Belgian girl who can't find the club because it's hidden inside a deserted Spanish village and the scary homeless people in the Metro at six a.m. on the way home from said club, because all the boys you came with are too drunk to walk you home themselves.

It's the poor Chinese lady who works at the front desk of the hostel and won't let you have another Croisant or use the internet after midnight which is what leads to what I fondly call: "Why Everyone on Earth Hates Americans."

Have you ever been in a situation with someone who is so absolutely rediculous that even though you'd honestly like to call the cops on them or throttle them you just have to laugh because otherwise you'll eat our own sock just to keep from ever having to deal with that person again? That's Cody on five shots of tequila, at seven in the morning, calling the consierge a prostitute among other things and demanding to use the internet and telling everyone that his father "the international lawyer" (he's not) is going to press "larges." "Larges?" you ask, to which I reply: sometimes it might actually be easier to kill someone than to talk to them. I cannot desribe in enough detail how marvelously ironic Cody's drunken brawling was except to say that when he apologized the next day we all burst into laughter at the idea of even being able to compose a sufficient apology.

Thank God for the other six people in the group.

All in all, the trip never ever, ever, ever had a dull moment and I learned more about a city and a small group of my fellow Lille-ers than I could have imagined. Not to mention that I spent more money than God. But it was absolutely one of the moist astounding experiences of my life, as well as the most tiring. I plan to sleep as much as my classes will let me for the next week and next weekend... I'm staying here where I can at least pretend I know the language.

Phrase Du Jour: Quanto cuesta? (spanish for: how much does it cost?)

*The first longest shower being the annual post-mud-pit TKE Bid Day shower.