Barcelona 2016

Barcelona 2016.

August 25-30.

August 25.

So now for the entry that you I have been waiting for.  This was my first trip back to Barcelona in a little over six years, and it was a long time coming, especially considering the love I have for this city that I haven't made any attempts to hide in the amount of time I've had this blog.  Barcelona is one of my all-time favorite cities in the world for various reasons, and I wasn't about to let any chance to go back go.

My time as an au pair had come to an end, as school was starting for the kiddos at the end of August, and I think the family was getting kind of sick of me in the end anyway.  I'm not good with kids, and I didn't speak enough English with them as was expected, and even though I did leave on good terms (I believe), it's not an experience I'd go into again.  It was a great learning experience, and it did teach me patience and how to be a better guest, but I'm just not cut out for those kinds of environments.

Anyway, the family dropped me off at the train station in Castellón, where there were some tears on the kiddos' parts (which I'll admit was really nice, because they were sweet kids and the family was definitely one of the better ones I could have been with).  I bought my tickets to Barcelona, where I had booked a hotel for four nights right by the Estació de Sants.

If you're not familiar with Barcelona, there are two main train stations: Sants and França.  França is generally the one geared toward European destinations and Sants toward domestic/Spanish ones.  I've never actually been to França, which says a lot about how I travel, but what can you do.  [I should mention there's another train station, Catalunya, right underneath the Plaça de Catalunya, but it's for regional trains within Catalunya, and I've been through that station; when I went up to Terrassa in 2010.]

Year in Review, 2016

Here's my 2016 in review, with pictures. I know I didn't do much blogging this year, and it's been a while since any decent updates. I'm not necessarily trying to make up for it with this post, but it is going to feature she of the pictures from my long-awaited trip to Spain, which ended up changing my life in ways I never even thought were possible. I'm also sharing what was to me the one song that *was* 2016 for me: "Faded" by Alan Walker, at the top of the post.

The End of an Era

"Xavi se despide del Barça por la puerta grande"

I always figured this moment would come sooner than I would hope.  The day my favorite athlete, my favorite footballer, would stop playing for my favorite club.  He's not retiring, but he is pretty close.  He's moving to another country, to another league, but thankfully for all the right reasons.  It's something to be optimistic about, anyway.

I've posted about my feelings before.  And to be honest, it's not something that I feel adequate to talk about right now.  I'm going through a lot right now on a personal level and I've stopped writing like I used to.  My thoughts don't flow as smoothly, my mind is a mess, and nothing makes as much sense.  But I feel like I somehow owe him something in his departure.  I feel like I need to say something about this man, because of so much he's given me.  And it feels so weird to say.  Awkward, even.  I've never met him.  I doubt he even knows I exist.  I'd be shocked if he did, really.  And to be honest, I don't even really care that much.  But none of that matters in the end.  What matters is that this man, this footballer, has given me so much.  He's brought me back to a place I never thought I'd be in, he introduced me to a whole new world, a whole new culture, to the extent that I honestly do feel like I know him.

The sad part is that the last couple years I've been so busy trying to take care of my life, trying to make something of it that I let things fall by the wayside.  I ignored the things I loved thinking that one day I'd come back to them, only to be chewed up and spit out by the very life I thought I wanted to live.

At the end of the day, the story is this: seven-and-a-half years ago I was planning my first trip back to Spain in almost four years.  I was getting back into football, if one could ever say that I was ever into it, and found a name that popped up on a roster for the Spanish National Team during a Eurocup qualifying match.  I recognized it from nearly nine years prior.  "That couldn't be the same guy...could it?"  It was.  What happened next sent me spiraling into a world that I'd only marginally known existed.  And what ended up happening was that I would end up taking a trip to Barcelona with some friends, sitting in the nosebleeds at Camp Nou, watching 90 minutes of beautiful football that would turn out to be a precursor to the legendary season that gave FC Barcelona their first treble.  And who would score the first goal in that match I saw on a May afternoon in Barcelona but the man who essentially forced himself into my life.

From that point on, I found myself immersing myself in Catalan culture.  In the language, history, and culture of a nation I barely knew and understood and would find myself defending.  I found myself within months being able to converse in it, and by the time I would return to Barcelona two years later I was told by native speakers, Barcelona locals, that they had no way of knowing I'd never lived a month in Catalunya.

So here I am, finding myself trying to figure out what's going to happen next.  It sounds trite, and bizarrely dependent on sports to find some kind of meaning in life.  But here's the truth.  And everyone who follows football knows this to be true.  Football is more than just a sport.  It's more than what American football and baseball and basketball and hockey purport to be.  Football is so much more than that.  I'm not even going to bother defining it.  It means something different for everyone, and that's what makes it the Beautiful Game.  But I honestly don't know what's going to happen now that Xavi no longer plays for FC Barcelona.  Oh, I'll still follow Barcelona.  That club has become such a huge part of my life I will never be able to let that go.  And I'll still plan my next trip to Barcelona, and I'll still speak Catalan, and I'll still support Catalan independence.  But it won't be the same.

I know he's off to a better place.  Not Qatar per se, but knowing why he's going there...to play the game at a level that Barça isn't letting him play at anymore.  To play a more managerial role so that he can segue into coaching, so that within the next five years we'll see him coaching at the Miniestadi and subsequently at Camp Nou.  So that, who knows, given the streak Barcelona's been on with 1st-year 1st team coaches winning trebles, he'll go on to win one himself.

So to this I say, in the language of his people:

Gràcies, Xavi.  Gràcies per tot.  Gràcies per tot el que ens has donat i pel que ens tornaràs a donar.  Ets tota la llegenda que mereix aquest club i tota la persona que necessitàvem.  Gràcies per ser la persona que has sigut.  Molta sort al teu futur.  Mai t'oblidarem.

Sometimes I spend money.

Very few people are going to care, but as I have nothing else to really talk about, here are some pictures from my latest hauls.  Note: I still don't have a job, but I'm starting to get some kind of allowance from my parents (in cash) just so I can buy a few things I need (mostly clothes), and I also have a few gift cards that I need to use.

Yes, I am still stuck in 2010, what of it?

I just discovered the photo editing software on Google+ (damn it, Google, I love you) and had a little fun this afternoon.  Don't mind me.

Las Arenas & Algorta, Getxo, Bizkaia

Playa de Arrigunaga, Punta Galea, Algorta

Punta Galea, Bizkaia

Camp Nou, Barcelona

Masia Freixa, Parc de Sant Jordi, Terrassa

Masia Freixa, Parc de Sant Jordi, Terrassa

Masia Freixa, Parc de Sant Jordi, Ca n'Aurell, Terrassa

Barcelona 

Downtown Toronto

Rogers Centre, CN Tower, Downtown Toronto

Barcelona. Barcelona? Barcelona!

Passeig de Colom, Port Vell.  April 29, 2008.

 It's really no secret that I'm obsessed with Barcelona.  I've never tried to hide it, I've never tried to ignore it.  It's just one of those things I feel defines me for some reason or other.  I'm not really sure when it became my "schtick", but ever since it did, I've had tons of people say to me "So-and-so has been talking about Barcelona and I thought of you!" or "They showed Barcelona on Such-and-such TV show and I thought of you!"  Barcelona, and my love and adoration for FC Barcelona midfielder Xavi Hernández (it's borderline creepy is what it is), are the two things that people who know me really well define me with.

It's all a compliment, obviously.  One friend took a trip to Spain and Italy shortly after I got back from Spain (she left the US the day I left Spain, actually) and after visiting Barcelona she said "Now I know why Elizabeth loves Barcelona so much."  It's contagious.  Add that onto the amount of times other friends who haven't been there have told me "Okay, so if I ever go to Barcelona, I'm taking you with me to show me everything!"  Of course, then I always feel bad because every single time I've been to Barcelona there's always something I don't end up seeing or doing for some reason or other.  Like I still haven't taken the tram up to Tibidabo, and it's been on my list since before I went the last time.  And I haven't been inside any of Gaudí's buildings either, but that's mostly because I didn't want to spend the money to get in.  And considering the last time I went I nearly emptied my bank account doing cheap things, I'm really glad the only splurge I made was visiting the Palau de la Música Catalana.

Sagrada Família.  May 1, 2008.

The other day on Spotify I did a search for all songs with "Barcelona" in the title and created a playlist.  Due to the amount of songs that only mentioned Barcelona once with no context of the actual city (I guess the name Barcelona just sounds nice or something...) I ended up deleting the playlist, but the fact that I actually did that search says enough.  I just can't stop.  Anytime I hear someone mention "Barcelona" in a sentence I feel my nose start to itch and my eyes start to water and I want to bust into the conversation and say "Oh my gosh, I adore Barcelona!"  Anytime it appears on a TV show or movie I'm watching I want to pause it and just repeat the person saying "Barcelona" over and over again to take it all in.

I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until I die.  Barcelona is magical.  And I don't care at all that I'm obsessed with it.  Because of my obsession with Barcelona I've met some wonderful people, learned another language, discovered amazing literature, amazing music.  Barcelona és, senzillament, màgica.

Avinguda Diagonal, 442

Avinguda Diagonal, 442 (© Google Earth)

La finca, a falta de mejores palabras, parecía un cruce entre un gigantesco reloj de carillón y un buque pirata, tocado de grandiosos ventanales y un tejado de mansardas verdes.  En cualquier otro lugar del mundo, aquella estructura barroca y bizantina hubiese sido proclamada una de las siete maravillas del mundo o un engendro diabólico obra de algún loco artista poseído por espíritus del más allá.  En el Ensanche de Barcelona, donde piezas similares brotaban por doquier como tréboles tras la lluvia, apenas conseguía levantar una ceja.

-- Carlos Ruiz Zafón, El juego del ángel

The house, for lack of better words, looked like a cross between an enormous grandfather clock and a pirate ship, touched with grandiose windows and a roof of green fields.  In any other place, that Baroque and Byzantine structure would have been declared one of the seven wonders of the world or the diabolical project of some crazy artist possessed by spirits from the other side.  In Barcelona's Eixample, where similar pieces rose up all around like clover after the rain, it barely raised eyebrows.

Silly people...

I found this on my Tumblr dashboard earlier today:

When I Hear the Name "Barcelona"...

I think of every single player on that team
Heart Rate Speeds up.
Light Headed.
MESSI.
Red and Blue.
In Love.
Greatest thing on this planet.
Greatest thing that has ever happened to me.
THE GREATEST TEAM.
There’s no definition for the love i have for Barca.

Okay so.  Let me begin by saying no one is wrong here.  I feel like I should make that disclaimer because, well, I like to say people are wrong a lot (sorry in advance...and in retrograde).  But that's not what I want to talk about here.

Because I'm just going to say this, I am a culé.  I do support FC Barcelona as my football/soccer team of choice.  I do.  But here's the thing.  Barcelona is a city, not a football club.  Sure, it has a world-class football club and a world-class football stadium that is amazing and enormous and beautiful and everything else.  It also has another football club, which may not have the renown as their cross-town rivals Barça, they have a very loyal fanbase and a legitimate claim to the city (yes, I'm talking about Espanyol).

Here's the thing though.  When I hear "Barcelona", or when I see it written on bags and elsewhere in print, I think of the Passeig de Gràcia, the Torre de Collserola, the Passeig de Sant Joan.  I think of the metro station at the Estació de Sants.  I think of the Palau de la Música Catalana, the Liceu, Casa Batlló, the Sagrada Família.  I think of Sants (featured at the top of this post), I think of Poblenou, of the lower Dreta de l'Eixample.  I think of the time I got lost on the tram and ended up in Sant Adrià de Besòs and ended up not caring because I was lost in Barcelona.

This is the city I first fell in love with in 2004 when I saw the Sagrada Família for the first time in my life, when my family walked down the Passeig de Sant Joan till we got to the Arc de Triomf...and then walked back to the Sagrada Família where we'd parked our car.  It's the city I fell in love with again in 2008 when two friends and I spent five days there, and again in 2010 when I spent six days there by myself.

This city is magical, and not just because of the football club.  Yes, I'm a fan, but this city means so much more to me and the people who live here, who go through every single monotonous day in this city.  I feel like all this blog is a defense of Barcelona and how much I love it, but who cares.  This city has changed my entire life.  And yes, FC Barcelona is a great club.  But it pales in comparison to the greatness of the city that houses it.  Because that's what's really important here.  It's not the club, it's the city.  It's the great city of Barcelona.  Let's not forget that.

Palau de la Música Catalana

Lluís Domènech i Montaner

This is probably my favorite building in all of Barcelona.  Worldwide, the city is known for Antoni Gaudí, the 19th century architect who's known for the Casa Batlló, Casa Milà, Parc Güell, and the Basílica de la Sagrada Família, among others.  I'm not going to deny Gaudí's genius, I'm not going to deny his talent or his ability to buck every single trend and design buildings that have captured imaginations for over a hundred years.

But (because there is always a "but") Barcelona is not just Gaudí.  He's the city's most famous person (despite being born in Reus, in Tarragona, not Barcelona) and he has certainly left his mark on the city who sponsored him, but there were two other great Catalan architecture masters who are often overlooked because Gaudí's work and fame tends to overpower their own.  Take for example Josep Puig i Cadafalch's, whose Casa Amatller sits adjacent to Gaudí's Casa Batlló, and I often wonder if people who crowd in front of the Casa del Drac, as it's sometimes referred to in Catalan, realize that the building next door is just as much an architectural monument.  No matter, it probably enjoys being an understated beauty.

Now, the Palau de la Música Catalana...this building is anything but understated.  Built to house the Orfeó Català, the Catalan Orphic Choir, between 1905 and 1908 in the Ribera district, it's a testament to the Modernist movement in Catalonia.  The main stage has incredible acoustics; in the tour I took last year we were played Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and even though I've always loved that piece, hearing it in that hall nearly moved me to tears.

I would love to see a concert here, in this Palace for Catalan Music.

Lost in BCN

Okay, the title isn't metaphorical this time.  And the "BCN" part is real too, even though perhaps a tad overdone in my case because I feel like I talk about Barcelona a lot.  Oh well.  Deal with it.

Here's my story about the time I got legitimately lost in Barcelona.  On my 5th day in the city I had it planned that I was going to spend the entire day out and about, on my feet, just exploring the city.  I'd already been to the tourist traps: Parc Güell, the Sagrada Família, the Passeig de Gràcia and the Rambles, as well as Camp Nou, and just wanted to do some wandering.  The day earlier, after meeting up with some lovely people I'd met on social networks like LiveJournal and Twitter, I bought myself a new pair of flats, and (biggest mistake of my life), I decided to wear them on my "day on the town".  Yeah, probably shouldn't have done that.  My feet were throbbing by three pm.  I wandered into the Barceloneta for lunch, and ended up eating at a make-your-own Chinese/Asian place on the beach when I checked my phone for Facebook messages, and saw that a family friend who lived in Barcelona had invited me to the church service at their house in the evening.  The Barceloneta is not at all accessible via subway, so I ended up walking down the Passeig de l'Arenal till I got to the Vila Olímpica, where there's a tram line that goes into the area of the Eixample where they live, just out of Poblenou (if you're not familiar with Barcelona geography this is really not that important).

Give Me Barcelona

I know I've already posted about how much I love Barcelona.  I don't even care if I sound like a broken record at this point.  I adore this city.  It's something I'll probably say a lot here, just because I can.  Because I can, because there are very few people who would even dare to argue with me on this, because there's really no point to arguing.

Paris bored me.  Rome annoyed me.  But Barcelona...Barcelona I got lost in.  Literally and figuratively.  Barcelona is, so far, the only city I have had plans be ruined in and still hasn't ruined my experiences.  In between running down the Passeig de Gràcia to find a bathroom and finally ending up at the Rodalies station in Plaça Catalunya where none of the stalls had toilet paper and shrugging it off later on to spend some time at the beach with my friends the first five days I spent there in 2008 to the time I got on the wrong tram and ended up in Sant Adrià del Besòs where I sat waiting for another tram for twenty minutes in front of the Centre Tèrmic (that building with the three smokestacks) the day after buying new shoes and deciding to wear them out as I did some exploring.  Not only did I also get on the wrong tram, on the way back into the city when I'd finally gotten to where I thought I needed to be, I got lost in Poblenou because I'd gone south instead of north.

And then I got creeped on in the Parc de la Ciutadella at the end of a very long day by a guy who decided he was going to speak to me in Catalan when I admitted to speaking the language...and not leaving me alone when I insisted I could find my way back on my own (I guess I should really create a story for myself in case this happens again).  When my feet killed me the next day, I braved the pain and headed off to Terrassa for the second time.

I'm convinced nothing can go wrong for me there that can ruin my experience.

Go ahead, try it.

I could probably get robbed at the Urquinaona metro stop or in the Raval and I will still come out and say "Well, at least I got robbed in Barcelona!" and then when I finally get replacement crap, I'll always remember that I got that replacement crap because I got robbed in Barcelona, and will be okay with it.

That doesn't mean I'm actually going to try to get myself robbed there, though.  I've only been to Urquinaona twice and I was on the metro car the entire time; never entered the station.  Never been to the Raval either.  I also tend to avoid the touristy areas like the plague, unless it's the Passeig de Gràcia and Plaça Catalunya.  Like when I ran into the Plan Internacional guys in front of the Fnac Triangle who seemed shocked when they found out I spoke Spanish.

Good times.

Biutiful

I started watching Biutiful last night, more out of curiosity than anything else.  After the trainwreck that was (for me) Vicky Cristina Barcelona, I've been a little hesitant about any film shot in Barcelona in which the city features prominently.  No movie about the city has yet to beat L'Auberge Espagnole as far as I'm concerned, so before I continue, let me just say that if you haven't seen it yet, go out and watch it now.  It is one of my top-five favorite movies.

Anyway, I don't know if I'll actually finish watching it because the video quality is so shoddy that I can barely understand what's going on (it's from a camera, which, I know I know, but, it's all that's offered since the film isn't out on DVD yet) and I'm totally lost.  And it's supposed to be a visually striking movie as well, and, yeah, not seeing it.  I'll probably just end up waiting for the DVD to come out, then I'll be able to watch it and enjoy it like I should.

Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, Barri del Clot (la Dreta de l'Eixample), Barcelona. 30 May, 2010.

Parc Güell, Barcelona. May 1, 2008

I'd rather be in Barcelona

I had another one of my moments today.  One of my "get me out of here soon or I'll start crying and carrying on like a child" moments.  They don't happen often, though the triggers are pretty regular and predictable for me.  I really shouldn't have been surprised.

The subway stop I get off at every other Friday night to volunteer with a Bangladeshi Bible study some friends of my family run has advertisements from the Spanish tourism board in the stairwell where you go down to access the tracks, right before you decide whether you want to go east or west on the Bloor line (I "live" in Toronto).  There are two images, one is of a Spanish parasailor I believe she is, and the second is of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona with the tagline "Perfectly Unfinished" next to it in a flowing script.  It always makes me a little nostalgic when I see it, and those signs have to have been up there for the past three months; I started seeing them in December.  But tonight...  It really didn't help that I was listening to my Above and Beyond: Trance Around the World podcast, and by the time I sat down their track "Can't Sleep" was playing.  It was as clear as a vision: all of a sudden I found myself waiting at the Badal stop on the L5 blue line.  The exit on the other side of the tracks wasn't written in English, it was written in Catalan.  And as quickly as the "vision" came, it was gone, and I remembered that I was not in Barcelona but rather in Toronto, and I felt it.  I felt my heart weighing down my chest, my eyes drooping, with that realization that I was not where I felt I should be in that moment.

It was a mixture of the song (Though listening to trance music on the subway is a really bad idea for me in general, because it always ends up bringing back memories of Barcelona; for some reason most of the time I listen to trance I'm reminded of Barcelona.  I think my 2008 trip and waking up to the A State of Trance 2007 album ruined me forever.), the public transportation, and the plain and simple fact that I am, quite simply, not in Barcelona came together in a crazy blend of nostalgia, leaving me hit as if by a freight train.  How lovely.

I honestly don't think I'll ever get this out of my system.  I love the music too much, I love that city too much.  I don't think it'll ever leave my system until I manage to actually live there.  Sure, at this point I can navigate the city like a native despite the fact that I've only been there three times and for no longer than six days.  Sure, I feel like I live there whenever I'm there because I tend to avoid the tourist traps like the plague (I have still never paid a duro to visit any of Gaudí's monuments; I've only technically been to Parc Güell and that place is free, thank God) regardless of how pretentious that makes me sound.  But until I can actually get to truly experience the city the way it should be experienced: as a native, as someone who only goes in there for business/education and otherwise tends to avoid it (I want to live in Terrassa, hohoho), basically, until I can find something to dislike about it I will probably end up missing it forever.

Though to be fair, I still miss Bilbao and Getxo and I lived there for two and a half years.  So I guess I'll probably always end up missing Barcelona.  Meaning I will probably be spending the rest of my life wishing I were there.  Such is my destiny.