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Published: December 7th 2007
¡Hola!
Spain is amazing. Gaudi is fucking awesome. Barcelona rock...when it's not overrun by loud abusive Scottish football hooligans. Madrid is a bit lame. But first i have a story to tell, it is one of coincidence and craziness.
We arrived in Barcelona and were blown away by the mass of street performers along La Rambla, the main drag of the city; human statues, magicians, painters, and a whole array of others, all doing their thing, and bloody well at that. We checked into our hotel, a cute little pensiones (pension alamar), basically a home-stay sort of thing, run by this friendly little Spanish family, we had our own little double room with a balcony overlooking the street, nice and quiet (except at night when the streets are overrun by dealers, drunks, and prostitutes) but still in the centre of things, the red light district in particular. We went out and, after our 22 hour bus from Venice, which got lost in Nice at about 2 in the morning, were craving some simple homely food, so we went to Travel Bar, exclusively catering for the needs of backpackers, and were surprisingly greeted with a g'day, and a burger, rather
Casa Batillo.
yep you guessed it, more Gaudi.than an hola and tapas. It wasn't exactly the finest cuisine in the world, and we later found out from someone who works there, not at all to our surprise, that you shouldn't really eat the food at travel bar. Our confidence wasn't really improved by the manager sitting in the courtyard talking overly loudly about how they had only just passed their health inspection, but we didn't get sick and we made it out alive, so things weren't all bad.
Our next mission, after a bit of an afternoon snooze, was to find something to smoke, so we went to a bar and asked a local in my cheap spanish how to pick up some weed, and in his equally as inefficient english (actually it was better than my spanish by a long shot, but still not easy to follow), managed to figure out that we buy it off the Pakistani guys selling beer in the street, you ask for chocolate (of course). We immediately then ignored this friendly advice, when an Itlalian guy came up to us at our table and offered us something to smoke. We arranged a price and he went off to get it,
when he returned, looking visibly quite sketchy, he wouldn't let us look at it and was pulling all the old tricks, trying to confuse us and pressure us into buying it, saying the cops were watching and junk. Anyway, in the madness of things we ended up paying ofr a large bag of peppermint tea. We are fucking idiots.
Anway, after we had gotten over the shock of being ripped off, we decidede we would try again, only being much more vigilant. So we set off to Placa la Catalunya, the towns main square. Now, this is where it gets crazy. We got there, and Niki said she wanted to use the toilets, so we ducked into the closest macca's. Whilst she was occupied, I was idly waiting outside the bathrooms minding my own business, when this tall, hairy, bearded Spanish guy came out of the men's toilets. We caught each others eyes and locked in a momentary stare.
"Simon?!!!!"
"Sion?!!!!"
"What the Fuck?!!!"
"Ohmigod! I Don't fucking believe it!"
Sure enough, this was no ordinary tall, hairy Spaniard, rather a tall hairy Australian instead. It was indeed Simon, one of the chef's that I used to
work with at Big Boy's Cafe in Newtown a few years ago, and also one of my best friends. In our excitement we headed for the closest Bodega for a few Canyas and watched a game of football with the locals, and Niki, Simon, Simon's mate (also from Sydney) Rensas and me all drank away the night regailing each other with tales from home and from our travels, we even got to see some Scotsmen beating up another Scotsmen. You don't see that everyday. Oh wait, you do. We went out to a shot bar later with the guys, where we ran into even more people from Newtown, as if Simon wasn't enough. This place was cool, it had a menu of literally hundreds of shots to choose from, all under 2 Euros, and mostly served with a massive flaming inferno as an accompaniment. Cheap, nasty, but above all, very ,very fun. We caught up with Simon and Olivia (his g/f, a beautiful and friendly person) and Rensas and the crew a few more times in Barca, hanging out a L'ovella Negra (the Black Sheep) and Murphy's Irish pub the night before we left, all very trashy and debauched, in
Flamin' Moes
Two Euros a shot, and you even get a personal pyrotechnics display. classic Sion and Niki style. Anyway, it was great to catch up with you Simon, say hi to everyone for us, sorry we had to bail on the last night at Locotron, but the night bus came and we thought we'd better jump on it before it was too late. Didn't get a chance to say goodbye. I still can't believe that thousands of miles across the glove, you can bump into someone you know so fucking well walking out of fucking macca's. Small, Small world. Crazy shit.
Well, that was my crazy story of coincidence. I'm still in shock. it certainly made our time in barcelona much more fun than it would have otherwise been, and I'm sure it contributed to us ranking Barca so highly in our list of must see cities.
The other things that make Barcelona special undoubtedly include La Sagrada Familia. The life work of Antoni Gaudi, a modernist architect, inspired by the natural world, it has since its conception been a source of much controversy. Construction began in 1882, and as the lonely planet states, is progressing at a noticeably 'other-wordly pace', evident by the building still being only eight towers into
it's planned sixteen (one for each apostle, one for the mother of god, one for her son and two more i can't remember). It is truly an amazing sight, worthy in my opinion of joining the Taj Mahal as one of the great human wonder's of the world, and in the same way that I was lost for words as I stood in the mighty shadow of the Taj, I once again felt myself stammering, searching for a way to comprehend the immensity and diversity of the emotion that such a structure invokes. The towering spires, that appear to melt like a candle towards the ground, or the tesellated ceiling work designed to replicate the feeling of being in a rainforest and looking upwards to the canopy, held up by column work derived from the branching trunks of a tree. The animals that hold up the entirety of Gaudi's personally overseen sections capture within them a sense of nature and the close connection that Gaudi obviously had with the natural world. Inside the still unfinished masterpiece, lies a museum, which demosntrates how the archistects and builders are trying to piece together Gaudi's orginal plans, after most of his work was
detroyed during the Spanish Civil War when his office was trashed and burnt by Franco's Fascists, and explores some of the ways gaudi approached his work. This creativity was so inspired, especially in one unique technique in particular that really stood out. Gaudi developed a way to design buildings upside-down by hanging lead weights from pieces of string, which created a naturally powerful archway, by combining this method many times, he could create entire models of buildings in inverse, using gravity to give the structure perfect harmony. It's a bit confusing but makes sense when you see it. It is pure genius, that's all you need to know.
Gaudi also represented the Catalunyan independence. A fiercely solidary group, independent of Castillian Spain, whom even speak there own language (Catalan). This independence of this region of the Iberian Peninsula is captured in the outrageous, and anti-establishment methods of Gaudi's architecture, yet it still remains staunchly religious. Although I am about to read a book about this history, I currently possess very little knowledge to be able to talk a bout it coherently or justifiably. So i'll just shut up.
Gaudi, unfortunately met with an untimely demise, when he was
hit by a tram on his way to work. According to the story, he was carrying no identification at the time, and had only peanuts in his pockets. This combined with his shabby clothes and broken shoes (presumably in a state of disrepair because he spent all of his time working) led those who found him to think he was a vagrant, and so, still alive, he was sent to a hospital for the homeless, where he died a few days later in what could only have been meagre conditions. It was only after his death that people realised who he was, and his body was transported to the site of the Sagrada. In a ddition to the Sagrada, Gaudi contributed so much to Barcelona that the city would be unrecognisable if you took away his works. The Casa Batlla, the La Pedrera, Parc Guell, Palau Guell, even the lampposts in Placa Real all give barcelona it's distinctive modernist feel, and are easily some fo the most awesome and amazing buildings I've ever sen. Anyway, Gaudi's cool, i think i have said enough about him for now.
There was a whole bunch of other stuff in Barcelona that I
don't have time for, like Mont Juic, the site of the Olympic village, which is crap, the Picasso museum which is slightly less crap, the beach, which was cool until we found out that it isn't a real beach, in that ever since '92 they've been shipping in the sand for the tourists, but it was still nice after a month of cold landlocked big cities, arriving at the sea and being able to lie on the sand and get ripped. We missed the launch of the round the world yacht race, we got there in time, but we couldn't find the launch point, so we ended up just wandering aimlessly along the beach. Not sure what else we did, its now a few weeks ago so it's getting ahrd to remember. Oh yeah, the soccer hooligans. We arrived in Barca the day before a match between the Glasgow Rangers and FC Barcelona, and to our wonderful luck, rather than La Rambla being filled with Catalunyans, it was filled with extremely pale, beer guzzling red heads, dressed in blue football outfits, shouting loudly and beating each other up, they literally took over the entire city centre, thousands of them, It
Ceiling of the Sagrada
The ceiling is inspired by the canopy of the rainforest. It really feels like your looking up at the treetops. was absolutely horrific. Although they did give a healthy dose of cash to the local underground, which we gathered from the numerous guys being beaten up by pimps for not having anymore money.
One more thing, i don't think i mentioned this yet, but as i said the food in Barca is crap...although, there is one place that really, really earns our praise. La Fonda. An amazing Spanish restaurant, specialising in Paella, that keeps its prices low and its food awesome. There is a catch, but its worth it. In order to get in you have to queue up for around a hour just to get a seat, but for about twenty or thirty euros, you cna get a two ro three course meal for two, and a few bottles of Cava (Spanish champagne), and trust me, its worth every penny and every second that you wait outside. Well done La Fonda, its not for nothing that we came back at least four times.
Well, i had better finish this blog and get it posted, sorry its a bit late, only a few weeks. i'm not going to write anything about Madrid cos it was kinda boring and
we were only there for a day or two, the park is nice, we finally got to go boating on the lake, and we met Rose there who was cool, she will be making another appearance in our next blog. By the way, do not stay at Cats hostel in Madrid, its shit.
Hello again to Simon adn Olivia and crew, hope your having a great time, and hello to everyone out there in the big wide world, that, at times, turns out to be surprisingly small. Next stop Seville, and a secretive little town nestled on the Almerian coast, which you'll have tow ait to find out about. I'll give you a hint though, it has something to do with Burt Bacarach, a Saint, and a Costa Rican I used to go to school with.
Adios Amigos
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Geoff/ Dad
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Spain
Yes, I remember studying a bit of Gaudi during the engineering days. Spain is indeed an amazing place. have fun.