¨Where´s your Nationalism?¨

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Oh Barcelona!

Beautiful Barcelona and embarassing Americans abroad...


March 20th

Barcelona is a charming Mediterranean city literally bursting at it's seams with European urban style, art, architecture, and most importantly, delicious Catalan cuisine. The capital of Catalonia, Barcelona ranks in as Spain's second largest city after Madrid. It is not hard to see why it is one of the most populous urban areas in all of the European Union... Lee start packing.

My flight to Barcelona started with 50 16year olds in the airport talking so loudly that I could not hear what the lady was announcing over the intercom. I asked if there were any upgrades available for fear of having to sit near them. Fortunately, I did not. The flight was okay, and I think I only had one or ten visions of us crashing over the seven hours it took to get to London. When in London I had four hours to think about how God awful tired I was... and naturally I thought about my silly British friend Kate 😊

By the time I met Marry in Barcelona she had already bought a towel and shampoo and taken a mini shower in the sink right there in the airport. I was beyond exhausted as I had not slept hardly any on my overnight flight and so we hurried to exchange some money and make our way out to find our hostel. We were lazy and it did not cost much so we skipped taking the metro and then a bus and took a cab instead. Once we arrived I immediately took a shower.

We went walking around our hostel for a bit and found a nice little place to eat some tapas. Surprising, I was able to order everything in spanish correctly. Well sort of. Marry and I thought we were super hungry so we may have over ordered. We felt horrible about not eating everything so we snuck the extra food into our purses so as not to offend anyone. Yes, we put warm, smelly food into our bags.

After walking around we headed back to the hostel to rest a bit before the free dinner was served at 2100. Well, we never should have laid down because we did not wake up until 2330!! We were woken up by our two roommates coming in and so we stayed awake talking with them for around an hour before they had to go to sleep because of leaving early in the morning.


MY RANT ON AMERICANS ABROAD

Be warned-- I have nothing nice to say about them right now.

As we speak I am sitting next to two girls, American girls, on facebook talking to each other saying things like, ¨Oh my gawd (god) he is so cute. Like wait, like do you think he is like shorter than me though? ¨These girls have not visited any part of the city, except for bars. But this is not what my rant is about, they are just aggrivating me that much more...


March 21

Somehow Marry and I managed to sleep in pretty late. When we awoke it was raining and dreary outside, but we ventured out anyhow. We walked around the city and visited two of Gaudí´s houses, the Batlló and La Pedrera. Both were absolutely captivating. You literally could spend hours and hours walking around the city gawking.

We headed back to the hostel for the free dinner which was paella and was pretty good. Naturally afterwards we entered into conversation with all of the other people staying at the hostel. One of our roommates is a man from New Zealand and another girl we talked a lot with is from Australia. Later in the evening a guy from Finland joined in on our conversation and it was all quite nice until we over heard what the three American guys sitting accross the room from us were saying...

The room got quiet when the words, ¨Everyone wishes they were American... because America is the best!¨ were spoken. I immediately responded with, ¨Excuse me, what did you just say?¨ To which the one guy then repeated what we had heard. Baffled, none of us were quick enough to reply before the one guy started asking everyone where they were from and following it up with, ¨Don´t you wish you were American?¨ Before anyone could even respond he yelped, ¨YES Because we are the best!¨

I must admit I absolutely lost my composure and asked, ¨Are you serious, are you actually serious right now?¨ To which they responded, ¨Uh, yeah... we are the best and the rest of the world wishes they were us. F*** YEAH America!¨ Instead of throwing my chair at him I told him how I felt by maturely saying, ¨You stupid little twat! You are the reason that I am embarrassed to say I am American. It´s little ********* (I don´t remember exactly what I said because I was so livid but I am sure it was not nice) like you that make the world hate us!¨ Not very anthropologic huh?

Because I had called him a twat I guess he assumed I was British and said, ¨Well you aren´t American so you are just jealous.¨ After he realized I was from the US he asked me, ¨Where is your pride?! Where is your Nationalism?!¨

I was crushed. I honestly have always thought that travel will heal any closed minded person, and maybe if more Americans would study abroad and travel that they would be different you know? I was wrong. Here were three study abroad students from the US saying this in a room full of international people.

We ended up staying up until 0330 in the morning speaking with these three guys because I so badly wanted to understand how they became such ignorant idiots. I believe everyone has the right to express their opinions, but to flat out insult everyone else in the room is not a dismissable act, especially when your own image is on the line.

I so badly wanted our new friends to know that I was not anything like those guys. I am glad that I took the time to actually talk with them because I ended up learning a lot from them. I also learned a lot about myself and how strongly I feel about particular issues and how extremely personal I take it when I see Americans feeding into the world´s sterotypes of us. It sucks to meet people, have them ask where you are from and immediately loose interest in speaking with you...



March 22

Because we had booked an extra night in the same hostel, we were woken up at 10am to change rooms. We wandered down to the kitchen to eat breakfast, which was pretty basic. Then when the room was ready we finished getting ready for the day. I decided it would be a good time to attempt my first hand washing of my clothing since I really only packed two outfits... it was interesting and harder than I had anticipated.

We invited Gemma, the Australian girl, to spend the day with us. The three of us set off for the Sagrada Familia. Once exiting the Metro we were slapped in the face with the gigantic structure. Sagrada Familia is Antonio Gaudi´s unfinished masterpiece. It really is one of the most astonishing churches that I have ever seen both inside and outside. The cost to go inside is €13 which was well worth it. I hope that it will be completed in my lifetime so that I can go back someday and see it!

Afterwards, we realized that we were starving, so bad that we all noticed the grumpiness lurking in our conversations. We stopped at the very next place we ran into and ate out in the... not so sunshine. The food fixed our grumbling stomaches and we moved on to visit Park Güell.

We made it to Park Güell and once again I was astonished. The Park was designed by Gaudí and is located ontop of a hill in a garden complex. The main large terrace is surrounded by an extremely long bench that is covered in beautiful mosaic work. One could easily spend hours sitting and looking about.

After spending a lot of time in the park we started to make our way back to our hostel. On the way we naturally were tempted and gave in to stopping for some churros with hot chocolate!! YUMMM!

We got back to the hostel and settled in for another round of late night talking. We met some more Amerians and brought up the conversation that we had had with the others the night before. It started with Brent, the guy from New Zealand, saying ¨Oh hey, tell them about the other Americans we met last night and what they were saying...¨ I told them what the one guy had said and before I could even finish they all started laughing and finally one guy stopped to explain that the same thing had happened to them... they had said to a bunch of Swedish guys, ¨America is the best! Our army could totally destroy you! Look at my military ID!¨ I waited for five minutes and then had to excuse myself from any more conversations... So much for that.

Even weirder, they were from Lancaster, PA!! Or rather, they were going to school there. Either way it´s pretty odd to meet people from the small town you lived in.

I have thought a lot about the Americans we have met thus far and have come to the conclusion that every country has their idiots. Unfortunately, we seem to have more of them!! haha... It might also have something to do with it being Spring Break; at least that´s what I am hoping.



Accommodation

The hostel we stayed in was called Hostel One Sants and I strongly recommend it. It was clean and had absolutely amazing staff. It was close to everything with a couple of different metro stops all within walking distance. The free dinner is also an amazing plus and helps save money!!

http://www.hostelworld.com/hosteldetails.php/HostelOne-Sants/Barcelona/16784?sc_sau=avdc&sc_pos=7

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Photos

Sagrada Familia
Windows yet to be stained

Comments

[Ginger]

Similar experience in Barcelona... from a Canadian perspective.
Hey, just happened across your blog today as I'm researching walking the camino... and your story here reminds me of when my husband and I were in Barcelona 7 years ago. We were eating lunch at a restaurant and heard two American guys sitting at a table near us (recognized them based on the accent) discussing where they should travel to next. One of them mentioned something or other about Canada, which caught our ears as we're Canadian. I've never been so turned off as when I heard the other respond, "America Jr.? Why bother?" I had a British teacher in highschool who said that before he immigrated to Canada most of the Brits he knew thought of Canada as a miniature England and it wasn't until he moved to Canada that he discovered Canada wasn't nearly as like the UK as he'd thought... and from our extensive travel experience we get the feeling American's feel Canada's a miniature US of A... That said, we love the US and have traveled throughout the states extensively. We also attended a year of college there and have many American friends. 99% of the Americans we've encountered - here's the catch - IN THE US, are fantastic, hospitable, generous, welcoming and helpful people. However, I've also attended college in England where there was a small American student population and traveled in Europe only to discover the Americans ABROAD tend to be outspoken in the ways you mentioned. Darn it! No wonder the great (normal?) Americans traveling abroad tell everyone they're Canadian? I know my American friends in England encountered many a cold shoulder, so I couldn't blame them.