Viva Barcelona

---

25 January - 5 February

After a few days in cold snowy London I flew into sunny and warmer Barcelona and settled down in the La Rambla section of old Barcelona. Barcelona is a beautiful old city that has been enchanting people since Roman times. It pulsates with a creative energy that fed the careers of Picasso, Joan Miro, Antonin Gaudi and many other outstanding artists and architects.

It´s an eminently walkable town, as I learned when I started to explore the city with an Argentinian roommate from my hostel. Fernando was in town for only three days before he had to fly on to Germany for a conference and he wanted to see as much of the city as possible. On this trip I have always felt like I have all the time in the world and my style is more to walk and see a little and then sit in a cafe for hours reading or watching people. So Fernando was great for me because he dragged me around the city for 10 hours a day seeing as much as possible. He also wanted to practice English as his conference was going to be conducted in English, so all day long he would talk to me in English and I would talk to him in Spanish, a system that worked out pretty well although my real limitation in Spanish is listening and comprehending what people are saying to me in Spanish.

On our tour we visited the Picasso museum, several of the weird and fantastic Modernista buildings that Gaudi created in the early 1900s, the Olympic stadium, the old Roman and Gothic quarters of the city, the seafront, old forts and on and on. I have never felt like cities are for me, but Barcelona has a really, really nice charm and energy that grew on me. I can definitely recommend this city to anyone looking for a little time in Spain. The highlight of our touring though was seeing a football game between the mighty FC Barcelona football team and a rival team from the Spanish league. Barcelona won 3-1, Ronaldhino (a Brazilian who is probably the best footballer in world) scored a goal, and everybody was happy.

After Fernando left I continued exploring the city with a new roommate - Charles from Australia. Charles is 20 and this was his first real trip outside Australia. His backpack was stolen in Budapest and he had been having the worst run of luck ever since then. He continually messed up his travel arrangements and he was so homesick that he couldn´t understand how he felt so sick of Sydney and his friends and life there before he left on his trip. In other words, I had enormous fun walking around with the guy. It was a different experience from hanging out with Fernando, as highlighted by the fact that our last night in Barcelona we wound up at a local punk rock show and stayed out until 4:00 in the morning (just like the good old days!).

I then immediately transitioned from the loud and profane to the quiet and sublime by traveling by train about an hour north of Barcelona to a Vipassana meditation center for a 10-day course.

---

Photos

Game on!
The FC Barcelona game with Fernando (center) and Luis from Mexico