Bilbao and Barcelona

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As expected, I have not had as much internet access here traveling around Spain and the internet cafes do not seem to have caught on to wireless internet access, so I have to type on their computers. I´ve written a few entries on my laptop and in my journal that I´ll just paste on to the blog when I get a chance. At any rate, I have been a bit more immersed in everything since I left the chateau; actually, a lot more immersed, which has led to a bit of culture shock. What is shocking for me is not the language or the even the stress of arriving at new cities literally knowing nothing. Both in Bilbao and here in Barcelona, Mat and I got off the bus and looked at the maps to find tourist information centers, bookstores with trave guides, and, ultimately, places to sleep. It would be a much more interesting and less urgent exercise if we were not carrying a summer´s worth of luggage on our backs and already tired from a bus ride. Yesterday, Mat and I arrived from Bilbao at six in the morning on an overcrowded overnight bus and had to figure out the metro system and find a hostel. Luckily, there was a computer with internet access at the bus/train station where I could find a hostel. Unluckily, we found out whe we arrived at the hostel that it no longer existed. So that was another three hours of walking and wandering to find somewhere. What is shocking for me though is just simply not knowing exactly what is going on. In the US, I´m accustomed to knowing why the landscape looks the way it does, why people work, speak, and act the way the do, and generally what makes the place tick. Here, I don´t have that. What is strange is that figuring that kind of stuff out is what I usually enjoy the most. Here though, especially in an urban landscape, trying to absorb that information is disorienting and a bit of an overload. I know that if I were to shut myself down to everything except the bare essentials I would be much less stressed, but that would kind of defeat the whole purpose of traveling, which is a question that I´ve encountered at this point in the trip. Everyone says that they travel to meet interesting people, to be exposed to new ideas, and generally learn more. Yet I think these are consequences of traveling, not the ends themselves. For me at least, the idea traveling is something far more essential, far more vital; in a way, ascertaining that one´s ideas, one´s perceptions, and even one´s humanity are more than just products of political, economic, social, and cultural mechanics and indeed in some way true and universal in the way we usually assume. I think that´s what makes traveling at once so attractive, so enlightening, so much fun and so frustrating, numbing, and even painful.
At any rate, Barcelona is a very cool city, and we have three days left here until we fly to Shannon (Southwestern Ireland) and stay at the castle for a few weeks. After that, the plan is to travel back down to Barcelona for my TESOL thing via eastern France. More writing and pictures when I get a reliable internet connection.

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