You Make Me Want to Speak Spanish

I went to Barcelona, Spain this past weekend with Emma. Needless to say, it was an adventure.
We left early Friday morning and took a bus to Luton Airport which I believe is about an hour North of the city. It was kind of neat to get out of the city and see the highways and stuff like that. Basically, they're all pretty much just like ours. There's a lot more rural areas right outside London than there would be around other major cities in the US, but it was mostly unremarkable. They were in the process of planting hundreds of little trees on the sides of the road, which I thought was a nice touch. They also had a lot of bright purple piping around... I have no idea why. There was in general a whole lot of construction going on. I'm not sure if they have something specific going on or if it's always like that. It didn't seem to be affecting traffic, so kudos to them for pulling that off.
The airport was quick and easy, and very tiny. The lady at checkin was on a foul powertrip (as earlier discussed), but otherwise no problems. We were allowed to pick our own seats on the plane, which was awesome because Emma and I got to sit together and we sat in the emergency exit row which had about 3x the amount of leg room as other rows. Had there been an emergency, we were told we had to basically become a member of the crew, but it thankfully didn't happen. That would have been a trip, to say the least. Once we got there, we had to take quite a long bus trip from Reus airport (which is about 80 minutes south of Barcelona, along the coast) into Barcelona. Then it was the metro and a long walk to our hostel.
We had read on the website where we booked the hostel that there was a crazy hill leading up to the place, but Emma and I didn't think much of it and chalked it up to a vacationers laziness. Oh man, that hill was beyond insane. The last thing we wanted after a day of various travelling was to climb that thing, but climb we did. Luckily, later on we found a different way to get up there that involved almost entirely stairs... stairs are just in general a lot easier than crazy steep hills. The craziest thing was seeing all these cards parked parallel on hills with gradients of like 100+ degrees. The most mindblowing aspect of this of course is that in Europe, everyone drives a manual, which if you've ever driven one, you know is almost impossible to parallel park, and impossible on a hill... combine the two, and succeed, and you are an amazing driver. These hills were covered with these master parkers. No BMW radar can help you there.
We got settled in to our hostel and took a leg break. The woman at the desk spoke basically no English, and my Spanish skills came to their first test. I passed with flying colours. I haven't taken Spanish in years, but it all came back to me and frankly, I kick ass at Spanish. I had forgotten what it was like to be in a country that doesn't speak English (I haven't done it since i guess 9th grade) and it struck me once we got off the plane and all the signs were in Spanish. I was under the silly culturally imperialistic notion that I would have no problem getting by with English.
The hostel itself was fairly nice. Definitely clean, which is a huge bonus in my book. The location was pretty bad though, but I guess there's no real way of knowing that until you get there. It was a safe area so that was nice, but was pretty far out of the way (in the West part of the city). We had 8 other roomates, which needless to say equated to little sleep. We got back pretty late on Friday, but our French roomates got back even later (they by the way also made the room smell like France, you get the drift) and thought it was a good idea to chat with each other for awhile. They also snored. Emma and I were not pleased with them. I would have said something, but alas, no parlez frances. Emma and I consoled our anger by being immature and talking about them in English in front of them the next day and being loud when we got up. We have no idea if they could understand us, but that seemed unimportant at the time. Don't worry, I'm not causing any cultural warfare... it's not like our countries were very fond of us anyway. Emma and I are also smart, whenever we're being especially obnoxious, we make sure to speak with an English accent. Ok, maybe we are causing a bit of cultural warfare, but they were annoying and rude (French? rude? no!).
Anyway, enough about Frances. My first hostel experience was on the whole decent, although it could have been better. None of my stuff was stolen, and I wasn't grossed out, so I guess that's all that matters.
We went out to dinner fairly late, but thought we were being so culturally adept because the Spanish eat dinner late. We were only partially right, there were plenty of people out and about eating, but there were also plenty of closed places. We went to this Italian place on Las Ramblas (a big walkway / road right near the waterfront) and had a pretty decent meal for fairly cheap, along with some excellent Sangria. Following that, after a short walk on Ramblas, we were inundated with offers to go to various clubs. Ladies in Spain, much like here, get special treatment. That first night out, we spent absolutely no money on club entry or drinks. It was a good time. I had eaten too much though right before dancing, which wasn't very conducive to an awesome time. The club was quite nice though and right out in the water. The walk to it over a boardwalk type bridge with boats all around and seagulls was very reminiscent of New Jersey, and I had a little moment. We took the night bus home (which was no small feat as we had no idea where we were going and no one spoke English) and arrived fairly late.
The next day, Emma and I got breakfast and hightailed it around the city to pack in all the touristy things we could manage. We hit up La Sagrada Familia (the cathedral Gaudi started to build in the 1800s and they are still building... not even close to finished, but still really beautiful), Casa Botllo (another Gaudi building), and La Padrera (Gaudi building), and La Catredal Barcelona. We only spent 5 Euros the whole day, which was also pretty great. We wanted to go to the picasso museum, but we also wanted to get dinner and get back to the main street near us to see Carneval.
We went out to dinner, and I had a really good paella, and emma had tapas. She got artichokes and one of them had a caterpillar in it.... it was sooooo gross and made us both slightly lose our appetites. I still think the paella tasted really good though. She got it comped, so that was good. We had to push for it though which was unnecessary.
We rushed back to Passeig Maragall (street near us) to claim a spot along the Carneval route. And then we waited. And waited. And waited some more.
Carneval = biggest disappointment ever. The Mummers Parade, Macy's Day, and basically any high school homecoming is better than what they did. It was unorganized, not cohesive, and in general just kind of boring. We missed the magic fountain for that. It was like, the reason we came to Barcelona and it was a let down. It happens I guess. It was neat to say, and awesome to say that I've been there and seen it. Carneval is basically like a Mardi Gras to celebrate and indulge before lent. I didn't see any hint of that anywhere. It looked more like a halloween than anything else. Lots of kids as pirates and princesses. We even saw one kid who appeared to be dressed up as a terrorist. I was not amused.
We also thought it would mean that there would be a ton of extra people in the city and it would be a crazy night, but it started to rain shortly after, and the night started off kind of as a dud. There was no one around coaching us on where to go, but alas, we were mistaken. We finally ended up at a place with cheap drinks, then headed back to the same club we were at. At the bar (sorry, lounge) we met this guy who spoke only Spanish. He was French and living in Barcelona. He kind of imposed himself on us, and it turned out to be the ultimate spanish exercise. I basically became the translator for the evening. It became extremely tedious and whenever Emma and I reverted to English for various snippets, he insisted we speak in Spanish. It was fun for awhile, but just got annoying-- it was so hard to have to plan every sentence and conjugate every verb correctly, etc. He came with us to the other club at Emma's beckoning and it was easier to avoid conversation while dancing with loud music.
It was interesting to note that basically everyone we came into contact with there could tell that we were not Spanish. They automatically deferred to English when they talked to us. The only exception is whenever we ran into other Americans, they would assume we were Spanish. There were quite a few American students around and it was funny to see how excited everyone got when they ran into someone from America that (most importantly) spoke English. After mucho espanol, I was relieved when someone asked me to dance and they turned out to be American (from MA, no less). We met a lot of cool Americans though and had an awesome night.
I am really proud of how well I did with my Spanish though. I was able to get by in essentially every situation and was the speaker for Emma and myself the whole time (she picked it up as things went on). It was awesome to have Spanish people compliment me on my Spanish (I got 3 altogether) and a great feeling to know that I still got it, it's somewhere ingrained in me if I ever really need to use it.
Mom will laugh at me, but something else I noticed on my trip was how ornate European sidewalks are. Even here, they put so much more effort into them, and it's very rare to see concrete slabs. I only really paid attention to it because when it started to rain the sidewalks became extraordinarily slippery. It was interesting because I would think that that would be a problem for the citizens whenever it rained. But maybe they just have better walking skills than me.
It was amazing for me to notice how different a place can be when you participate in the nightlife. I think you get a much better idea of the general culture of the place, especially in Europe where it's such a central part of everything, when you can go out. We noticed that clubs had people at them ranging from like 16 to 50. I don't think you'd ever really see that mix in the US. People also go out, and go out a lot. Cities here have buses that run well 24/7 and on Saturday the Metro stays open all night in Spain. There's a whole lot of people out and about at all times, and in general, it's just intriguing to see that side of a country. We were on the Metro headed back to the hostel and we ran into these young guys dancing and singing in the car, and we were invited to join and for a few stops we had a dance party to our own rendition of "I wanna know if you'll be my girl," which needless to say was awesome and hilarious. I could be wrong, I don't know because I don't go out in the US, but I feel like that that would not likely happen at home.
On the flip side, it also did not take long for Emma and I to notice that Barcelona was a fairly sketchy city. As one of my BU friends put it who was also there this weekend, "that city is just full of Euro Trash" I don't know if I would go that far, I don't really know what the true definition of Euro Trash is, but there were definitely some off characters. Basically every 30 feet there, there is someone selling beer from 6 packs. They approach you and say "beer? cerveza?" very half-heartedly. It's all the same kind of beer too. Emma and I were perplexed by this. Also, within minutes of leaving our hostel for the first time, as we were walking along the ornate sidewalk, a guy started to approach us and Emma and I secured our purses in our hands and huddled together, and he just walked by, got really close to Emma and gave her a very loud air-kiss. It was sooo creepy. Later on, Emma was exchanging money and I was waiting outside. I was standing there when this guy started walking towards me, and on instinct, i kind of grabbed my purse more securely, and he, too, gets up close to me and I guess having noticed my move, says "don't worry" and winks. Again, creepy. When we were waiting for the bus, a down on their luck person approached everyone at the stop and asked for 20 cents to make a call. I literally had no coins and ignored him anyway because we didn't speak Spanish and I didn't know how to say "coins" Even though no one else gave him money, he was particularly pissed at Emma and me for this and began to speak very angrily at us and eventually flipped me off, like, Dane Cook style, BAM! Luckily, a guy next to us told him off and gave him 20 cents. I'm not sure what I did, but for real, I didn't have any coins. The second night, these two guys kind of followed us out of the club (both were named Abdul... which, um, what?) and insisted on talking to us in Spanish despite our refusal to do so and just kept in general being annoying. Also, Emma was apparently an extremely hot ticket and she got checked out and in some cases whistled at approximately every 10 minutes. I hate to generalize a city like that, but there were more sketchy characters in 2 nights of being there than in years in other cities. The first thing my friend Steve said to me when I first saw him today (he was there this weekend, too) was "Spain is full of sketchy people." So, just a warning and an observation. I still think the place is amazing, so that's just a cultural difference I guess? Noted.
Barcelona was a fantastically beautiful place. It was also very clean. Within an hour of Carneval being over, it looked like it had never happened. Everything was picked up, hosed down and put away. It was nice being near the water, even if it definitely wasn't beach weather.
We had a really good time, and I'm so glad that I went with Emma. We were a really great match for travelling and we had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we were in a time crunch, so we didn't get to see that much, but I still got a good feel for the city, so that's good.

I realized today that I have 2 more weeks before the semester is 1/2 over and I have finals and papers due in that time. I must get cracking. And I was so enjoying having nothing to do ever... My motivation is shot. Here's to a busy week of school and, oh, fine, I admit it "learning stuff."

-Kate