Nicky and I talked about the things that are different between Barcelona (and Rome and Paris) and Atlanta. In Nicky's view, the toilet flushing mechanism in Europe is far better than here. Oh, and when he is here, he has to talk to people who are not his family. I hadn't considered it, but Nicky's conversation (and Cassie's and Greg's) was largely limited to people who speak English, except, as he pointed out, "really brief conversations with no depth whatsoever." Greg had his students totally to, and I could get by in Spanish for essential conversations, but the kids were on their own.
As usual, Nicky is an insightful little beast, in between his moment of testosterone-fueled boyness. He quickly got to the heart of one of the little hurdles of re-entry to our real life. It takes a minute to re-adjust to conversations with people again, but for me, it's like medicine. I can hear chatter around me and understand the tone of the room, but I can also tune it out a little more, because my brain isn't trying to translate at all. And I can joke around with people, say silly things to amuse myself with people's reactions, or respond to the way they are behaving, because I know what is expected here.
Jeez, I never realized how important it is to me to banter with people, get a grin out of someone, or even just make sympathetic noises to someone who is in the middle of some small dilemma. Did you ever think about how often people in Atlanta wish you a good day? Or did you ever enjoy some quirky little offhand conversation you had while waiting for the cashier? I never realized how much I missed that until I got back.
I went to Target this morning to pick up some stuff to send over to Cassie. Going to Target is not usually a healing experience of any kind, but my exhausted, purse-losing, re-Americanizing brain was actually really happy to cross paths with maybe ten employees who all said good morning, asked if I was finding things okay, chatted a minute, or wished me a good day. Even when I cracked a joke that didn't work, I understood why. And because, let's face it, I'm used to my jokes failing, I laughed at it and moved on, whereas in Barcelona if have felt very insecure.
All this was so ordinary, but after not-experiencing it for a month, the ordinary feels like a little gift.
And that is why, at the end of this blog, I am glad that I convinced my travel-hating, over-committed, stressed-out, logistics-hating, homebody self to go to Spain for a month: because going to an extraordinary place can reconfigure the ordinary until it feels like a treat.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Missing the great John Candy
I've been thinking about "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," which hilariously depicted the weirdness of travel as it existed back then. I'd shudder to think of the post-9/11 version of that flick. But I've had a lot of time on planes and trains, as well as buses, lately, and my overall conclusion is that I really love my automobile.
That's the danger of being an American over-consumer: I know perfectly well that my car helps destroy the environment, clog the roads, and rocket my blood pressure. I'm feeding the evil oil industry and reducing my participation in social life by being in my car all the time.
But damn, I love to drive. I love controlling where and when I go, how hard I brake or how fast I accelerate, and deciding on my musical selections and temperature. I love not being ill from lurching and bumping. Not breathing fumes. Not sitting under someone else's armpit stank. Not hearing travel noise. Not listening to other people's mindless cell phone calls or smelling their meatballs-and-onions lunch while I'm riding backward in an overcrowded bus.
I've truly come to hate trains. I still haven't been on the super speed trains, because they were too expensive for last-minute planners like me. Those might be better. Subway trains and passenger trains just suck. Yesterday, I had to sit and talk myself out of just stomping off the damn train and calling a cab for a hundred euros.
Suddenly, I started respecting air travel. At least air travel isn't restricted to one damned track.
But then we had today's flight, which was actually quite smooth and glorious until the end, when Nicky felt sick from trying to concentrate on the video-sudoku game while the flight got bouncy.
Overall, nothing except trams seems likely to get me out of my comfy car anytime soon.
Unless I can drive the trainor plane, that is.
That's the danger of being an American over-consumer: I know perfectly well that my car helps destroy the environment, clog the roads, and rocket my blood pressure. I'm feeding the evil oil industry and reducing my participation in social life by being in my car all the time.
But damn, I love to drive. I love controlling where and when I go, how hard I brake or how fast I accelerate, and deciding on my musical selections and temperature. I love not being ill from lurching and bumping. Not breathing fumes. Not sitting under someone else's armpit stank. Not hearing travel noise. Not listening to other people's mindless cell phone calls or smelling their meatballs-and-onions lunch while I'm riding backward in an overcrowded bus.
I've truly come to hate trains. I still haven't been on the super speed trains, because they were too expensive for last-minute planners like me. Those might be better. Subway trains and passenger trains just suck. Yesterday, I had to sit and talk myself out of just stomping off the damn train and calling a cab for a hundred euros.
Suddenly, I started respecting air travel. At least air travel isn't restricted to one damned track.
But then we had today's flight, which was actually quite smooth and glorious until the end, when Nicky felt sick from trying to concentrate on the video-sudoku game while the flight got bouncy.
Overall, nothing except trams seems likely to get me out of my comfy car anytime soon.
Unless I can drive the trainor plane, that is.
Final day activities
Our last day in Barcelona was one of those days that serve as a showcase for all the ups and downs of traveling. We decided on Montserrat for our last outing, because we hadn't been to the hills or mountains much. We started out late, as has become our norm, and took a series of buses and trains up to Montserrat.
In my head, the train trip would be a lovely breather from the city, a chance to see some gorgeous Spanish countryside. In reality, it involved a lot of waiting, even more sweating, an epiphany about why the Southern US has no mass transit systems, losing five euros in the drinks machines, listening to traveling college kids holding entire conversations based entirely on the word "like," and so on. The scenery consisted mostly of factories and their surrounding towns, which ran the gamut between bleak and depressing, with occasional glimpses of comfort. I had envisioned a place where people lived in actual houses, rather than apartments, but there were not many areas like that. People here seem to live in apartments, apartments or apartments. I amused myself by trying to calculate the exact time when "abandoned buildings in an exurban hellscape" can transition to "ruins."
Finally, we got past some of the uglies and hopped to another (better air-conditioned) train, called the Cremallera, which took us the rest of the way to the monastery area. The mountains and valley views were unreal. Remember when we were kids at the beach, and we would take wet sand to drizzle on top of our sand castles for drippy effect? The mountains reminded me of that. And standing at the top, you could see all the layers where a body of water had once been, and the way it had drained out of the valley, just like a toilet flushing. How could anyone who had been to such places think that the earth has only been here for a few thousand years!?? Utterly ridiculous.
It was blissfully cool and breezy, and a perfectly clear day. We ran into a few of Greg's students who had spent the whole day up there, which would be easy to do. There were walkways, pathways, a few shops, a cafeteria that actually served decent food, a hotel or two, and street carts selling cheeses, honey, fig cakes, almonds and such. The vendors would cut little pieces of cheese and hand them out, and I swear there is no better foodie experience than walking around a mountainside where they make their own cheese, nibbling and enjoying the view. I never need restaurants if I can get that. The whole place was built to blend with the monastery, which has been there for literally a thousand years (though it had to be rebuilt a couple hundred years back).
"Do you want to see the basilica?" we asked each other. We had been told the last train left fairly soon, and Cassie world-wearily said, "I don't think I'm gonna be impressed by a basilica after the ones we have seen." I kind of agreed...and then someone told us there was another train a couple of hours later, which opened up some free time. So we got some gelato, and wandered toward the basilica. While we walked, the bells started tolling, and they echoed off all the mountains around us. What an awesome sound. I can imagine a world up there in the mountains, where everyone for miles and miles relies on the sound of the bells to divide time.
We didn't have time to take the funiculars up the mountain, but Cassie says she will take Gwendolyn and Uncle Butch up there next week, so at least someone will get to see it.
It took Cassie about a nanosecond to admit that she had been wrong about being basilica-jaded. This basilica was jaw-dropping. The feel of it was totally different than Rome, Paris or Barcelona. It felt far more medieval, though not in the cruel way I think of medieval churches. With a few modifications, I can see how the place would be an Inquisition stronghold, but now it is just a stunningly beautiful building. There was some glorious, faint monk-song audible while we sat in the church, but I couldn't tell exactly what was going on. No one was at the altar, but something was happening in another language, and it seemed like another time.
There was much more to do up in the monastery complex, but another person told us that last train left soon. I swear, the train schedule was a giant prank played by the monks, who probably changed last-minute changes during those mysterious hymns. We jumped back on the Cremallera, looking forward to the air conditioning that unfortunately didn't exist. The next train wasn't much better, and was supremely crowded as well. Everyone from the exurbs seemed to be heading into Barcelona for a night on the town, and the train got more and more crowded as we got closer. There were twenty-some stops to make, all of which were completely nauseating as we stopped, packed in more people, lurched to a start again...
..and this is why, in part, I think we don't have good train systems south of DC. Trains suck for those of us with motion sickness, and the stifling heat of the train cars makes it much worse. Even if the cars are air-conditioned, opening the doors in 90-degree heat twenty times will result in misery. We were hot and sweaty to start the trip. An hour later, we were hot, sweaty, irritated, motion-sick, and grumpy. My chief source of comfort was knowing that the Scouting Masters who had three dozen young cub scouts were probably even less comfortable.
When we popped out of the train in Placa Espanya, we found ourselves at the Pride parade-rally-party. It looked like fun, particularly when the guy pushing an empty rainbow-colored stroller was trailed by his toddler, pushing his own baby stroller at full speed, yelling like a banshee. It always cracks me up when exhausted parents push empty strollers while their kids zoom around like party animals.
But alas, the party blocked off the Placa, which meant hauling our asses halfway home before we found a bus that was running. But every second of it was worth it, because we had such a phenomenal experience on the mountain.
In my head, the train trip would be a lovely breather from the city, a chance to see some gorgeous Spanish countryside. In reality, it involved a lot of waiting, even more sweating, an epiphany about why the Southern US has no mass transit systems, losing five euros in the drinks machines, listening to traveling college kids holding entire conversations based entirely on the word "like," and so on. The scenery consisted mostly of factories and their surrounding towns, which ran the gamut between bleak and depressing, with occasional glimpses of comfort. I had envisioned a place where people lived in actual houses, rather than apartments, but there were not many areas like that. People here seem to live in apartments, apartments or apartments. I amused myself by trying to calculate the exact time when "abandoned buildings in an exurban hellscape" can transition to "ruins."
Finally, we got past some of the uglies and hopped to another (better air-conditioned) train, called the Cremallera, which took us the rest of the way to the monastery area. The mountains and valley views were unreal. Remember when we were kids at the beach, and we would take wet sand to drizzle on top of our sand castles for drippy effect? The mountains reminded me of that. And standing at the top, you could see all the layers where a body of water had once been, and the way it had drained out of the valley, just like a toilet flushing. How could anyone who had been to such places think that the earth has only been here for a few thousand years!?? Utterly ridiculous.
It was blissfully cool and breezy, and a perfectly clear day. We ran into a few of Greg's students who had spent the whole day up there, which would be easy to do. There were walkways, pathways, a few shops, a cafeteria that actually served decent food, a hotel or two, and street carts selling cheeses, honey, fig cakes, almonds and such. The vendors would cut little pieces of cheese and hand them out, and I swear there is no better foodie experience than walking around a mountainside where they make their own cheese, nibbling and enjoying the view. I never need restaurants if I can get that. The whole place was built to blend with the monastery, which has been there for literally a thousand years (though it had to be rebuilt a couple hundred years back).
"Do you want to see the basilica?" we asked each other. We had been told the last train left fairly soon, and Cassie world-wearily said, "I don't think I'm gonna be impressed by a basilica after the ones we have seen." I kind of agreed...and then someone told us there was another train a couple of hours later, which opened up some free time. So we got some gelato, and wandered toward the basilica. While we walked, the bells started tolling, and they echoed off all the mountains around us. What an awesome sound. I can imagine a world up there in the mountains, where everyone for miles and miles relies on the sound of the bells to divide time.
We didn't have time to take the funiculars up the mountain, but Cassie says she will take Gwendolyn and Uncle Butch up there next week, so at least someone will get to see it.
It took Cassie about a nanosecond to admit that she had been wrong about being basilica-jaded. This basilica was jaw-dropping. The feel of it was totally different than Rome, Paris or Barcelona. It felt far more medieval, though not in the cruel way I think of medieval churches. With a few modifications, I can see how the place would be an Inquisition stronghold, but now it is just a stunningly beautiful building. There was some glorious, faint monk-song audible while we sat in the church, but I couldn't tell exactly what was going on. No one was at the altar, but something was happening in another language, and it seemed like another time.
There was much more to do up in the monastery complex, but another person told us that last train left soon. I swear, the train schedule was a giant prank played by the monks, who probably changed last-minute changes during those mysterious hymns. We jumped back on the Cremallera, looking forward to the air conditioning that unfortunately didn't exist. The next train wasn't much better, and was supremely crowded as well. Everyone from the exurbs seemed to be heading into Barcelona for a night on the town, and the train got more and more crowded as we got closer. There were twenty-some stops to make, all of which were completely nauseating as we stopped, packed in more people, lurched to a start again...
..and this is why, in part, I think we don't have good train systems south of DC. Trains suck for those of us with motion sickness, and the stifling heat of the train cars makes it much worse. Even if the cars are air-conditioned, opening the doors in 90-degree heat twenty times will result in misery. We were hot and sweaty to start the trip. An hour later, we were hot, sweaty, irritated, motion-sick, and grumpy. My chief source of comfort was knowing that the Scouting Masters who had three dozen young cub scouts were probably even less comfortable.
When we popped out of the train in Placa Espanya, we found ourselves at the Pride parade-rally-party. It looked like fun, particularly when the guy pushing an empty rainbow-colored stroller was trailed by his toddler, pushing his own baby stroller at full speed, yelling like a banshee. It always cracks me up when exhausted parents push empty strollers while their kids zoom around like party animals.
But alas, the party blocked off the Placa, which meant hauling our asses halfway home before we found a bus that was running. But every second of it was worth it, because we had such a phenomenal experience on the mountain.
On Atlanta from barcelona
My friend Beki said I should write about Atlanta from the perspective of a month in Barcelona, so here goes...
First, in a gross over-simplification, Catalonia bears a certain resemblance to the American South, in both the climate and the fiercely held belief that the region deserves its own nation, which would naturally be far superior to Mother Spain. Of course, not everyone holds this view, but it is reminiscent of the whole "South's gonna rise again" kind of anti-Federal perspective. Catalonians don't seem to be rednecks about it, just very populist, and convinced they can be their own little world.
But back to Atlanta.
A key difference is in the size. Atlanta is enormous, and so spread out that you have to drive everywhere, which leaves it polluted, snarled and obese. In tiny Barca, they walk everywhere, or take buses, trains or trams, or bicycle. They seem to have healthier bodies for it, but the trade-off is in their independence and time. They rely on someone else to get them where they need to go, and it takes longer. Your bus might leave every 20min, but it takes you to the train that only runs every 30min, which means you could either be really punctual or really screwed. If you have kids, you know it is a nightmare to get anywhere on time, and that adds another wrinkle. It is hard to take kids to a lot of places when it means pushing a stroller over stone sidewalks, lifting the kid onto a bus, etc. The sweat factor is ridiculous. No wonder people smell like hell and then think they need perfumes (though it is worse in France by far.)
Inevitably, you can spend 3hrs/day on transit, but more often, it seems people live their lives in their little neighborhoods, shop smaller and more often, and depend on each other in ways that an Atlantan like me would rather not.
Barcelona is a city of apartments, with everyone living in their little shoeboxes decorated in Early Ikea. Nice places have terraces, where people are creative with plants and gardens. But that's the limit of their own, private green space. In Atlanta, while there are lots of apartments, there are also tons of houses, and the greenness of the place almost assaults you. Trees, plants, grass, everything is everywhere and it is trying to murder me every spring. But more than that, the greenness separates us a bit from our neighbors gives us our own space. It is that separation, space between things, more than anything, that hits me as a major difference in Atlanta.
Some might think the separation is a bad thing or not. There's no point questioning it. After apartment living for a month, I'm longing to be in a house with a big, comfortable bed, central air conditioning, and my own car.
First, in a gross over-simplification, Catalonia bears a certain resemblance to the American South, in both the climate and the fiercely held belief that the region deserves its own nation, which would naturally be far superior to Mother Spain. Of course, not everyone holds this view, but it is reminiscent of the whole "South's gonna rise again" kind of anti-Federal perspective. Catalonians don't seem to be rednecks about it, just very populist, and convinced they can be their own little world.
But back to Atlanta.
A key difference is in the size. Atlanta is enormous, and so spread out that you have to drive everywhere, which leaves it polluted, snarled and obese. In tiny Barca, they walk everywhere, or take buses, trains or trams, or bicycle. They seem to have healthier bodies for it, but the trade-off is in their independence and time. They rely on someone else to get them where they need to go, and it takes longer. Your bus might leave every 20min, but it takes you to the train that only runs every 30min, which means you could either be really punctual or really screwed. If you have kids, you know it is a nightmare to get anywhere on time, and that adds another wrinkle. It is hard to take kids to a lot of places when it means pushing a stroller over stone sidewalks, lifting the kid onto a bus, etc. The sweat factor is ridiculous. No wonder people smell like hell and then think they need perfumes (though it is worse in France by far.)
Inevitably, you can spend 3hrs/day on transit, but more often, it seems people live their lives in their little neighborhoods, shop smaller and more often, and depend on each other in ways that an Atlantan like me would rather not.
Barcelona is a city of apartments, with everyone living in their little shoeboxes decorated in Early Ikea. Nice places have terraces, where people are creative with plants and gardens. But that's the limit of their own, private green space. In Atlanta, while there are lots of apartments, there are also tons of houses, and the greenness of the place almost assaults you. Trees, plants, grass, everything is everywhere and it is trying to murder me every spring. But more than that, the greenness separates us a bit from our neighbors gives us our own space. It is that separation, space between things, more than anything, that hits me as a major difference in Atlanta.
Some might think the separation is a bad thing or not. There's no point questioning it. After apartment living for a month, I'm longing to be in a house with a big, comfortable bed, central air conditioning, and my own car.
Friday, June 27, 2014
The untrained ear
On the bus to the beach, I met a very nice woman with a kid who seemed to be her granddaughter. The kid was far too happy to be a kidnap victim, but the woman was too old to have a kid that young, so let's stick with grandchild for the purposes of this story. Like most kids in Europe, she would not speak to me, just stared at me like I was an alien, which bums me out. Kids are the best way to learn the elements of a language. I can still remember certain Urdu words from listening to Shanila and Irfan teach Gibran.
The bus-grandmother and I spoke Spanish to each other, which taught me a lot, namely that I "speak well" (according to her). I know I'm good at imitating accents, and I can usually put my sentences together accurately, but I do not understand half of what I hear. If I can read it, I'm fine. But hearing...my ear is so untrained. Sure, I can sail through a Spanish course with no errors at all, because everyone enunciates carefully. But an old woman on the bus? Poor thing had to use multiple descriptions to help me understand what she was talking about. To be fair, I didn't know they called the cable car a funicular. She clearly wanted to tell me that the funicular was awesome, and gradually I figured out that she meant the cable car. I knew I couldn't speak intelligently when I couldn't say things like, "launch point, cable car, landing area," so I cheated. I told her I was afraid of heights (I'm not), just to end further inquiries about a topic I can't adequately discuss.
I realized that this was an auditory-training problem when I stopped to buy us some drinks at a stand. "Tres y uno," said the vendor. And I stood there dumbfounded, thinking, really? He wants me to give him three euros and a penny? Why the hell would he bother with a penny? No one uses pennies, for petesakes. They aren't useful for street traders.
Then (solely by ruling out the stupid notion that a street vendor would deal in pennies), I figured out that he was saying, "Tres euros." Here is the difference:
Tres y uno sounds like "Trace ee-ooo-no."
Tres euros sounds like "Trace eh-ooo-doce."
Any idiot could tell the difference, if they knew what they were listening for. I'm just not trained to listen.
I don't know how much time it would take for me to learn this well. I'm not sure I know enough people who would be patient with me while I learn to say things like, "excuse me, is that really your grandchild, or did you kidnap her?"
Down to the wire
I have that end-of-vacation anxiety in which you think, "Quick! Hurry up! Have as much fun as you can before you have to go home!" Perhaps I need to re-think my whole life strategy, and just stay on vacation.
Overall, I'm very happy with our coverage of Barcelona and the variety of things we have seen, between here, Paris and Rome. I know we could have crammed in a lot more, but we aren't into over-scheduling anymore. My days of returning from a vacation completely exhausted are long over. I'm taking the week off this coming week, just to deal with jet lag and several pieces of life-maintenance that I've put off for this trip. Dentists, veterinarian, car servicing, oh the fun!
The one thing we haven't done, and maybe we should have, is explore culinary Barcelona. I know, my foodie friends will be horrified at us, but we never really wrapped out heads around going out to teensy restaurants at 10pm for dinner. I'm not an enormous fan of sitting on the sidewalk amid a dozen smokers and eating paella. (For calamari, I'll deal with the smoke.) Money is another factor: it seems to melt away in European restaurants to a horrifying degree. But mostly, the kids weren't very comfortable dining here, because you rarely see kids in restaurants. I assume you're supposed to leave your little mini-mes at home while you and your spouse go out and eat a $100 meal, but food just isn't important enough to me to bother doing that. Of course, I love all the fresh food markets and the bakeries. I like being able to go and get crepes, or gelato, or whatever strikes your fancy, at late hours. Atlanta doesn't really have that.
Tomorrow we are going up to Montserrat to look around, because we have only seen it from the air. It looks very cool (the name comes from the fact that the mountains are serrated, like a good bread knife). It'll be good to see a bit more nature and a little less of the human influence, though I guess the Montserrat monastery that's about a thousand years old counts as humanity. Perhaps I will join a contemplative order and live out my life free of technological influe---hahahahahahaha, sorry, I couldn't get through that with a straight face.
I'm also trying to drink in as much of the moderate weather as humanly possible, before getting back to the steam bath of Atlanta. And of course, I finally had to brave a couple of the tourist shops to try to find truly raunchy souvenirs for my minions. Cassie spent the day saying, "Oh my God, no Mom, you cannot buy that." Alas.
Overall, I'm very happy with our coverage of Barcelona and the variety of things we have seen, between here, Paris and Rome. I know we could have crammed in a lot more, but we aren't into over-scheduling anymore. My days of returning from a vacation completely exhausted are long over. I'm taking the week off this coming week, just to deal with jet lag and several pieces of life-maintenance that I've put off for this trip. Dentists, veterinarian, car servicing, oh the fun!
The one thing we haven't done, and maybe we should have, is explore culinary Barcelona. I know, my foodie friends will be horrified at us, but we never really wrapped out heads around going out to teensy restaurants at 10pm for dinner. I'm not an enormous fan of sitting on the sidewalk amid a dozen smokers and eating paella. (For calamari, I'll deal with the smoke.) Money is another factor: it seems to melt away in European restaurants to a horrifying degree. But mostly, the kids weren't very comfortable dining here, because you rarely see kids in restaurants. I assume you're supposed to leave your little mini-mes at home while you and your spouse go out and eat a $100 meal, but food just isn't important enough to me to bother doing that. Of course, I love all the fresh food markets and the bakeries. I like being able to go and get crepes, or gelato, or whatever strikes your fancy, at late hours. Atlanta doesn't really have that.
Tomorrow we are going up to Montserrat to look around, because we have only seen it from the air. It looks very cool (the name comes from the fact that the mountains are serrated, like a good bread knife). It'll be good to see a bit more nature and a little less of the human influence, though I guess the Montserrat monastery that's about a thousand years old counts as humanity. Perhaps I will join a contemplative order and live out my life free of technological influe---hahahahahahaha, sorry, I couldn't get through that with a straight face.
I'm also trying to drink in as much of the moderate weather as humanly possible, before getting back to the steam bath of Atlanta. And of course, I finally had to brave a couple of the tourist shops to try to find truly raunchy souvenirs for my minions. Cassie spent the day saying, "Oh my God, no Mom, you cannot buy that." Alas.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Success Iin souveniring
Finally, thanks to my friend Dan, I found some souvenirs I actually want to take home! And they aren't t-shirts with dirty jokes! They come from a cute ceramics shop down in the Barri Gotic, and my only real dilemma is how I can manage to buy another ton of the stuff and get it back to Atlanta. Luckily, Nicky (who packed light on the way here) can be my pack mule. The ten pounds of ceramics I've bought so far are likely to kill my luggage weight limits, but I can likely jettison useless things, like shoes.
I found a replica of Sagrada Familia as requested by my friend Becky, and Cassie even found a gift or two for some of her friends. We had a great day shopping while Greg worked, and the overcast skies guaranteed that we wouldn't get too stanky in the process. It's definitely getting hotter than I like here, but still nowhere near as bad as Atlanta, where summer misery has started in earnest.
Nicky and I went to the park a couple of blocks from our house, and fed the big goldfish. There is something about feeding bread crumbs to fish that I have always loved...though my OCD and my liberalism both kick in and I try to make sure every fish gets some food. Nicky and I worked hard to get as many fish interested in our food as possible, luring them from all over this huge pond...because he was trying to get the fish to create a bait-ball, revealing that he has clearly seen one too many NatGeo specials. No, Nick, the goldfish in a four-foot-deep pond do not make bait-balls.
We were going to go on a walk with one of the professors who knows a lot about Barcelona, but he has a bad cough, which he is apparently treating by doubling whatever cough medicine dose has been prescribed by the docs here. I'm hoping we don't have to take him to a detox center. We did manage to go out for Barcelona's version of crepes tonight, and we decided they are better than Paris's version.
As we munched on our crepes, a big group of interns from UT-Austin came in. They are all from the same university, but interning in different places according to whatever their academic speciality is. There were a lot of these kids, so the woman sitting next to us looked over and said, "I theenk ees time for me to go. Adios."
Barcelona seems a popular place for summer interns. I'm not sure who hires the kids, but what a great experience for them. One of the kids we met tonight is looking at Georgia Tech for grad school in MechE, so it was fun to chat.
Tomorrow Greg has to work again, which is really irritating, because it means I cannot accuse him of being on a boondoggle.
Tomorrow I might hunt up the espadrille shop that Janet recommended, en route to taking the kids to Montjuic. Rock on!
Sent from my iPad
I found a replica of Sagrada Familia as requested by my friend Becky, and Cassie even found a gift or two for some of her friends. We had a great day shopping while Greg worked, and the overcast skies guaranteed that we wouldn't get too stanky in the process. It's definitely getting hotter than I like here, but still nowhere near as bad as Atlanta, where summer misery has started in earnest.
Nicky and I went to the park a couple of blocks from our house, and fed the big goldfish. There is something about feeding bread crumbs to fish that I have always loved...though my OCD and my liberalism both kick in and I try to make sure every fish gets some food. Nicky and I worked hard to get as many fish interested in our food as possible, luring them from all over this huge pond...because he was trying to get the fish to create a bait-ball, revealing that he has clearly seen one too many NatGeo specials. No, Nick, the goldfish in a four-foot-deep pond do not make bait-balls.
We were going to go on a walk with one of the professors who knows a lot about Barcelona, but he has a bad cough, which he is apparently treating by doubling whatever cough medicine dose has been prescribed by the docs here. I'm hoping we don't have to take him to a detox center. We did manage to go out for Barcelona's version of crepes tonight, and we decided they are better than Paris's version.
As we munched on our crepes, a big group of interns from UT-Austin came in. They are all from the same university, but interning in different places according to whatever their academic speciality is. There were a lot of these kids, so the woman sitting next to us looked over and said, "I theenk ees time for me to go. Adios."
Barcelona seems a popular place for summer interns. I'm not sure who hires the kids, but what a great experience for them. One of the kids we met tonight is looking at Georgia Tech for grad school in MechE, so it was fun to chat.
Tomorrow Greg has to work again, which is really irritating, because it means I cannot accuse him of being on a boondoggle.
Tomorrow I might hunt up the espadrille shop that Janet recommended, en route to taking the kids to Montjuic. Rock on!
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