Baaarthelona

Ugh. Maybe I am just getting tired of moving from one place to another, or maybe I expect more from people in terms of service and friendliness, but I have to say, my introduction to Barcelona was not pleasant.

Getting here was fine. I took the subway from Plaza del Angel (my apartment) in Madrid. No problem. My backpack was a little heavy (I am not sure why, since I now have this extra bag and have unloaded several items of clothing along the way), but I managed, carrying it down the stairs to the platform. Once I arrived at Puerta de Atocha Station, the main train station, I took an elevator to the departures floor.
I was very early, but I was all packed up and ready to go by 9 this morning and thought it would be better to leave early before the rest of the city started waking up if I was going to take the subway to the train station. I stalled a little, but arrived at the station by 10.

I noticed signs pointing to the memorial for the victims of the Madrid train bombing 3-11, and went to look at it. It was a medium-sized room painted blue with a hole in the ceiling. Inside the hole in a kind of circular form, was plexiglass or something with words calling for peace in many different languages. I think there might be something visible from the ground, this was just the view from below, but I am not sure (google it). There were a few other women there and we were all watched over by a security guard. Security was very tight. We had to enter an entrance and could not enter the room until the door to the entrance was closed. Weird.
I went through the security check and sat in the waiting area for the departures. At around 11, they started boarding my train.

I was traveling first class, as I did from Seville. Since I had a train pass it was not that expensive to go first class. It was worth it.

I was a bit disturbed when a whole girl’s sport team boarded our car. They were, as you can imagine, pretty noisy. But I was prepared with my MP3 player, which drowned out all of their noise and the noise of everyone else who may have been talking. It made for a very pleasant ride.

After we passed Zaragoza, they served me lunch. It was decent. A salad, pasta with some kind of chicken in tomato sauce, wine, bread, cheese. I had some sort of herbal aperitif which was quite nice. It took about 3 hours to get to Barcelona by high speed train.

Train travel is really so much better than plane travel. There is less hassle boarding and the trip itself is so much nicer. You don’t have to get to the train station two hours early (even though I kind of did), you don’t have to strip when passing through security (there isn’t always security, but apparently in Madrid, there is), and there is more room than on a plane. Plus you are not breathing that stale recycled air, and it has a low carbon footprint. I hope we can get more high speed rails in the US.

When I arrived in Barcelona is when the aggravation began. I tried calling the number I was supposed to call, but nothing was happening. I tried several times, cursing the whole time because if they had just let me go to the apartment directly (this is what the guys in Buenos Aires do), it would have been so much simpler. I could not figure out what I was doing wrong.

Fortunately, there was a tourist information center right next to the phones. I went over and showed the girl the number and asked her how I had to dial. She said I needed to dial 00 before the 34 and then the number. (34 is the prefix for Spain, so I was surprised I had to dial it).

I went back and tried that several times. No luck. I moved to a different phone. No luck.

I went back to the Tourist Information Counter and asked a different girl. She told me it was a mobile phone and I should omit the 34. I asked, “no 00?” – no 00. Seems I was given the wrong information by the tourist information center.
So I went back, now after struggling with this for 15 minutes and finally got through.

Some French guy answered. When I told him I was at the station, he told me he could not be free for 45 minutes! I was kind of pissed at this point, partly because I had to call in the first place, and partly because they gave me this number to call but didn’t tell me I didn’t have to dial 34, and now I had to wait!???

I told him I had sent my arrival time and didn’t understand why I had to wait. He didn’t seem to care. He told me he would be there at 3:45. I just hung up the phone without saying good-bye. I was thinking about just ditching the whole thing because every interaction I have had with these Feel Barcelona people has felt wrong.
So I went and sat down in the station and tried to connect to the internet, and surprisingly, there was free WiFi! I got an update from my sister-in-law on my Dad’s condition, and it sounds hopeful, sort of. I checked rates for the Axel Hotel and it was way out of my budget. So it seemed I was stuck with my Almodovar apartment and the Feel Barcelona people who felt not so good.

In the mean time a stinky old couple came and sat down next to me. I am not sure why they smelled bad, but they did. And they were very loud. They were shouting across at some other old people on the other side of the station. I was in a serious state of dishevelment and was ready to snap. I didn’t. I just complained about them in an e-mail to my sister-in-law and finally got up to go get my taxi.
I have no idea where I am. I think I am in a section of Barcelona called El Raval. I’m not sure. It feels a little funky. It is definitely not L’Eixample, where I thought I was staying. I wanted to stay in L’Eixample because it is the gay neighborhood (they call it gayxample), and I have learned that gay neighborhoods are good, and also it is where most of the Gaudi stuff is, and that is the main reason I am here. But I am not in L’Eixample. I am in some funky, out of the way neighborhood, and I don’t know where I am.

So I sat on the stoop and waited for Frenchy to arrive, and of course, he was late.
He was a young guy, probably working for Feel Barcelona. He opened the door and bolted up the three flights of stairs, not even offering to take one of my bags. I struggled with my very heavy backpack, and my not so heavy, but bulky other bag. It was hard. The flights were long and the bag was heavy. By the time I reached the top I was completely out of breath. I think I may have suffered a mild heart attack (seriously, my chest hurts, but in the center, so maybe it is something else). I was not happy. So far, there had been not one inkling of an effort at making me a satisfied and happy customer. Instead e-mails with BIG BOLD LETTERS emphasizing the rules over and over again and now this very awkward check-in which was really just about getting the money and laying out more rules for me (if you leave any garbage, you will be charged 50 euros, if you make noise, you will lose your security deposit, etc., etc…) I don’t think I was ever welcomed to Barcelona and I was not told anything about where I was, where I might find a supermarket, subway, given a map. Nothing. These people sucked in terms of vacation rentals.

The apartment looks like it did on the website. It is quite stylish. I love the big poster of Penelope Cruz in the living room from Volver, I love the kitchen, and the living room and I love having two bedrooms. It has always been my dream to have two bedrooms, so that I could just throw clothes in one and keep the other one clean. And that is exactly what I did. I chose the one I would sleep in and in the other one, I unpacked my bag and it is a mess! I love it.

The bathroom is very small. I have to straddle the toilet like I am getting on a horse or motorcycle. It means when I sit on it I cannot have any pants or underwear on. It just won’t work. But all in all, the apartment is good.

Except….there is no internet. I can’t believe there is no internet. I thought all vacation rental apartments had internet. I’m guessing that the location (who knows where I am) and the no internet are the two reasons why this very nice two-bedroom apartment costs less than Amsterdam and Madrid. It is 1/3 the price I paid for two weeks in Amsterdam and half of what I paid in Madrid. And I am in Barcelona! Originally, Barcelona was going to be my base instead of Seville, but the apartments I was finding were so expensive I couldn’t afford it. I put Barcelona at the end of the trip and at the last minute before I left, I found this apartment. I never questioned why it was so cheap until I was ready to leave Madrid.

Once I was unpacked, I went out to look for a supermarket. I wasn’t finding it as easily as I thought I would. There seemed to be nothing in the neighborhood. When sitting on the step waiting for Frenchy, I saw several people walking by with bags of fruit and vegetables, so I knew there was something, I just wasn’t finding it.
Finally I did find a produce market. I got some apples, bananas, oranges and red peppers. It was enough to make sure I didn’t starve. On the way home I stopped at a little Arab run grocery store and got a bottle of water (I have found the tap water in Spain to be really nasty). And then as I passed the Chinese restaurant on my corner, I decided to go in and get some food to go, hoping it would not be too bad or too salty.

There was one family eating and three Chinese people standing around. I ordered noodles and kung pao chicken and sat down to wait for my order.

A dark-skinned guy, who I thought might be Indian, stuck his head in and made a surprised face. The woman working behind the counter said something about there being one table and that is why they were open. I realized it was siesta hour and they should have been closed.

I enjoyed sitting there and listening to the conversation between the Chinese woman and this guy, who turned out not to be Indian at all, as he spoke Spanish quite fluently. I didn’t think he was was from Spain, but I don’t know. The Chinese woman’s Spanish was pretty good, obviously she spoke with a Chinese accent, and she didn’t use the past tense, but she was pretty confident and fluent.

The woman was asking him if he had electricity earlier. Apparently he works across the street. He said he didn’t know because he wasn’t working. She said she lost her electricity from 1:30-3:30, during her peak lunch hour. She said she had to cook by candlelight. It was such a funny conversation, I couldn’t help laugh with the rest of them when she was telling the story. I was beginning to feel better about my neighborhood. It was nice to observe this interaction between two (probable) immigrants to Barcelona. The guy had a coffee and then a shot of scotch. I guess he was gearing up to go to work.

I came home ate my Chinese food, which was quite good and not too salty, and decided to go out and try to find a Locutori (that’s what they call them here) to check my e-mail and also to alert folks that I am internetless.

On the way back, I stopped in the Arab grocery again and picked up some tuna, vinegar and oil and yogurt. I now had a pretty good selection of healthy eats.
It was only 7 p.m. and I thought it would be good to explore my neighborhood a little before it got too late. Barcelona has a serious reputation as a pickpocket haven. I left my wallet and just took a little cash with me.

I walked to the corner to a street called Avenida Paral.lel . I don’t know why they spell it Paral.lel. I walked in the direction of Placa Espanya. I don’t know how far Placa Espanya is or if I ever reached it, but after a while I got tired and walked back.

I enjoyed reading the signs in Catalan, the language they speak here in Barcelona and the rest of Catalonia, which is an autonomous region in Spain. Under Franco, Catalan was banned, but since then its revival and autonomy have been important gains in Catalonia and other autonomous regions in Spain (which have different languages). Catalan is a Romance language and it looks like a mixture of Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. I have no idea how to say even hello in Catalan, and since I don’t have an internet connection, I can’t even look it up. It is amazing how dependent I have become on the internet on this trip, but without it, I couldn’t have done half the things I’ve done.

Avenida Paral.lel, is a nice Avenue. There were lots of shops catering to immigrant types, shops selling wigs and hair products for African women, Chinese and Arab run groceries, and a bunch of other stores, mostly restaurants. The people here seem very diverse, and I am definitely in an immigrant area. I started to like the neighborhood the more I walked.

And so now I am back, blogging without an internet connection (I am hoping on Monday to get some sort of wireless card that will enable me to connect and post my blog entries, learn how to say hello in Catalan, etc.) and ready to make some popcorn and see what is on TV.

It’s been a rough day and I am so ready to get back to SF and begin my travels in the other direction where I know things will be easy, pleasant, and oh so friendly. But for now, I am in Barcelona and I will do my best to enjoy it.