Vid Goes to Barcelona

Our train to Sevilla left on Wednesday morning at 9:55. Without us.

I think Megan, Sarah and I all knew when we left our building ten minutes before our train was supposed to leave the station that we weren't going to make it in time. Even so, we darted through the narrow streets of Cádiz toward the station like our very lives depended on catching that train, moving at a pace that left my calves burning for the rest of the morning. It was an exercise in futility, but at least it was exercise.

On our way to the station, we called our friend Amanda, who was traveling with us, and more or less told her not to be silly, of course we were going to make it there in time, go ahead and buy four tickets. Then as we finally neared our destination, we received a call from Amanda informing us that the train was now pulling out of its platform, with her inside. They don't always check tickets on the trains here, but it was comforting to know that Amanda was definitely going to be covered if they decided to this time.

We ended up taking a bus into Sevilla and we made it to the airport in plenty of time to catch our flight to Barcelona. When we arrived, we checked into the Central Garden Hostel One on Carrer Roger de Llúria and we were immediately impressed. It was spacious and clean and the staff were friendly and helpful. The husband of the husband-and-wife team that owns the hostel sat us down with a map of the city, showing us where he had marked various sights we had to see while we were there along with prices and routes for getting where we needed to go.

That night, we dined at La Rita, a reasonably-priced restaurant with decent sea food and a nice, upscale atmosphere. This upscale atmosphere is what inspired me take off the cap I'd been wearing all day while we ate. I'm not sure what inspired me to leave it in the restaurant when we left or what inspired someone to take it for their own when they found it lying on the floor, but that's my best guess as to what transpired, because it wasn't there when I went back for it.

A little aside to our would-be hat thief: Enjoy. It's not worth much and it's starting to smell, but it was always good to me. Also, I'm pretty sure I don't have lice, so that's a plus.

On Thursday, we woke up relatively early and headed to Travel Bar for a free walking tour of the Gothic quarter of the city. The tour was interesting and informative, but paled somewhat in comparison to my Dublin tour. Our guide Mark was Australian and although he seemed to have done his research on Barcelona, he hadn't lived there long and didn't exude the same authority that Dublin Dave did. Still, he was engaging and friendly and convinced us to come back the following day for a bike tour.

On our walking tour we met a girl our age named Pinsi, who accompanied us for the rest of the day as we got sandwiches at La Xampanyeria and walked through the exhibits at the Museu Picasso. The museum doesn't hold a lot of Picasso's really famous works, but instead a lot of his lesser-known, earlier works, so I imagine it's more interesting for those who already know a thing or two about Picasso. I myself was most impressed by just how conventional some of his really early work was.

My friends and I spent Friday morning riding around Barcelona on bikes. We stopped at Sagrada Familia, the famous cathedral designed by Antoni Gaudí, and walked around the giant building on foot, taking in the bizarre and inspiring art of a mad genius. This is one of the sights people will tell you you must see if you visit Barcelona; I agree. I'm not sure how much it costs to get inside or how long you would have to wait in line to get inside once you pay, but it's free to just walk around it outside and you don't have to be interested in architecture to fall in love with Gaudí's crazy work.

Halfway through the bike tour, we stopped for one-euro wine and then continued on. I wouldn't say I got tipsy, exactly, but riding a bike was a lot more fun after two glasses of cheap wine.

On Saturday, we met up with Sergi and Jaume, my friends and natives of Barcelona. I was grateful for the opportunity to experience the city through the eyes of people who actually lived there. First we took a tour of Camp Nou, the football stadium of FC Barcelona. Sergi and Jaume love their football team and try to make it to every game. They pointed out to me where they usually sit in the stands and talked about important plays they remembered seeing. I learned that FC Barcelona is the first team to win all six important cups, although now that I'm writing this out, I realize I'm not sure what it means.

Next, we went to Park Guell, which is home to more work by Gaudí and is, I was reminded many times this weekend in excited yelps from my American friends, also where one season (one episode? all seasons? I'm not really sure) of America's Next Top Model was filmed. The park, being built into a hill, offered a nice view of the city and, again, Gaudí's architecture was spectacular.

Sergi spent the afternoon trying to teach me some words in Catalan, the predominant language in Barcelona. It's not a dialect of Spanish, but is, as I've indicated, a language all it's own. Though it's fairly similar to Spanish, it's different enough that I had trouble pronouncing a few words.

Before I met Sergi and Jaume, I thought of Spain as being very homogeneous. This couldn't be further from the truth. There are four main languages spoken in Spain. In Barcelona, which is in Catalunya, they speak Catalan. In Galicia, they speak Gallego. Up north in the País Vasco, they speak a language called Euskara. And down here in Andalucía, where I study, they speak Castellano. Castellano is also the official language of the country and is often referred to simply as Spanish. Everyone in Spain speaks Spanish, but not everyone in Spain likes to think of themselves as being Spanish.

Sergi kept pointing out things that he considered to be "Spanish" and spoke of them as if they were more than a tad ridiculous.

• Flamenco ("This is very Spanish, this.")
• Castanets ("Of course! Very Spanish.")
• Bull fights (This one in particular Sergi seemed to feel strongly about, because it involves torturing and killing animals for sport. The people of Catalunya recently voted to ban bull fights in their neck of Spain.)

Sergi even expressed hope that Catalunya would someday be independent from Spain, but Jaume seemed to think Sergi's pride in Catalunya was a bit excessive. He said he was both Catalan and Spanish and that was fine by him. It was interesting to hear these two differing perspectives from young people.

Barcelona is a beautiful city with a lot to see, but by Sunday I was exhausted and just wanted to be back in Cádiz. Someday, maybe soon, I'll go back and try to see everything I missed this time around, but for now, I'm glad to have a bit of a rest from traveling.

Until I go to Berlin in less than two weeks. And I'll be flying Ryanair again. Oh, joy of joys!

Vid Goes to Dublin

I kicked off the day after St. Patrick's Day with the coldest shower I've ever taken in my life. I was staying with my friend Sean, whose water heater, we later deduced, was a bit broken. But the water wasn't just not hot. I can deal with not hot. It was COLD. I'm convinced if the water had been any colder, it would have ceased being water altogether, unless we can call ice solid water, which I suppose it is. More on water later.

I survived my shower and my friends and I rushed to City Hall where we waited for what seemed like an hour for our walking tour of Dublin to begin. The reason we rushed is that we were supposed to meet another group of friends there and we were concerned that we had kept them waiting. It turned out there was a problem with their bus (in that it was the wrong one) and they ended up missing the beginning of the tour.

Our tour guide, Dave, was friendly and engaging and knew a lot about the history of Dublin. He spoke about the tension that existed between Britain and Ireland and Dublin's role in the story of Ireland's eventual independence. He expressed his mild distaste for the architecture of Sam Stephenson (whose Dublin buildings are arguably both landmarks and eyesores) and his extreme distaste for Jack Black (whose portrayal of Gulliver in the recent Hollywood flick Gulliver's Travels is, according to Dave, an insult to the memory of great Irish satirist Jonathan Swift). He informed us that like famous Irish writers James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, Courtney Love attended Trinity College, but she was kicked out for selling massive amounts of LSD. All in all, it was an entertaining and informative tour and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in learning about Dublin without having to spend any money. The tours, which are run by Sandeman's New Europe, are completely free. Tips are suggested.

After the tour, we went to O'Neill's Bar and Restaurant on Suffolk Street, where we got a discount for having taken the tour. I got Fish and Chips, which I'm told is very popular in Dublin. It was delicious and the atmosphere of the restaurant was very friendly.

That night, my friends and I went on a pub crawl, also run by Sandeman's New Europe. It was a lot of fun, although some bartenders seemed less than happy to see us waving our colored wrist bands about, yapping in accents that clearly originated outside of Ireland. One in particular let us know that he hated these pub crawls and that, although my two friends and I didn't "seem so bad", we represented a major nuisance for him and he'd be glad when we moved on to the next bar. It was all a little confrontational, but at the time I was in good spirits, and allowed my mind to twist his blunt honesty into a sort of friendly confidentiality. From what I can remember, the pub crawl was fun and it's a nice way to both meet other people visiting Dublin and to experience the Dublin nightlife.

The next morning, I was a tad hungover. Of course, Saturday was the day we decided to visit the famous Guinness Storehouse, so as I stumbled around in my miserable alcohol-induced haze, I got to learn all about beer and how it's made and just how gosh-darn great it is. I tried to keep sickened groans to a minimum.

Perhaps my experience at the Guinness Storehouse was colored by my hangover, but I wasn't all that impressed. Our tickets cost eleven euros online and there are plenty of other, free attractions in Dublin that I suspect I might have found more enlightening.

The first floor of the Guinness Storehouse is devoted to Guinness's four ingredients: hops, barley, yeast, and water. Each ingredient gets its own visual displays and plaques of information.

• Learning about hops: Fairly interesting. Maybe you're like me before I went and you aren't entirely certain of what hops are, or what they look like, or where they're grown.
• Learning about yeast: Also fairly interesting and relevant.
• Learning about barley: At least somewhat more interesting than it sounds.
• Learning about water: A good reason to spend your eleven euros somewhere else.

The Storehouse tried to turn water into something new and fascinating by installing a miniature waterfall inside, with mixed results; it wasn't fully capable of distracting me from the inane information about water painted on the floor and written on plaques, but it was cool enough that many people seemed to want to take pictures in front of it.

After I took my free pint on principle and gave it away immediately, we exited the Storehouse and took a taxi to the Kilmainham Gaol, an old prison in Dublin that houses a lot of Irish history. The jail is known mostly for its political prisoners, especially the fifteen rebels sentenced to death after the Easter Rising of 1916, who were executed by firing squad in the courtyard. The tour was a little eerie, but it only cost us two euros each and the jail is so steeped in Irish history I think it would have been a mistake to miss it.

On Sunday, we rose bright and early to catch our Ryanair flight out of Dublin Airport. I tried to sleep on the plane, but I think maybe it was designed to make this impossible, or at least incredibly uncomfortable. After landing in Malaga, we took a city bus to the bus station and bought tickets for a bus back to Cádiz. The weekend had exhausted me and I wanted nothing more than to be back in the city I've grown to love, snug between my cheap Chino store blankets and my not-that-comfortable mattress. Of course, this was denied me for just a little while longer when our bus broke down somewhere between Algeciras and Cádiz.

I think because we were overtired, my friend Megan and I almost immediately burst into laughter at the seeming absurdity of this occurrence and we kept laughing as we waited for another bus to come pick us up. Our chuckles drew suspicious glances from some of the natives, but by that time I was too tired to care.

I guess I can sort of break it down this way:

• Dublin: fun
• Traveling all day long: not fun
• Bus breaking down: funny(?)
• Sleeping after arriving home in Cádiz: AWESOME

Happy St. Patrick's Day from Dublin!

Today, after about twenty hours of travel, my friends and I arrived in Dublin, Ireland. The crowded streets in the city center reminded me of Carnaval in Cádiz, except everyone was speaking English and wearing the same costume--green*. I stopped to take a picture with good ol' Jimmy Joyce and my friends and I continued on to O'Shea's, where I enjoyed their famous Irish lamb stew. Next we hit up the only bar we could find that would take us (many turned us away due to lack of space) and I had a glass of Guinness. Satisfied that we had fulfilled our holiday duties, we retired after one drink and headed home so we could finally get some decent sleep. Which, if my heavy eyelids are any indication, will be happening soon.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

*UPDATE: I almost forgot drunk--green and drunk, both equally important on St. Patrick's day, or so it seems.

Carnaval Sights AND Sounds

On Saturday afternoon, I took my camera around the city in an attempt to document the beginning of Carnaval. As I mentioned before, all the little kids were in costume...

..as were a lot of the adults.

There were street vendors everywhere.

I tried these things called buñuelos. They're basically little donuts they fry right in front of you. You can choose from a number of different toppings like chocolate, white chocolate, dulce de leche and strawberry. I paid 3,50€ for about six tiny buñuelos covered in a strawberry sauce. It was worth it, but just barely.

Some people stood on street corners, selling costume parts like masks...

...and hats and wigs.

I ran across this artist on Calle Ancha. She was in the middle of sewing an intricate tapestry. It was an interesting process to behold.

The sign says: No se vende. Mi trabajo es para todos. Gracias. (Not for sale. My work is for everyone. Thank you.)

Oh, and guess what? Somewhere between pouting about my broken Flip and eating those emotions in the form of overpriced bite-sized donuts, I realized that my regular ol' camera ALSO has a video feature. So here some of the sights and sounds of Carnaval de Cádiz 2011:

Lions and ninjas and clowns, oh my!

I just went for a quick run along the waterfront (which is always more enjoyable than I expect it's going to be; I think I'll just have to bring a view of the bright blue ocean with me whenever I go for a run) and by the time I returned to Plaza de San Antonio, Carnaval was in full swing.

All the little kids are dressed up, as well as some adults. So far I've seen a lion, a dinosaur, a couple Spider-mans, a couple Batmans, a Mario, a Snow White, a Woody from Toy Story, a couple clowns, a Linguini from Ratatouille, a ninja, and a couple ninja turtles. There are street vendors everywhere selling balloons shaped like Spongebob, Patrick, Dora the Explorer (interesting side note: In Spain, Dora teaches little kids to count in English), and a number of potentially Spanish characters I don't recognize.

There's a giant stage set up in Plaza de San Antonio, which is right near my apartment, and there seems to be some type of performance going on as I write this. I stopped and watched part of it on the way back from my run, but from what I can gather, the show consists mostly of costumed adults crawling around the stage on hands and knees while circus music blares through the speakers. To be fair, there was a costumed little girl on a swing they'd set up above the stage; that was pretty cool. Also, I think a lot of the performances happening during Carnaval are put on by townspeople and not professionals. I suppose one has to appreciate the authenticity and charm.

Anyway, being there in the midst of all the festivities made me wish I had brought my camera on my run with me (on the other hand, trying to run with a bulky camera in hand would have made me wish I'd left it at home) and it also reminded me that my Flip is broken, so I won't be able to film any of the cool street performances this week. Which is pretty lame. So I apologize for the lack of video content, but expect some pictures of Carnaval de Cádiz 2011 in the near future.

Carnaval

Last night was the first night of Carnaval, a ten-day period of festivities before Lent. Cádiz's Carnaval is world-famous and supposedly people come from all over just to celebrate with the Gaditanos (people from Cádiz). There are no classes during Carnaval, so I'll have plenty of time to take part in the merriment. In the coming days, I expect to see a lot of choruses, street performers, and costumed foreigners imbibing to excess. I've been warned by some natives that things can get a little out of hand, so I intend to be careful, while still trying to get into the spirit of things.

Photo credit Elsa Pedro