Two months ago, I was sitting in front of a computer moving the cursor around a button that, when pressed, would buy me plane tickets to Barcelona and Paris. I was not sure I wanted to do this. First off, I didn’t speak Spanish or French, at least not well, and these cities seemed far off with food that I could never taste and parks which I could walk through only in dreams. Well, I hit the button, and this is the result.
I woke up very early on a cold morning at the end of January, taking a bus to a stop close to the airport and walking the rest of the way (because the airport bus costs more, you learn these things when you live here). The plane shuddered as it took off and flew over the seemingly endless Mediterranean Sea, a sea which I swam in for the first time in September last year. I landed in Girona and stayed the night in small hostel bed. After having some fast food chapas, I took a long walk through the town and saw the cathedral that rises up on a hill over the river. A German I met at the hostel suggested upon my return that we go out for a drink. We strolled through the sandy piazzas bordered by palm trees swaying in the wind and found an almost deserted bar just where the town starts to shed its history and take on a modern feel.
I say almost deserted because there happened to be a gaggle of Spanish people there and, after trying out my language skills (‘Hola! Me llamo Ben! Me gustas...!’) they began to talk English or Italian and we got along pretty well. This German and I started out with plain beer, but the next drink I tried this delightful concoction called Ratafia. As opposed to the awful taste of the name, this elixer is absolutely DELICIOUS! I am unable to describe how happy I was, and with every sip from the tall glass I reiterated to my newfound colleagues the completely divine gusto of the drink. It is the equivalent of limoncello in Italy, which is drunk after meals before the guests have to head into the cold night, but it has some kind of unexplainable zip to it. SOOOO good.
I left them around 2 AM because I thought I might utilize the space I had reserved at the hostel rather than return only for breakfast. That morning I met some great Italians from Milan, and we talked about Spain over tea and croissants. After getting directions from the amazing Spanish lady at the front desk, I came to realize why the name Barcelona is so beautiful. When Spanish women say it, they roll the r and lisp the s, sort of like ‘Barrrrthelona,’ and it sounds heavenly to ears parched by too many plane and bus engines. I walked outside, said goodbye to the river and the apartments perched over it with decaying concrete roofs covered with vines, and jumped on a train to Barrrrthelona.
Near the metro stop I met my friend Vicente, and together we went to buy food to cook, and cook, and cook. The market we went to was called something like the Mercat Ingles. It had food from around the world, and apparently just saying the name to a Spanish person was like a joke. After the market, we headed to Vicente’s rooftop apartment which overlooks Barcelona’s soccer stadium and I cooked my special pasta sauce (which, by the way, gets better every time I make it). We ate lunch for an hour and a half on the patio, drinking local wine from the Basque country and talking about food and life and politics and weather and culture and America and Spain... and lounged in the sun, something I hadn’t been able to do for ages during Italy’s gray winter. After lunch, Vicente took his siesta while I sat on the patio and looked through the guidebook. I could never see everything in this city.
The view from Vicente's patio.
After leaving Vicente’s, I met up with a Portuguese couple that had invited me on couchsurfing to stay with them for the night. They live up on one of the hills that looms over the city, and there was an amazing view of Montjuic and the sea from the rooftop. When I first saw the alleyway that their apartment opens into, covered with plants in tiled ceramic pots and looking out on more beautiful building rising from a hillside across the way, I knew I was in Spain. Andre, the husband, and I took a long walk through Parco Guell, masterpiece of the Spanish architect Gaudi who designed many of the unique sculptures and facades that Barcelona is famous for. I forgot my camera, but I can tell you there was a lizard and that Gaudi’s house looked taken from Alice in Wonderland. Using small colored tiles and concrete, Gaudi somehow managed to take the rough jagged material of glazed ceramic and use it to create flowing designs and patterns. The park was crowded with people, and we walked slow because I was having problems with my knee but it was better that way.
Andre and his wife in the beautiful alleyway of their apatment.
Back at the apartment that night, I ate so much food I thought I wouldn’t have to eat again till returning to Bologna. We started with toasted bread with olive oil covered with a special breed of tomato cut with a cheese grater. Then they brought out this dish with supports over it and I was wondering what it was for when Andre put the salsiccia on it, poured all over alcohol, and lit it on fire! After the flame died down, the thing was cooked and I ate most of it still amazed at how simple the process was. We walked to a Portuguese bakery for desert after dinner (these flat cupcakes that tasted like pieces of cloud mixed with rays of sunshine) and I wanted to buy the special kind of plate to cook stuff by lighting it on fire, but I don’t think the airline would have allowed it on. Plus it weighed 4 or 5 kilos.
The next morning I made French toast (which I had been thinking about for a long time, it’s weird how sometimes these days I’ll be on the bus home and just begin imagining myself cooking a specific dish, hope I’m not alone in this kind of thing) and the couple rode the metro with me to the Hard Rock Cafe. Before leaving Bologna, I had booked a tour to see the palaces and piazzas that Carlos Ruiz Zafon, an author from San Francisco whose books are all set in Barcelona, mentions in his writing. It was a small tour, only about 10 people, and it was in Catalan! This is a second language which many people in this region of Spain speak. I decided to just go along with it because trying to understand the words the guide used was more fun than if the tour had been in English, and with my 100 or so words of Spanish I managed to chat with everyone.
A piazza mentioned in Zafon's 'The Shadow of the Wind'
Zafon mentions all these mystic, phantasmic scenes in his book where the protagonist suddenly finds him or herself in the middle of a cemetery shrouded in fog or a piazza where the light is bright and he has to squint his eyes. In ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ he mentions the Cemetery for Lost Books, and I got to see the libreria that was the inspiration for this during the tour! All through the alleyways of Barcelona there was colorful laundry overhead swaying in the wind and people talking in a beautiful language that I may one day understand.
The cemetery of lost books.
All of the awesome Spanish people on the tour.
After the tour and a famous group picture I took a stroll along the water lined with palm trees, elegant light posts, people on bicycles, and sunlight. I took a right turn down Las Ramblas, the beautiful main pedestrian thoroughfare of Barcelona where many street artists dress in costume and musicians play sweet drifting melodys. I ate a lunch of baguette and strawberries from the outdoor market and headed to see the Salvidor Dali museum.
The path beside the water in Barcelona
Dali was a surrealist painter who lived in a gorgeous house on the Spanish coast northeast of Barcelona. Among the many intriguing works on display at the museum, I found that Dali had created a painting for every canto in Dante’s Commedia. Dali’s seemingly incomprehensible but beautiful artwork seemed to match the feeling for every part of Dante’s poem: pain in the Inferno, the notion of time in Purgatorio, and the joy of Paradiso. There was also a model of an enormous sculpture that Dali made for an art festival where, on the final day of the festival, all of the artwork is burned to the ground in a spectacular fire. The idea that an artist could work so hard when they knew the finished product would go up in flames shows true passion.
Dali's picture for the first canto of Paradiso where Dante invents the word 'trashumanar' to describe the change that takes place in his vision so that he is able to ascend into the Sky of the Moon (Cielo della Luna)
After the museum I spent the night with Vicente, who took me to a Spanish birthday party. I had some traditional Spanish drinks, amazing Spanish food (some kind of dip made with spicy peppers and potatoes), and danced with all of the party-goers. Most of them were older than me, but they knew how to groove! With my limited Spanish I introduced myself and they were very patient with my linguistic inexpertise. The DJ had an affinity for American songs from the 70’s, and the songs seemed to keep getting better and better. After feeling fully prepared, we headed out in the cold night air to the disco, where we promptly took over the dance floor and I danced, rather well, with several Spanish ladies as the night went on.
That day I also learned several memorable elements of Spanish culture from Vicente. The first was the phrase ‘Esto con Franco NON pasaba!’. It means ‘This didn’t happen with Franco!’ and refers to a political leader in Spain who had a lot of support among the older population of Barcelona. I tried it out several times when trivial things seemed to be going wrong and it had great success among the older members of the party. I also learned that day about Choriso, which is like salami in Italy but spicy and denser. My goodness it is delicious.
The day after the party Vicente and I spent the entire afternoon cooking a traditional basque dish from Vicente’s home town. It involved making a filling out of hot milk, flour, and butter, adding tuna, stuffing red peppers soaked in olive oil with the filling, coating the peppers with eggs, and frying them in more olive oil. We made sooo much and ate like kings. Strangely enough, we usually had meals with baguettes, and I thought that baguettes would largely have been found under the roofs of Paris.
Me and Vicente outside the soccer stadium. Apparently things can get pretty crazy at this place...
After our 4,5, I don’t know how many hour culinary escapade, I took a train to the town of Sitges, which is south of Barcelona and right on the water. During the summer it is a very popular resort town, but when I went the streets were not crowded and there was no one swimming in the water. I spent the first night in a hostel and stayed the second night with a couple who owns a restaurant that is hidden in one of the narrow cobbled alleyways of the town. The restaurant is downstairs and the couple (as well as the cook) lives upstairs. I dropped off my stuff, had some breakfast in the kitchen of the restaurant, and took off to go hiking in a national park that overlooks the ocean.
I walked pretty slow because of my knee, but I had more time to enjoy the view. I think this was actually the first time I have ever seen a cactus in the wild. Along the way I said ‘Hola!’ and smiled at the beautiful Spanish people, many of whom had simply stopped their car beside the road and decided to lounge on a blanket, ‘basque’ing in the sun. I hiked for most of the day and saw all kinds of strange plants that the dry terrain offered, and I was so happy to have a sunburn afterwards!
View of the ocean from the top of a hill in the National Park
That night I ate with the cook, couple, and their kids in the restaurant, then studied French late into the night. For an hour I sat at the bar and talked with the cook, who is from Copenhagen, and he told me all about his city. I really want to go to Copenhagen now to see the bikes because apparently everyone, and I mean everyone, goes in bike because it is incredibly expensive to have a car, and bikes get stolen all the time even more so than in Bologna. For example, after a long night at the disco, if someone has stolen your bike you might just say ‘Oh, well, I’ll take this other one,’ which wouldn’t make you a thief but just a part of a long chain of intentional borrowings. Also, many real thiefs go around in vans and just pick off bikes using great big pliers and throwing them into the van. Sometimes they even pick up motorbikes! And if you own a van, someone will steal the van, and then they will use the van to steal bikes!
After talking about Copenhagen, I asked the cook to let me help in the kitchen the next morning. And we cooked up a storm. Although it was down season and there were not too many customers to be found, the cook and I made enough food for an army in a couple of hours. Some of the dishes, like spaghetti and meatballs, are pretty common to restaurants everywhere, but I also learned how to make this traditional white bean soup. After we got done cutting, stewing, stirring, and washing, I got a bowl of every dish we made, and each was like a little piece of paradise.
Before heading back to Barcelona, I took a long walk along the sandy path lined with palm trees beside the water and tried not to notice all the modifications that machines were making to the beach (well, it WAS off season, and it takes a lot of rocks to stabilize a beach). The sun felt so good and it sparkled on the waves that lapped at the shore. All along the water were traditional looking Spanish houses and men walking with canes and people with rimmed hats sitting on benches. Gorgeous.
Palm trees lining the path beside the water in Sitges
Back in Barcelona, I took a walk during the afternoon through the park of Montjuic, which was the site of the Barcelona Olympics and practically covers a whole hill, and stayed the last night with Vicente, making us risotto with chorizo. Chorizo has this wonderful red element that dissolves in the water and congeals on the rice, and it makes a darn good risotto.
My last day in Spain, early, I said good-bye to Vicente and headed to Fegueres to see the Salvidor Dali Theatre before catching the plane in Girona. The museum was filled with all kinds of indescribable art in which a person can get very lost looking for meaning. So, I just looked. In the courtyard of the museum was a car with half a man inside attached to a boat floating in the air with weird blue droplets dripping off of it all steered by a woman made of drift wood from the sea. This was surrounded by statues that looked like Oscar trophies motioning with their arms. Inside the theater and in the hallways I saw many of the paintings that up till then I had only seen in books: people with drawers coming out of their bodies, clocks oozing over the side of blocks, and other products of a genius imagination.
Sculptures in the courtyard and above the stage in the Salvidor Dali theater.
I caught a cappuccino and made it to my plane in plenty of time, but I was coughing and beginning to not feel so well. On the plane I met a teacher who teaches Spanish in Paris and French in Barcelona. He flies back and forth every week to two different schools, and he wanted to learn English so that he could know the three most spoken languages in the world. He helped me a bit with my (atrocious!) French pronunciation and tried out a few words in English, like a skater carefully making their way across thin ice.
Landing in France, I was enthralled to hear the French people around me talking fluently with the raspy r and the fluid way of ending words that I have so much trouble with. In the bus on the way to Paris I caught my first sight of the Eiffel Tower. That first night I got in very late and stayed with a friend of my mom’s and her amazing musically talented family. While I was sick for most of my stay in Paris and ended up staying under the covers in the mezzanine, which is like a raised bed with sliding doors, the sound of different family members practicing bass, flute, or piano would drift up to my ears and alleviate the fever a bit. The whole time I was in Paris this family made me delicious meals, and while my appetite was not very awake my favorite was most definitely the fondue! Fondue is made from three specific cheeses and a specific white wine which are found (I think) only in France, and they are mixed together and put over a flame on the middle of the table. To eat, a person simply takes a piece of bread, dips it in the melted mixture, and tries not to get the rogue strands of cheese everywhere! Their spacious apartment with designs on the ceiling really made me feel like I was in the heart of France.
My favorite sculpture on the Arc de Triumph
My first day in Paris I visited the Arc de Triumph, a monument to Napoleon’s success in war, and took a walk down the Champs d’Elysee. Afterwards I met up with the husband of the family I stayed with who is a lawyer and he gave me a grand tour of the halls of justice. There are something like 20 kilometers of hallways devoted to this portion of the government in Paris, and all of the judges and lawyers wear traditional black robes with white collars. I also sat in on hearing for one of the trials and tried to understand all the words (for example, ‘J’oublie’), but by this time I knew I needed to get back to bed.
Gargoyles on top of Notre Dame. They come alive at night and... do mean stuff around the city. But I think Van Helsing comes and fights them or something.
It was torture having to be in bed with this great big beautiful city swirling around me, but that’s how travelling and life go. I did try to go out one night to meet up with some friends of friends. I got to their apartment and immediately fell in love with their voices, the way they spoke French, and one day I hope to speak that well. We made crepes and drank white wine and talked and laughed and listened to one of the guys play accordion music late into the night. I had worse fever all night, but looking back it seems very worth it. They introduced me to some traditionally French music (LA BAS… IN TERRAMARA!) and wrote down some recipes for me that I hope to try out soon. Crepes are so easy to make and so fun, it’s a wonder everyone doesn’t do them! After tea and more talking and then lunch and then tea again the next day, I headed back to the loft to crawl back into the mezzanine.
Me next to a young self portrait of Durer. I am the one on the right, smiling.
My last day in Paris I summoned some energy from deep inside and got myself out of bed to make a trip to the Louvre with my mom’s friend. The Louvre is the biggest art museum in the world, and it is truly impossible to see it all in a week or even a month unless you simply walk through each room snapping photos and not looking. I was especially interested to see the works of Durer, a German artist we studied in my art class, and I also got to see an enormous hall full of Rubens paintings and finally the Mona Lisa (‘La Gioconda’).
The modern glass pyramid outside the Louvre.
After stepping out of the Louvre and walking past the modern glass pyramid in the front of the museum, I got a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower lighting up just as it was beginning to get dark. The tower sparkled. It looked like a million different firecrackers were going off all up and down the tower, and at this distance the tower seemed to be taking off from the ground.
The next morning taking off from Paris I was very sad to not have been able to see hardly anything during my stay but truly happy that I got to spend time with this amazing family. I am incredibly grateful for everything they did for me.
At the moment, back in Bologna, I feel like I am really ready for this semester. While last semester I started my courses two or three weeks late, this time I have met with all of the professors beforehand and feel really prepared to learn. I am taking three natural science courses this semester including Vulconology, and we are going to make some excursions to the different volcanoes near Napoli in April! I am also finishing up the medical evaluation portion of my Peace Corps application, which is proving to be incredibly difficult in this country but possible, and I am working very hard to start learning French on my own before I begin a language course next month. As a result of my travels last semester, I am slightly poorer this semester and will probably not travel as much, and I will have to shop more at the Mercato delle Erbe (frutte e verdure ai prezzi piu bassi!). However, I am really starting to get a hang of Italian and, strange enough, am actually looking forward to working and studying these spring months. I have to take another exam for my Dante course at the end of next month, so I am still reading the Commedia, and every time I open Paradiso it feels like opening the door to my warm apartment after a cold walk home at night.
I am starting to get a bit homesick, five months after my arrival in Italy, and I miss my parents, my best friends, professors, and bike in North Carolina, but I’ll pull through, for mine is a heart made of iron!
