On another negative note, the school work here is starting to pick up.  I find it very difficult to do work here, simply because I have no motivation.  I keep thinking of all of the other interesting things I could be doing instead of sitting in my room doing homework.  There are parks, museums, beaches, and bars that I could be exploring instead of reading 50 pages about Freud’s stages of psychosexual development.  I had my first midterm already and I have 3 more to come in the next week.  I should probably start preparing.

                On Friday night, my roommate and I decided to venture into “La Garrafa de los Beatles” which roughly translates to “The Beatles Pub”.  I’m not the biggest Beatles fan, but I was excited to see a live band playing Beatles music and see some old memorabilia from the glory days of rock n roll.  As soon as we walked into the bar, we knew it was going to be a disappointing experience.  A Barcelona Guide Book told us to get to the bar early because it is a small bar and reaches capacity very quickly.  We arrived around 10:30 to find the bar nearly empty.  There was a live band playing 60’s and 70’s music, but they were not playing Beatles songs and the songs they did play were sung in very bad English.  The beers were very expensive, and the whole atmosphere was awkward.  After a while, more people showed up and we struck up a conversation with the bartender who told us that the Beatles cover band that the bar is known for would be going on the stage at 1:00 am.  I walked around the bar looking at the different memorabilia and I wanted to take pictures, but I felt really uncomfortable doing it, so I kept the pictures to a minimum.  We decided not to wait 2 and a half hours to see the performance, but they perform every night so we figured we could go back on another night.  When we left the bar, we were the only people under 35 in the whole place.

                I made my second trip to Montjuïc on Saturday.  It was just as thrilling as the first time, only I did not get to catch the sunset from the castle/fort.  I went with a group of friends to the castle, to the Olympic Stadium, to Palau Nacional, and around Plaça Espanya.  I saw the same sights I did the first time I visited this beautiful part of Barcelona, but I did more things.  For example, I climbed up the Communication Tower in the Olymic Park, which was really cool actually.  For lunch in Castell de Montjuïc (Montjuïc Castle), I got one of the worst pizzas and one of the worst glasses of sangria I have ever had.  After  walking around the Olympic Park for a while, we headed down to Palau Nacional, which is a palace that houses the National Art Museum of Catalonia.  Unfortunately we didn’t have time to visit the museum, but the palace and the views are breathtaking.  At the base of Palau Nacional, right near the Magic Fountains that run lighted fountain shows every night, there is a world-wide mobile telephone conference.  This conference/convention is huge!  I would really like to sneak in and see the newest technologies in cell phones, and maybe even get some free stuff while I’m at it. 

                After a siesta and dinner, I was too exhausted to a nightclub, so I decided to find a cool, local bar.  My internet search eventually landed me at a site called worldsbestbars.com.  There, travelers talk about their experiences at local bars and which ones they would recommend.  The travelers talked of a bar conveniently located right off of Las Ramblas that has the best cocktails in Barcelona.  The name of the bar was Boadas Bar, and it is said that it was Hemmingway’s favorite bar to visit while he was in Barcelona.  The bar was incredible small, but it was very intimate.  Nearly every person in the bar was a local or a traveler (a.k.a there were no American students there, which was a relief) and they were all over 40.  The bartenders wore tuxedos and were professional drink makers.  The site recommended a mojito, so that’s what I ordered.  It was hands-down the best cocktail I have had since turning 21 in July, even if it was a little bit on the expensive side.  To me, it is so much more interesting exploring local bars such as The Beatles Pub and Boadas Bar than venturing to a different club every night, which is what a lot of the American students do.  The nightlife here is one-of-a-kind, but all of the clubs are more-or-less the same.  Each bar here has its own personality, its own atmosphere, and its own collection of original drinks.

                Sunday was an extremely cultural day for me.  I went to one of the Plazas in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona for the Festival de Santa Eulalia.  It is a Catalan holiday for the children of Barcelona showcasing Catalan culture.  The plaza was packed with people, mostly locals, and around the outer sides of the plaza stood giant figures called gegants which towered over everyone.  Catalan music started playing and the gegants would march through the crowd into the center of the plaza where they shared a surprisingly graceful (considering their size) dance.  The dancing giant figures were really well made and very cool.  I wanted to operate one and dance around the plaza!  After the gegants left the plaza, the castellers entered.  I talked about the castellers in one of my earlier posts–they are the teams who build human towers.  Each area’s team of castellers entered the plaza with a walking tower of 1 column of 4 people. They call this a “1 de 4”.  After all the teams entered, they began building more complex and difficult towers.  It was truly amazing to see in person.  The strength, concentration, and teamwork of each person in the tower really demonstrate the pride and dedication to one’s culture.  The top of each tower is a child, usually around 4 or 5!  Don’t worry though, they wear a specially designed helmet to protect them, and the people below them, from falls.  It was spectacular watching one team build a tower of 4 columns of people stacked 7 people high, and then build a single column in the middle of those four.  It’s a lot harder to explain than it should be, maybe I should just let the pictures do the talking.  As you can tell  from the pictures, it was a beautiful winter day in Barcelona: 60˚F and sunny.

                In my Spanish film class, we started watching some of Pedro Almodóvar’s early films.  Without getting into too much detail, I’ll just say that his films are definitely original, shocking, and hysterical.  I would compare the content his early work to some of John Waters’ movies.  I am much more interested in the class now that we are talking about film history instead of the history surrounding the film.  To me, it is much more interesting to compare the movies in Spain in the 80’s to the movies of today than to talk about subtle satirical symbols of the Franco regime in Spanish movies of the 70s.

                Monday was St. Valentine’s Day, or as they call it here Día de los Enamorades.  For a city with as much “public displays of affection” as Barcelona, I was a little bit disappointed with the amount of love in the air. One of my teachers told me that people in Barcelona see St. Valentine’s Day as too commercial, which is probably true.  In fact, the only stores in Barcelona that were advertising Valentine’s Day were the lingerie stores, which isn’t surprising.  I was lucky enough to receive Valentine’s Day cards from my mom and my girlfriend, but it kind of made me miss home.  Apparently there is another day to show affection in Barcelona, Día de St. Jordi (St. George’s Day) on April 23^rd.  On this day, the women give men a book, and the men give the women a rose: “a rose for a love and a book forever”.  Apparently, Barcelona is an exciting place to be on this day and Las Ramblas is full of street performers, “sardana” dancers, and a 24 hour marathon of a public reading of Don Quixote.  Unfortunately, this is during my Spring Break, and if I ever get around to planning a trip, I will not be in Barcelona to celebrate St. George’s Day.

                Last night, finished the book I had been reading for the last week or so, Stephen King’s The Green Mile.  I had seen the movie, but never read the book.  I thought the movie was great, but the book was so much better.  It was a little bit slow starting off, but by the end I literally couldn’t put it down.  I highly recommend it.  I wanted to finish it last night so I could start a new novel during my trip to the French Riviera.

                My trip to the French Riviera this weekend was almost canceled.   I received an e-mail on Monday from the travel company informing me that a group of people bailed on the trip and they did not have enough people to run the trip.  I was pretty upset by this news because I had been looking forward to seeing a new part of the world all week.  Luckily on Tuesday, the travel company sent another e-mail confirming that the trip was still happening.  8 people must have signed up at the last minute.  Muchas gracias to those 8 people.  So, in a few short hours, I will be on a bus headed to Nice, France.  I can’t wait!  Maybe I’ll even hit the jackpot at the Monte Carlo Casino…

Hasta Luego,

Sean