...It Was the First Time that We Met

While I was writing the previous post I started thinking about how I wanted to tell the tale of my time in Barcelona. I was there nearly a week, I went on a few guided walking tours. I took lots of pictures, met lots of people, walked alot. Took lots of pictures.

Right, I already mentioned that.

I thought maybe I'd try another type of "Frog in Prague" tale, but going through the pictures nothing was really coming out. More importantly, for me anyway, going through the pictures, especially the crap load I took of La Sagrada Familia and other Gaudi locales, all I kept thinking about was something Andrei, the PhD and all around nice guy originally from Romania who now lives in Barcelona and leads this photogrpahy oriented walking tour, said pretty much at the beginning of the walk.

Barcelona is now the 3rd most visited city in Europe. #1 is Paris. #2 is London. #3 used to be Rome (how couldn't it be), but Barcelona recently surpassed it - much to the surprise of Rome. And what's the point to this tourism statistic. Well, it means, and you can verify this by going to Google images and typing in Barcelona, that practically every square inch of the place, inside and out, has had it's picture taken at least a gazillion times. His point? Don't worry about snap shots. Worry about telling stories.

I learned alot in those three hours with Andrei, or at least I think I did. I mean, it's not like I pretty much wasn't a blank slate to begin with. Yes, I've taken thousands of pictures, and my mother believes I am getting better at it (I should be after taking so many), but I haven't studied, read a book, read a blog, tips, or taken a class or anything. So this three hours was a huge eye opener. I walked away from it feeling like the world had just opened up and revealed a whole new language.

But it created a new conflict. Part of me wants to take the "snap shots', wants to create a catalogue of the things I see and be able to share it, be it on this blog or forced upon a crowd of unsuspecting victims/friends when I get back to Toronto. The other part of me wants to focus more on the key points that Andrei was espousing, namely, the telling of a story.

In the end I'll be doing both. Hard for me not to.

The thing is, I kinda feel like I've been dialing it in somewhat on a few of the past blog entries, and I've definitely taken my sweet time getting around to writing them, good excuses aside. Going through all of the pictures trying to figure out which I would post started to get overwhelming, followed by disheartening. So many. So, so, ever so many.

So I thought I would try something new. This time round I've decided to limit myself to 25 pictures or less. Most of these count as my favourite shots I took in Barcelona.

So you're not about to get a catalogue of Gaudi, or his contemporaries. If you want those images you can go somewhere like here, or just Google image it. You're not going to get my Barcelona version of Google street view either. Again, you've got the rest of the internet for that. I've cetainly got all these pictures, and you're more than welcome to come over and see them sometime. Just remember to bring lots of red wine. For now though you're stuck (well not really as you can always close the browser and move on with your life) with these ones.

They're nothing special, they're just the ones I happen to like.

George Orwell Square

Barcelona is home to the only sqaure named after George Orwell in the world, or so I was told on my first of three walking tours. He was a big fan of the place having fought on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, and then chronicling that period in his Homage to Catalonia, Catalan being the region of Spain in which Barcelona resides. Barcelona loves him, and 'Homage...' is essentially mandatory reading.

The irony of this sqaure is that, due to the drug related crime that was going on in and around it, this became the home to Barcelona's first CCTV security cameras.

I've got a fun pic of a graffitied '1984' that drives the point home quite nicely, but I preferred the one above.

Making Paella

That morning walking tour turned into a night of learning to make paella, some tapas, and of course, what would appear to be the national drink and favourite pass-time for many a tourist, sangria.

The crew you see above all met on the morning walking tour and decided that making dinner together would be a good idea. Conveniently there was an offer on just such a thing so the lot of us signed up, went our separate ways for the afternoon, and then regrouped back at the Travel Bar, where all of these walks originate from each day. It was a great way to do it. Having spent the morning together all the ice had already been broken, so the moment this one started we were all off to the races and having a blast.

So, here are in the instructions on how to make a traditional seafood paella.

Step 1: Prepare your ingredients.

Step 2: Make the paella.

Pretty straight forward, don't you think?

Those two count as favourite pictures solely because they allowed me to continue a running gag I have with my Dad. If you know him ask him how to draw an owl sometime.

Photo Walk

As I already mentioned, one of the walks I did focussed (pun intended) on photography. Yes, we learned some history along the way and heard a few cool stories, but the focus was about learning how to take a good photo. And to do that you need to know what makes a good photo. Well, I didn't know, but now I do. This doesn't mean I can spot a good photo in a crowd, or that I even take good photos. It does though mean that I now chastise myself more frequently for not being able to 'see' something, or worse, 'seeing something' but not being able to capture it. It also means that I've started playing with this little wheel on top of my camera that has letters like 'A' and 'S' as potential settings, as opposed to 'SCN' which has all of the presets. Now I get to screw with aperture. A is for aperture. And shutter speed. S is for shutter speed.

See, the first rule of taking pictures is 'Read the manual for your camera'. Big fail on my part. And honestly, I really know nothing about how the damn things work. But now I'm starting to learn. And as we all know, learning is fun. And a bit of knowledge can be very dangerous, especially in the wrong hands. I don't know if mine are wrong, but they're certainly not an unequivocable right.

Here's a faucet. You decide.

And for the record this is currently in my top 10 favourite shots I've taken on the entire trip so far. A) I like the colour. B) I learned how to do that thing in front in focus while keeping the back blurry.

See, told you I know nothing.

And this is Andrei. Go hang out with him for a few hours on the weekend if you're in Barcelona with anything that passes as a camera these days.

Andrei pointed out to me the important part of this picture.

I, being me, and having my own obsessions with doors which is now spreading to windows and perhaps laundry as you'll see below, thought I was taking a picture of the door and window as an exercise in telling a story by juxtaposing two objects. Sure, the pitted wall between them adds for some great texture, and even more story when you learn that the damage was due to bombing that Stalin did on Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War with the permission of Franco. Stalin and Hitler both used Barcelona for practice for their airforces to develop new bombing techniques prior to WWII. The story gets more poignant when you know that this square is Placa Sant Felip Neri, and that there is not only a church, but there was also a school and orphanage, and when the bombing started, while some kids were gathered from the school by their families, the orphans were taken into the lower levels of the church for safety. A direct hit in the square though collapsed that area and the nuns and children died.

I knew all this taking the picture, I had learned it on my first walk. Then Andrei pointed out what he thought made this picture, the little plaque below the window. That plaque is only one of two plaques in all of Spain that holds Franco accountable for the atrocities he carried out against his own people.

Spain is an interesting place. Franco was a fascist and ruled until his death in the mid 1970's. Spain is the only country in Europe that did not overthrow it's fascist regime post WWII, reform having come about because the opportunity presented itself when he died. It's interesting to think about that when looking at how Spain views Catalonia and it's desire for independence. The referendum was considered illegal, and there was actually talk of military intervention. Leaders of that separatist movement in Catalonia made many concessions around the nature of the referendum to ensure that they could move forward with it. Even still the national government were not going to recognize it's validity. It is a far different beast than either Quebec or Scotland.

I've ventured too far into the world of "I don't know what the heck I'm talking about", so let's move on.

Laundry

No story here. I just liked it.

SioSi

Timing on this trip has been pretty good I think in terms of stuff going on. We were in Scotland about the time of their referendum, in Sweden during their election, and then when I arrive in Barcelona I'm in time for the Catalan referendum regarding moving towards separating from the rest of Spain.

I don't begin to understand it all, so I won't try to explain. What I will say though is that I didn't know a thing about it before arriving. Following the world news, it also didn't seem to be that big of a story outside of Spain up until it finally happened. Perhaps I was reading the wrong feeds.

Anyway, I was in Barcelona the week leading up to the referendum, and in fact, left the night of the day that it happened.

There is a place in Barcelona that everyone says to go to at night. It is called, stylishly enough, The Magic Fountain. Images of Disney characters dancing merrily about come to mind, but they can't stay there long lest Disney, with their rabid intensity for copyright protection, come and knock them out of my head with a little hammer.

The Magic Fountain is a big fountain that has a light show in the evenings. Apparently it is spectacular. A few of us from the previous walks and paella dinner decided to go check it out one evening.

The regularly scheduled show was not happening and instead we walked right on in to a SioSi rally for the referendum. I even have a pin to prove it.

To my mind the rally was way better than the fountain. I've never actually found myself in the middle of something like that before, and the energy to it was phenomenal. Not tense. Not scary or worrisome in anyway. No hooliganism (though other rallies had had some damage done by people exploiting the opportunity). Just a good solid gathering of like-minded individuals who want more recognition for Catalonia. That at least is the simple version. Like I said, I'm not qualified to speak intelligently on what's really going on, the related economic issues, the desire for more cultural protection, etc, and it would appear I am already getting back into that area where I should not go, so its time to move on.

You may be wondering if there is anything I can speak intelligently about. I often wonder the same thing.

Oh, and they had fireworks.

Jared

Jared gets a special shout out as he is one of the nicest people I have ever met. And I know some really nice people. You know who you are if you'll allow yourself to. Jared also happens to be a great example of how you really do need to make an effort to not meet people when you're travelling. Friends and family have been concerned that, with me out here on my own, I may be getting lonely, or feeling isolated, or some such. Well, rest assured that this is not the case. The world is full of friends we haven't met yet. It's kinda like one giant pub in that regard. We apparently cannot turn a corner without bumping into another person or, in the case of Marrakech, nearly being run over by one on a scooter.

Good times.

So yes, people are everywhere, which means potential new friends are everywhere. It's just a matter of making a choice, and then making the tiniest of efforts. Actually, being alone is harder as you need to be constantly shutting down anyone who comes your way.

Of course, there is a huge difference between being alone and being lonely, as I was reminded of the other day. I can be in a room full of people I know and like and get along with really well, and feel incredibly isolated and lonely. Likewise I can be totally by myself in this riad of mine, or cut off from everyone around me for 30 hours on a ferry from Barcelona to Tangier due to language, and feel completely a part of what is happening. And I guess that's the difference. Being alone is about whether you are physically by yourself or not, while being lonely is about not feeling connected. We don't need to be with (physically or virtually) people to feel connected to them, and we don't need to even know people, or speak the same language to feel connected to them.

I took the ferry from Italy to Barcelona. I was in a crap mood and didn't want to deal with people so I splurged and upgraded myself from a pulman seat,  basically a chair in a room full of chairs, to my own cabin. I barely saw anyone, and the only people I spoke to were the crew long enough to upgrade my ticket. I pulled a Garbo.

I was the second person off the ferry when it docked in Barcelona. Jared was the first. That meant that when Jared swung to the left to go to the security booth as indicated by the sign, I followed him. And then when he swung back to the right because there was no one in the booth, I followed him again. And one, perhaps both of us, laughed at that. And the laugh lead to speaking which lead to sharing a cab from the port to downtown, as our hostels were relatively close. And sharing a cab meant becoming Facebook friends. If you're my friend on FB then you may have noticed all these young folk cropping up as my new friends. And ya, it's a good way to be able to connect with people you meet along the way.

This then lead to meeting up for the walk, exploring the city for the afternoon, doing the paella thing, and getting to have some mighty fine micro brewery beers at a bar Jared had stumbled across his first night. A very nice man. Meeting people like Jared is an excellent reason to travel all on its own.

Park Guell

I know I said I wasn't going to show you Gaudi, and I'm not. I'm showing you this instead.

It happened to be taken in Park Guell, which was designed by Gaudi, and is full of buildings, and other structures decorated with his distinct broken ceramic style. A style by the way which was come across accidently, or so I was informed. The story goes that, when Gaudi was working on Casa Batllo he had ordered all of these ceramic tiles for use on the exterior, but when they arrived they had all been broken in transit. Instead of tossing them he had some sort of epiphane and voila, you've got a whole new thing happening.

Alright, I'm caving as I read through what I've written. There's another shot from the park I liked that actually is part of the park.

This means that to keep to my promise of under 25 I'm gonna have to cut bubble boy.

I think I wrote awhile ago about how I believe I'm becoming a better listener because I am writing this blog, and therefore hear more stories each day then ever before. Everything we do, every encounter and conversation is a story, or could be. It's just a matter of which ones to tell. Well, Park Guell was where I told myself I would do the same thing with my eyes. I've always wondered at photographers and how they pluck an image out of everything else that they see and frame it so we see it as something exceptional even if seconds before it was just part of the visual "noise". I know I've talked about this when it comes to my Uncle Per. So yes, Park Guell was my first playground after the walk with Andrei to try this out. It was a frustrating experience to be honest. A fun one too.

I went to the park with Julia one afternoon. Julia had arrived at the hostel the day before and had joined us on our trip to the Magic Fountain. Now, I hadn't planned on going anywhere that day. It was raining and I was feeling a bit lazy and sluggish and not wanting to get up to much beyond reading my book. Then Julia walked by and said she was off to Park Guell and very astutely pointed out that the rain had stopped. So, remembering the whole Yes Man thing, I said "May I join you?" and off we went.

Learning to use the 'S'


That little bit of 'yes' effort allowed for a really fine afternoon and evening in Barcelona. Julia has studied photography and was happy to show me some tips, answer my questions without making me feel too to daft, and introduce me to some fun things you can do when you are start messing with shutter speeds at night.

So while the afternoon had been Park Guell, as dusk approached we had left the park by a different direction and were happily exploring parts of the neighbourhood in and around.

There came a point where Julia felt it was starting to feel a bit dodgy. I chose to accept this instinct of hers so we found ourselves back on the metro, back down to old city, near, but not on Las Ramblas, that frantic nighttime boulevard full of restaurants, souvenir shops, well, shops of all kinds, and of course, the frantic part, lots of people. We found a decent tapas bar, ate our fill, and wandered back out into the night to try and capture a few pieces of it.

How could a lantern thingy shot not be one of my favourites. I mean, this started with a door, so you really shouldn't be all that surprised.

And then Julia said the most amazing thing to me about photography since Andrei's walk. Mind you, the walk had been the day before and I'd spent most of this day either curled up with my book or walking around with Julia taking photos. So the bar wasn't set very high, and the competition was pretty scarce. She said "shake it a little" and proceeded to take a picture, with a little shake of her camera, and then show me all these squiggly lines.

Needless to say this was to me what the internet and email is to people who have recently got it. I will try my best however to not inundate you all with my squiggly light line equivalent of cat pictures and chain emails.

Just this one time though.

So ya, I learned how to do this that evening, and got kinda crazy with playing with it. The last of Andrei's rules is, afterall, "have fun", so that is what I did.

Churches

Again, I said I wasn't going to show shots of La Sagrada Familia, but I lied. I'm showing this one. And why, well, I just keep expecting Keanu Reeves to burst out of one of those pods.

La Sagrada Familia is not a cathedral. The Barcelona Cathedral is The Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia. Eulalia is the patron saint of Barcelona. If you walk around the city you'll see lots of statues, paintings and whatnot of someone you expect to be Mary. Nope. Here it's Eulalia. She was a young Christian girl who was Christian at a time during the Roman Empire when a) Barcelona was part of the Empire, and b) it wasn't cool to be Christian. Arrested and sentenced to death she survived several tries at it until they finally stopped with all the fancy stuff and just beheaded her. Less then 20 years later Charlemagne makes the whole Empire Christian and Eulalia gets to be a saint.

'Sagrada' is a Basilica. It was originally intended to be an Expiatori church, which is essentially a church that is built using the money of people who have given it so they can be forgiven for all of their sins now and always. Kinda like an Indulgence, but bigger. Sagrada in fact was to be an exact replica of The Temple Expiatori del Sagrat Cor, which sits atop a hill overlooking Barcelona, lining up nicely with Passeig de Gracia, the street where several of the families that gave money for this church lived.
Gaudi's Casa Batllo is on this street.

Well, the project got canned, and then Gaudi came in (he wasn't the original architect) and a whole new project got started and it became essentially a peoples church, one which was built based solely upon donations from whomever. This then changes a good long long time later when, in 2010, Pope Benedict comes along and consecrates it and makes it a basilica. Now, to be a basilica you basically need to keep some relics of a saint. And which saint has some bits of him in La Sagrada Familia? Gaudi. He was nominated for beatification in 1999 and two years later was awarded it. Like a rocket some might say, given how long it normally takes. Of course, that made it just in time for 2002, the 'International Year of Gaudi' celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth.

And yes, to be a saint you need to have performed miracles. Apparently Sagrada counts as that miracle. Sure, it's not complete, and perhaps it never will be, but the Vatican wants it done by 2026, so we'll see how it goes.

I learned all this during the other walk I took, which was a look at Gaudi and his contemporaries and focussed, as Joseph, our mentor for this one said, not on how these things got built, but why. What motivated the creators? What motivated the sponsors? Who was for and who was against and who got their feathers ruffled and what the heck else was going on at the time that influenced a particular building, or the messages intended by it's design and ornamentation.

Yes, these tour guides are real academic slouches.

On the other side of town is the Cathedral. It's gothic, and old. That said, it's got a tower that was added on near the front of the building when Sagrada got started on. Below is the interior of that tower from the nave floor. Apparently Little Jimmy isn't the only place suffering from tower envy.

It's a beautiful building and is as vital and important to Barcelona as 'Sagrada' is, if not more so. Probably just not as photographed. Though maybe.

It's interesting considering these two holy places, what each represent to the city, how they balance one another, how they may compete, or perhaps even conflict. On the surface though, they are each a marvelous creation, with two totally different forms of beauty contained within them.

People

I've little to say here. These people are not people I met, they're just people I saw along the way. I'm not comfortable yet with taking pictures of strangers, and do so surreptistiously, if at all. I remember my uncle one time in Kensington market in Toronto taking a photo of people sitting along the outside bar at a particular place, when one gentleman (large, leather, lots of tattoos and piercings) said "Sir, please don't." Now my uncle has a tendency to really concentrate. Great when you're writing, not so hot when there's a big guy who doesn't want his picture taken marching towards you.

It turned out okay.

I too survived all of these.

This one is another protest that was going on one day in support for the referendum. People had gathered in the square in front of the cathedral and were dancing. I'm assuming a traditional Catalan dance, but I don't know for sure. Makes for a better story if it is, and certainly better symbology, so let's assume so. Also makes for a good protest.

I'm enjoying the puppetry I've been seeing along the way. In this particular case what really made it work was the set design.

I was wrong, bubble boy can stay.

Saint Jordi
It would seem that everyone has their own St. George, and Barcelona is no different, except his name is St. Jordi, and he is the patron saint of Catalonia. Now yes, similar story as the rest. St. Jordy rescues the princess and slays the dragon. Thing is, what Barcelona celebrates isn't the bravery, it's the romance. April 23rd is St. Jordi's day, and is pretty much the Valentine's Day of Catalonia. On this day men give women a rose, and since 1923, women give men a book. Yep, a book. And why? Well, if you ignore variations in calendars then you'll see that both Shakespeare and Cervantes died on April 23, 1616, so what better way to recognize these two greats in literature then by folding them into this romantic day.

So, if you happen to be in Barcelona on the 23rd of April some year, be sure to have a rose or book handy. Perhaps not 50 Shades of Grey though.

Last Day

As I mentioned, my last day in Barcelona aligned with the day of the referendum. I'll honestly admit to having been a bit nervous about the day. Having heard about some of the rally's that had gotten a bit out of hand, the increased police presence, the stories of how people exploited such happenings to wreak their own form of havoc for no good reason other than to do so, I was a bit nervous about being out and about.

No reason to be. And that is turning out to be a lesson I am learning repeatedly. These things that make me nervous, they really don't need to. I mean perhaps the media, government, corporations, and much of society in general, report on things in a way that is designed to make us wary, if not afraid of what we do not know. Or perhaps the choice is still left up to me and for whatever reason I have a fear of the unknown that influenes my perception and choices, but is not based upon first, or even second hand experience. I'm not sure where it comes from. It'd be easy to blame everything else for my fears and fear-based prejudices, and perhaps that is true. Or perhaps it is intrinsic. Regardless though, if they continue in the face of fantastic experience that tells me the contrary, then I've only myself to blame. Part of that saying yes thing is not just about not being lazy, it's also about not being afraid.

And now I've shifted from talking about things I know nothing about to making you suffer through my half-thoughts on nurture vs. nature. Sorry about that.

Oh look, balloons at night.

And see, kept it to 25.