Ok, so when you last left me I was catching my breath on the train after a panicked sprint through the Barcelona metro….that probably ended in me knocking some little old Spanish woman over in my wake of sheer and utter confusion and exhaustion.
Luckily, I made it.
The train left at 8:25 and would arrive in Toulouse at around 5….giving me pretty much all day to reflect, listen to music, be quiet and alone (for the first time really in like 3 weeks) annnnnnd gaze out the window.
Passing through the Pyrenees and into the south of France almost seemed like the real start of this trip…. It was funny to realize that I was accomplishing the very same trip that, state side, was almost a year in the making after I met Olivier.
It’s funny how everything just clicks into place when it’s so right.
So outside the train window, I can tell you that I was speechless… the country side crossing the Spanish border and going into the south of France is unbelievable. Mediterranean. Rugged. Everything that people expect from southern Europe around the Mediterranean. There were vineyards hugging steep cliffs, yellow flowers growing in between the rocks, mountains and always to my right… the ocean.
My train ticket looked a little something like this: Barcelona-Cerbere, Cerbere-Narbonne, Narbonne-Toulouse… you can check it out on a map; it’s a pretty hefty hike…. But like I said earlier… considering Toulouse was…. Just... around… the…corner? I had to go.
Ok. So now we just passed Carcassonne in the train… it’s beautiful; guarded by medieval walls and surrounded by vineyards. All the other people except for one guy get off the train, leaving us by ourselves in the little… I guess, cabin.
This is what I love about traveling; people are generally sociable and will more often than not enjoy talking rather than remain completely and utterly awkward and silent.
So, we just talked, for the hour train ride from Carcassonne to Toulouse about France, the United States, politics, traveling….very light heartedly and politely, keen to hear the other person’s point of view.
In the end he suggested that we should “tutoyer” instead of “vousvoyer”…that for me, in French at least, with a perfect stranger, is a big compliment.
Arriving in Toulouse was hectic and Olivier had an appointment to set up for a theatre show he was organizing that would show case all the clubs on campus (of which there were cheerleaders….really bizarre considering there was no sports team… definitely made me smile when they got up for their show.)
The tour went something like this: Ok… so tonight I have a role for you to play in the show (ummmm, shit?) we have to get some food, and ps… these postcards are the most important sights in Toulouse, but whatever, and oh by the way, we have to catch THAT bus (500 meters away that we had to run to, trampling little French ladies instead of little Spanish ones in the process…. It was all very exciting for me…I’m sure Olivier was just freaking out about being late ☺
It’s nice when you’re some comfortable with someone that you can rush…and make them rush too.
So fast forward to later that evening; the show. Ok, so I have never preformed on stage before in my life… and my public speaking courses in high school were a far cry from being in front of about 100 or so French students at a university I had only arrived at 3 hours prior.
Hmmmmm…. Luckily the skit I was in was an English one… It was meant to showcase the English Debate club and some sort of foreign language Translation Club. Imbedded in it was this discourse about “where is Brian?” which apparently all French speakers learn when they are learning for the English the first time that “Brian is in the kitchen.” To play off of this I was supposed to bullshit about some nonsense about “Brian not being in the kitchen.” Reverting to logic…. Even though… in FRENCH grammatical rules “Brian is ALWAYS in the kitchen.”
I reread my lines about 5 million times because I was so nervous… did I mention I had leeway… to…improvise… if I wanted…?
So we get up there… and then…
“Wait… let me ask my colleague… WHERE IS BRIAN?”
Here we go.
“This is an eternal question that has been plaguing French students for centuries… Where is Brian… (I’m proud of this part) To understand the profound nature of such mysteries we must revert to the very essence our being… the very questions of our universe… What came first.. the chicken or the egg….to be or not to be… (and ready) How much would WOULD a would chuck chuck, if a wood chuck… could chuck… wood (I thank you.)
It was a hit… I… was… funny?
Ok so really it was a short, not that big of a deal of a skit BUT for me this was pretty cool, I always said I wanted to try something in theatre, I just never had the guts or courage. It was nice to hang out feeling seemingly useless as everyone prepared and deconstructed the show through the course of the weekend and even nicer to be part of the action.
Thanks, Olivier, for giving me that opportunity.
Halfway through I caught up with the other people from the trip to Tréminis…the most amazing thing happened… we just picked up where we left off. There were no questions asked; just “hey!!! You came! Great to see you again”…the day after, Anaïs, one of Olivier’s friends, gave me a lovely tour in Toulouse that consisted of a series of gastronomic activities, precise scheduling…chance encounters with random people who were keen to practice their English (“how do you say…il va pleuvoir…” “I know three phrases…Madison Square Garden, Wall Street… and pretty boy”), a walk along the Canal du Midi as it started to rain ANNNNDDDDDDD watching Les Poupées Russes (the sequel to L’auberge espagnole…needless to say I think that now I have a future, considering that, as I have mentioned before, a lot of what I have done here has been influenced by that film…)
It was very lovely to hang out, have some tea and enjoy the company of someone else. I mean, isn’t that what this is all about?
I hate being stuck making lists; how the hell am I going to describe ALL of this…especially since everything is so engrained in my memory.
Somehow, we (meaning me with Olivier being a really gracious host) that it would be cool to take a bike ride in the country; Olivier has a grandmother that lives in a small town outside the city of Albi which is another outside Toulouse.
We were young, motivated, ready to take on a little rain, BUT freaking exhausted.
The morning we spent literally lounging around the town and taking a little siesta on the banks of the river.
And then it began… the tour in bikes.
Keep in mind two things: a) I can’t remember the last time I rode a bike more than 5 minutes and b) we hade a VAGUE idea where we were going, the roads we were going to take and, like in Tréminis….not well armed with a decent map of the region.
All the makings of a good adventure if you ask me… right? I forgot to mention that the sky was getting miserably gray, of course, as soon as we left.
So we rode. The city quickly melted away into rolling hills and beautiful countryside (ps… rolling hills are beautiful… BUT they kill your legs..fyi. And all those nice descents downhill most of the time only mean that you’ll have a bigger one to climb.) I’m not complaining at all, it’s just to say that your perspective changes from the view outside a train window to real life actually traveling through what you’re looking at. No bother…it was amazing. We passed cows…. And open fields… and.. and…
I don’t even know how much we rode, Olivier’s grandmother said that probably by the end, trips to and from the train station along the Canal du Midi included… about 30 km. We ended up getting lost and having back trek over a heart attack hill…
Pulling into his grandmothers village made it all worth while. I can’t tell you how amazing and how thankful I am to have a friend who I can do random adventures with like that…. I think I said that already when talking about Tréminis… but it’s WELL worth mentioning again.
We were definitely rewarded at his grandmothers with some amazing food, warm hospitality and EVEN a ride back to the train station because it was raining too much by his grandmothers friend who informed us as we were passing the police station that she didn’t have a license.
Fun ride for sure. But seriously, for her to go out of her way…even if, it was kind of a illegal… totally adorable.
The last day, despite crummy weather, we headed to Carcassonne; that perfectly preserved walled medieval city that I had passed on the way in. One again, coming full circle; funny how so many trips end where they seem to begin.
Olivie’rs aunt picked us up at the station to take us back to his grandmothers for our first of two huge meals; one before our trip to the city and one after… complete with first and second plates, salads, bread, cheese, and locally produced wine. Oh… about the wine, it gets batter….just wait.
We pulled into a small French village about 20 minutes outside Carcassonne that was of course flanked by vineyards and more beautiful rolling hills. Now, Olivier’s family here owns and number of vineyards and produces wine. This. Was. The. Real. Deal.
After lunch and having our ears delightfully chatted off by Olivier’s aunt… we headed to Carcassonne… first however, I got a small tour of the vineyards. We took his grandmothers little old car up into the hills outside the village (messing up the catalytic convertor… the only part of a car I actually know because I got fucked up on mine back on Long Island two summers ago.. it’s not horrible, just makes an unpleasant noise) to do a little prospecting.
We didn’t say much, but I was and still am really touched; I don’t know if it was the symbolism of sharing part of his family like that or if I was just overwhelmed by the beauty of everything; but it’s something, like pretty much every minute of this trip starting in Barcelona, that I will never forget.
Carcassonne, we took a tour of the old ramparts and saw a number of the important sights…I’m sure Olivier has seen them a million times, but it was still very cool. My favorite part was after though when we just strolled around the city walls; the skys, after clearning, then raining, then clearing, then…winding…finally cleared up for good. We just talked… climbed up on some older ramparts that we probably shouldn’t have climbed on, and just took it all in.
Dinner was as exciting and full of chatter as lunch and I have to say that I really admire Olivier’s grandmother; a pretty tough woman that had to leave her family to work in the north and now, although hard of hearing, is still super sharp; when you’re young such people are really impressionable and help you to really revaluate your outlook on life.
I was just really trying to take it all in at this point.
It’s always so difficult to leave, say goodbye. Not knowing when you will be back and if you will ever see the people you encounter during such a trip is so hard, especially when you’re like me and get so attached. It’s hard to not look ahead to the future AND not be ruled by the past…it’s something I’m really working on as this Erasmus experience winds down. Train stations are so weird like that; the place where you are both so excited when you meet someone again after a long time but at the same time are sad when your paths part. In this case it was much easier to part on path than for Olivier because…well… his train was 2 hours late.
My overnight trip took me back to the very beginning of these two blog entries; I came full circle again, covering old ground (passing Nice again in the process) and tramping on some new…It’s called to think that I have no pretty much traveled throughout the south of France in a region that stretches all the way along the Mediterranean from the north of Italy all the way to Barcelona.
It doesn’t seem like a lot on the map, but you try it.
So there I was, exhausted in my apartment, just getting life back together and work my way through all my thoughts when… someone rang the doorbell.
Where is Brian? Part I
Are you ready for a whirlwind summary that will ultimately lead me back to the question posed above? Buckle your sealtbelts, kids, this is my life the past three weeks.
So last night I just got back from a whirlwind ten day trip to Barcelona and Toulouse to the south of France. That’s to say, after trekking back via train from Carcassonne to Montpellier, overnight bus from Montpellier to Milan, and train again from Milan to Bologna the next morning, I was pretty much, you guessed it, a zombie.
You may think it’s crazy, but you just have to do it. You gotta move when your in Europe.
The trip, I’ll get back to, just be patient.
So anyway, getting back to Bologna, I was kind of a zombie. Life was getting back to normal, the apartment was a little messy, but whatever, it was nice to be settling in again after the seemingly endless chaos that was the month of May for me here. Now, earlier that week, or prior to leaving rather I had said goodbye to a really good friend of mine exchange; he said he was going to leave some Belgium beer that his family was bringing on their trip down to pick him up.
First thing, there was A LOT of beer in the fridge.
My roommate was there; after asking about the trip he proceeded to inquire about a party that was supposed to go on that evening….with my friends?
What? Curious, right?
Sure enough someone rings the doorbell.
Martin? Ok, just another friend of one of the guys in the apartment.
Turns out…..it was MARTIN! He had decided to stay until I got back to have this one last going away party complete with Belgian beer and chocolate and lots of general merrymaking. Apparently he had been waiting at the train station to surprise me; way to fuck that one up and be in your own little world… Matt.
Needless to say the party last night was unbelievable. One last, bittersweet goodbye to Martin with everyone there.
What an end to a great adventure. I mean, I know it doesn’t seem like a bid deal or a huge surprise, but when you get close to someone after a few months, saying goodbye is always terrible (something else I’m gonna have to deal with here pretty soon….lets not talk about it.. k?)
K. Back to present time. Now I’m sitting here in a Laundromat; life is finally getting back to normal (despite the utterly broken washing machine in our apartment) and I have to say I couldn’t be happier. May. Was. Crazy. and experiences ranged from the sweetest things ever like going to Ferrara to see a flag throwing competition (for little kids) for the Palio or horse racing contest that has been going on in the city for centuries and a cooking course with an Italian grandmother toooooo being caught in the middle of a fight between a Siclian friend of mine and a random Napolitan guy who called in the cavalry (about 10 of his friends), writing or rather bullshiting my way through two ORAL exams (one of which was pushed back to a day later than scheduled… well… because it’s Italy and for which I had read about 450 pages in one day), and having little to no personal space or quiet time because I had to share my room with two friends of my roommate who visited…. for two weeks
Begin to get what I’m saying about all this craziness. All this being said, I assure you that right now, I couldn’t be happier. My life is a little bit messy, but for the first time, I’m ok with it.
Amongst little trips, I swam in the Adriatic, when to Milan for the day… twice… once for a friends birthday which ended up with her (Paola) running back and forth between showing Claire (visiting) and I around and planning at the last minute her OWN birthday party, the other for a graduation from university (Gabriele), pick nicked in the hills outside Bologna, ate gelato, went out, enjoyed the warmth of the Italia sun….everything right now just seems to melt together… lets see if I can make any sense of this mess that is my memory at the moment.
OH! Another good point to intervene. Milan. What a marker for how much I have changed these past four months. I don’t know why, but after leaving Milan in January, even though I have very close friends there, I never seemed to make it that far up the peninsula again. The craziness of life here and other day trips kind of got in the way.
If there is something I most regret, its not getting back there sooner.
Going back to Milan for me was like going back to where I start; my journeys came full circle. That being said, the city I left in January, kind of cold in gray, and the Matt that I left in January, self conscious and just trying to make sense of Italy…and life for that matter, had lifted. The streets were green. The sun was shining. I had come back. That’s when I realized two things.
-How much I had taken for granted living there.
-How amazing my experiences on this trip have been so far.
It’s so dangerous as soon as place gets normal or familiar; taking Milan for granted; the fact that I had friends that would be there if I needed them and the fact that I knew my way around pretty well after a month of exploring without letting myself be impressed for not even a second….that was just stupid. Even now, as I am typing this, somebody came up to me to ask where I learned to type…and proceeded to tell me he couldn’t even write… see what I mean about taking stuff for granted. Be. Careful.
Sorry, Milan and everyone I know there.
Ummmm…ok. So where was I going. As yes, continuing with the month of May. Next stop. BARCELONA.
Ok, so Barcelona is by far one of the most interesting in paradoxical places I’ve ever been… let me give you some windows onto what we observed (JiaJia, Rosanna and I) and felt while we were there.
First things first… I have to admit that this was without a type a twisted type of pilgrimage for me as L’auberge espagnole, one of my alllllll time favorite movies was set in Barcelona. Every time I turned a street corner I could’ve sworn I recognized something from the movie…. All this angst and excitement culminated with us all going to the bar where some of the crucial scenes of the movie went down.
Dorky, right?
One of my favorite things that we did that I think best sums up this whole experience of being there is the night that we went to the Ovella Negra (black sheep)… a Catalan kind of bar that served ridiculous amounts of food…
First things first… the menu was in Catalan… Barcelona is a lot like Montreal in that it’s caught between two languages; Spanish and Catalan. The Catalan dislike being lumped in with Spanish and it’s definitely felt everywhere. Most of the signs are in Catalan and, even though you can get by with Spanish, I feel like it’s like Montreal where you miss out on more than half of the city if you don’t speak French.
So us, being the cheap students on a horribly low budget that we were, immediately went for the longest thing that we could find for the menu… our noses brought us to something Embotit… which I guess means “Most bang for your buck”.
Being the cultured Europeans that we were, we of course had to take some cheese with our meat… and about 1.75 litres of nastily and delightfully cheap Sangria.
Embotit really means, I guess, slaughtered animal on plate…because what came out was about 60-70 slices of various types of meats; we are talking Chorizo, Salame, Sausage…lots and lots of animal flesh.
We made it three quarters of the way through. Spain 1… Cheap students… 0.
The whole night culminated in us sadly and slowly walking around the city, clutching our poor overwhelmed stomachs.
The day after we repented for our food sins on a strict diet of fruits and vegetarian tapas in the evening. I think my stomach has still yet to recover.
That’s the other thing about Barcelona….. it’s great, it’s abundant, it’s full of life.. but it Kicks. Your. Ass.
Other things that I loved. The dancing. There is this special Catalan dance that, when there is a little music in some square, all the old time hardcore Barcelonans break out their special white dancing shoes and proceed to dance.
Imagine the Whos in the Grinch.. remember when they sing in a circle…. It’s like that, only dancing. People slowly join hands, through their stuff into the center of the circle and just… enjoy life.
Everyone else who is watching gets the strength of ten Grinches… plus two..
Our random accommodations made me laugh. Rosanna had found a place that was 19 Euro a night…in some random guys apartment. It was basically as if you were to rent out a room in your house… kind of like a B and B, but not really. He had a pet dog and I think he hated us because we would come in at all hours. That being said… he was always very courteous and was quick to provide us with maps and point us in the right direction.
But… if he was busy waiting to let us in…did he ever leave the apartment?
THAT was the question that plagued us during our whole trip…
All the urban studies crap and analysis of Barcelona I’ll save you from… ask me later. Let’s just say that there is a pretty bitter triangle between Natives, Tourists and the Cops that is really felt everywhere.
It was a trip full of late nights, me being enthralled with “ocean breezes” and “urban corners”, EATING (we all…LOVE to eat), sunshine. I just wish I was better at remembering all the random things that made me crack up that we talked about.
Oh…. We rented a rowboat for a half an hour in one of the city’s largest parks…. There was a small, man made water…area…thing… where you pay 2 Euro a person for thirty minutes. Not bad.
Problem. We all forgot how to row. That meant that for the first few minutes we ended up spinning in circles while JiaJia took photos of Rosanna and I screwing up in our tailspin. On TOP of that, we of course wanted to challenge ourselves by going for the hardest obstacle…. in the lake: a really, extremely, low bridge. So low I had to row from the floor of the boat. Not the seat.
So hilarious… the whole time we were singing ridiculous Disney songs… mostly Under the Sea because it seemed to be the most appropriate AND the one that we knew the best… There’s video evidence; I’m sorry in advance.
It’s always nice to smile….even nicer in some warm Spanish sun, in good company with a full stomach. ☺
So the second leg of this adventure was to Toulouse, where my friend Olivier lives… because, you know, France is right around the corner… right?
(Europeans are always flabbergasted by North American sense of space… meaning that I, like the other North Americans here, am often met with looks of bewilderment when I describe where I’ve been).
So we were out until five in the morning; my train was supposed to leave at eight. That left just enough time to nap, shower and head off (while waking up the guy who was renting out our room in his apartment in the process).
Ok, so I get out of the shower… get dressed.. it’s around eight.. that leaves just enough to slowly make my way up to the train station before the train departs at 8:50… but you know… being the careful and savy traveler that I am… I check the ticket just to make sure….
8:25.
You can imagine the panic that ensued. Needless to say I made it, probably crushing some little Spanish women dressed in black in the process….
So last night I just got back from a whirlwind ten day trip to Barcelona and Toulouse to the south of France. That’s to say, after trekking back via train from Carcassonne to Montpellier, overnight bus from Montpellier to Milan, and train again from Milan to Bologna the next morning, I was pretty much, you guessed it, a zombie.
You may think it’s crazy, but you just have to do it. You gotta move when your in Europe.
The trip, I’ll get back to, just be patient.
So anyway, getting back to Bologna, I was kind of a zombie. Life was getting back to normal, the apartment was a little messy, but whatever, it was nice to be settling in again after the seemingly endless chaos that was the month of May for me here. Now, earlier that week, or prior to leaving rather I had said goodbye to a really good friend of mine exchange; he said he was going to leave some Belgium beer that his family was bringing on their trip down to pick him up.
First thing, there was A LOT of beer in the fridge.
My roommate was there; after asking about the trip he proceeded to inquire about a party that was supposed to go on that evening….with my friends?
What? Curious, right?
Sure enough someone rings the doorbell.
Martin? Ok, just another friend of one of the guys in the apartment.
Turns out…..it was MARTIN! He had decided to stay until I got back to have this one last going away party complete with Belgian beer and chocolate and lots of general merrymaking. Apparently he had been waiting at the train station to surprise me; way to fuck that one up and be in your own little world… Matt.
Needless to say the party last night was unbelievable. One last, bittersweet goodbye to Martin with everyone there.
What an end to a great adventure. I mean, I know it doesn’t seem like a bid deal or a huge surprise, but when you get close to someone after a few months, saying goodbye is always terrible (something else I’m gonna have to deal with here pretty soon….lets not talk about it.. k?)
K. Back to present time. Now I’m sitting here in a Laundromat; life is finally getting back to normal (despite the utterly broken washing machine in our apartment) and I have to say I couldn’t be happier. May. Was. Crazy. and experiences ranged from the sweetest things ever like going to Ferrara to see a flag throwing competition (for little kids) for the Palio or horse racing contest that has been going on in the city for centuries and a cooking course with an Italian grandmother toooooo being caught in the middle of a fight between a Siclian friend of mine and a random Napolitan guy who called in the cavalry (about 10 of his friends), writing or rather bullshiting my way through two ORAL exams (one of which was pushed back to a day later than scheduled… well… because it’s Italy and for which I had read about 450 pages in one day), and having little to no personal space or quiet time because I had to share my room with two friends of my roommate who visited…. for two weeks
Begin to get what I’m saying about all this craziness. All this being said, I assure you that right now, I couldn’t be happier. My life is a little bit messy, but for the first time, I’m ok with it.
Amongst little trips, I swam in the Adriatic, when to Milan for the day… twice… once for a friends birthday which ended up with her (Paola) running back and forth between showing Claire (visiting) and I around and planning at the last minute her OWN birthday party, the other for a graduation from university (Gabriele), pick nicked in the hills outside Bologna, ate gelato, went out, enjoyed the warmth of the Italia sun….everything right now just seems to melt together… lets see if I can make any sense of this mess that is my memory at the moment.
OH! Another good point to intervene. Milan. What a marker for how much I have changed these past four months. I don’t know why, but after leaving Milan in January, even though I have very close friends there, I never seemed to make it that far up the peninsula again. The craziness of life here and other day trips kind of got in the way.
If there is something I most regret, its not getting back there sooner.
Going back to Milan for me was like going back to where I start; my journeys came full circle. That being said, the city I left in January, kind of cold in gray, and the Matt that I left in January, self conscious and just trying to make sense of Italy…and life for that matter, had lifted. The streets were green. The sun was shining. I had come back. That’s when I realized two things.
-How much I had taken for granted living there.
-How amazing my experiences on this trip have been so far.
It’s so dangerous as soon as place gets normal or familiar; taking Milan for granted; the fact that I had friends that would be there if I needed them and the fact that I knew my way around pretty well after a month of exploring without letting myself be impressed for not even a second….that was just stupid. Even now, as I am typing this, somebody came up to me to ask where I learned to type…and proceeded to tell me he couldn’t even write… see what I mean about taking stuff for granted. Be. Careful.
Sorry, Milan and everyone I know there.
Ummmm…ok. So where was I going. As yes, continuing with the month of May. Next stop. BARCELONA.
Ok, so Barcelona is by far one of the most interesting in paradoxical places I’ve ever been… let me give you some windows onto what we observed (JiaJia, Rosanna and I) and felt while we were there.
First things first… I have to admit that this was without a type a twisted type of pilgrimage for me as L’auberge espagnole, one of my alllllll time favorite movies was set in Barcelona. Every time I turned a street corner I could’ve sworn I recognized something from the movie…. All this angst and excitement culminated with us all going to the bar where some of the crucial scenes of the movie went down.
Dorky, right?
One of my favorite things that we did that I think best sums up this whole experience of being there is the night that we went to the Ovella Negra (black sheep)… a Catalan kind of bar that served ridiculous amounts of food…
First things first… the menu was in Catalan… Barcelona is a lot like Montreal in that it’s caught between two languages; Spanish and Catalan. The Catalan dislike being lumped in with Spanish and it’s definitely felt everywhere. Most of the signs are in Catalan and, even though you can get by with Spanish, I feel like it’s like Montreal where you miss out on more than half of the city if you don’t speak French.
So us, being the cheap students on a horribly low budget that we were, immediately went for the longest thing that we could find for the menu… our noses brought us to something Embotit… which I guess means “Most bang for your buck”.
Being the cultured Europeans that we were, we of course had to take some cheese with our meat… and about 1.75 litres of nastily and delightfully cheap Sangria.
Embotit really means, I guess, slaughtered animal on plate…because what came out was about 60-70 slices of various types of meats; we are talking Chorizo, Salame, Sausage…lots and lots of animal flesh.
We made it three quarters of the way through. Spain 1… Cheap students… 0.
The whole night culminated in us sadly and slowly walking around the city, clutching our poor overwhelmed stomachs.
The day after we repented for our food sins on a strict diet of fruits and vegetarian tapas in the evening. I think my stomach has still yet to recover.
That’s the other thing about Barcelona….. it’s great, it’s abundant, it’s full of life.. but it Kicks. Your. Ass.
Other things that I loved. The dancing. There is this special Catalan dance that, when there is a little music in some square, all the old time hardcore Barcelonans break out their special white dancing shoes and proceed to dance.
Imagine the Whos in the Grinch.. remember when they sing in a circle…. It’s like that, only dancing. People slowly join hands, through their stuff into the center of the circle and just… enjoy life.
Everyone else who is watching gets the strength of ten Grinches… plus two..
Our random accommodations made me laugh. Rosanna had found a place that was 19 Euro a night…in some random guys apartment. It was basically as if you were to rent out a room in your house… kind of like a B and B, but not really. He had a pet dog and I think he hated us because we would come in at all hours. That being said… he was always very courteous and was quick to provide us with maps and point us in the right direction.
But… if he was busy waiting to let us in…did he ever leave the apartment?
THAT was the question that plagued us during our whole trip…
All the urban studies crap and analysis of Barcelona I’ll save you from… ask me later. Let’s just say that there is a pretty bitter triangle between Natives, Tourists and the Cops that is really felt everywhere.
It was a trip full of late nights, me being enthralled with “ocean breezes” and “urban corners”, EATING (we all…LOVE to eat), sunshine. I just wish I was better at remembering all the random things that made me crack up that we talked about.
Oh…. We rented a rowboat for a half an hour in one of the city’s largest parks…. There was a small, man made water…area…thing… where you pay 2 Euro a person for thirty minutes. Not bad.
Problem. We all forgot how to row. That meant that for the first few minutes we ended up spinning in circles while JiaJia took photos of Rosanna and I screwing up in our tailspin. On TOP of that, we of course wanted to challenge ourselves by going for the hardest obstacle…. in the lake: a really, extremely, low bridge. So low I had to row from the floor of the boat. Not the seat.
So hilarious… the whole time we were singing ridiculous Disney songs… mostly Under the Sea because it seemed to be the most appropriate AND the one that we knew the best… There’s video evidence; I’m sorry in advance.
It’s always nice to smile….even nicer in some warm Spanish sun, in good company with a full stomach. ☺
So the second leg of this adventure was to Toulouse, where my friend Olivier lives… because, you know, France is right around the corner… right?
(Europeans are always flabbergasted by North American sense of space… meaning that I, like the other North Americans here, am often met with looks of bewilderment when I describe where I’ve been).
So we were out until five in the morning; my train was supposed to leave at eight. That left just enough time to nap, shower and head off (while waking up the guy who was renting out our room in his apartment in the process).
Ok, so I get out of the shower… get dressed.. it’s around eight.. that leaves just enough to slowly make my way up to the train station before the train departs at 8:50… but you know… being the careful and savy traveler that I am… I check the ticket just to make sure….
8:25.
You can imagine the panic that ensued. Needless to say I made it, probably crushing some little Spanish women dressed in black in the process….
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