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….