Senses Working Overtime

More and more each day I'm starting to feel like there just isn't enough time. Not enough time to take in the sights of Barcelona, not enough time to make friends to help me do that, and not enough time to make plans for traveling to other cities to do the same thing elsewhere. Hell, in a blink of an eye I went over a week without updating this blog. Whereas Mexican days always felt like they all moved at the same laconic pace, Barcelona time seems to only speed up the more you pay attention to it. It's all a bit overwhelming, and while it makes life pretty exciting it can also wear you out pretty quickly. For instance, just like week I heard about a trip to San Sebastian that my friend Ashley was planning. Ashley is a tour guide at UCSD and a born planner, so she wrote up a detailed pamphlet for us on facebook about the trip that required us to do little more than book a hostel and buy a train ticket. Naturally, I hopped on the bandwagon, and after a night of tutoring Edward, Sometimes-Problem-Child Roge and Mark (that's a post for another day), I got on a 12-hour train ride to San Sebastian, a gorgeous beach town up in the Basque country that I've wanted to visit ever since Zander, whose grandma lives up there, first told me about it.



It was nice to get a change of pace from bustling Barce, and traveling within a country is easily more carefree than actually living there. The train was the type in which they pack you together in beds like sardines, but luckily I was rooming with Alex, a really cool literature major from UC San Diego who I ended up hanging out with for most of the weekend, as well as two superfriendly dudes from Canada and South Africa, respectively. South African Surfer Dude (can't remember his name, sorry) actually didn't have a place reserved to stay, so he followed us to the completely awesome Hostel Olga, which in addition to being clean, friendly, and safe, was actually run by a benevolent woman named Olga. I don't think any of the girls we were traveling with minded that South Africa Surfer Dude came along, as he was quite the strapping embodiment of blond surfer masculinity. Ashley, one of those rare completely un-self-aware pretty girls who has never had a boyfriend purely on account of being too shy, lingered for a while by our room talking to him about surfing even though she's never been. It was quite adorable.



There were travelers from all over at Olga's Place, and it's easy to see why such people catch the travel bug: it's God damn fun, that's why. Upon arrival we met some bewitchingly beautiful Australian girls, along with a mountain of people from other nations whom I can recall in light of my lingering bewitchment. Quickly Alex, Suzie (formerly Out-Of-Control Asian Girl, now Suzie-Boozie, get it?), Zander, and the two Sophias were out taking in the majestic beaches and swooping mountains of San Sebastian. The city truly retains a feeling of timelessness and placelsesness because, well, Basque culture and architecture really doesn't appear to have much of anything to do with either that of Spain or France, where the the Basque Sheppard-folk have been living in relative isolation for centuries. Of course, they still have tapas bars, Castellano (or Spanish, for anyone outside of this country) and otherwise beautiful women with mullets, but there's definitely a different vibe entirely coming from the place. Like many beach towns, it's a little slower and more personable. Hell, we even bumped into Drunk Canadian Dude two nights in a row by accident. Barcelona, with its infinite amount of night spots, would never produce such a coincidence.



The more tranquil vibe also allowed me to bond quite a bit with some of my fellow American students, who I may have been a little too hard on in the past. Alex, for instance, is a pretty hilarious and unpretentious guy who just happens to also be very literary and up on his music. He also has quite the quarreling brother-sister relationship with Argentine Sophia, who is basically attached by the hip to Ashley and knows a ridiculous amount of knowledge about Futbol Internacional. Peruvian Sophia, on the other hand, may be my first viable love interest in my would be self-inspired novel about my time here (I've given up hope on Magalee, sorry). Like most girls with an extensive knowledge of the music I also love, I quickly wrote her off as a girl who would either annoy me or not have any interest in me, but I found out over our time in San Sebastian that we have a lot more in common beyond that and, at the very least, our friendship has certainly developed by leaps and bounds. It helped that you probably couldn't think of a more romantic city to discuss the literary genius of Haruki Murakami's



When it was all said and done, we returned the same way we came: on an overnight train that dropped us off at nine in the morning, barely rested and more than half-dazed. Lucky me had class an hour later, and I was just about to throw in the towel on that front when I met my new piso-mate, a wonderfully friendly, generous, and humorous Italian chap named Andrea. He made me some of the strongest yet best-tasting coffee I've ever had, and it gave me quite the boost to make to through an hour-and-a-half lecture on the Spanish Civil War. You see, lovely Juliana decided to move to Sitches, a beach-town about half-an-hour from Barcelona, but since she was never here to begin with I'm certainly glad Andrea replaced her. His presence already seems to have added a homely atmosphere to the place: he's already become friends with Magalee and Pablo (who actually talks if you prompt him, surprise) and the four of us along with Ruth actually spent the evening together last night. It was the first time I can recall such a thing happening, and though I'm meeting new people everyday and finding less time to spend with any of them, I pray it won't be the last.

Up All Night

Sometime around four in the morning, when Richie Hawtin ended his marathon, uninterrupted DJ set for a crowd of several thousand people, I found out why Barcelona truly is one of the coolest places on the planet: when I asked a hip-looking Spanish girl next to me if the party was truly over, she told me "no-no-no, in Barcelona, the party is *never* over, ok?" People say that about a lot of places, but as I found out in this exhausting weekend, it actually applies to this crown jewel of a city. It's also especially true right now, when the week-long Fiestas de la Merce have eight different concerts/events/parties going on simultaneously, every night until the sun rises. There's kind of a downside to this: I rarely slept this weekend, but I still feel like I've missed a lot. For instance, Friday night I accidentally missed out on a free show by rock/electro giants Primal Scream, and on Saturday I inadvertently skipped a ceremonial parade where everyone stampedes through the streets while spraying fireworks all over the place. Currently, I'm fighting the temptation to blow off class altogether so I can catch as much of the festival's events as possible.



It didn't help that I did much of said-partying with the roommates of my buddy Evan, who has the liability/advantage of living in a piso that is itself a never-ending party. Like me, he lives with a diverse group of foreigners (a French guy and girl, a Honduran girl, and an Italian dude) except they all drink like fish and constantly pressure anyone who goes over there to drink with them. Where as my piso is friendly yet tranquil, his is perpetually loud, dirty, and full of people, some who live there and some who don't. They're all quite nice (the Honduran girl even made me some Honduran coffee, which was just as delicious as I remember it from my volunteer work there), but I barely survived two nights going out with them, and I fear for Evan's liver if he actually plans on living there for a year.



Camil, his French roommate (above, left), also had two of her friends visiting her for the weekend named Julie and Maielise (above, to my left and right, respectively) and the whole lot of us went out on Friday night. As is prone to happen with that crowd, we were all far too drunk before we even left the apartment, and thus it took us close to an hour to find our destination, a bar called el Obeja Negra (the Black Sheep). Beautiful Julie and I had been flirting all night, but at some point I became a little too intoxicated and she started mocking my inability to remember things she had told me five minutes beforehand. By the time we arrived at a nearby dance club, I was so frustrated at being continuously shot down by Julie that I randomly began dancing with shy, pretty Maielise, who I was told is her best friend. We began dancing rather close (a rarity in this country) and before I knew it we were making out while everyone else (Julie included) gawked at us in shock. Needless to say, all of Evan's roommates drunkenly made fun of me for the rest of the weekend.



Despite all that debauchery, the highlight of my partying was undoubtedly the massive, outdoor, state-sponsored rave featuring Richie Hawtin and two other phenomenal DJ's I've never heard of. Just the spectacle of seeing so many people dancing, cheering, and jumping up and down for a DJ was enough to give me chills, and being in that crowd, feeling the bass thumping deep in my chest, was unforgettable. I inevitably got separated from most of my friends, but once I just gave in to ebb and flow of that teeming sea of bodies I had an even better time meeting random Europeans from all over who had come to Barcelona just for the festivals. I met a surfer from Belgium who told me where the best waves are in Spain. I met a French guy who DJ's at an indy dance club near my house. I met an Argentine dude who talked to me about the Pixies. I met some pretty girls from Amsterdam who told me where I could find the best underground afterparties in the city. It was a blast, and I finally understood why this city is so mythologized - it embodies a transnational sense of community where people from all over the planet can converge and celebrate the mere fact that they are together - and alive.

It Aint Easy

With all my American friends out of town for the weekend, I had plenty of time to casually explore the city (sadly not reflected in the quality or amount of photos I have), but also to get my affairs in order, so to speak. I've noticed that in Spain, getting rather simple tasks accomplished can sometimes take an entire day or more, because most businesses and government institutions tend to only operate on weekdays and also tend to close early. For example, it took me the better part of two days just to send in my request for an absentee ballot, which will thankfully allow me to vote in what is sure to be a a nail-biter of a presidential election in the US. To print something out, I had to search for an internet cafe. To buy envelopes, I had to track down a Chinese market (thankfully these almost *never* close). To buy friggin stamps I had to somehow find an open tobacco shop, which are only the only places that sell them. It just goes to show that if you want to live in a more laid-back society you have to trade in the "I want it NOW!"-style convenience of living in a hyper-stressed one. Fair enough, I suppose, but I'm not quite there yet.



I also got myself a job. Our program liaison here has been forwarding us e-mails from families who want someone to teach their kids Spanish, and after translating/updating my resume all of Thursday in preparation for applying, the first family that I called wanted to set up on interview, no resume required (at least I have it for future reference...). When I showed up for the interview who else did I find waiting but Deysi, a girl from my program, and Carmen - the mom - ended up interviewing us together in slightly awkward fashion. Carmen is a gracious Spanish woman who obviously thinks the world of her three boys and tends to package statements she feels uncomfortable saying as if they were jokes to make them go down easier. For instance, she told Deysi and I that she preferred a boy so that her kids could have an older role model to talk about football with (*laugh*) but later said that her boys get the last word on whether I get the job because they might find me boring, for instance (*big laugh*).



So now I have a job, just so long as I can convince a five, eight, and ten-year-old that I'm cool and know about football, more or less. I'm strictly prohibited from speaking Spanish anywhere near them (no problem there!) because they'll learn better if they think I only speak English. I get the impression the family is pretty well-off (they live in the quite-well-to-do Zona Universitaria neighborhood, pictured above and below), and thus the boys already have English classes in addition to sports and music classes, which I'll be picking them up from. The two older boys, Mark and Rogeio(?) were born when the family lived in New York City, so their English is already pretty good and a point of pride for them and Carmen alike. I haven't babysat in a long time, but if I can't bond with three little Spanish boys for a few hours a week, I'm going to seriously question my ability to ever deal with kids and thus, become a decent father someday.

In Limbo

With the somewhat frivolous intensive language classes over and proper university classes not starting until Monday, many of my American compatriots wanted to "hacer punto" (take advantage of a holiday) and do some traveling within Spain (we're not allowed to leave the country just yet). But despite Zander, Ashley, and Evan, and I's attempts at throwing a last-minute plan together with our guidebooks, nothing materialized. Everybody else plans are made. As such, and as the title of this entry might suggest, my sense of stasis has continued. I'm starting to see that as not such a bad thing, though. Maybe it's because things are starting to come together in a way they didn't seem to be before. Ill explain.

I'm starting to get a feel for my housing situation, and it's far from as bleak as I once feared. At certain points the piso is quite lively, it's just that my roommates all work differing, bizarre schedules that have them clocking in during the evenings and on weekends, so rarely are they all hear at once. Slightly complicating the situation is the apparent rift between Ruth (Affable English girl, as referred to before) and her boyfriend Pablo, and Elena, the (seemingly) nice, older Italian women who co-owns the property. I'm not sure what started it, but they never talk to each other and the situation apparently put enough stress on Pablo that he got in a shouting match with Juliana (the cute, spunky Peruvian girl) when she yelled at Ruth for taking her clothes out of the dryer (did I mention said-fight occurred right outside my door at one in the morning?). Complicated, no?



Luckily, and despite these "Real World"-esque shenanigans, I'm having no problem getting along with anyone. Juliana, when she's here (which is practically never) is gregarious and flirty, while Elena is somewhat reserved but seems to enjoy talking to me about anything related to the US, which she has lots of interest in. Then there's Magalee, the luscious French girl who lives across my hall and just returned from a trip to her hometown. As soon as she arrived we were drinking bear on her balcony, listening to the deep bass grooves of her extensive reggae collection, sharing a spliff. Yeah know where this is headed: I think I'm in love.

But best to take things slow with roommates, I told myself, and though she's never anything less than surprisingly warm with me I'm not yet convinced that she's no more than a genuinely sweet, kind person. Either way I feel pretty lucky to be rooming with her. Her longtime friend Julie and Julie's boyfriend, Eric, were visiting her for a night, and the four of us went out to a cafe in the beautiful, bustling Plaza del Sol in the Gracia neighborhood. Gracia is like a classic village from the Europe of old, with narrow streets, high apartments everywhere, and plazas filled with outdoor cafes where people chat until past midnight. We drank wine, ate tapes, and smoked copious amounts of cigarettes (a true stereotype about the French, it would seem). We didn't finish until well past my normal bedtime, but true to Barcelona's reputation, it was only the beginning of the night.



We spent the rest of our time at a wonderful Cuban bar, which quickly became so packed that there were more people inside standing than sitting. The bar tenders irritably pushed us aside constantly because we were blocking the closet with all the glasses inside, but we didn't pay them any mind. I talked to Eric for a long time about why there's so much obesity in America (they're very curious about this in France, apparently), Eric talking in his extremely limited English and Magalee translating between us via Spanish when necessary. She also introduced me to several of her friends from work (she helps sell office supplies to large companies), most of whom were French as well, in fact. We all gabbed for hours, practically yelling over the chattery din of the bar, drinking the addictively-delicious Mojitos and smoking God knows how many cigarettes in the process. Everyone loves to talk about how much Europeans look down their noses at Americans, but the people I met that night were some of the friendliest I've encountered in any country and never batted an eye when I told them where I was from. To my eyes, it seems like everyone everywhere are more or less the same: as long as you don't dwell on whatever cultural differences you might have, it's easy to find common ground.

Midnight Runner

After experiencing the blissful rush of finally coming upon a piso, I was left in a perpetual state of limbo. Everyday I moved a little bit more of my things to my new, cozy (ie: closet-size) bedroom, staying in an increasingly sparse dorm room in the meantime. Growing restless with the room all to myself (Zander left to spend the weekend with his Spanish grandmother, who lives in the Basque country), I said goodbye to the comfortably aloof confines of the dorms. With my intensive language classes coming to (overdue) end and all the EAP students splitting up to live on their own, I couldn't escape a sense of finality about the situation. It felt as if my Barcelona experience was just beginning.

In a sense, I still feel like that. I have finally met all of my roommates (there are only five, not six) and while they're all refreshingly friendly, they aren't/haven't been at home very much for me to get to know them, or for me to figure out what kind of relationship they have with each other and what kind of relationship they expect from me. Magalee, the exceedingly sweet and beautiful girl who first showed me around the apartment, is visiting her family in France. Ruth, a kindly English girl who I became acquainted with via Spanish, began speaking to me in English yesterday (I'm going to have to do something about that) before quickly vanishing into the night. Her soft-spoken, Catalan boyfriend, Pablo, showed me how to use the internet before doing pretty much the same. I don't really know what to say about Juliana other than she's Peruvian and I met her on my way to the bathroom yesterday and haven't seen her since.



I don't mean to make it sound impersonal - I think it's more that, living in such close quarters, my roommates don't spend much time at home, and when they are here, they appreciate their privacy. Also, Spain is a much more quiet country than Mexico, where barking dogs and garish soundsystems effectively negate the entire ciesta concept in the afternoons. Partly because they stay up so damn late at night (more on that later), Barcelonans like their mornings and evenings quiet. Even though you can hear pretty much everything that happens in this apartment complex through it's paper thin walls, it's an eerily silent place at certain hours of the day.

However, once you get them talking they're as friendly as anyone I've ever encountered. Just today I met the last of my mystery roommates, Elena, a mature, pretty Italian girl (read: noticeably older than me), and ended up talking with her for felt like an hour while she ate her pasta and I stood in the kitchen doorway awkwardly fretting because I had left Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade blaring from my room. She's actually an English teacher (how do I keep living with those?) stuck teaching Italian, and though I know she was just being nice she insisted that my Spanish is actually really good.



But if this was to be my introduction to the "real" Barcelona, I couldn't have gotten a much better introduction than Cut/Copy's sweltering performance at Razzmatazz on Saturday Morning. Although it may read awkwardly, that time description is completely apt: the doors opened at 1, and the boys didn't hit the stage until 3:15. Thanks to the magic potion that is Vodka and Redbull, I managed to stay up for the entirety of this raucous spectacle while dancing the entire time - and I wasn't the only one, either. It seemed like the entire room - a dancefloor the size of a concert hall - was locked into the same pulsating groove, with each new melodic element or incitement from one of the band members just adding to the frenzy. The above montage of live footage (set to the group's "Hearts On Fire") and the below live clip of them playing "Lights and Music" should give some indication of how effectively these stylish Australians can stir up a crowd.

Cut/Copy were perhaps the most perfect fit imaginable for a dance club that just happens to feature the occasional rock band (the room they played in was just one of three different rooms within the club, each with different music and atmosphere). They sit comfortably on the fence between the physicality of rock and the unifying functionalism of dance music, fusing disco and electronica with chart pop and arena rock. Ever since I heard their latest album In Ghost Colours earlier this year, I've listened to it compulsively, imagining what it's explosive songs would be like live. Not only did it live up to my overactive imagination, it completely reset my standards for how much fun a concert can be. I had heard that Barcelona concert crowds were particularly responsive, but I doubt I'll ever again be in a mob that crazed unless I participate in some kind of violent uprising.