When I told my friends that I was going to Barcelona, many reacted with absolute, pure passion … Wow! You lucky dog! Stupid Cow! You must go to Parc Güell! Must have monster steaks which are a Catalan speciality! Why do you get to go! Etc. etc. etc. You get the picture!
All this got my really curious about the city. My first evening in Barcelona when I didn’t step out of my hostel, literally, I got plenty of messages telling me I must visit the football stadium. Now, all I know about football is that really hot men play it on Television, they are all after “one ball”, and that really hot men play the game! Did I already say the last one? Never mind. Doesn’t hurt to make a point. Anywho! I’ve seen a few films about football … I like films about sports in general … I don’t really watch any sport otherwise … other than Tennis of course, when Rafa is playing that is … for a Rafa game I almost feel like if its an important game and I am not watching it on me telly, he will feel really … what’s the word … Lonely! Yeah!
Coming back to football and Camp Nou! So, my first morning I decide to visit the stadium; apparently its like 20 minutes walking from the hostel. En route I’m taking pictures, walking around, la la la …
I make it to one of the gates and ‘it looks empty’ and I am thinking wow, is it just me or are there no other football fans like me here :P... I go to the man at the gate and say ‘tourismo’ and he instantly sees through me and says ‘gate no. 9, all the way around’ … ‘Erm Ok!’
Whoever said it’s a 20 minute walk should like “&£^£$£*&*%^$£%$£ do something to themselves … its been more than 20 minutes and now I have to walk all the way around the stadium … it better be worth it really, my back is still hurting from the sweet luggage walk yesterday …
Hah! Finally reach gate no. 9. See some action there, lots of people, lots of talking, a family playing football … watch it *^$&%£^%* … I see a sign that says Museum and I am thinking what? Who gives a damn about a football museum. I am just here to see the stadium, how big it is, take a couple of pictures … show them to boys back home. I am thinking all this and as I turn around I see a huge queue has formed right behind me within a matter of seconds … Oh boy! Well, I’ve come so far …
Wait for about 20 more minutes in the queue … its my turn and I am asking the man behind the counter ‘I OnLy wAnt To sEE tHe sTaDiuM !!’ and he looks at me as if I’m a fly and he is a fly-squatter, literally. Dude! If you’re sick of your job, quit! That’s when he says it … he says the forbidden words … and the forbidden words are anything above ‘12 euros’ … and he says ‘17 euros’ … I want to use so many curse words at this point that its not even funny. It would be ok if I was spending this amount to go for a concert … but a football stadium? Sigh but am here so let me just … Sigh!
I go inside the stadium and start clicking pictures with such ferociousness that people kind of steer clear of me.
Anyway … it's a big stadium. That’s pretty much about it. In the museum, they have pictures and stuff about the history of the club. All right! More pictures. I’m going to get my money’s worth dude!
I gladly walk out of the museum as soon as I am done and head to the food counters … I read the word ‘frankfurter’ and my eyes do the ‘hit the jackpot’ on a slot machine drill and I can hear ‘kching’ somewhere in the background …
‘Not so quick my dear’, says my frankfurter when it arrives on my plate … why? Why? You ask … and I say … because my dear frankfurter is made up of a pequeño baguette … the hard European stuff … and inside the baguette is a measly, skinny sausage … and to the right hand side of the cash counter are two menacing dispensers – one for tomato ketchup and one for mustard sauce. Sigh! Still relying on the French fries by the by!
After this disastrous (foodwise) morning, I go back to my hostel and rest my poor back a little bit …
At around 4 I set out, to head to the infamous barrio gothica or gothic quarters …
My first trip in the Barca Metro … I’ve become quite a pro at it by now by the way … You just need one day to figure out the metro system in a European country … Once you do that you’re sorted because the systems are usually pretty efficient and once you’re tuned into that system … you start walking fast, running even to catch the metro much like a local … you don’t do the touristy slow walk thinking, looking at every possible sign, not understanding it, not knowing where to go … the whole metro ride deal becomes piece of cake … la la la
Now, in Barca I can see that my hostel is not walking distance from all the touristy spots … it actually could be if you’re big on walking because Barca is actually a very small city … but if you are about 5 metro stations away from your destination, just take the damn metro … so I go and buy this sencilla billete or some such thing which basically gives you about 10 rides for about 7,40 euros, whereas a single ride is about 1,35 euros … so the sensible ticket is a sensible option indeed … and I did use my ticket fully and satisfactorily … : )
I step off the metro at a station called Catalunya and when I step out … phew! This part of Barca looks very different from the area called Sants where my hostel is … The first thing I see is this wild market … the land of surplus … fruits, meat, chocolates, candies, spices, chillies, chilli peppers, mushrooms, everything in hoards … it’s a sight but a little too strong for me …
A few pictures later I am out of the market and start looking at the buildings … every building, every balcony is beautiful to my untrained eyes …
And this is when I truly start feeling something … the song Barcelona starts playing in my head automatically, on repeat …
Barcelona te esta's equivocando no puedes seguir ignorando
que el mundo sea otra cosa y volar como mariposa.
Soon I lose myself in the streets of the Gothic quarters, I go in and out, out and in … clicking pictures all through … of balconies, street lamps, streets, shops, statues, some palace under restoration …
At some point the body seeks rest but the mind keeps making it go on and on for soon it will be dark and then it will be quite difficult to take pictures with my camera … at some point the body wins … a soda pop (very difficult to find in the land where beer flows eternal) and some crisps … junk, junk, I love junk … A not so bad looking man laughs at me, literally, blatantly because I’m ordering soda pop when everyone else at the taverna is 3 beers down and he is ordering pitchers … $%^$&%£^$%&£$ … Its only 6 you know, its not a crime to order soda pop!
Gobble Gobble and out you go!
Walk around some more … beautiful, beautiful Barcelona … by this time I’m feeling it … what Sol meant to me in Madrid is what the streets of barrio gothica mean to me in Barca … … … y volar como mariposa. La la la la la …
Oh and back on the main street again and oh! My god! I almost have tears in my eyes. I’ve reached a McDonalds outlet.
The devil and the angel fight an ugly battle and whilst I wait for them to finish I pass by the store at least three times, almost entering and then retracting my steps. Finally the devil wins and tells me ‘hey you’ve been in food hell for 5 days now, go for it, and indulge in some toxicology tan tad dan dan, tu un, the burger is only going to sit around in your stomach for about 2 days and the fries for about 5 … Sigh! Un (some Spanish name) burger for me please!
I superspeedily eat a superburger and step out of McDonalds … feeling all right!
7 o’ clock, tring tring … don’t hear it. Don’t actually remember that I’m carrying a phone these days.
8 o’ clock – look at the phone and hey Varun called. Call him back and ‘hello! Hello’ he has a plan.
He has a plan, he has a plan,
And we’re not going to go eat flan … (like the beginning of one of the songs from my musical O_O?)
Well, the plan is to meet at a Mexican place (I can hear my heart crashing into smithereens when I hear the words ‘it’s a good place for Mexican food’) … serves you right for listening to the devil. 9 o’ clock at the Mexican place then …
8:30 we take the metro to where the Mexican place is (we = me and the McDonalds shit in my stomach) … 2 minutes to 9 we are at the Mexican place called ‘Bar Panchito’ (I think) at Aribao street (I think) …
A very warm welcome by the hostess, she loves Indians and 2 minutes later, precisely at 9, enter Varun con Gurvir … its so good to see a face from back home … a face we haven’t seen in quiiittteee some time … exchanges, what brings you to Barcelona, what have you been up to, what’s new, what’s next …
And the others arrive.
A J is from Turkey (sweet girl, not in the picture)
Elena is from Russia (sweet girl, not in the picture)
Lionel is from France (first from left)
Neel is from Mumbai, India (second from left)
Daniel is from USA (third from left)
Varun (first from right)
Gurvir is from Mumbai, India (second from right)
After Bar Panchito the party moves to ‘the philharmonic’ because it’s only 11 and no club is going to even be open right now, they’d probably open at like 12:30 … plus we were out till about 7 this morning and are a bit tired … you should’ve been there yesterday :D
Nice bunch of students, all studying their MBA’s at various universities, some of them on exchange here from other universities … some like Varun study here at the ESA in Barcelona (think that’s the name he said repeatedly …ESA)
Anyway Varun is a very, very good host … and he is a traveller at heart so he has lots of stories and insights and is fun to be around … his friends are a bunch of funny MBA’s, the sorts I haven’t met before and have interesting business ideas …
The evening continues till about 3 am (creating history here – in my world) and towards the end we are all teaching each other cuss words in each other’s languages … Lionel takes the cake by learning ‘a lot’ of hindi ones … I learnt one French one which I cannot remember now, it was very difficult … fuis de puit or something to that effect … don’t know …
At 3:30 when I open the creaky door of my dorm to get into bed, every bed is occupied … and everyone moves. I know they will be going back to sleep and in their dreams will be doing some very nasty things to my body … but hey c’est la vie …
Goonight young night … the next day I find out that after finding me a cab home the boys went out drinking again. Phew! Not my cup of tea :P
La Sagrada Familia it is the next morning. Since I am a pretty crummy traveller as far as research is concerned I don’t know that the temple is under ‘construction’ still … I think its under restoration and I sing to myself ‘well there’s another 11 euros not so well spent’ … later that night Varun tells me that its still being constructed … but the engineers today are finding it so difficult to follow Gaudi’s principles and techniques because well they were simply magnifique … and the construction will end in the first third of the 21st century … holy guacamole … I step inside and I hear some stuff, and I read some stuff … and I see how the design elements are taken from nature and by the time I step out … my head is going ‘Gaudi is god, Gaudi is god’ …
So I go to the museum store and buy the first and the only present for myself from Spain – the cheapest ring based on design elements from the temple … to remind myself, that I was here, and I saw it, with my own two eyes … and that ‘Gaudi is god’!
Across the temple is a park, and in the park is a free flamenco concert by two of the most beautiful spirited people I’ve ever met … and I can see this in their eyes … in the way the girl’s face lights up when she is playing percussions, or singing … the way the man is consumed by his guitar and the music … the way he looks at her and she looks at him … Sigh!
mariposa libre en barcelona
