I am a dead and bedraggled thing. I have been in the fair city of Barcelona for 7 nights now … and only one has ended before the wee hours of the morning. In fact, the joke here was to try and get to bed during the double digits …. ha. Spainiards do not step out for dinner until about 9 or 10 pm …. and they are not speedy about their meals, which means most dinners are not finished until nearly 1am. That is the first problem. The second problem is the discotecas get rocking and rolling at about 1am and are conveniently located near many eating establishments. They don’t shut down until like 4 or 5am. Over the week you could see the deterioration in people as the accumulated sleep loss took its toll. Dare I say, there may, may have been alcohol involved on some of these excursions. To provide you with an example, let me begin with last Saturday night, my first night in Barcelona.

The minkey was in fine form though quite tired and there were a few work comrades already here, so we went out for tapas and rioja in el Born, a funky neighborhood near the old gothic quarter. We proceeded to a couple more bars (and found more work comrades) until the clock chimed midnight, which meant it was now Minkey’s birthday! And, said work comrades felt compelled to notify everyone in the stratosphere of this fact. Including our new found bartender friend at an empty discoteca. Notice, the discoteca is empty at midnight …. yet at 1am is so packed it’s difficult to move. Our bartender pulls out an unknown bottle of liquor and pours pequena (small) shots…which he does with us – and we toast my cumplianos (that means birthday, for you non-Spanish speakers). We even convince the DJ (tricky when your Spanish is rusty) to play some 80’s tunes for our dancing pleasure. As the bar fills (and music returns to techno/dance) I meet a youth, yes, a youth who really found the Minkey interesting. So interesting that Minkey had difficulties escaping and her wing-gal merely laughed when approached for assistance. This youth was all of 30 (I made him show me some ID) and at one point introduced me to a strange custom — that of tagging your dancing partner. You may be wondering what I could possibly mean by ‘tagging’ allow me to explain. This youth, as we are dancing, pulls out of his pocket a full bottle of cologne. I notice this and remark to him about this, asking what he is doing. Our conversations have been somewhat halting, compounded by the decibel level and my lack of Catalan Spanish. Needless to say he begins to spritz himself with the cologne … while I can only look on somewhat astonished. But not so astonished as I was moments later when he took my hand and sprayed it with the cologne, smiling and I think, telling me that it smells good. I was now officially marked and could only be pleased that it was not in the traditional animal kingdom form of marking…… ! I did not notice others with bottles of cologne — so have decided this was the market differentiator that my youth had stumbled upon and must impress many a Barcelona gal. So, first night ends somewhere in the 2am range which, to us meant day time in the US — so why sleep?

Sleep was more elusive the second night than the first and it continued to be that way as the week wore on, because we never finished a night until 2 or 3am — again, our bodies thinking it’s daytime….. My last night, oh but wait, it was not quite my last night, in fact, not sure when the last night will be (hopefully its this one) I had perhaps 45 minutes of sleep (again, who needs it?) before embarking on today’s adventure at the aeropuerto …. which was complete and utter chaos due to the air traffic controllers strike. More on that later — let me take us in a different direction and talk about exploring the sights in Barcelona.

I was on a mission to visit all the Gaudi buildings. I have always wanted to see these, ever since learning about them in Mrs. Wendel’s humanities class back at good ‘ole WHS. I braved the cold on Sunday (I’ve not griped about the freezing weather yet) and went to La Sagrada Familia – which is an unfinished catedral in the middle of Barcelona. I hopped the metro and as I exited thought, how am I going to know what direction to go in? And climbing up the stairs into the wan sunlight I turned around and was literally right in front of the catedral …. wow. If you are unfamiliar with Gaudi, he has a very distinct style and builds following the way trees grow in nature — so no straight lines and very unique and different shapes. The decorations on his buildings remind me of icing on a cake, they seem to flow and melt across the columns. The inside of the catedral is filled with light and has a very modern style – and words will fail me – but I thought it was the most beautiful catedral I’ve seen. Of course, I am quite partial to modern art. I was brave enough to take the elevator up into one of the towers — yikes — there are not really protective barriers up there but you do get views all across the city and can observe the decorations on the columns much more closely. Gaudi uses pieces of colored tile as well, and writes words with the tile, like Sanctus – and this is all on the pillars… A couple of days later I managed to see the apartment building that Gaudi did and what I think is a house – but I’ve not looked up exactly what it’s about. I missed the tour of the apartment building, which has a scene on the roof of St. George slaying the dragon – think huge sculptures that are visible from the street. This is truly the wedding cake building with balconies that flow across the walls. The entrance is almost like going into the side of a grassy hill — I don’t know how else to describe it. Lastly, there is the Parc Guell, a failed housing development of Gaudi’s (strangely nobody in Barcelona wanted to buy one of these gingerbread looking houses) located on the top of a hill with a beautiful terrace area that overlooks the entire city.

All right — I realize this blog is jumping all over the place, which is due to the fact that my brain is really not in top form, in spite of my 4 hour nap today. Original plan was to head back to the states but that was not to be. Air traffic contollers went on strike and shut down all air travel in Spain. This started at 5pm on Friday – but some of us were too busy sight-seeing to pay attention to the news. I did not know of a problem until about 7:15am when myself and a colleague were headed to the airport. She told me about the strike, and that most likely planes would not be leaving. We decided to head to the airport anyway and see for ourselves plus, potentially get on a later flight. I have never seen so many people at an airport with nowhere to go … lines lines lines and nobody had any idea what was going on. Slowly, flights began to be cancelled – ours we knew about right away and were able to work our travel agencies (who had no idea about what was happening in Spain, it seems) to get on a Delta flight through JFK. We were all thrilled – high fives all around — we actually thought we’d be headed out soon as the rumor was that the military was going to step in to do air traffic control. I can kind of laugh now, as I recall our joy. We even checked our bags and went to the VIP lounge. It was there that we learned about what was REALLY going on — as the nice lady at the desk was quite well informed and explained to us that the air space in Spain was CLOSED. CERRADO. No flights in and no flights out …. and they don’t know when they will resume flights. Eventually – we had to retrieve our luggage and go back to a hotel in Barcelona and spend a few hours strategizing on options. We have opted to try our luck with the flight tomorrow — rather than take a train (with one stop) to Paris and attempt to fly out of there – which was not looking possible as the flights and the trains were basically sold out. SO, here I sit — I did have the most amazing meal for lunch – best meal I’ve had in Barcelona and as I could barely keep my eyes open, I crashed hard — and am getting ready to do so again.

Buenas noches !