Barcelona

Ah, it´s quite nice now being able to speak a country´s language instead of grunting and pointing and things. I feel human again! It seems that my first day in every country is never that great, it´s always a bit disorientating and frustrating. One highlight was when I went to a restaurant and ate an omellette at the bar with all the other individual Spanish businessmen. We all just stared straight ahead, minding our own business--I felt one with the Spanish people...

The second day turned out much better, I took a free tour, which was not part of the tours that I´ve gone on in other countries, and it was definitely not as high quality. Evidentally the Spanish guy running the free tour was a horrible businessman since he thought that a good start time for the tour was 10:30am, in a town known for it´s late night partiers. So instead of finding 200 people waiting for a tour like in other cities, I found 3. It was essentially hearing a cocky-california surfer boy give a speech about the past of Barcelona and Spain, and his style was be funny at all costs, including making jokes about torture and disappearances in the different regimes. Classy. I wasn´t thrilled and so I decided to go to the Picasso museum which had a 45 minute line since it was a free day and I ended up having one of those moments of luck when I met 3 Aussie guys and ended up hanging out with them for the next 48 hours straight. Good times!

We went all over Barcelona, ate tons of ice cream (I probably single-handedly increased their risk of diabetes), went to the beach, and just wandered around to different sites such as the mosaics of Gaudi in a park, and La Sagrada Familia. It was quite a fun group, which I´m so glad to have found through such a random event such as waiting in line. I´m now on my own again and hope for some more good luck! Here were some highlights:

--One of the guys had taken out money and was trying to find something in his wallet on the metro, which blatantly showed the 50 euro bills sticking out and I nudged him and told him to be careful, and he said "oh come on, who is going to rob me on the train?". I mentioned to other guy that he looked like a perfect target since he had fiddled with his money and then put it back, so people would know exactly where it was. About a minute later, he runs up to us, "Someone just tried to rob me!". An unsuspecting looking couple had basically seen him and tried to distract him and steal his wallet while they got off the train. It was the epitome of a "I-told-you-so" moment.

--We went to the Barcelona Museum of Erotica and saw plenty of old phallic objects, drawings from the greeks, and a couple disturbing old iron machines that make you shudder. The highlight was the old 8mm rolling film that was from King Alfonso´s private collection, made in the 30s, of two ridiculously unattractive people having the most awkward sex you´ve ever seen. As we walked out of the museum, Joel said "Ironically, I don´t think I´ve ever been turned off this much from sex".