Barcelona Day 2

I really loved today. Jamila and I traveled to La Rambla which is the main boulevard running through Barcelona. Barcelona is a district of Spain, and they speak Catalan. It´s kind of a mix between Spanish and French. It´s really cool, and instead of learning French I may go with Catalan. It seems easier than the mumbled/slurred jargon the French use.

Which reminds me (Yes tangent time) that I´m thinking of looking into linguistics for my degree. Yes it will be difficult but it will be worthwhile and helpful if I plan on doing a trip like this again. I know that I would love the places I´ve been more if I was able to speak the language, and that specifically goes for France. People are just not nice to people they know can´t speak their language, and are perfectly willing to talk about you to someone in French. It´s not a good feeling. I think that being bilingual or trilingual has now become a main priority in my life. I need to take my studies in language a little more seriously, and I think that everyone should look into becoming fluent in another language. Any second language. These are the ones I´m thinking. Spanish, Catalan, German, Italian, Korean, and English would count as my sixth, but I think I would love to speak French, but not like learning it and translating it over to actually speaking it. We´ll see. As you know I´m unable to decide on one thing to do so that may change. Especially when I start taking the classes.

And back to the point of this post. Can I just point out that Barcelona has to be the prettiest place we´ve been so far. Oh. My. Goodness. It´s cobblestone streets, bustling roads, a mall that is probably 12 floors (Yes that´s right, we made it to the 7th floor and we weren´t near the top.), 1 Euro dinners (Okay, that was just because the hostel we´re at offered a discount), a church with live geese in it, street musicians EVERYWHERE, b-boy groups dancing in the middle of a huge square, museums, random protests where people cover statues with toilet paper, bike tours, bus tours, walking tours, you name it, it´s here.

The hostel we´re staying in is called the Nice and Cozy hostel (just in case you plan on coming to Barcelon). It is the best one we´ve stayed in so far. The owner is the sweetest lady, and like I said, she offered us tea right when we walked in the door the first day. Cheap breakfast, free internet, cheap laundry services, amazingly it´s 3 floors, and has games, tv, and a rooftop sitting area that overlooks all of Barcelona. It helps that the people here are really fun as well. It´s amazing how you go a week without random things that you realize how nice it is to have them again. This is my list.

1. A large bathtub
2. A large kitchen with a dishwasher and no flies
3. Toast with jam
4. Cereal
5. A cupboard full of tea
6. A fluffy pillow rather than a flat newspaper thin one
7. A room almost to yourself
8. Room to shave your legs IN the shower
9. Tiled floors!
10. Wall decorations (yes, they make a place SO much cozier)
11. 9:56 pm
12. Tiles in the town that don´t wobble when you step on them.
13. Sunny skies
14. Clean subways
and
15. Starbucks (Just kidding. Starbucks is like America´s Mcdonalds, or Walmart, and they also are the worst place pickpockets wise. Don´t go to them in Europe. The pickpockets really do pray on the people that go to them.)


Random. Random things. And part of me is thankful for the board games they have. Like Risk. If only Brandon and Ben were here to dress up like evil dictators and duke it out for Australia before one finally massacres the others pathetic little army.

Did I mention there is a rooftop sitting area where you can look out over Barcelona AND the ocean? Amazingly. Beautiful. I can´t get over it. 5 stars for Barcelona. Tomorrow we´re going to the Aquarium because we hear it´s amazing. Compared to the weak sauce one in Utah, I´m pretty excited! We were thinking about the zoo as well, but we have a pretty good one at home. Instead we plan on going to this castle on top of a mountain, and the Cathedral de Familia. Everyone´s telling us we HAVE to go see it before we leave.

So some fun tidbits I learned on the walking tour today.
1. Columbus gave Isabel and Ferdinand Syphillis. Just thought you´d like to know. Isabel was a huge supporter of Columbus and was the leading force behind getting him the finances to travel the seas. She mainly supported him because she thought he was the bees knees and slept with him a couple of times. Through sleeping with him she got Syphillis and in turn gave it to Ferdinand. This was one of the main reasons Ferdinand hated Columbus and why he ended the contract they signed saying Columbus would recieve 10% of all he brought back from the ¨West Indies.¨ Columbus traveled to America a total of 4 times before that, and each time forcefully took gold, raped the women, and killed who knows how many American Indians. Once the contract was broken he obviously never returned.

2. Although Columbus was the one that disovered America it was named after Americo Vespucci. As the map for the world was being designed news came in that Americo claimed it wasn´t really part of Asia, but an entire land mass of it´s own. Not knowing how big the continent would be the mapmaker drew a white line in the general area of where they knew it existed. Not knowing Vespucci´s name, other than what he heard from the messenger, he wrote America, although it should have been Vespucci. So there you go my little American buddies. If the mapmaker had known Vespucci´s name we would be known as Vespuccians today. I think I like American better.

3. One of the ways they executed people is NASTY! Pole. Rope around neck. Choke person as you pull neck into pole. Nail in pole aimed at back of head. It didn´t stop until 1974, and was only banned because execution of any kind was made illegal.

4. As the black plague swept through Spain the Jews were being ostricized as usual. They were restricted to 2 ghettos that were set up for them specifically. None left or entered without the okay from higher ups. As most people know, it was considered bad to wash yourself regularly in that day and age except for the Jewish culture. They practiced a high sense of cleanliness, and because of this there was a severe difference between the Jewish Ghetto´s and the streets outside the ghettos. Around 60% of people died outside of the walls, and below 10% of people died within the ghettos. Because of this Jews were further to blame in the peoples eyes. They believed that the Jews were beheading little children and placing them in the water bioducts so that everyone else got the plague. (I´d think they´d just ask the Jews why they were living and they were dying, but blaming is so much easier isn´t it?)

5. A 13 year old girl was executed for trying to bring Christianity to Spain. Her name was Saint Eulalia and within the Cathedral named after her there is an area sectioned off where 13 white geese live. It represents each year of her life.

6. Barcelona used to be a crappy city until the 1992 Olympics. 2 billion Euros were spent to transform it to what we see today. They built a beach using sand from Egypt, and shipped palm trees in from Hawaii on a 12 year lease. They remodeled some of the buildings, and built other partitions along the coast. Since then the original palm trees have been sent back, and new ones were put in their place. The tour guide laughed about how every fall the Egyptian sands try to ¨get back home, and they have to shovel them back onto the beach again.¨ (The things some people go to to make something look nicer!)

Honestly, I could go on for a while, but I think I´ve bombarded you with enough stories for today.

It´s been an amazing opportunity to travel the places I have over the past week, but I have to admit that not only is Barcelona the best, but it´s nice to finally be somewhere for more than a day or two. It gives me time to breath, and look over the past few terrible days with new insight, and a new sense of accomplishment for getting through them. The whole situation with Eurail is still up in the air, but we´ll see if we can´t get that fixed. Keep you posted! Love you all.

Signing out in Barcelona.
Giovanna