I'm (not) From Barcelona, get it?

On the morning of May 5th, I woke up bright and early at the wonderful hour of 6 am to catch a train from Bilbao to Barcelona. With directions that managed to be vague and quite in depth at the same time, taking up an entire page of my little travel notebook, I got to the hostel around 14:30 and checked in to plug into my much missed internet. My first thought was that Barcelona was freaking huge, so I needed a few hours to lock myself away inside and get over being overwhelmed before venturing out and exploring. As my months of traveling go on, I'm beginning to turn into a horrible tourist, but it's okay!

Crazy awesome building near my hostel!

Plaça de Catalunya

The first night I met up with Marlen's friend Maria from Germany whose studying in Barcelona for the year, who I ended up stealing and seeing every night of my trip. That night Maria, her friend Christina and I went to two bars, one called Oveja Negra and the other whose name I forget, before I had to go home and pass out around 2 due to my early wake up that morning.

On Saturday I got up and headed to the Boqueria, which is a massive market that pretty much had be jizzing myself. I immediately proceeded to spend €5 on delicious chocolates, then bought some fresh pineapple-coconut juices, a pepper and an onion and wandered around for at least an hour. It was basically the best hour of my life. I love food. And vegetables. And chocolates. I saw vegetables I'd never seen before in my life and crazy mushrooms. If I was in Barcelona longer and had more money, all of it would definitely be spent on food from there! So--if you're ever in Barcelona and enjoy eating...go to the Boqueria!

The entrance to the Boqueria! Noms!

Very wrinkly tomatoes in the Boqueria!

In the Boqueria, I really wanted to try one of the pitahaya's (I think it was cactus flower, but not sure), but I didn't because I didn't want to spend 2 euro. I sort of regret that now.

La Rambla, the main street in Barcelona.

Cool street with lots of laundry hanging out the windows in el Raval and a guy carrying an orange tree.

In the courtyard of a medical hospital research something (I think) in el Raval, as I was trying to find a specific vegan restaurant, and failing. But! I found orange trees and pretties!

On my wander around el Raval, I found an orgasmic store. No, literally. See? Apparently organic food = orgasms. I think so.

That night I met up with Maria again and her friend Sina, who was also German and studies dance in the city. I am apparently collecting Germans, yes. We went to a bar sort of by the water and then on to a lesbian party at a place called Lolitas, which was definitely the poshest lesbian club I've ever been to, but it was fun. Maybe I'm just a big stereotyping asshole, but I'm not used to lesbians looking so...straight.

Sina and Maria, I'm not sure what's going on with the spotlight effect.

My drunk face and Maria.

After Lolitas, Maria and I went on an epic drunk bike ride to Sagrada Familia on one bike. I'm still not sure how we got there or how we didn't die, but it happened! Wir können es schaffen! I think my ass is still bruised from sitting on the metal frame of the bike though, oops. Unfortunately I don't really have any good pictures since it was dark, but it was super intricate and pretty! Here's a picture I stole from the interwebz, though:

My last day in Barcelona was Sunday and everything was closed, which was silly. So until later in the afternoon I only ventured out on a quest for pasta sauce. At night I attended part of a harpsichord concert with Maria and her friend Albert, key word...part. One guy started clapping before it was time and everyone gave him a death look...including the harpsichordist, which sent us into a fit of laughter that we couldn't stop. However much I tried to hold it back, I ended up bursting out laughing in the very quiet filled auditorium. The worst part was when the harpsichordist STOPPED in the middle of a song to scold the audience and say, "I can't go on...please be quiet and cover your mouths." I hope it wasn't just us he was scolding, but at the break we definitely scurried away from there. I think I shat myself.


As for the rest of the night, it involved watching a couple have some intense sex in the back of a bar and this picture, which pretty much sums it up:


I give Barcelona two thumbs up except for the freakish snow storm that delayed my flight back to Berlin by over 3 hours. Wtf was that, anyway? It was so sunny and nice, otherwise!

Bienvenido a Bilbao!

On Monday the 1st I hopped a train from Toulouse to Bilbao to stay with the lovely Emilie for the week. I had never been to Spain before and I'm still not quite sure how I got to Bilbao saying as my train went into a different town than it was supposed to (Hendaye instead of Irun), all I had was a crude hand-drawn map without street names for the location of the bus station, I only knew about 15 words in Spanish and most people didn't speak English, but somehow I did it. It's funny to watch the progression of my itinerary planning skills. At the beginning I had every detail mapped out, but now I'm lucky if I have the full address of my destination. I'll tell you one thing, long-term travel definitely chills you out. I generally figure everything will turn out okay, somehow, it might just take a helluva long time.

One important landmark of Bilbao is the Guggenheim modern art museum. It's definitely the craziest looking building in Bilbao, but I liked the outside more than what was contained within. Maybe I'm just uncultured, but I have a hard time appreciating most art. It was cool to see some Picasso's, Manet's, Van Gogh's, etc. in the flesh (or should I say...in the canvas..har-har?), but the giant spider filled with eggs outside was infinitely more interesting to me. But, when in Bilbao I felt it'd be a sacrilege not to drop the 5 euros to go inside.

Giant spider filled with eggs! Baby spiders!

PUPPY MADE OF FLOWERS. This is almost as good as a real puppy.

We went shopping for vegan things for me. Spain really likes its meat. Here is me with some soya yogurt and vegan chicken nuggets under a giant dead cow head.

Since Emilie didn't have an oven we decided to make cookies and forgo the baking. She got so into chopping up the chocolate that she broke the plate. CookiesxCore. Oops! In the 4-5 days I was there we maybe made two whole batches of cookie dough to eat, but we won't speak of that.

I think the highlight of our culinary genius, however, was making pizzas in a frying pan. Win! I even had vegan cheese!

In the Guggenheim, this reminds me of some stuff we were shown in our Intro to Computing and the Arts class my last semester at Smith, am I right?

For our second batch of cookie dough, we decided it was definitely a good idea to fry our cookies. It sort of worked.

Me and my little food babies about to go in my tummy. Nom nom nom sugar.

On Thursday, my last full day, we caught the metro out to Algorta--a small Basque village near the sea in an area called Getxo (pronounced something like 'getcho'). It was really pretty and old.

I made three doggy friends! Briefly. Then their mommy came out and I ran away.

Euska = Basque Country

It was very ominous that day, with the clouds eating the mountains and all, but that didn't stop us.

The best thing about Getxo was the GIANT OUTDOOR GYM/PLAYGROUND! We had waaaay too much fun here. This is Emilie on one of the weirder machines.

I really am not very flexible. I have long legs, it's hard!

This was Emilie's take on this machine.

Mine interpretation was a little bit different. But what muscles does this one work?

If I lived here, this is all I would do. Forever.

What a workout.

I decided that I should just pretend it was a canoe.

It took me awhile to realize it was broken. Oh no!

After our "workout" we braved the wilderness! And by wilderness, I mean lots of steps and steep slopes with trees in between! We definitely deserved our dinner.

Emilie on the left, her friend Georgeanna on the right and Gergeanna's daughter at the restaurant.

Her other daughter decided to give Alex a bath while he was clothed. Dirty boy.

Basically, if you fall in front of the train you get fined 6000 euro. I'm not sure how you'd pay it though, since you'd probably be dead. Logic?

Emilie's street in old town Bilbao, Artkale. Bilbao is freakishly clean.