Last notes on Barcelona

A great deal has happened between the last days in Barcelona and now, namely trips to Zürich and Venice as well as an eventual and somewhat more permanent landing in Munich. The Spring semester starts on Monday and I will be taking a series of fascinating courses, theatre/literature, art therapy and puppet-making and performance, to name a few. But alas, before I go on to detail my time in Venice or any recent contemplations, I wanted to write a quick wrap-up of Barcelona, just for finality's sake.

A sample of a typical day in Gaudí's city, when I was not taking a Spanish course, was as follows:

Mulled around in the morning checking emails and preparing breakfast, left the apartment, browsed some boutiques, picked up apples, tangerines and almonds at a shop... Went to Café El Jardín, walked a lot around the area beforehand, gazed at window displays and passed the Museum of Contemporary art... Drank a capuccino, read part of Reborn (Susan Sontag), perused La Central bookstore, bought "Cualquier sencilla intimidad" by the American graphic novelist Jeffrey Brown (translation was simple, easy to understand), went grocery shopping for real food, talked with Ivanna, chatted with Johanna and Andrew online, putzed further on the computer and had dinner before reading.

I have also, out of a selfish desire to return as well as for the benefit of other travelers to Spain, compiled a list of my favorite things in Barcelona.

• Lola Mora Delicatessen: amazing traditional but plastic table clothe that made me think of middle-aged Mexican housewives who prepare lunch as their husbands and sons go, once again, to watch the cock fights. In this delicatessen I perceived that the Spanish really understand the indie persuasion, hipsters, and all of these ridiculously stereotypical but nonetheless fascinating and intellectual subgroups of society. They offered quirkiness, good products, art and music, kind service. These are the elements that together create the successful 'hole-in-the-wall' but raved about hipster haunt that kindly caters to vegetarians.
• The drawer man sculpture in the Dalí Museum
• Huge wall-papered room in MACBA with couple undressing and initiating sex as a pattern, repeated over and over in a Rorschach-like visual pun that proved an outrageously colorful sight.
• The rolling chairs and other stoll or couch-like objects with wheels, the people sitting, laughing and spinning as part of a public art piece in the MACBA area.
• The dance performance part of La Dansa, with the crumpling of paper and the body; the petite elegant woman with a pixie cut contorting herself, wrapping the paper continuously around her head.
• The theatre piece from Amsterdam, also part of La Dansa and in English, at the performing arts center. The seemingly eternal stillness of the players, the actors, then the beginning of their monologues and the concurrent montionlessness of their bodies... "I imagine I am a forest, growing, reaching, lusting for the sunlight" [paraphrased]. They each imagined themselves and included the other characters and the audience when desired. Lights out, switch places. When the lights came up, they were in the same positions. The violent shaking that their bodies involuntarily exhibited from holding a position so long was memorable, as was the notion reached in the conclusion, of the endless possibility of the imagination.
• The Germans! They were everywhere!
• Biking along the beach, through the narrow roads, around tourists and other pedestrians.
• My Beautiful Parking, the bike shop
• Reading, loitering in bookshops, devouring the English section and taking furtive glances at the Spanish one.
  
• Walking, walking, walking until my back and legs ached and cried out at night with pain in the creaky, flimsy twin bed.
• Not being afraid of lighting the fire for the gas range stove anymore. Once singing the tips of my arm hairs and not noticing until Ivanna tittered uncontrollably and pointed it out.
• Sunbathing, reading, eating, drinking or just thinking on the small but perfectly-located and ever-sunny balcony.
• Developing my personality, maturing, blah blah psychobabble.
• Catalunya Square, watching the people feed and frolick around the pigeons, taking in the Spring warmth with my book.
• Well Park Güell and Sagrada Familia, of course.
  
• Primavera Park, Montjuïc, the beautiful walk up, the well-manicured garden and the panoramic view of Barcelona (where the skytram brings you).
  
• Hearing Swiss-German on two seperate and stomach butterfly-inducing occassions.
• Picasso Museum: his early and concentrated self portraits
• The attractive, calm-voiced German man with his gorgeous boxer dog.
• Kiki Smith: "Her Memory," an exhibit concentrating on femininity, seated/standing/lying levels of posture, birds in flight, death and the life cycle, windows, glass and sculpture. This was in the fantastic Museo Miró.
• Sensing, very acutely and not a moment too soon, that I will go insane without a bike and to the constant, reliable easy freedom it provides.