Barcelona, Gaudi and Laundry

The first half of my day was filled with the sights, sounds (and yes smells) of Barcelona, capital of the Catalan region. If you haven't studied it or visited Spain you might not know about Catalonia's desire to be independent and their distinct culture. The Catalan language is everywhere here. Actually, our tour guide, Sonia, said that you can be fined if a sign is written only in Castilian (the Spanish we know and teach in America). Still, Catalonia's desire for independence has mainly been by peaceable means in contrast to the Basque ETA, which is essentially a terrorist group, who, thankfully in recent years have calmed down. Remarkably, Spain is less cohesive than even the Switzerland with its autonomous Cantons! 

I had a small but hearty breakfast of a few breakfast sausages, chorizo, a slice of toast and a tasty pear. We then got in our tour bus to view the city. Our first stop was Montjuic, the place of the 1992 Olympics. Following that, we drove through the downtown area and saw out our bus a few buildings by Antonin Gaudi, a famous architect at around the turning of the 20th century, who, with others pioneered the Modernisme movement, an off shoot of Art Nouveau. Next, we stopped at Park Güell. Güell was wealthy business entrepreneur who invested a huge amount of money trying to develop a community in the surrounding hills of Barcelona. He even managed to get Gaudi to make a few model homes for the development and to create a plan. When few people bought up the tracks of land in 1914, Güell gave up the project and handed the development over to the city to be preserved as a park. Gaudi and his apprentices painstakingly tiled nearly every square inch of architecture in this park and managed to use all sorts of materials: bottles, mirrors, tiles, etc. Then we visited La Sagrada Famillia, Gaudi's major work. Undertaken in 1882, this impressive cathedral is slated to be finished by 2026 the 100th year anniversary of his death. With its melted-candle-wax/organic look this cathedral is bound to be one of the best I've ever seen and its completion will be in the history books.

   Parc Güell

    La Sagrada Familia

Following our yummy Paella lunch in the Barcelona Marina, we did a brief walking tour up La Rambla with Sonia to gain our bearings. At the end of the brief walking tour others went on to do a bike tour, some to shop, but I went back to the hotel via subway to do my laundry. Luckily some of our students got a washer in their room and lent me their key so I could use the free washer. The only problem was that their were some 50 different settings with tiny Ikea like characters that I hadn't a clue what setting to choose. I chanced upon a snow flake combined with a feather. . .cold and delicates right? My clothes came out fine but took forever. To further complicate things, the dryer was broken so I now have laundry hanging all throughout my room and on my patio. :)

For dinner we went to a kind of Fresh choice type place that had lots of salad options and meat for the boys in our group who haven't have struggled with the European diet. Over dinner Sonia and I talked politics in Europe and America. I don't often get a chance to hear a European perspective so it was interesting to see what her beliefs are as half Spanish, half Swiss. One interesting thing to share was that she found it hard to believe that Christians would want to own guns. Her thoughts were that Christians are peaceable, and well, we are! I tried to explain that, at least where I grew up, people owned guns because of a distrust of government and joy of recreation. . .not for committing crimes or violence. Still, she found this incredible. On my side, I had trouble understanding Swiss government and how it works as a direct democracy. Still, we both enjoyed the conversation and were glad to talk politics.