Tuesday 11.16.2010

Adios Monique, Hola Barcelona!

Garrison Keillor once described learning a language at an advanced age as a “leaky boat.” While that sounds colorful in a Wobegone sort of way, it is misused in that things leak into a boat. The truth is that in the language learning business, things leak out as with a leaky bucket. We have been trying our best to keep up with the changes in our languages as we change geography, but it is a losing proposition at best. We probably know less now than we did a couple months ago.


The issue arose last night as our host Nick explained that the people in this area speak Valencian and the children are taught in Valencian in school. This, of course, makes them unable to communicate in 99.9% of the known world, but local pride wins out and the EU’s stance on preserving local idiosyncrasies does not really help. Tonight we will be in Barcelona where the lingua franca is Catalonian, which is more like the Euskara of the Basque than the Spanish of Madrid. We are finding that there is no Spain (but we haven’t been to Madrid) but rather a collection of regional egos that flies the Spanish flag at soccer games, the Olympics and Rafael Nadal matches.

No problem as Nick and Judy are on their way to Jolly Old England and our host this morning is neighbor Sheila, an expat Brit as well. In fact everyone in the restaurant last night was a Brit except the poor father-in-law waiter and us. In reading the reviews of this B&B, the most frequent compliment was that this was the “real Spain.” Right. Anyway, Sheila does a nice job of filling in, explaining that all the church bells this morning were for the funeral of the poor fellow who kicked off yesterday. No time wasted here, but all of the family members are probably in town except those who are off working in a factory in Connecticut. Sheila knows her job as she gives us cheek-cheek kisses and we’re underway.

We ask GPS Monique to look at options with and without toll roads today for our drive to Barcelona. Toll roads get us in at 2:35 and non-toll roads at 6:18. We’re going to have to bite the bullet and pay. It is a sleepy and very expensive drive with tolls totaling over $50 so about $12 for each hour saved, but with a stop for lunch at a plaza we still are dropping the car at a little after three. The drive was fast (about 75-80 mph) with mountain and Mediterranean views all the way so not as unpleasant as driving through Kansas or Iowa. The car agent on this end is a little slippery. He has told us to drop the car at a hotel a couple kilometers from the airport, won’t come to the desk to take the paperwork and won’t give us a receipt that shows everything intact. We feel better when we see a lineup of Peugeots in the lot and the front desk lady signs for the keys, registration and insurance. We kiss GPS Mademoiselle Monique Deneuve adieu and thank her for her service. She lost us a few times, but we would have been lost a lot more without her, and one of us would have had a face in a map at all times instead of sight-seeing.

The hotel lady calls us a taxi, which whisks us into town in less than a half-hour. The driver is coughing and sneezing all the way which will add to the germs we are carrying from Manuel in Granada. Our hotel for tonight is the Praktik, a budget option with a great location in the center of the action. We originally booked it for seventy-five euros per night but saw it on line a couple days ago for sixty-four so we canceled and rebooked, the difference paying for our taxi ride.

Barcelona is a big city on the eastern coast of Spain with a 2000-year history of fame, fortune and failure. These days it is bustling with activity and there is no obvious sign of the Spanish economic troubles. Our room is surprisingly nice at half the price of the hotels around us with a king bed, a little terrace on our active street (we have ear plugs), free wi-fi and a few English speaking TV channels.

We don’t sit long, but get right out on the town. It is about a ten-minute walk to the Placa Catalonya, the center of the universe for the folks in these parts, and another five across the square to La Rambla. Rick Steves describes La Rambla as the best people-watching street in Europe. It is one-way traffic on one side and the other way on the other side with a fifty-foot wide treed pedestrian area in the center. There are people selling touristy stuff from small stands, others peddling birds, fish and turtles, and where we usually see one or two of the “human statues,” here there are a dozen or more. We are dazzled, acting like a couple of tourists from Middle America.

We stick our heads in the market packed with people, produce and pig parts and decide to leave it for tomorrow. At about 7:00 we pull up a stool at Eukara Tapas bar for a couple tapas (two hot, two cold) and a red wine and make a plan for our next few days. We finish the mile-long Rambla walk at the statue of Christopher Columbus, reverse course and walk back up. On the way back there is a dance group of a couple dozen young ladies (ages 15-25) performing for a reasonable crowd. There are four or five featured dancers and the rest are rapping out the beat on tall drums while showing off their own moves. Everything is choreographed well and it is a very entertaining stop. There was a film crew there from Channel Six in case any of you saw us.

There is a two-thirds moon shining clearly on us as we continue our walk back. We find another Irish pub across the street from our hotel, and while we complain about the Brits stealing the Spanish ambience, we sure like a nice cold pint in a pub. We finish our beers and lose about six-months of our lives to second-hand smoke, and tuck ourselves in after hanging our jackets on the terrace to air out.

Today's Picture: A Ramblin' woman on La Rambla