Living Fast

This weekend marked the one month anniversary of touching down in Barcelona, and to be honest, things have not slowed down much. That’s the thing about living in Barcelona; there is ALWAYS something interesting going on. Case and point:

An (as far as we know) un-advertised carnival, setup right off the street.

Chris and I just stumbled upon this while getting dinner. Also, characteristic of a children's attraction in Barcelona…

Notice that the woman is holding back two vicious dogs. Somebody actually painted that.

We would’ve stayed, but we had to get back before the Barça game.

SIDE NOTE: I need to rant about why soccer sucks. I’ve honestly tried to like soccer, but I don’t think I’ve watched a single game that didn’t have an embarrassing dive. This game was no different.

The victim of Fabregas' pussiness got a red card, so they had to play with 10 men for part of the game. Also, this was against Sevilla. Barcelona didn't need to cheat to win that game. That being said, the game was still exciting. Barça came back from a one goal deficit in the last 10 minutes to win, thanks to a few filthy passes by Messi, soccer’s saving grace:

We came back to that area the next day to watch an air show that was happening at the beach. The problem with that is the whole city is on the beach, and we chose the wrong side. But that’s ok, because air shows aren’t that cool and we ended up having a much better day on our side of the beach. We started by waiting a good thirty minutes for the best sandwich in the city of Barcelona and likely the world…

"Sometimes I google image Bo de B's, just to look at it." -Devin McDonnell, highly quotable residencia neighbor

The place is so tiny that you don’t wait inside to order food, so there’s always a line of 5 to 20 people outside. I'm pretty sure that the restaurants around it do better because people come to go to Bo de B’s, realize it’ll be like an hour long wait, and just go to one of the other restaurants. Also it takes a good 15-20 minutes to get your food after you order it. It’s sort of like JD’s (restaurant in Madison, for all you non-Madison readers), except the servers are a lot friendlier, prices are more reasonable, the food is better and it’s not infested with flies. Bo de B’s is a twice-a-week addiction for the majority of the people on the program.

After Bo De B’s, we realized the air show was like two miles away, so we just walked around the port to see what was what. We happened to run into a few guys with bubble-making equipment. The fact that it was clearly for children did not faze us…

After that we started walking towards the carnival, Chris and I saw the night before, but got flanked by a huge row of shops with a bunch of tourist crap. This was perfect, because I really needed sun glasses. But boy was there a lot of crap here. For example, which do you think this shop sells less of?

This wide assortment of novelty belt buckles?

Or baggies from this surprise box?

The answer is probably the belt buckles, because we bought a bag from the surprise box. Inside were a few bracelets and a piece of cardboard with a picture of an iPhone. Some crafty marketing there.

The week marked our first week of real, non-syllabus reading classes. With my schedule finalized, my school life is starting to take shape. Only two of my business classes are in Spanish now; much more manageable than having all of them in Spanish. Overall, they seem pretty easy and surprisingly interesting. The only drawback is having 9:00 or 9:30 am class every day. It’s a major obstacle to going out on weekdays (one that I still manage to conquer frequently).

This weekend, our program took us on a tour of a fancy Spanish winery. Not being that into wine, the tour was not really my thing. You can only hear so much about how Torres “ages its nationally recognized, award winning wine in only the highest quality American and Canadian oak trees, giving it that bold, elegant taste its drinkers have come to adore” before it starts getting old. I did, however, pick up a bottle of Brandy.

Fun fact: 76% of the brandy consumed in the world comes from Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

SIDE NOTE: I was obviously making fun of how the tour described its wine in that last paragraph. Read the description and “tasting notes” taken directly from their website.

The fact that we use a lot of the same words doesn't say much about whoever writes this shit.

After the wine tour, we bussed over to a small beach town called Sitges, known for its film festival, 17 Mediterranean beaches, and for being “a popular destination for gay and lesbian travelers” (source: Wikipedia). After exploring the town a bit (and noticing that all the shops were closed. On a Saturday afternoon.) we went to the beach and enjoyed the weather. I want to use this time to rub in the fact that it’s still 75 degrees and sunny every single day here, and by the looks of Facebook pictures, it’s starting to get cold in Wisconsin.

I think I've worn long sleeves like 3 times since I've been here... and I've regretted it every time.

Sunday was the biggest day of the weekend though: Barcelona vs. Real Madrid. El Clasico. The biggest game in the world of soccer. We decided it would be fun to go near Camp Nou (the soccer stadium) and see how things go around there. I thought it would be crazy, but I honestly wasn't even prepared for it. It all culminated into one big march down the main street, complete with chanting waving Catalonian flags. I actually got a great video of it, but a guy came up and waved me off, telling me to stop. Of course, I didn't listen to him. The next guy wasn't as nice. He straight up punched the camera out of my hands. Thankfully my camera was fine, but the video didn't save. Very disappointed.I did manage to get a picture of the riot police, but I was nervous about breaking out the camera too much after that.

Those vans were actually full of people.

Losing that video was disappointing, but the final score was even worse. Although Messi scored both of the Barcelona goals, he was matched by two goals from Ronaldo. Everyone says that a win brings a riot, and a loss brings a riot. A tie brought nothing. So disappointing.

The next few months are going to be hectic. The one and only Mike Lee will be visiting next weekend, and we’re in Madrid the weekend after that. After two weeks off of traveling, a few of us are now completely booked for Morocco, Amsterdam, then Paris. The fact that the most exciting section of my study abroad experience hasn’t even arrived yet is a great feeling. I’ll leave you, now, with the five day forecast in Barcelona.

I made it X-Large because I'm a dick.