Emotional Fútbol War Ground
Today began, perhaps, the emotional roller coaster ride of leaving Spain. I am, without a doubt, excited to come back home. However, there are certainly aspects I will miss about Barcelona, mostly, if not only, the people I have met.
My good friend, Iana, left today to Bulgaria. For some reason I wasn't really sad at all about it until I went back to her apartment to meet my friend/her roommate, Kaitlin. I walked by Iana's room and saw it completely empty, but it still smelled like her, and it suddenly hit me that she was gone. Then, I remembered that I really do plan to see her again and everything was fine.
After meeting Kaitlin, we went a few doors down from her apartment to see the Barça championship game in a bar. It was absolutely ridiculous, as not only was it my first Spanish/European public soccer game watching experience, but they won, and they won the European championship. Now, I've seen quite a bit of crazy fútbol fan action on the streets after the game, as I live one block from where everybody likes to congregate, drink, urinate on the street, break things, shoot off fireworks and flares, make police angry, fight, chant, sing, whistle, scream, and provoke all kinds of sirens and alarms. However, this time was absolutely insane, as one would probably expect. The Plaça Catalunya by me was entirely full, so people backed up all the way to Plaça Universitad to celebrate there. I've never seen so many people in the streets, not even for the nearly-civil-war-declaration Estatut marches.
I met up with some friends, and we observed the craze for a while before heading off to a bar, and then later to a club. At this point, I was feeling pretty good since my city just won a continental championship, people were happy, I was happy to see my friends before leaving, etc. Normally, the idiots on the streets near my house tend to bring me down a bit, mostly because its near my house and I have no way to escape it. Even with my windows and doors closed it is loud and obnoxious. This time, though, I was out so it couldn't bother me so much.
After a full night of dancing until 5am, a normal night out, it came time to leave and say goodbye to a few of my friends. This is the hard part. Saying goodbye to Iana wasn't too hard because I have plans to see her again, and it seems perfectly feasible. However, this group is going to disperse back to several different countries or stay in Barcelona, which I'm not certain I'll be coming back to visit any time soon.
Of course I knew I would miss these people before hand, but it never hits until you say goodbye. For some reason it just bubbles up all kinds of emotions that you couldn't naturally bring up before. And it is weird, because it is quite possible that it is not goodbye, as I may be seeing them tomorrow, Friday, or at the airport. Who knows. My friend, Dan, said that he never says goodbye anymore, but see you later. It seems better, to me.
The hardest was probably when Tonny, my one friend who kind of initially accepted me into this group of friends started going off about how he is so sick of meeting good people and making friends and then they all just leave in the end. I could feel nothing but terrible and guilty. I had such a good time with him and the whole group, and it was all thanks to him, and I just leave him in return. But, what can I do? It was destined from the beginning and not something really under my control. Even if I had the rest of my life free with no plans, I'm not so sure I would want to stay here much longer than I am. Of course I would want to stay with all of my friends I've met here forever, but it simply isn't possible. I told him I completely understand, and that is exactly why I am ready to go home. The nature of Barcelona is temporary. People come and go, come and go. They use this city for whatever reason and then when they are done with it they abandon. To anybody living here, it must be exhausting seeing such a throughput of people, but I don't see it changing any time soon.
The thought of settling down, for the first time in my life, is really beginning to excite me. Making friends that will (hopefully) stay around a while. Forming relationships with people that can last maybe 10 years will be amazing. Truley getting to know a place, inside and out. Culture, food, stores, roads, parks…. everything. I want it to feel like home. It seems like every time somewhere starts to feel like home, it gets taken from underneath me. Settling down and permanence used to scare me, but now I can't wait for it. I am, in fact, getting older.
Walking back to my place, I was enlightened with the aftermath of the massive street-party that took place around my apartment. Near Plaça Catalunya was a Levi's store, front window smashed and entirely robbed of all merchandise. Quality citizens. Obviously, winning a championship is a good time to do a little rioting and lifting. A further walk towards La Rambla revealed missing or torn down lamp posts, traffic signals, park benches, crosswalk signs, newsstand signs, etc, etc, etc. The streets were filled with beer and urine and vomit and broken glass and garbage and everything. There were still cops hanging around to disperse anybody who wanted to form a crowd. It seems disgraceful that these people treat their own city this way.
I am ready to come home. 48 more hours. Many people to see. Dinners and beaches and packing. I will soon get to do it all over again in a week, but next time in Rochester. I knew it was coming, I knew it would be like this, but I was willing to accept the consequences and here I am now, forced to go through with them.
Day of Coincodence
Today was interesting. It is a shame that this is actually my first post about Barcelona, but so it goes. I create a blog to document my happenings here, and of course what doesn't happen is exactly that. Since I have given you no previous Barcelona background, you will have to learn about my time here from context. If anything, it will certainly not be repetitive from something you have read before.
Everything started out pretty normal. I went to Spanish class and had an exam. Wait, I guess that really isn't normal at all, because I've never had an exam in Spanish until now. How many weeks I have gone without having any clue as to how well I was doing or seeing if I have made progress. Even then what I tell is a lie. It was a practice exam, one week before the actual thing. I did fine, a 78. Apparently "the ideal", according to the professor, is a 60. This means I am set to pass with flying colors. Wonderful.
After class, my Japanese friend, Sumiko, and I decided to go out to lunch together. My friend Sara, who is also a vegetarian, had recommended me an all-you-can-eat "Japanese" restaurant close to the university. We had been to a similar restaurant that we liked, but was somewhat far away. I gave Sara a call, found out where it was, and off we went to look for it. After finally figuring out where we were and what street it was on, standing in line to get in, we were greeted by a rather unhappy man. I told him I was vegetarian, and asked if there was anything for me to eat on the all-you-can-eat merry-go-round of food. Not really, he said. I asked if there was something on the menu I could order then, and he said yes, so we sat down. Lies. There was nothing on the menu I could eat, and he knew it. So we left and found a nice Arab restaurant with service that didn't suck.
Somehow, we got to talking about blogs, diaries, journals, etc. This blog came up, and she mentioned how I don't have a single thing written in it about Barcelona. It was true, and I and many others knew it. Perhaps that is why I'm writing this now, or maybe it is because I have to write a journal entry for my photography course and I don't want to write this twice. Something that sparked my attention about what she had said about her own Diary is that she writes about her roommates in it, but in Japanese. It is certainly encrypted from them, should they want to read it. Its not that she writes bad things, but it is certainly personal, and she certainly wants her thoughts to be hidden which is completely respectable. We all have things to hide, and that is OK.
Why this was so interesting is how it was so relevant to my photography project. When I initially came to Barcelona, I was amazed at how much effort people put into locking up bicycles, stores, restaurants, motorcycles, and homes. It is not just paranoia, it is necessary. Sometimes it does seem overboard. Is it really necessary to chain and lock your trees to your storefront? It makes you wonder if they didn't if somebody would actually come and steal the plants.
These photos of locks evolved to photos of barricades, walls, fences, and other ways to try to deter people from property they should not enter/see/disturb. The only problem with this is that people can only look at so many photos of locks and walls before they get really mind-drillingly bored. To make things interesting, I wanted to make the photos become more personal. I wanted to include how people choose to lock their things, and why. I wanted to show their paranoia and fear. I wanted to show how they not only lock their property, but also their personality and identity. This is a challenge, but I had some ideas. People hide their identities in wallets, and I don't just mean photo ID. They have business cards from clients, photos of children and lovers, entry passes to clubs, discos, gyms. Certainly almost everybody has a secret in their wallet. Certainly everybody has a secret in a drawer or filing cabinet or closet or under the bed or in the glove box. We all hide things and everybody knows it, but nobody seems interested enough to document it.
The diary, though, is something I hadn't considered. It should have been obvious, but it wasn't. People write some of their most intimate thoughts in a diary or journal, and they write them to not be shared with others. Sumiko said that sometimes she writes things that she doesn't think others will understand. People write things that they want to express, but don't want others to hear or judge. We write things in private to not hurt others. There are books containing the true identities of people which will never be shared, and will always be hidden. It is really amazing, and it needed to be shown in my photographs. Sumiko agreed to participate, and later, after lunch, we did a quick shoot with her writing in a planner. Not her diary, but a book which still contains information that she doesn't want people to see. Often times she looks through it, blocking others from viewing it by holding the pages close together. That was how we shot her writing, and that is how I will remember her and her book.
After that, I headed off to the photo lab to check out some photos that I had recently developed. When I got off of the metro at the stop, a man who was entering the train as I was leaving carried in his hand a newspaper, which, on the back side had a portrait of Picasso by Irving Penn which I had written an entire paper about for my Photo course. The odds of seeing that photo on my way to the photo lab seemed so small, that I smiled and wanted to strike up a conversation with the man. Too bad he was on the train, and I was not. I did catch a glimpse of which paper it was, El País. I would buy it later.
Inside of the store, while waiting in line, suddenly somebody grabs me by the waist and really startles me. It was my Bulgarian friend, Iana, who was also there to get some of her photos for class. Neither of us knew that the other would be there, it was purely coincidence. We sat and analyzed some of our photos, picking out the ones that we liked and disliked and gave each other some advice. She left earlier than I, and I stayed around to order some prints, which again I had to wait in line for.
At this point, everybody had gotten off of work, so the store was a bit more busy than when I had gotten there. The line was kind of long, with about 10 people waiting in it. I sat patiently, and noticed that the girl waiting in line behind me looked very similar to Audrey Tautou from Amelie. Turning to look at her, my mouth must have dropped to the floor when I noticed that over her bright red shirt she was wearing a bicycle lock around her neck, sporting it like a fashion item. It was perfect, and I asked her if I could take her picture. She had no problem with it, but seemed so amazingly uninterested in the whole ordeal that it was almost disappointing. She did ask if she could see my work, but said nothing. I'm not entirely sure, but it seemed that Spanish was not her native language either. Now, I have several photos of a girl wearing a bicycle lock in a photo lab while looking at my photos of bicycle locks. I can't wait to see how they turn out. Perhaps one will go in my final project.
Later in the night, I was to meet Sumiko at a metro stop so that we could go to a restaurant for a surprise dinner party for her roommate, as she is getting married and moving out the same day that I leave for the US. As I was waiting, she called me rather distressed, and said that she had to tell her roommate everything because they couldn't convince her to go to dinner, that the dinner was no longer a surprise. More interestingly, it is my understanding they had also discussed many of the things with her roommates that she had confided to her diary, but had never talked to them about openly. It seemed to be a pretty emotional event, and everything worked out quite well in the end. The dinner was wonderful, and her roommate had a great time even though she didn't initially want to go out.
Midway through our time at the restaurant, I noticed that the person sitting back-to-back with Sumiko's roommate looked a lot like my friend, Jose-Alberto. It was impossible to tell if it was him though, since I couldn't see his face, only the back of his head. Anyways, the odds of him being there as well seemed so low considering the huge number of restaurants in Barcelona, the somewhat strange location, and large populace of the city. Sure enough, once he got up and his face was visible, I confirmed that it was him and went chasing after him to say hello. Apparently he was there with his co-workers. Neither of us could believe it. It was the second time we had randomly bumped into each other in Barcelona.
After dining, we went out in search of somewhere to go have fun. We must have walked an hour and a half, and finally ended up at the front of a discoteca. However, after walking for so long we were all so tired that none of us really wanted to dance, and we decided to go to a bar. It was ironic, though, because if we had decided to just go to a bar from the beginning we could have walked ten minutes instead of over an hour. I could not find a good way to translate Catch-22.
The night ended with us waiting in Plaça Universitat for the #2 Night Bus. We waited, and waited. Other numbers came, and came again, and then again, but the #2 never did. We saw two busses marked "Especial" (Special) go by, and figured that somehow, somewhere along the route, something was turning these #2 busses into Special busses that wouldn't stop. I didn't need the bus, but Sumiko and her flatmates did. I finally gave up after over 45 minutes of waiting and told them I was going home, and did, and slept in my comfy foam twin bed and it was a wonderful way to end such an interesting day.
Año Nuevo
So this is the new year, and it might be the first one where I actually feel different. This change is not just a tick of a clock and the rolling of the year’s least-significant digit. This year actually marks yet another new era in my life. William wrote about era shifts in his own live-journal, something that was heavily based on a thread of e-mails that he, Derek, Matt and I had shared.
2001 was the mark of graduating from High School and moving on to a new city, a new school, new life, new friends. 2001 was the mark of an era shift, and a good one at that.
2006 marks yet another new era. In 4 days, I will be leaving the country for a fairly extended period of time. I had a feeling that this wouldn’t make itself entirely apparent to my conciousness until after new-years-eve, and I was right. It hit me fast and hard. Out with the old, in with the new. Gone with the home-country and friends, in with the unknown and foreign.
5 months from now, I will be back here. By “here”, I don’t mean here where I sit (Ohio), but here in Rochester. However, it will not be back to the regular Rochester routine. I will not be taking any more classes of Computer Engineering. I will not be starting yet another co-op at Harris. I will not be sitting at Java’s attending weekly Spanish Hours. Instead, I will have yet another large era shift – graduation. This period should get its own year. Let’s call it 2006.5
Shortly thereafter will come yet another whirlwind to my life. Moving to Texas will be something exciting, interesting, and yet sad. I’ve spent so much time developing lives in Ohio and Rochester, and will have spent a relatively shorter but intense amount of time doing the same in Spain. All of that effort will hopefully prove itself worthwhile. My close friends will filter themselves out from the aquaintances. This is a natural progression, and I expect that I will be able to handle it, though it will be difficult.
If anything is comforting, it is that Austin may mark the first time in my life where I could see myself actually settling. It is early to tell, of course, since I’ve not even lived there yet. However, from a purely logistical standpoint, I’ll have completed high-school, my undergraduate studies, and done my long-desired study abroad. There really isn’t anything requiring a relocation from Austin, so long as things go smoothly with AMD (and I expect they will). It is somewhat relieving to finally see that option of settling down somewhere. Who knows, though. Maybe I never will. Maybe I’m a nomad at heart.
Whatever the far future holds, 2006 will be a year who’s face will stand out above the crowd. It is a year I look forward to and dread simultaneously. It is a year which I will look back upon and relive the moments which I have yet to sculpt from the material we call time.
Pittsburgh [again]
After waking up at 1:00pm in Columbus and having a wonderful breakfast (lunch), Matt, Katie, William and I spent some time just hanging out. We watched a movie, called Saved! which was pretty entertaining. It features some great one-liners like, “No, I’m not OK, I just ran my van into Jesus!”.
We also played Trivial Persuit. Matt and Katie beat William and I pretty well. It turns out that we’re all pretty good with the brown (science) questions. I think Matt’s largest advantage is that he is the only one of the three of us that knows anything about sports.
William and I headed back for Pittsburgh around 8pm, 2 hours behind planned departure. We consider this right on time.
I originally had planned on heading straight back home from here, but instead I’ll be spending the night (morning) at William’s yet again. While driving to Pittsburgh, I had the idea to contact Nate again to see if he wanted to hang out, since we weren’t able to before leaving for Columbus. We wanted to go to a coffee shop, but after William and I walked down to Walnut street, we found that it was closed earlier than we had anticipated. So, we ended up catching a ride from Nate and going down to Mad Mex in Oakland. That was good. We caught up a bit, told some stories of Senior Design to William, and headed back to William’s apartment around 2am. Nate ended up leaving William’s around 3am… 2 hours later than he wanted to be out. This, of course, is right on time.
Now, again, it is nearly 4am. Someday, maybe, I’ll go to sleep before the sun is about to rise. Tomorrow I go back home, and I don’t expect to have any other major traveling. That is, of course, until I fly across the Atlantic in a couple of weeks. I expect to wake up around noon. I figure an hour to get out of here, 2 hour drive. I’ll probably be back home around 5pm… right on time.
Columbus
William and I headed to Columbus on Sunday evening, late as usual. We were supposed to leave around 4pm, but of course ran late by an hour and a half. Naturally, Matt & Katie expected this to occur, so it was not a problem at all. When we arrived in Columbus, they had dinner all nice and ready for us. We had some delicious thin-crust pizza which Katie flash-cooks in a 500 degree oven. For wine, we had a bottle of St. Vincent from Michigan which William had bought when we went to visit Derek some time ago. I didn’t like it as much as I remember liking it for our tastings, perhaps caused by pre and post Wines of the World.
We ended up watching the movie Clash of the Titans, a rather terrible film which was aided by a bottle of Chardonnay, a gift from Matt & Kattie to myself. Normally, I don’t care too much for Chardonnay, but when watching such a terrible film, anything that numbed my senses helped. And, to be honest, it really wasn’t that bad of a wine.
Today, William and I woke up late, and Matt headed out to work. We ended up watching some Naked Science on the National Geographic channel, and determined that it is very formulaic and completely awful. William calls the show “Is it real? NO!” Honestly, they spread what could be told in about 5 minutes over a 30 minute show. Is La Chupacabra real? How about the Loch Ness Monster? Watch for 30 minutes as we recover things you have already heard and then tell you that a pile of bones found is not actually the Chupacabra, but those of a dog. Oh, and the Loch Ness Monster was actually a boat, which nobody realized until we did this show! Please, what a waste of time.
After getting fed up with TV, we went to this bookstore called The Book Loft. If you visit the website, let me assure you that the interior is just as chaotic as their page design. This place was an absolute labyrinth. I was looking at Europe/Spain/Barcelona travel guides, which happened to be at this juncture of 4 different rooms/halls/cubby holes. As I was trying to compare guides, I would have to move out of the way ever 30 seconds for somebody to get through. Eventually, I moved in to one of the cubby holes to hide. I think I’ve decided to get the Lonely Planet guide to Spain, and the Rough Guide to Barcelona. I may have also decided not to travel to Slovenia this trip, as it will be simply too much to try to do in 15 days along with France & Italy. Poor Slovenia, this is the second time I may abandon it. I’m sure it will do just fine.
After getting lost in the bookstore, we decided to find a place to kill some time before Matt would be coming home. We wanted to go to a coffee shop, and there was a Starbucks across the street from the bookstore, but we really didn’t want to go to a Starbucks. William jested at going inside Starbucks and asking “Hey, are there any coffee shops around here?”, to the Starbucks employees. I told him that if he did, I would buy him a free drink, under the condition that we go to the other coffee shop, should they recommend one. William is a daring man, and he’ll do anything for free coffee, so sure enough he asked the Starbucks employee “Excuse me, we were wondering if there were any other coffee places around here”, and the guy said “yes, right across the street is Cup O Joe’s”, which happened to be right next to the bookstore, but we somehow missed it. I think I’ll consider Starbucks as a good information center for better places to get drinks from now on, rather than a place which serves drinks.
We then watched Harry Potter. It was good, but there were some scenes which left me confused and needed to be explained by those who’ve read the books.
Tomorrow, William and I will be leaving Columbus in the evening back to Pittsburgh. We will probably have dinner here, first (excellent!). I expect to be back home either late tomorrow night, or Wednesday morning.
Pat wanted me to wait until around 4:15 to post this message so that its timestamp would be consistent with my other posts. At first, I thought it was silly, but then I was trying to get spellchecking working, and it turns out that I will be posting this around the same time again anyways. Funny, isn’t it?
Pittsburgh
I am in Pittsburgh… again. William calls this city the nexus of the universe. To some extent, I have to agree. I’ve come to realize that I know an extraordinary amount of people here, considering that I am not from the area nor did I go to college here. The fact remains that William is here at CMU, Emily and Abby are both studying neuroscience at Pitt, Nate is from Pittsburgh and is now on co-op here, and this guy I met at the Spanish Consulate in NYC, Ethan, also goes to CMU. By knowing these people, I vicariously know their friends, and my network here seems to be almost too large. I think I know Pittsburgh better than Cleveland, which is kind of sad, but not too much, since I really like it here.
Yesterday, I went to a party at Emily’s house for her roommate’s going-away to Costa Rica, and their friend’s graduation. Naturally, it was a good time, but due to a lack of sleep I was rather tired and fell asleep a bit on the futon. Luckily, I heard some guys scheming things to do to me while I was asleep and decided that I should get up before anything bad happened. Instead, they took out their agression on some other kid who passed out. Lucky me. I spent the night there and slept on the floor in the living room. We were supposed to go see the movie Brokeback Mountain in the morning. We were surprised to find that a movie which was heavily advertised was not showing in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, or Rochester. Perhaps they will show it in some local theater before I leave for Spain.
Emily and I were both rather tired from not having slept much. She had a graduation to attend at 6pm, and I had nothing to do, so I left her be after we had lunch at a Crepe restaurant in Shady Side and came back to William’s to take a nap while he graded homework. Three hours later, he woke me up and we went to Thai Place, which has by far the best Thai Tea that I’ve ever had, and very good food to match. I would certainly go back.
It really amazes me how little people who live in this city appreciate what it has to offer. There are some really cool districts here, not very far apart from one another. Each offers its own style of restaurants, bars, stores, etc. I love the architecture in the houses and how unique the whole city is. It is dense like NYC, but not unmanagably large and the people seem a bit friendlier. In recent news, Google has decided to build a research facility here, which is good news for the city. I imagine that will attract some other tech companies. If only Cleveland could follow a similiar trend…
Tomorrow, William and I are heading to visit Matt in Columbus, as he won’t be coming up to Burton for the holidays. It should be good. Until then…
