Been in Barcelona for 4 days-ish and they’ve been the kind of ideal culture surprise that we look for when travelling.
I thoroughly love the fact that just about no-one we encounter speaks English. I mean, when I wander up to a tourist info desk or similar, I’m just wasting both their and my time by trying to struggle through various scenarios in Spanish given that they speak perfect English.
But when forced to do so, I constantly surprise myself with how much I’m capable of communicating in the language. The 6 months or so that I spent studying Spanish were absolutely worthwhile, I’m now so glad that I did. It’s a totally different experience.
This not-so-EasyInternetCafe won’t let me upload any photos unfortunately. Might have to wait till we get back to England. At the risk of talking about the weather, we’ve had sunny and 24 degrees every single day here. And it looks set to continue a little further south in Valencia with 24-26 every day. We’ll definitely go for a swim in the pond (er, Mediterreanean).
Food
Is so important here that it deserves its own subheading. My body clock is in all sorts of confusion on account of lunch at 4pm, dinner at 11pm, drinking until 3am schedule. But it’ll deal with it ;-) They do a coffee that agrees with me here, which is interestingly not the case in Italy.
The people are mostly great. We’ve spent time with a nice Catalan fellow (Catalonia is not Spain, so they keep saying!) and more recently with a couple of Mexicans living here. People are generally happy to help and are not nearly in as much of an eyes-down hurry as Londoners. Mind you, you need to keep your eyes down here what with all the piss/vomit/dogshit on the tiny streets.
The streets of Barcelona are W I D E. Strange for an old city. Traffic moves quite briskly and you don’t get easily lost because they’re dead straight. Lot like Melbourne. Did manage to get lost on the bicycle today, though.
Something I probably wouldn’t have noticed had I not studied the language is that most signs in Barcelona are in Catalan and not Spanish. However most conversations I (attempt to) eavesdrop on are in Spanish, not Catalan. They have a strange relationship with languages here. Catalan is closer to French than Spanish. I struggle to read it and cannot understand a spoken word of it.
Moving on from my language obsession…. Overall this is a briliant city and I could potentially live here, though I’m certain I could not keep up with the hectic, exuberant state these people live in. Very, very glad that we’re not here in summer; it’s plenty warm enough and still thoroughly teaming with tourists. Me gusta mucho!