Becoming a Barcelonan

Since I wrote a lot has been going on. The night after I last posted was the “correfoc” in the Merce. In Spain there apparently no lawyers because as part of this festival there are people dressed as devils running around with giant sparklers spraying sparks onto crowd. People would were goggles and bandannas and would go and dance in the flames. It was nuts.

The next day Seva Rodnyansky came to visit me in Barcelona. His visit was awesome despite the fact that I hardly slept the entire time he was here. During his visit, we visited la Pedrera, Picasso Museum, and Joan Miro museum, not to mention two more fireworks shows.

For the closing night of the Merce there was a “piromusical” or musical fireworks. The theme was “a tribute to rock and pop” so the majority of the music was in English, which sadly enough I enjoyed.
There were fireworks and a fountain that corresponded with the music ... best fireworks show ever.

It was an intense week, but unfortunately I do not have many photos of this span because I camera died and Seva accidentally reformatted his camera memory card without backing up the files on his computer first … it’s all good. Initially, I planned to go to Madrid with him the following weekend but credit card issues inhibited my plans.

Instead of Madrid, I applied to for to Chuck Green Fellowship, so hopefully I’ll have an interesting job next summer. I also went to a “discoteca” with a bunch of people from my dorm; I was the only American, which was pretty sweet. Whenever a song in English came on I bleated the lyrics and encouraged all the Spaniards to sing along. Not surprisingly they knew more of the lyrics than me to a lot of the songs. But the best part is when they played “Such Great Heights,” which apparently was in some advertisement so people recognized it. Also, for some reason Spaniards love REM and I have no idea why, but it still made me happy to hear “Losing My Religion.” Last weekend I also went to in absinthe bar in La Raval – the immigrant district. The absinthe was really bad and according to some nice architects I we met, you need to go to Eastern Europe to get real absinthe (although I really don’t have much interest). But the people we met were really interesting and told us a lot about the city.

The following week I didn’t do much - kept up with work and reconnected with people from home. Unfortunately, on Thursday my messenger program freaked out and stopped working on me, so I’ve been spending way too much time trying to get that sorted out, because I’m highly addicted. As of now still no luck, although I can still fake it sometimes. Also this weekend I visited the Gracia barrio – a hip neighborhood separated from everything else. A friend of mine really wanted to find a street that one of the architects from the previous weekend had told us about. We had to ask at least five people to find, but when we got there it was pretty sweet. Today I’m planning on going to the Contemporary Culture Center of Barcelona for a film festival and to just check out the museum.

Now, I want you to keep me updated on your lives. If you are reading this you obviously have at least some interest in my life (or just really, really bored), meaning that most likely I have some interest in yours as well. Whether you are in St. Paul or Paris or Timbuktu - I want to know what’s up with you all? Feel free to post on Facebook, comment on my blog, email me etc.