Skipping Town

On Wednesday, I set out from Barcelona to make a roundabout journey home: Barcelona-Paris-Newark-Pittsburgh. I’m home for the holidays—all of them—to wait out a block of time for visa reasons. So I’m in Connellsville once again, after having nearly missed my flight from Paris to Newark—a delay in my Barcelona-Paris flight had me running through Charles de Gaulle, where, once I reached the corridor where my gate was located, I found Air France people looking for me, radioing the gate with walkie-talkies once they spotted a winded, frantically running American. It was a near miss. For my suitcase, packed carefully with my favorite clothes and all the postcards and mementos I’ve accumulated from my travels over the past few months, not to mention Andrew’s soon-to-be-fixed laptop and my favorite perfume, it was a total miss. At Newark, waiting at baggage claim for my suitcase, I had a sinking feeling that it may not have made it from Paris. I waited and waited until I was the last person w...

This weekend, Andrew planned a surprise trip—whose destination, this time, I didn’t find out until we’d been driving for about an hour in the car. We were headed to Cadaques, a tiny village two hours north of Barcelona, just below the French border, on the rocky coastline of the Costa Brava. The drive isn’t difficult until the last leg, which involves a winding, steep climb up the mountainside—with a steep dropoff to the side, and lots of sharp blind curves. It was enough to make me realize that I haven’t, after all, grown out of my tendency to get motion-sick. But we reached the town without incident. Our hotel, like so much else in Cadaques, was full of Salvador Dali memorabilia: photographs, prints, and Dali-esque artworks in the lobby. Cadaques was Dali’s home for many years, and it was where he met his wife, Gala—who had traveled to Cadaques from Paris with her husband, only to subsequently leave him for Dali. Cadaques is one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in Spain or else...

The kitchen of our new apartment, though limited to a freestanding double-hotplate unit, a large toaster oven, and a microwave, has proven to be more useable than we initially feared. The hotplates are super-hot, boiling water in half the time as the gas stove in our old place; and though we can’t use them both at once—they’re too close together—we’ve made do. The toaster oven thing is quite large, which means we’ve been able to cook the holy grail of easy dinners: frozen pizza, which here in Barcelona are fantastically cheap and, surprisingly, delicious. This weekend, I decided to make chili, since Barcelona is—finally—a normal fall temperature, crisp and chilly (at least in the evenings; the afternoons are still warm enough for short sleeves). Recipe in hand, Andrew and I went to the supermarket at El Corte Ingles, since our small, local Condis market has a very limited selection of ingredients—if I would find chili powder in Barcelona, I knew, I’d find it at the Corte. Some of the i...

There was a lot to absorb in Marrakech—too much for one trip. Marrakech is too wild, too different, too surprising, too uncomfortable—the things I saw and felt during this first trip are still swimming around, undigested. I think perhaps they’re not meant to be digested, that the exhausted inside-out feeling I had when I got back to Barcelona was the point of going to Marrakech. It’s not a place I want to live, unlike, say, Amsterdam, whose canal houses and ridiculous charm are perfect for domestic fantasies; and it’s not a place ideal for relaxation, like the hidden cove beaches of Mallorca. In Marrakech, I was uncomfortable, sometimes nervous, often uneasy, and always aware to the point of absolute sensory overload. When I got back to Barcelona, I felt like I’d been away for weeks—Marrakech required the entirety of my attention, and I hardly thought of Spain at all while we were there. My mind was monopolized by other concerns: crossing the streets without getting hit by a motorbike;...

The night before we left Marrakech, we decided to have a home cooked couscous dinner at our lovely, four-room riad. The French riad owner, Michel, and all the other guests had stayed in for dinner as well: a French-speaking Swiss couple, who, thankfully, spoke English as well; a French couple; and two new guests, a French woman and her daughter, who’d arrived just that night. When the French woman came into the cozy, fire-warmed lounge for dinner, I thought I recognized her—but that was ridiculous. She was French; we were in one of hundreds of riads; we were in the middle of Morocco. But when I saw her again the next day at breakfast, the feeling persisted, and later in the day I placed her: she looked like the heartbroken downstairs neighbor in Amelie. We saw the woman in the street on our last night, as Simon loaded our suitcase into our airport-bound taxi. She wished us a good journey; we wished her a good stay. “I just have to tell you how much you look like an actress from Amelie,...

In warren of Marrakech souqs (small shops), which begins to the north of Djemaa el-Fna, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of stalls line the streets. Some are wood-lined, with elaborate doorways and luxurious interiors, but most are makeshift, little more than alcoves carved into rock. The narrow streets between them, some paved, some dirt, are covered in places by a haphazard “roof” made from tarps and sticks. Real Moroccan life is conducted in the souqs, which sell all the essentials of daily living: conical mounds of spices and herbs; jars and bins of apothecary supplies; all manner of dried foods, preserved fruits, and olives; tray after tray of Moroccan pastries, buzzing with bees and flies; bushels of fresh mint; freshly butchered meat; soon-to-be butchered meat. Pomegranates, fresh figs, onions, carrots, peppers, zucchini, and eggplant are piled in every available corner, sometimes sold by old women hunched over small blankets on the ground. Besides foods, the souqs also sell all manne...

We saw so much of Marrakech during our four days there; but had we simply stood in one spot in the Djemaa el-Fna the entire time, looking around, taking it in, our trip would have been no less interesting. Djemaa el-Fna is the main square of Marrakech, the throbbing heart of the city for both tourists and locals. Calling it a “square” is wholly inadequate and inaccurate: it suggests a certain familiarity, a certain refinement, and Djemaa el-Fna is anything but refined and familiar. Around the edges of Djemaa el-Fna are shops, cafes, restaurants, and small newspaper stands. In the heart of the square are donkey-drawn carts piled with dried fruits and nuts—dates, apricots, figs, almonds—and buzzing with flies. Interspersed among the dried fruit carts are glass-encased carts full of oranges, where you can buy fresh-squeezed orange juice (unless you’re a tourist with a wary Western stomach). At night, these carts multiply a hundredfold with the food stalls, some selling steamed snails, oth...

We arrived in Marrakech in darkness. From the window of the plane we could see the bright red neon Marrakech Menara Airport sign in French and Arabic; when we climbed down from the plane and walked en masse across the tarmac to the airport door, we could see the Koutoubia minaret in the distance—the city center. Inside, our passports were stamped; we found an ATM and withdrew hundreds of dirhams, the equivalent of about 30 euros; and then we looked around anxiously for our driver, without whom we’d have been stranded at the Marrakech airport. The city center would have been accessible enough by taxi, but our riad—a traditional Moroccan home refurbished as a guesthouse—would have been hidden forever in the warren of unmarked streets in the Marrakech kasbah. Fortunately for us, there he was, along with Simon, a guide/servant sort of person at the riad, with Andrew’s name and the name of our riad written on a bright red sign. Simon spoke minimal French and even more minimal English. He sh...

This afternoon, a man from an internet company came over, ostensibly to install internet and cable TV in our apartment. Not surprisingly, he wasn't able to do it; perhaps we'll work it out next week. After this had been established, I walked with the man to the apartment door. There's a small "foyer" area outside our door, which you have to exit by way of another door before you get to the hallway, and I stepped into this foyer to turn off the light after the man had left. My apartment door slammed behind me. I was locked out. Thankfully, I was wearing shoes. But I had no cell phone, no money, no glasses, no reading material. Andrew, the only other person with keys, was at school. The woman who serves as a doorperson a few hours each day had already left. I had things to pack for Marrakech; I had things I had to do. I went to a cafe next door and explained--in Spanish!--that my keys were in my apartment and I had no phone or money. I asked to use their phone. They...

Tomorrow, Andrew and I are embarking on a true travel adventure: we’re going to Morocco for just over three days. Though the title of this post would suggest our destination is Casablanca, we’re actually heading to Marrakech, where I’ve wanted to go for a very long time. Andrew had actually planned this trip as a birthday surprise; however, a poorly timed walk down Andrew’s hallway in Jacksonville resulted in my overhearing Andrew discussing the trip with his father. But no matter: knowing the destination meant we were free to talk about and anticipate the trip together, and I’ve spent the last several days scouring our guidebooks, trying to imagine us fending off aggressive vendors in the souks, drinking mint tea, eating tagines and couscous. And I’ve realized that my fledgling Spanish has pretty much supplanted my fledgling French. Gracias. Merci. Hola. Bonjour. It’s going to be a memorable trip…

It’s a bit unsettling to realize how fully reliant we are on the internet here in Barcelona. I need email to do my freelancing work; we need the internet to plan our trips and flights; I need it to read the New York Times. We do not yet have the internet in our apartment. Andrew can use the computer lab at school, and though I can check email at my language school, I can’t send documents, download anything, or spend a leisurely time writing emails, since there’s usually a line of people waiting to use the computers. And there are lots of things Andrew and I need to look up together, such as riad selections for our upcoming trip to Marrakech or flights home for Christmas. To survive, we’ve made ourselves regulars at Hotel Omm, a cushy hotel just around the corner from our apartment. The lobby of Hotel Omm is full of plush couches, ambient lighting, and a bar; more importantly, there’s free wi-fi. We don’t have a computer that is wi-fi capable (Andrew’s computer crashed irreparably sever...

On Saturday, we rounded out a long day of walking around the city with a few stops into cafes for sustenance. We were determined to try bittenballen, a kind of fried meatball that’s the Dutch bar-food equivalent of jalapeno poppers or wings. At our first stop, we had the requisite Heineken, bittenballen, some Dutch cheese, and some olives (though Spain definitely does olives better). At the next charming café—they seemed to be everywhere—we had only Heineken. We’d been in the Jordaan, and we then wandered back to the canal area, thinking we’d get tickets to a movie. Instead, we found ourselves craving more bittenballen. What followed was a long, arduous search for the perfect café in which to spend the rest of our evening. There were lots of cafes, but not all had bittenballen; not all had the vibrant crowd we were looking for; not all seemed quintessentially Dutch. We peeked into café after café; an hour passed, maybe more. Finally, we found a café that met our requirements, more or l...

When we arrived in Amsterdam on Thursday, it was very late. By the time we’d walked from Centraal Station to our hotel and dropped off our bags, it was almost midnight. The streets of Amsterdam were quiet, but we set off with our map, intending to find a café where we could welcome ourselves to the city with a beer and some food. It’s disorienting to arrive in a new city at night, with no idea what sections or streets we should seek out or avoid; my three-year-old memories of a charming, lively Amsterdam didn’t mesh with the eerie, dangerous-seeming streets around us. We bought some food at a snack stall—a hamburger and Vlaamese frites—and went back to our hotel. But the days that followed were, happily, more charming and fun than those first few hours seemed to promise. We went to the Rijksmuseum, which is mostly closed for renovations but has its most famous works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and others on view in one section. We took a canal tour by boat and floated under bridges and past...

On Friday night, shortly after darkness fell, we set out for the red light district. We weren’t alone. The quiet streets of the eastern and central canal belts soon gave way to a Vegas-like swath of neon lights and coffeeshops, filled with tourists. We turned down a side street lined with the red-lit windows of the prostitutes’ quarters; the street was so narrow we couldn’t have stretched out our arms. Around us, the lingerie-clad prostitutes stood idly in their windows, seeming unfazed by the early-hour tourists who were obviously there simply to gawk. One woman was checking messages on her cell. We emerged back onto the main street and were confronted by two things: a large Japanese tour group, led by a guide holding a large flag, winding their way into the narrow streets; and a brass band playing rallying songs more suited to a parade than the red light district. This part of Amsterdam is like a carnival gone wrong—a confluence of all things normal and strange, shocking and ridiculo...

On Friday morning, we got up at the crack of dawn to catch a bus for Aalsmeer, a tiny village about an hour outside of Amsterdam. We wanted to see the flower auction, held daily in a huge commercial pavilion, where billions of flowers are auctioned off every year. Flowers come to Aalsmeer from all over the world, including Africa and Asia; are auctioned off; and are immediately transported to whatever country has claimed them—within hours, they could be in France or Spain or even the United States. Not many tourists make their way to Aalsmeer, but the auction complex has a catwalk system set up so the tourists that do come can watch the action from above. Below us were millions of flowers, arranged by type and color on carts. It’s all very industrial—the flowers are held in plastic containers; the carts that hold the containers are metal; the floors are concrete. The carts hitch together and are pulled around the complex—the size of 160 football fields—by powerful scooter devices. The ...

My Spanish has progressed to the point where I can carry on a basic, rudimentary conversation and, usually, make myself understood. This is, of course, progress. But the progress is frustrated by a wild array of verb tenses which make saying anything a laborious process of figuring out what tense to use and then considering the many irregular verb forms I may confront. Flashcards are in order, pronto. Despite my developing confidence in trying my Spanish in the real world, my brain still short-circuits regularly. Leaving my apartment building last week, I ran into a neighbor coming into the building. Amiably and boldly, I said, “Hasta manana!” which, since it means “See you tomorrow!”, makes no sense whatsoever. “I mean, hola,” I said. “Hola. Buenas dias.” She gave me a pitying, though indulgent, smile. In class, predictably, my textbook Spanish is quite a bit ahead of my marble-mouthed American pronunciation. My teacher told me on Friday that my vocabulary and grammar are good, but th...

Our first fall visitor, Matt, a friend and former co-worker from New York, arrived last week and, so far, has seen an admittedly interesting slice of our life in Barcelona. On Thursday, we took Matt to a dinner celebrating the upcoming and very small wedding of a Swiss friend from Andrew’s class. The dinner was outside of Barcelona, but what we expected to be just a few tram stops away turned out to be further out into the Barcelona hinterlands than we’d expected. Once there, it was a lovely event, with drinks first and then a sit-down dinner for all the couple’s friends from Andrew’s school. After dinner, unplanned and unexpected, several people volunteered to sing wedding songs from their home countries—a cappella, in a roomful of eyes, basically my worst nightmare. We heard songs in Finnish, Nepalese, Russian, and Japanese. Later, the Japanese singer admitted that he hadn’t known any wedding songs and so had chosen a song schoolchildren sing. Obviously, no one knew the difference. T...

It’s October in Barcelona, a perfect time of year. It’s still warm—the days start chilly and dark but by noon the sun is out and hot—but there are cool gusts of wind and fluffy clouds that make the days more pleasant than they were in high summer. Yesterday, the wind was so intense that the tall winged doors of the apartments in this building and around the courtyard slammed loudly open and shut, unsupervised and unsecured, so violently that I heard crashing glass above me and, later, disgusted sweeping. Most of the tourists are gone now, though the Bus Turistic still sails around the city with sun-glassed travelers on the open top and La Rambla is still (always) bustling. However, it’s a slower bustle than summer, and there’s an impending sense of the city settling in, shoring up for the coming fall and winter. I feel settled: unpacked and getting my bearings in a new apartment and neighborhood (a stroll brought pleasant surprises, including a Nine West store, a beautiful church with ...

We’re moved! We actually did it. In three days last weekend, we managed to get all our stuff from one apartment to the other (five carloads); to clean and turn in the keys to our old apartment; and to go to Ikea to buy few essentials, such as an armoir and a bed frame. Actually moving was tricky. At the old apartment, we sent elevator-loads of boxes and bags downstairs, then carried them out to the car; at our new place, there’s no street-side parking, so Andrew parked on the sidewalk, flashers flashing, while we ran everything inside, loaded yet another elevator, and finally pushed everything into the new apartment before running back downstairs and doing the whole thing over again. It was an exhausting few days, but things are finding their way to their rightful places, and we have a real bed now rather than a mattress on wooden pallets on the floor. Sunlight is streaming onto the terrace. The place is feeling like home, even though there are a few small problems. We won’t have inter...

It’s moving day. After Andrew finishes classes, he’ll rent us a car, and we’ll move ourselves from Montjuic to Eixample in a few packed car trips. Hopefully. As we packed our things last night, it became abundantly clear that we’ve accumulated a lot of stuff. The move won’t be as easy as we thought it would be. Andrew hasn’t been here for that short a time—over a year—and I’ve been here, for the most part, for five months; but the amount of stuff we have is surprising considering that the rest of our stuff—indeed, most of our stuff—is still in the U.S. We’ve accumulated several boxes of books, buying them, receiving them, bringing them over en masse every chance we have; we have (okay, I have) tons of clothes, many of which I’d like to divest myself of but don’t yet know where to donate them; and we have a few boxes of kitchenware. Not to mention a few lamps, a desk, a shelf, pillows, towels, and a random assortment of iPods and hard drives and cell phones and endless wires and cords...

This week will be the last week that we call the Font Magica our neighbor. The Font has been a loyal friend these past twelve months (the first half of which I was only a visitor to the Font rather than a true neighbor), its music thundering into our apartment at exactly 9:30pm every weekend night during the spring, summer, and fall. It shines and dances even now, when the summer crowds have thinned and fewer tour buses clog the curbs. It’s no less grand, no less elaborate, than it is during the height of tourist season. Last Thursday, I watched the Font from high up near the Palau Nacional , sitting with a glass of wine on hard cracked stones. The music is quieter there, the Font a more manageable basin of colored lights on water. But from there it looks even more a part of the city, dominating Plaza Espanya swallowing the headlights from the traffic that flows in front of and towards it. It’s been nice living near the Font, always a happy sight as we walk to dinner or drive in a taxi...

Spanish classes are not the time for introversion. I've always hated group activities of any and all kinds--group work, teams, pairs, and, of course, and kind of interactive group activity, including but not limited to "ice breakers" and other demonstrative and usually embarrassing games. However, in Spanish class, games, teams, pairs--the whole roster--are employed frequently as language-teaching strategies. During my time in classes here, I've had to sing the National Anthem; ask questions (in Spanish, claro ) about what activity was written by another student on a Post-It note affixed to my forehead; and throw and catch a ball to shout out conjugated verb forms. Doing these things is helpful, usually (with the firm exception of singing the National Anthem), but still not fun. However, my preferred method of learning--reading or doing exercises quietly to myself--is obviously not the way to learn a language. So I participate without grimacing (again, the Anthem is t...

Yesterday, we went to Ikea to prepare for our impending move. A few months ago, Andrew broke our coffee table, which, like all our furniture, belongs to our landlord. It was a hideous glass-and-metal contraption, the wide top of it a single sheet of glass, the bottom layer a large sheet of mirror. Though we'd piled books on it without really considering the danger, it finally gave way under Andrew's socked feet. The glass cracked loudly in two, scaring both of us. We put the ruined table by the curb, admittedly happily for the decreased clutter in the room. However, Andrew wrote to the landlord explaining what happened, and we promised we'd buy another coffee table before we moved out. According to the hours on the Ikea website, and the hours printed on Ikea's front door, Ikea is open every day, including Sunday and holidays, with the exception of one or two specific festivals. However, yesterday, Ikea chose to be closed. We don't know why. A few other people trickl...

It’s sunny today. This usually isn’t remarkable in Spain—but after the past four gloomy days, it is. At the beginning of the week, it began raining. Then it rained harder. Thunderstorms—big ones, the really threatening kind that led us to unplug appliances—came and went. There were downpours, sheets of water, rivulets at curbs and on sidewalks. We got caught in the rain the night we saw our new apartment, taking refuge under the lip of a building but still getting splashed and wet. People in Spain are not used to such weather; there’s much stunned running, few umbrellas at hand. Spain itself is ill-equipped for it. Metro lines shut down; telephone and internet service was disrupted. In the course of one day—Tuesday—Spain got 30% as much rain as it gets in an entire year. The towels I unwisely hung on the line during a lull on Monday stayed soaked until just this afternoon. Accustomed to constant sunshine, I felt my energy slip, my spirits sag. I love gloomy fall weather but perhaps thi...

We lost the apartment we wanted. It was an attic space, with high ceilings crossed with wooden beams, lots of light, and use of the large roof terrace, whose entrance was across from our own apartment’s door. It was pricy, but we wanted it. And the landlord wanted us. But when Andrew told him we might be leaving Barcelona after eight months, rather than the one-year lease the landlord wanted, the landlord stopped returning our emails and we found the apartment re-posted online. However, the loss was meant to be, because yesterday our apartment search yielded two fabulous apartments that led to several hours of agonized debate over which one we wanted most. The first, in Eixample, we loved immediately. Unbelievably high ceilings, old, interesting moldings, beautiful mosaic floors, and a large, private terrace—a terrace that shares an interior courtyard with La Pedrera, one of the most famous Gaudi buildings in the city. Both the living room and bedroom have tall, large-windowed French d...

Until this weekend, neither Andrew nor I had ever been to Germany—never seen a German city, never even had a layover at a German airport. We’d tried to go in the past, but we’d always been thwarted by scheduling problems or other obstacles. So when Andrew was invited to the wedding of a friend of his from school, we were excited to finally set foot in this as-yet, for us, unexplored country. When Andrew and I arrived at the Munich airport on Friday afternoon, we were immediately struck by the utter lack of chaos—as well as noise. The airport was bright, new-looking, and clean, and no one was talking. People left the plane quietly; families and other travelers walked through the airport corridors with their bags, quietly; we all gathered at baggage claim, quietly, watching the extremely quiet conveyor belts carry the luggage by. We ran into more quietness later, as we headed to Herrsching, an hour outside of Munich, in our rental car with three other people we know from Barcelona who we...

Last night, Andrew and I went up to the MNAC (the palatial museum on top of Montjuic, just steps from our apartment) for one of the last “Open Doors” nights of the season. A few times each summer, MNAC stays open until midnight and offers free admission along with wine, cava, beer, tapas, and live music on the plaza in front. Last night a New Orleans-style jazz band was performing—an odd but festive backdrop to the spectacular view of the Font Magica and Barcelona at our feet. They sang “The Saints Come Marching In” in English. Inside, young, hip-looking Barcelonins wandered around the galleries. Andrew and I walked through the rooms with Catalonian art from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. So much of the style from that time is distinctive: firmly outlined figures; lots of black, gold, ash-green, and gray; a general aura of hardness or defiance among the street scenes and portraits. Much of it is strange but compelling, like Barcelona itself. I always like museums at...

I’m back in Barcelona, back at my desk, ready for fall in Spain. It will be an exciting time: soon we’ll have a new apartment; soon I'll be back in Spanish class; we have several exciting trips planned; and we have a few visitors lined up as well. In the meantime, there’s jet lag to get over. My trip yesterday couldn’t have been easier: Pittsburgh—Philadelphia—Barcelona. I’ve never flown directly from the US to Barcelona; it made the trip incredibly fast. Even better, the flight was sparsely booked, so after takeoff I moved to a new seat—actually, three empty seats in a row, providing a business-class-type flat “bed.” It was hard to sleep since the flight left at 5:45pm, but at least I felt rested and uncramped when we landed. That said, the strange hours of the flight—when we landed in Barcelona, it wasn’t so far past my regular bedtime in the US—are making me feel particularly slothlike now. To stay awake yesterday, I went across the street to the Caixa Forum for a café con lech...

Letters written to me from a pen pal--a soldier in Operation Desert Storm--when I was in fourth grade. Stacks of letters from grade-school friends I haven't seen or talked to in years that were written to me when I spent summers in Fairport. Promotional materials I sent away for concerning the Pillsbury Doughboy, worry dolls, stamp collecting, Cabbage Patch Kids, New Kids on the Block. Congratulatory cards on my acceptance to college; Governor's School; graduate school. Birthday cards for my 20th, my 21st, and many more. Postcards from people whose last names I couldn't remember. All of these, as well as stacks of mail from family and friends, have been stored in shoeboxes in the attic for years--twenty, approximately. Tonight, a swift triage whittled the letters and cards down to one large boot-box that can be slid easily under my bed. Ancient history, all of it; some well worth saving, most not. I can't come home without feeling compelled to do at least a bit of excav...

In the next few weeks, Andrew and I will move to a new apartment in Barcelona. We haven't yet found a place, but now that the landlords and brokers are back in the city after their extended August vacations, Andrew has started visiting some possible new homes. It's exciting to think about moving--a new place to call our own--and it's always nice to get to know a new part of the city. We know a lot about Barcelona now, and have a good idea of where we'll be happy. It will be fun to apartment-hunt together when I return next week--a perfect way to see the hidden parts of people's Barcelona lives, taking place beyond the etched faces of the buildings. When Andrew moved to Barcelona last August, finding an apartment was a different story. Neither of us knew the city, and Andrew didn't yet know what the neighborhood around his school was like. And we felt rushed to get settled; we were staying in hotels and spending hours in the EasyInternet cafe, looking at apartmen...

One of the best things about being back in the U.S. is that everything is so much cheaper. Barcelona isn't a particularly expensive city, but the euro/dollar discrepancy means prices are just a bit higher than they should be. Here, though, there's Target and Gabe's, which means I can pretty much shop whenever I want to and not feel too guilty. And I don't even have to do any mental conversions to figure out how much things cost in dollars. Everything's already in dollars. Then there's Lynn's, a (very) local bar/restaurant where I had dinner last night. Unlike other local places, where heads turn whenever a non-local (or a non-regular) walks in, Lynn's was pleasingly dismissive of our small family group; everyone's eyes were on the baseball game, not us. It was 25-cent wing night, but even on a non-wing night, the prices are ridiculously low: the four of us each had a dozen wings; we ordered three pints of beer and one iced tea; and we shared a gigant...

When you live in a place not many people have been, it can be challenging to find the perfect story or detail to illustrate what your life—or life, in general—there is like. “How’s Barcelona? What’s it like there?” I’ve been asked these questions countless times since I’ve been back in the U.S., and I always answer in the general—“It’s great; it’s a beautiful city.” These are hardly evocative or satisfying responses. Providing more detail—about, say, the weird architecture, the extremely late hours for eating meals, or the fact that many people don’t speak Spanish but Catalan—gives a better sense of the city but not necessarily a vivid mental image. But I’ve learned something from hearing Mom and Dad tell people about their visit to Barcelona: the perfect way to grab attention is to describe the jamon . Jamon iberico —Iberian ham—is a regional specialty, ridiculously expensive and ubiquitous in Barcelona and beyond. It’s basically a type of cured ham, expensive because of the elaborate...

Though Barcelona is now one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe, it wasn’t always this way. Before the 1992 summer Olympics, which the city used as an excuse for a complete transformation, it wasn’t so sought after; the beautiful architecture was still there, and the sea, and La Rambla with all its sights and sparkle, but it wasn’t a place you’d necessarily want to visit. The industrial city hadn’t really found its footing in the modern world. Thanks to the influx of money that came from winning the Olympic bid, however, the local Barcelona government was able to revitalize the city’s entire infrastructure and economy. The revitalization was all-inclusive, transforming not only the area around the Olympic buildings but also the airport, train stations, city center, and harbor. Barcelona had won the hosting over cities including Paris and Amsterdam, and the 1992 Games proved to be remarkable. For the first time in thirty years, no countries boycotted or were banned from t...

I never paid much attention to the Coal Queen pageant. When I was in high school, the Coal Queen pageant lacked the excitement of, say, the run for Homecoming Queen; it was just another pageant, held in a town nearby. I’m sure, however, that I marched with my clarinet (the most hideous of instruments) in the parade for the King Coal Festival—if indeed our marching band was involved. If there was a King Coal parade, I’m sure our band was there. Notably, there are former Queens and Queen-hopefuls in the family. One aunt was a contestant in the Coal Queen pageant in 1971. Another aunt was the Scottdale Centennial Queen in the mid-1970s. And Molly herself was Queen: Homecoming Queen. (But she’ll almost certainly deny it.) Little did I know how big a deal the Coal Queen pageant actually is to other girls in other towns. This weekend, we went to a screening of a new documentary called The Bituminous Coal Queens of Pennsylvania , directed by David Hunt and distributed through a new Netflix fi...

The Boqueria market is one of my favorite things about Barcelona. It's the craziest, fullest, most interesting market I've ever seen, with aisle after aisle of vegetables, fruits, meats, fish, breads, candies, and more. Much is unrecognizable; there are lots of exotic fruits, including one with spiky skins and black-speckled flesh inside. The fish booths are indescribable: piles of shellfish of every shape and size; gigantic fish lined up in rows, their beady eyes staring at the crowds; lobsters, crabs, and all sorts of tentacled creatures moving their claws and antennae idly. In the meat stalls, lambs' heads--eyes still intact--nestle up to livers, sausages, and many other things I avoid scrutinizing too closely. I've never actually bought anything at the Boqueria, other than an occasional fruit drink, gelato, or snack, but I have dreams of putting together elaborate meals made solely from Boqueria riches. One of these days. The Boqueria is on my mind today for a reaso...

Being between worlds is creepy. Home but not home; among my things, but my things still in boxes; a few weeks to relax, but a plane ticket and passport ready for action. Andrew's back in Barcelona, in the desolate city that Barcelona becomes in late August; most people are still on vacation, so the streets, metro, and even his office are empty. He said it's cooler now, and rainy, which is much different from the Barcelona we left two weeks ago. He's alone in our apartment, and the whole image--of the empty city and the apartment, which, like any other home, always feels a bit ghostlike when it's been closed up for a length of time--makes me shudder a little. We're between seasons, and there's a nervy first-day-of-school feeling in the air, even though, for me, the only school starting up again will be my Spanish classes when I return to Spain. And we're between stages in our Barcelona life, Andrew's work and my travel-craziness winding down, with our no...

I've been in Connellsville for two days, and already an important item has been crossed off my "To Do" list: Go to Gabe's. Obviously, this was a priorty upon arriving in PA. On Saturday, I went to the Greensburg Gabe's; sadly, however, I found only two things: a Theory skirt and a pair of Blue Cult jeans. Both were good deals, but far from the breathtaking Gabe's bonanza that, now and then, befalls us all. Hopes are high for the Uniontown Gabe's in the next few days. Shopping with a luggage limit is difficult, to say the least. I need to stock up: on shoes, on beauty products, on household goods we can't find (or can't afford, oddly) in Spain. But how can I pack a set of towels in an already-full suitcase? How can I bring back picture frames without shattering the glass? If or when I buy new boots for fall, I'll need to fit them in alongside the boots I already have here, which I haven't yet moved over to Spain. The high cost of shipping th...

Our two weeks in Jacksonville have come to a close, and we were both sad to see them end. Andrew flew back to Spain on Saturday, while I have a few more weeks in the States, in Connellsville. We had a lovely vacation in Florida. We took a few trips to the beach, and saw a baseball game in Tampa; we had lots of nice meals out, and cooked a few times at home. And we spent lots of time just relaxing, reading, and watching TV. It was strange to come back, to see the abundance of products in the grocery store and other quintessentially American sights, and, now, to be back in Connellsville among the boxes I left here when I moved to Spain in April. It's a transient period, but an exciting one. For now, I'm among familiar things--touching base before heading back to Spain, and happily getting ready for whatever new places and experiences are in store for us in the months ahead.

(I’m about to write a post that, if I weren’t me, would make me hate me. Nonetheless, I’ll proceed.) I am tired. July has called my wanderlust bluff. You want to travel? July sneered. Fine—let’s see you travel. I went to Paris for three days; London for two days; Krakow for five days; and Rome for three days. That’s four countries, not counting Spain, where I’m based, or the U.S., where I am right now. Counting those, July has seen me in six countries, maneuvering in four different currencies and saying “hello” and “thank-you” in five different languages (six, if you count Catalan). The day I returned to Barcelona from Krakow, I had three different currencies in my wallet: euro, zloty, and pound. Buying a pack of gum at the airport proved to be an awkward juggling of coins. Writing this, I see that it’s a bit insane. Now, I’ve skipped town again—but this time, back to the United States. It’s my first trip home since coming to Barcelona, and I’m undeniably excited to be here. For the n...

In Philadelphia, when we finally arrived, there was an exorbitantly long wait for our bags to come through into baggage claim. Everyone was already travel-weary, and everyone had tight connections to make; yet there we were, waiting together as a group once again, all of us looking like zombies. Andrew and I stood by a cart trolley, one of those where you pay a few dollars in order to get a metal cart to pile your luggage on. The trolley had long since been empty of carts, and Andrew and I and many others idled near the empty rails. Nonetheless, an exhausted man walked wearily up to the trolley and inserted three dollar bills into the slots, just as the instructions stated: “1. Insert money.” When he moved on to the next instruction, however—“2. Remove cart”—he waited, puzzled, seemingly confused at why no cart had appeared. Andrew and I watched him curiously. Did he think a small inflatable cart would pop out from the change slot? The man eventually realized his mistake, and, disguste...

This weekend, my flight from Barcelona to Jacksonville was thirty hours late. For sixteen of those hours, I sat on the filthy floor of the Barcelona airport among thousands of other stranded, angry passengers and their thousands of hulking suitcases in the unairconditioned check-in area of the airport. On Friday, Andrew and I sent Mom and Dad off to the airport for their early-morning flight back to the United States; a few hours later, we went to the airport to catch our own afternoon flight to Philadelphia, where we’d connect to Jacksonville. When we arrived, we walked into a mob scene. The Barcelona airport often has long, chaotic lines at its check-in counters, but this was a new kind of chaos. Even stranger, there were no airline employees at any of the check-in desks, and on the departures board, we saw that every single flight was marked as delayed. “Is everyone on strike or something?” Andrew joked, marveling at the ghost-town-like expanse of counters. Indeed, we found out quic...