Skipping Town

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...