The apocalypse has come.
I missed National Running Day yesterday.
I didn’t even go for a run. I was
incredibly bummed, until I realized that my run this morning, through the
mountains of Collserola Park, huffing and puffing next to Ignasi, fell within the
“yesterday” of the Pacific Standard Time zone.
PHEW. Crisis averted. Anyway, we dipped up and down mountain paths,
through the hazy morning fog, and even wound our way through a tiny hidden path
that is probably frequented by us and small woodland creatures. And even at 7:30 am, on a route 70% in the
shade, I got a sunburn. If I didn’t, I
would wonder who had taken my place on this grand Spanish adventure.
Work finally involved working on my human samples. With tiny dissection scissors, I snipped tiny
samples of human heart biopsies into even tinier pieces. It felt like the science nerd version of a
bad romantic comedy. But all went well,
and the work will continue tomorrow.
After work, I celebrated Corpus Christi as any good tourist
in Barcelona would: I pushed through large crowds in the gorgeous cloister of
the Barcelona Cathedral to catch a glimpse of its wild geese and dancing egg.
What dancing egg, you might ask? Well,
you know how Spanish men can dance? They’ve
got nothing on the eggs. The eggs dance
for hours on end atop a fountain of water, never falling or breaking, going
with the flow.
But in some strange way,
the dancing egg has come to represent the annual celebration of the body of
Christ that Christians eat and imbibe every week. The fountain is specially decorated with
floods of flowers. It’s incredibly
beautiful, enough to merit sneaking in with shorts that are too short for
cathedral regulations.
The next stop was another tourist detour. Almacenes del Pilar, a store that sells
fabrics and accessories for traditional Spanish costumes. The windows are draped in fabrics and fans,
the inside piled high with cracking, ancient shoeboxes on shelves and rolls of
fabrics leaning haphazardly in corner and on countertops.
It was like a store that your Crazy Aunt Liz
might take you to, if she was a traditional Catalan Sardana dancer, or perhaps
dabbled in Flamenco (for the record, my aunts are fabulous and hilarious in a non-crazy, non-Catalan way).
The store dates back to 1886, and I think that quite a few of the boxes
have been there since opening day.
However, the attitude of the proprietors does not match the happy,
quirky vibe that the rest of the store produces. A dour-faced woman cleared her throat and asked,
“Can I HELP you?” in a voice laced with meaning as I walked in and lifted a
camera. Despite the Time Out sticker of
approval on the doorway, I was not welcome in Almacenes del Pilar, and scooted
out.
And what is the remedy for all the glumness and grumpiness
of life? Food, particularly food
adventures. My wonderful sister,
Caroline, visited Barcelona about a decade ago with her wonderful boyfriend,
Toby. One of their clearest memories in
the city is of a psychedelically-painted juice bar and vegetarian restaurant
called Juicy Jones.
Tucked on a small
side street, nearly at the end, is a tiny little world that revolves around
vegetables and the clean taste of fresh blended juice.
I got the juice of the day: orange, kiwi, and
peaches (the Spanish word is so wonderful: melocotones), and sipped in delight
as I explored the remainder of the street.
Despite all the other juice for sale around the city, I’d say that Juicy
Jones warrants another visit.
On my long wander back, I discovered a bakery with chicken
and almond empanadas (deliciously spicy and topped with a sprinkle of
confectioner’s sugar), an art exhibit that decries the social injustices of
modern society (including a video of a man who juggles one of his teeth using
his tongue),
and finally, my new favorite little park. El Recine de L’Antic Hospital de la Santa
Creu offers a wonderful respite from the city.
Small fountains, cool stone walls, and my favorite purple flower
trees. Gorgeous.
I also stumbled upon the 100th anniversary of
some Barcelona/Catalan encyclopedia that chronicled various strikes, famous
moments, and the like. I wandered into a
small corner shop that turned out to be a large room with rows of wonderful old
photos on the walls and free copies of a magazine (the “Encyclopedia”, as it
turns out) lying on a table. An incredible number of discoveries for one
day.
Spotted: Another festival in Spain, probably the one event
that I would most like to attend, is La Tomatina. Each year in the small Valencian town of
Bunol, thousands of people gather for a gigantic tomato fight in squares,
streets, and anywhere else that people can congregate on the last Wednesday in
August.
The tomato fight commences when
someone in the town square manages to shimmy up a tall greased pole and drop a
ham from the top (I can’t even make this stuff up). And they’re off! The bright red tomatoes
whizz through the air until everybody is stained and dripping with the sweet
summer pulp. There are even official
rules: tomatoes must be squashed before being thrown, only tomatoes can be
thrown, and you can’t rip off each other’s t-shirts.
Fun fact about La Tomatina: The video game company Namco
included a scenario based on La Tomatina in the sixth edition of the Tekken
fighting game.
1 comment:
FYI: its tekken, not trekken
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