Hot and Greasy, Just How I Like 'Em

This morning started with a run up Diagonal, one of the major roads in Barcelona that cuts across the normal grid structure in much the same way that Broadway cuts across Manhattan.

Barcelona

The City that Never Sleeps

It was early, first light removing the shroud of night and the mystery of the prior evening's festivities.  Bleary-eyed twenty-somethings roamed the streets in suits and spandex dresses, the  high heels that had seemed like such a great idea clutched in one hand.  They were far more shocked to see me running than I was to see them.  My favorite quote of the morning was when one of the suit-clad drunkards exclaimed, "Dear God! People are getting up for their morning runs and we're still out for the night.  This is SO COOL."  Rock on, stamina man, rock on.

Anyway, I went on a relatively short run because it's Friday, and Friday is 8:15 AM speaker day, a fact that I fortuitously remembered when I woke up this morning.  So, I scrubbed up, wolfed down breakfast, and prayed that I wouldn't miss the Metro.  With minutes to spare, I burst into the office - which was empty.  Apparently, this was one week when we didn't have a speaker.  JESS FOR THE WIN.

The morning was fairly uneventful, but our lunch time chat was pure gold.  I mentioned the Zombie run that I heard about yesterday.  It's a 5k race with obstacles that's being held in Barcelona for the first time this year.  Some people are zombies, and they chase the humans around.  Humans wear belts with 3 flags on them, representing their three lives, and attempt to "survive" the race.  Those who lose all their lives can still finish the race, but they do not count as survivors.  Pretty crazy, right?  Everyone was very excited about it, and I thought that the whole lab might get in on the race, which would be really fun.  I looked up the details after lunch (http://www.running4runners.com/2012/05/carrera-zombies-madrid-barcelona.html), and discovered that it's being held all throughout Spain in different cities.  The only problem?  It's about 25 euros to participate.  That's a lot of money for 3 miles of self-entertainment.  So it's probably not going to work, but it was funny watching people form allegiances and decide who would survive.  I was unanimously voted a survivor of the apocalypse, which is the best compliment I've received in quite a while.

The afternoon brought my first scientific results: a beautiful NMR readout from one of my sample extractions, read by this magical machine:

Peaks corresponding to lactic acid, the methyl groups of certain amino acids, and numerous other identifiable metabolites spiked at their characteristic frequencies.  Ignasi admitted that he didn't think it would work, since we were using such a crude sample and testing it for such a short period of time.  Basically, I feel like an extraction-and-NMR rockstar.

After such glowing results, Ignasi decided to talk about more serious matters, namely my social life and participation in events central to Catalan culture.  There are numerous summer festivals, including that of La Patum, a pagan festival that has been incorporated into the annual celebration of Corpus Christi and involves large puppets, people dressed as plants, and lots of fire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckQxcQTRs1g
My apologies.  I couldn't find the English version that I watched earlier.  Anyway, I have been given next Friday morning (and possibly next Thursday?) off from work so that I can travel to Berga to witness and fully participate in this spectacle.  Now I just have to figure out which bus to take there.  And whether I'm going to fall asleep in some town square (what Ignasi did as a youth but does not recommend) or find another bus back that I can stumble onto at a godforsaken hour.

The other party is La Nit de Sant Joan, which occurs on June 23rd and involves an all-night party on the beach attended by literally the entire city.

The police arrive at 6 am to kick people out, but beside that anything is fair game.  There're fireworks, bonfires, alcohol, singing, and dancing for hours on end.  And everyone is best friends for one night.  Ignasi has told me that these two events are so important that if I can't figure out plans, he will figure them out for me.  He has sort of extended the offer to have Friday morning off to the rest of the lab in the hopes that someone will take me to La Patum as a sort of Catalan-speaking guardian angel.  We'll see what happens.

After work, Naaman and I decided to skip our beach reading and relaxation and instead seek out the mystical churros at a restaurant called La Granja.

La Granja is a small café just off Las Ramblas, with small tables and fantastic decorations on the walls.  

These include old newspapers showing Einstein 

to a wall full of a postcard mosaic which nearly matches the one in my room at home, so of couse I was instantly drawn to it.  I'm such a snail mail nerd.

The key to La Granja is that it doesn't actually sell churros.  For that, you go down the street to a special churro shop,

One paper cone filled with 7 churros is just 1 euro!  Obviously we went back for a second cone, when the first one instantly disappeared.

and then come back to La Granja to sit down and buy the thick hot chocolate that you dunk the churros in.  It's a very symbiotic relationship, and one that I plan on utilizing on a regular basis.

And finally, it wouldn't be a night out with Naaman if we didn't go for a walk.  We hit up a small market, where we oohed and aahed and I eventually gave in and bought some goat cheese.  Next was a walk to the Magic Fountain show, but on the way we spotted this gem:

And then there was the Magic Fountain show itself, which was full of color and terrifyingly high water pressure.

And finally, Spotted: A very strange Catalan tradition involving poop.  In celebration of Christmas, a Christmas log, or Cagatio,

is also known as a pooping log or a shit log and is a piece of wood that children whack on Christmas eve so that it "poops" out presents.  They also sing to it, in rhythm with their poop-inducing smacks on the log.  Shoutout to Naaman for first alerting me to this tradition.  How odd.  More information here: http://www.barcelonaphotoblog.com/2011/12/what-will-cagatio-bring-for-christmas.html
PS: The guy who runs this blog is so nice!
PPS: There was one of these on top of Montseny, where I hiked last weekend!  Glad I now know what it is, but too bad I didn't whack it (even a pooped-out present is a present).