“And a Surprising Amount of Diarrhea”
Hej hej, we’re back again folks! I’m sticking by what I wrote about last week; I do intend to keep this blog going, but at a pace that is healthier and more manageable for me. If that means I miss a week, I miss a week. I am beholden to nobody, or at least that’s what I’m trying to be. For 99% of this blog’s existence, I did it solely out of some misplaced obligation that I had to do it. I was beholden to OCD and my own mental processes. I made life harder for myself on purpose and for no reason. But I don’t want to live like that anymore. And if this blog has to take the fall, then so be it.
But I do still enjoy it once in a while, and I do feel like I have unfinished business here (especially with my woefully-neglected Big Europe trip taking up space in my “draft posts” folder). So let’s jump right back in to the most expansive (and expensive) vacation of my life so far. You can read about Nick and I’s time in Madrid and Toledo here, but for now, we’re in Barcelona, baby! Sunny, sandy, sexy, shitty Barcelona. To clarify, I don’t mean that the city was shitty; it was one of my favorite spots on the trip. But our time in Barcelona was exceptionally shit-filled, and I suspect you’ll see why soon. Let’s get cracking.
After Toledo, we took the train to Barcelona. And Barcelona was… chaotic. I’ll get to why, and I think you’ll see as these things start to kind of compound on each other. But Barcelona was also one of my favorite cities from the entire trip! It’s architecture was a bit more… pedestrian? Urban? Modern? than Madrid, meaning that it didn’t have the same density of beautiful classical architecture that Madrid’s city center had. But what Barcelona did have was far, far more unique, in my opinion, than Madrid. You can get classical buildings in any European city. But what Barcelona has is only in Barcelona. I would go back to Barcelona in a heartbeat; I don’t feel the same for Madrid. I think I’ve seen Madrid well enough. But I really, really liked Barcelona.
The above is a picture from the roof of our hostel. We had stayed in hotels in Madrid and Toledo to ease ourselves into this lengthy trip, since we didn’t want to jump immediately into sharing a room with six strangers, which is what a hostel is, basically. Hostels are weird. It’s like dorm life in college, complete with shitty roommates, groups of friends/strangers going out partying until 6am, a constant fear of missing out (or FOMO, as the kids say), and one bunk bed in a room of eight with a single bathroom/shower. But, for all of that, hostels are anywhere from half to a quarter of the cost of a hotel. So it’s worth putting up with weirdos for the money you save. Well… Most of the time.
The first time Nick and I walked into our hostel room, it smelled like body odor and sex. That stank, musky, kind of sweaty smell. You know the one, I’m sure. And in the far corner bed were two teens, obviously naked underneath and blankets pulled up to their necks. Ok, weird, this is basically a public room, anyone can walk in at any time, but whatever. I’ve been that age once. So Nick and I courteously ignore them, and unpack our stuff and get ready to go out to the city. Then the dude in the bed starts talking to us, saying “hi, what’s your name, where are you from,” the usual hostel pleasantries. Also weird, but whatever. Nick and I walk over and talk to him for a while, giving him plenty of opportunities to get the hint but still continuing the conversation, while his poor partner/girlfriend/whoever is silent in the bed next to him, sheet pulled up to her neck. Yeesh. I felt bad for her, that must have been uncomfortable.
His name was Amir, and her name was Kenza (the only thing she said the entire time), and Amir said they had just graduated high school in Morocco, though he was from Dubai, and was going to college in America to study corporate law. This was his fifth time in Barcelona, which is admittedly only a short flight from Casablanca. Huh. Ok, I do have an idea of the kind of kid this guy is now, I guess. Nice enough fellow, if he was going to be our roommate for a bit.
But here’s the thing that made the incident stick out to Nick; Nick is pretty sure that Kenza was a prostitute/sex worker. See, Nick never heard Amir say they had graduated high school together; just that he had graduated. We never saw Kenza again, she never came back to the room, Amir never left and ordered in Uber Eats the entire time. Then a few days later, he was gone. So we have no idea what that was all about, and it was only our first day in this hostel. And it was about to get much, much weirder. Ah, the people you meet on vacation.
The first night in Barcelona, we went out and walked around the city for a while. We walked up and down La Rambla, which is this street that goes through the old center of the city and is loaded with fancy shops and designer clothing and stuff like that. Think Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, or Paris’s Champs-Elysees. It was, frankly, not particularly interesting, though if you walked off the main drag of La Rambla and wandered into the other streets of the old city, it got much more interesting.
But we did see lots of pigeons! At the Placa De Catalunya, kind of the entry point into old town Barcelona, there were hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of pigeons. I, of course, being the bird man, wanted to feed the pigeons. How Could I not? There are too many to ignore. So I got some sunflower seeds from a store nearby, and began to feed them. They swarmed me. These birds know what’s good. They know how to play the game. It was like being mobbed by, well, by birds, I guess? They climbed over each other to get to the seeds in my hand. Eventually, they would fly up into my hands and land on my arms to get the seeds. One pigeon that only had toes on one foot stuck around for a while, and kind of became my friend. I thought that was sweet. I also, in bringing things full circle and becoming the true bird man, offered bird seeds to a little girl nearby so she could also play with the pigeons. She was pretty thrilled about getting attacked by birds. I also gave a whole pigeon to this teenager who wanted a picture of herself with the pigeons for her Instagram or some shit. She asked, basically, “can I have one?” So I handed her some seeds and a pigeon. Nick took a picture of her on her phone, and the deal was complete. I am now the bird man. I give the birds. I command the birds. I am the birds.
Fun fact, not about pigeons; many signs in Barcelona are written in both Spanish and Catalan, another official language of the city. Catalan is a weird bastard child of Spanish and French, which makes sense since Barcelona and that region of Catalonia are basically the gateway between Spain proper and France. So it’s a neat little cultural thing.
Ok back to the pigeons now.
One thing I want to note is how fucking hot it was the entire time of our trip. We were in Europe during the big heat wave of 2023, the one that got temperatures in Italy up past 110 Fahrenheit/43 Celsius (we were actually supposed to be in Italy the days that that happened, but we changed the schedule of the trip and cut it short, so we skipped the worst of the heat, I guess). It was at least 90 degrees F/32 C, sometimes hotter, the entire time were in Madrid, Toledo, Geneva, Prague, and Berlin, with it only cooling down in Barcelona (to a whole 80F/26C!) because of the ocean and then in London (to a wonderful 70F/21C) because it’s London. I mean, I guess the whole world was kind of a heat wave at that point in the summer, so it was to be expected, but damn did I hate it. I hate the heat. That’s why I keep moving further north. And with climate change now starting to get totally out of control, each summer is going to start looking more and more like this. Unless the gulf stream collapses and Europe enters an ice age, in which we won’t have to deal with heat! Just large-scale famine and world price increases and mass starvation. Yay?
After playing with the pigeons, and forcing the LEGO store to let us clean ourselves of bird, we got back to our hostel and then met our second, and much worse, hostel roommate. Nick nicknamed him Plato, after the Greek philosopher, because he certainly looked the part. Hostels are typically for people ages 16 to 35, but this guy was old. Like, scary old. At least 70’s or 80’s. He had a really thin face, kind of that see-through skin, and no hair on the top of his head. He had a ring of white fluff around the back of his skull, and it stuck out at all weird angles. He sort of looked like the grandpa from It Comes at Night. He didn’t seem to speak English, and didn’t talk to anyone, but when we got back to the room, he was sitting in his bed watching YouTube videos. No headphones, just blasting the sound out loud from his iPad. And not just any YouTube videos; Reddit videos. Like people reading/using text-to-speech voices to share best Reddit posts, like “My Top Ten Worst Experiences as Night Hotel Manager,” or “Reddit, what was THE incident at your school?” Stuff like that. But in English, so maybe he was trying to learn English? Innocuous behavior enough, if rude roommate conduct. But he watched them constantly. Get back in the evening? Watching reddit videos. 8am? Wakes up, turns on reddit videos, full volume, no headphones. But that’s fine. We can live with that, he’s just an eccentric old guy. We aren’t in the room much anyway.
Things only got worse from there. But we’ll return to Plato later. For now, let’s move on to our next day in Barcelona. Check out this building. It’s one of the ones I mentioned is so unique to Barcelona; it’s called Casa Batllo, and it’s designed by Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí. Gaudí designed tons and tons of buildings throughout Barcelona, and it’s clear how much of the city’s later construction was influenced by his unique, curved, almost otherworldly designs. There are no other buildings in the world like Gaudí’s. He truly had a style that was completely and utterly unique. It’s the primary reason I would go back to Barcelona, just to find more of these buildings.
We walked around and explored the old city of Barcelona then, finding these cool buildings and poking into random shops and the twisting, medieval streets of the city. There’s a funny story about this ice cream, though, and I don’t have the picture to go along with it, but we got these ice cream bars in the old city and then went and sat in a little square to eat them. I noticed that the church behind us in the square had some pockmarks and chunks of stone missing; pretty common for Europe, they did go through a lot of pretty major wars. I figured, oh, maybe this is left over from the Spanish civil war in the 30’s. The damage was in a straight line, so I figured, “hey, maybe the fascists had a firing squad here and executed some people.” Pretty brutal, but that’s European history. So I looked it up, and boy, I wish I hadn’t. What’s worse than a firing squad? Bombed orphans. Turns out, no, the church wasn’t the site of a firing squad; it was an orphanage that had been bombed by Franco’s forces as they tried to take Barcelona. Over thirty children died, and most of them were fleeing the fighting in Madrid already. Jesus. That put a downer on our ice cream. The Spanish Civil War was brutal. And the fascists won! We gloss over that in history classes, I think, but the end of World War II did not take down all the fascist regimes in Europe. Spain just kind of did their thing. Good thing they’re democratized now, I guess.
After that emotional rollercoaster, we saw the Barcelona Cathedral, which is, you guessed it, another Gothic medieval cathedral. It’s a very cool building, and we did some shopping at the antique market in front of the cathedral, which was cool. The inside is, well, a cathedral. That’s the thing about these beautiful churches; eventually, I just kind of got numb to them and they started to look all the same. This is gonna be the dumbest thing I’ve ever said, but if you’ve seen one gothic medieval cathedral, you’ve kind of seen them all. Not that that stopped Nick and I from seeing all of them anyway; I mean, you have to go to the cathedrals. They’re still incredible works of art and some of pre-modern Europe’s greatest artistic achievements. But. You know. Seeing like seven in a few weeks is a bit overwhelming.
The Cathedral of Barcelona is dedicated to Saint Eulalia, who was a young martyr of the Catholic church and one of the patron saints of Barcelona. I don’t really know much about her, but for whatever reason, she’s associated with geese? So in the Cathedral’s cloister/courtyard, not only do they have a nice fountain, they also have The Thirteen Holy Geese of Santa EulaliaTM. You know I was absolutely just tickled pink by. The Holy Geese! Thirteen Holy Geese! Kept in this church for hundreds of years! What a religion this is.
Following the cathedral (and a trip to a flea market where I bought a truckload of antique pins, including my favorite that says “Penis Cola”), Nick and I finally got to Barcelona’s beach. I mean, this is a beach city; it’s on the ocean, and it’s part o fhte reason we’re here anyway. We had to go there at some point. Nick and I decided to go paddleboarding, where you stand up on the board while you’re out in the ocean. There were two issues with this, one major, one minor. The minor one was that we had to walk smack-dab through the middle of the nude beach to get to the ocean. Imagine this; you’re sunning, naked, with your partner on this very large beach, and then, stomp stomp, here come these two motherfuckers with big-ass paddleboards who block your sun for a good five miuntes as they fiddle with straps and dilly dally about how cold the water will be. Weird. The major probelm was that the ocean was quite choppy, with waves between one and three feet pretty much everywhere. This made it impossible for either Nick nor me to stand up and actually paddle the board (because we have shit balance). Despite this, I tried many times, but all I got was sore nipples from hauling myself out of the water fifty times after I fell.
Swimming after that was considerably more relaxing. I just went out into the water, far enough away where I couldn’t tell who on the beach was nude anymore, and I just floated. Nick thought it was funny to look up and see me floating out there, dozens of feet further than anyone else. I thought it was funny when they were collecting rocks in the sand and naked ladies (and dudes) would walk by without them even noticing, intent as they were on finding nice rocks. Like I said, far more relaxed.
Except when I really, really had to take a shit, and then had, well, explosive diarrhea in the changing room of the paddle board rental shop. That’s fine and all, I got to the toilet, whatever, but after I emptied by bowels, that was when I realized there was no toilet paper. Anywhere in this bathroom. Oh, shit. I need to wipe. I can’t just not wipe my ass after I destroyed that toilet. I looked around, but there was well and truly nothing. I checked the paper towel dispensers. Nothing. I checked my pockets. Nothing. I checked my backpack. And…. Bosch, forgive me for what I must do. And I found a map of the Museo Del Prado in Madrid. I wiped my ass with that.
You know, it isn’t even the first time I’ve used proper paper to wipe myself. I did that once when I worked at Philmont, too, and forgot toilet paper on a hike and used notebook paper instead. Of course, there I really had no choice. Here, it wasn’t until later that I realized there had been a pack of tissues in my backpack the entire time. And I still wiped my ass with the map. Go figure.
But from one shitting story directly to another! The beach was the end of our first full day in Barcelona, and Nick and walked back to our hostel afterwards. We grabbed dinner somewhere on the way, and retired to our hostel room. Except, there was something off about it. A kind of smelly smell, a smelly smell that smells…. smelly. Like shit. Nick goes into the shared bathroom our room has, and finds that, oh no, someone has shit all over the toilet seat and on the floor. Great. Wonderful. Well, someone had a rough night, I guess. Maybe it was all the takeout food Amir was eating. We can use the hallway toilets. But Nick knew right away whole the culprit was; “Plato shit the toilet. It was definitely Plato,” they said. And I knew deep down that they were right. But there was nothing to do about it now besides go to sleep, and hope it gets cleaned tomorrow (it didn’t).
The next day we slept in a bit, despite the smell, and made our leisurely way into the old town of Barcelona to find a paella restaurant that Nick’s girlfriend, Katie, had recommended to us (the picture above is related). We did find it, eventually, and got a shared chicken paella together. Our expectations were very, very high; Katie had talked up this place real good. And you know what? I learned two things from that restaurant. One, that was definitely the best Spanish food we had the entire trip (except maybe Patatas Bravas). Two, neither Nick nor I like paella very much. Don’t get me wrong, it was damn good; but take that all as you will.
After that we had nothing to do until our tour of the Sagrada Familia cathedral in the evening, so Nick and I bummed around the city. We climbed up a weird statue tower, and went to the Barcelona Maritime museum. And boy, we were not at all prepared for the sheer existential terror that we were confronted with in that museum.
The big exhibit of the Barcelona Maritime Museum is a full-scale reconstruction of the 16th century Spanish Navy’s lead flagship. Scattered among exhibits of modern ships and shipping containers and lighthouse glass and paintings of boats is what amounts to a massive, ornate, bedazzled rowboat. This thing is huge, at least a hundred feet of red and gold-gilded ship, covered in ostentatious religious iconography. This is the ship that lead the Pope’s forces to victory in the battle of Lepanto (which Miguel De Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, fought in), a naval conflict which saw the Spanish unexpected triumphant over the Ottoman empire and more or less expelled the Ottomans from the Mediterranean. This ship, or at least what it represents, is kind of a big deal in late-medieval European history. But did you know that it was entirely powered by hundreds of slaves?
The English-language information signs, in no uncertain terms, spelled out directly to Nick an I that this ship was both wind-powered and people-powered, and those people were criminal, slaves, indentured servants, and straight-up anyone the Spanish could force into labor and hold against their will. Chained to seats in the middle of the boat, forced to sit, eat, and sleep in their own waste, these people were forced to row for anywhere from four to eight hours a day in the Mediterranean sun, sometimes for weeks or months on end. It’s said that the stench of these ships was so bad, enemy vessels could smell them for miles away before ever even seeing them. And the Spanish had fleets of these things.
“This is hell,” Nick said. “This is my personal hell. If I die and go to hell, it would be on this ship for all eternity.” It was, indeed, a chilling thought. It’s no wonder that the Spanish empire in the New World was so steeped in brutality; this was just their way of doing things, apparently. Human suffering and carnage was the order of the day. And now you can walk about on a reconstruction of the ship that held it all!
Then we went and saw a hundred-year-old sailboat out on the water and tried to not think about the horrors of the Barcelona Maritime Museum.
After that unexpectedly terrifying museum visit, Nick and I had to make our way up back into the city proper for our tour of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona’s grandest building and modern cathedral. First we passed under the Arc De Triumph of Barcelona, though, and it looks the same as every other Arc De Triumph in every other European city. But this one has bats on it, for some reason.
So, describing the Sagrada Familia is hard. It’s something both Nick and I were very much looking forward to, but neither of us were properly prepared for the beauty and otherworldly qualities of it. I’m not going to try and tell you what it looks like, I’ll let the pictures do that, but even the pictures can’t properly do it justice. This is the kind of place that you really need to see to believe. And it isn’t even finished yet!
The Sagrada Familia, or the “Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família” in full, is a massive, unfinished Catholic church. It was designed by Antoni Gaudi (that guy with the crazy houses from earlier), and construction started in 1882. When it’s finished in (hopefully) 2026, it will be able to host service for 9000 people, will have 18(?) massive towers, and will stand at over 560 feet/170 meters. These are all true things, and are all impressive enough, but none of that tells you why this church is so different or special when compared to any other church, Catholic or otherwise. For that, you really need to see it. I can show you a little bit. But to understand, you need to see it up close. I’ll do my best.
The fact that it is unfinished and its tallest spire is uncompleted does not matter, to be honest. What’s there is astounding already. But what makes it so astounding is how unlike anything else in existence it is. Living in the modern day, it is easy enough to see impossible or perplexing architecture. At my fingertips, I have access to the world’s greatest buildings, and in the video games I play, I can see five impossible buildings before breakfast. But it’s different to be there in person, it’s important to remember what the purpose of this building is and other buildings like it (a church), and most of all, I have genuinely never seen anything else like it. The curve of the towers, the color of the mosaics, the way that geometric shapes collide with natural abstractness in unexpected ways, all of it combines for a building that is so totally alien and out of this world, I couldn’t believe it was “just” a church. But then again, what else could it be? A building like this could have no higher purpose than being a place to gather in community and contemplate the very meaning of existence. Anything else would be failing to live up to its potential.
I think what really does it for me is, 1) the mosaic work, and 2) the contrast with every other cathedral Nick and I had seen. I love mosaics, and appreciate how labor-intensive it is, and realizing that beautiful colors all over the building weren’t just paints but mosaic tiling was a shock I still can’t quite get over. But when you combine that with the fact that Nick and I were getting a bit sick of cathedrals, the contrast couldn’t have been better. At some point, as I’ve said, every cathedral, no matter how beautiful, begins to look the same. Sure, there are specifics of some of them that I can remember; Koln, Germany (not on this trip) has the best facade, Toledo has the best interior. I’d always be happy to see another cathedral, too, even if I’ve already seen six or seven. But you weren’t meant to see more than one or two in your life when they were first built; back in 1300, you were lucky if you saw one cathedral before you died. Only the very wealthy, very pious, or very lucky probably traveled to more than two or three. No one could possibly have imagined that, some day, you’d be able to go on a tour of every major cathedral in Europe. So I get it. Make as many beautiful things for many people as you can, and we know what works and how to do it. Bring the mountain to Muhammad and all that.
But the Sagrada Familia wasn’t built in that world. It was built in the world of trains and steam ships and printed books with photographs of real buildings. SO what do you do when you want to take a design and bring it into the modern world, for modern times? Well, you could do a whole lot worse than what Gaudi did, and make it the most dreamlike, surreal masterpiece of a building I’ve ever seen. Let’s take a look at the inside.
I was immensely glad that I did not look up the inside of the building before I went there. The surprise and wonder of being greeted with a space I could not possibly have expected was wonderful. So I’ll tell you this now: if you also want to see the Sagrada Familia someday, and don’t want to know what it looks like on the inside, click here. That link will skip you past the most impressive interior pictures, so you can read the rest of the post in peace. I’m still going to post these pictures here, though, so if you don’t mind seeing the inside before going there in person, or don’t think you’ll ever actually go see it, feel free to read on ahead! The pictures are pretty great still.
Here there be spoilers! For… a building, I guess. Click here to skip!
Alright, are we done? Seen all the inside pictures? Great. We’re spoiler-free now. Hopefully that link worked out and I didn’t just accidentally stick you in the middle of all the interior pictures. So. Moving on.
I won’t try to describe the inside, with the interplay of the stained glass and the vaulted ceilings and the curve of the stairs and the forms of the stone. My words would be just shadows of the pictures above, which are themselves shadows of the real thing. But I will tell you how it made me feel. Being in that place gave me goosebumps. I didn’t want to leave. For a time, Nick and I just sat and looked. And it was wonderful. And it’s a memory I’ll hold onto forever, I hope.
But wait! There’s more! Shit somehow gets even crazier again on the outside. Behold: Cuboid Jesus!
I’m really going to hell for that last one, aren’t I? But you just can’t make this shit up. The Sagrada Familia is truly one of the most surreal religious structures I have ever seen. But it’s effective! If I was ever going to reconnect with my Catholic upbringing, it would have been in that building. This is a truly modern cathedral. No one is building cathedrals anymore, there isn’t the need/desire to spend that much money and time on Christian religious structures the way there used to be. There might not be any more new true cathedrals build in the history of the world. But this one? If La Sagrada Familia was the last ever cathedral to be built (which I don’t think it was), then maybe that’s ok. This is a place unlike any other, one that I think gets back to the more mystic, spiritual roots of Christianity through its adoption of natural forms, spiritual ascension, and deeply personal symbolism. Gaudi redesigned the Sagrada Familia four times, and each time he made it more personal than before. ANd I think that’s an incredible thing, and makes it all the more accessible to the everyday person. You don’t need to know the meaning behind everything to get the message. This is a holy place. This is a story of pain, and suffering, and one of the greatest human tragedies of all time. But it is also a place, and a story, of glory, and power, and hope.
La Sagrada Familia is, without a doubt, one of the coolest things I saw on my trip. It might be my favorite thing I saw in all of my travels with Nick this summer. I can’t wait to see it again when it’s done.
Here’s some last pictures before we move on:
Plato update: he smells. Upon returning to our hostel after touring the Sagrada Familia, we went and lounged in our room a bit before going to hit the town and party. When we first arrived back, Plato was not there, to our amazement! His scent, however, still lingered. The room smelled of, well, sweat and human feces in that distinct way only soiled pants do. Nick and I decided we wouldn’t spend any more time there than absolutely necessary, but as we were preparing to leave, Plato made another surprise appearance. In the distance, down the halls, we heard the faint sounds of someone moaning in pain. Surely just a drunk college kid. But no, next thing we know, the door to our room bursts open, and one of the hostel staff is half-carrying, half-dragging poor Plato to his bed. Plato’s moaning this whole time, too, like he’s on the verge of tears or in immense pain. The hostel staff drops Plato in his bed, who immediately kind of tangles himself up in a mess of sheets. The staff guy turns to us, shakes his head, and with a brief “sorry, guys,” he leaves. What the fuck was that? Nick and I, not wanting to be in the room with Plato when he fucking dies, left quickly after. We asked the front desk staff for a new room, citing Plato’s stench, but they said they didn’t have any open rooms with two beds together. Fine, that’s fine, we can put up with him a couple more nights. We’ve smelled worse before, and that was at family’s house, so we can deal with this.
But we certainly weren’t going to stick around there any longer than we had to. Barcelona is for parties! And party we were determined to do; we had to go out at like ten or eleven pm, because most bars in Barcelona don’t even open until midnight, and then go to five or six in the morning (if not later). I get that this is partially due to the heat of the summers; it’s easier to party at night when it’s cool. And part of it is due to Spain’s clocks being out of sync with the sun. They should be in a time zone two hours behind, but because of EU regulations, they’re in the same time zone as, say, Warsaw. That’s also why they eat dinner so “late.” Catch the sun and the sahde when you can. But I’ll tell you, as much sense as that all makes, it was inconvenient as hell (for me) to have to start partying at midnight. Back home, I start drinking at seven and am in bed by one. You’re telling me I’m not going to go to bed until four in the morning? Who the fuck are you?
But, regardless, we went to a few bars, some clubs, met up with some rowdy Australians and a random Dutch man, and then were ditched by the Australians at the next club, so Nick and I in turn ditched the Dutch man, but that’s just how these things go. I don’t frankly remember what else happened that night, besides that an actual prostitute (not Kenza) offered me her services, and then Nick and I went back to the hostel around 3am. And that, my friends, was the wrong move.
We got back to our room in the hostel and things were… suspiciously quiet. A room of eight people should have at least some sounds going on, especially in Barcelona at 3am. But we opened the door and found out immediately why; the room absolutely stunk. Not like sex and sweat, or like shit and sweat, but like actual, full-on shat-the-bed shit shit. Nick and I have smelled a shat bed before (not our own, luckily (except that one time…)), and I’ve spent a great deal more time than I care to admit around people who soil themselves daily, so we’re probably more used to the smell than some. Keep that in mind as you consider my actions in the next moments. But there was no doubt about it now. If I had hoped against hope that the smells earlier weren’t Plato’s shit bed, I could no longer deny the truth of the matter. Plato himself was curled on his bed, fast asleep, and the comforter, stained a distinct brown, was piled on the floor next to him. This man shat the bed, pulled of the blanket, and went back to sleep. And I- I slept in my own bed in the same room.
Nick said “fuck this,” went out to the street to call Katie, and slept on a couch in the lobby mezzanine. I stuck it out, for some misguided reason, and eventually managed to fall asleep in the shit room. But my troubles were yet to cease; around 5am, I was woken up by the sounds of something happening. I can only infer what was going on, but from Plato’s bed I heard the most cavernous, thunderous farts I had ever had the displeasure of being present for. Imagine the sound of a train going through a cave, or the howl of a man dying underground. This was accompanied, of course, by an immediate fresh wave of shit-smell. The man did not stir. Plato shat the bed a second time, and didn’t wake up. I went back to sleep.
The next morning we, around 10am, both of us tired and red-eyed, went back to the receptionists and asked for a new room. They dickered with us, saying they weren’t sure they could switch us, and then I said, “Our roommate shat his bed. Several times.” Their faces went white. “He did what?” Why hadn’t I opened with that, I wondered? But it didn’t matter. We got a new 8-person room with two empty beds, free breakfast and a couple of beers for our troubles. At least they did their best.
And that was the end of Plato’s saga. We only had one day left in Barcelona at that point, and dog only knows what they did with poor Plato. We never saw the man again. I can only hope that, whatever his problems were, he got some help. Was he homeless? Was he disabled? Was he sick? Was he just old and weird? I will never know the answer, and no answer short of “he was a trickster spirit fucking with us on purpose” would make me feel better about what occurred in that hostel room. Wherever you are now, Plato, Godspeed to you. Stop shitting the bed.
But we did have one last day in Barcelona, so we had to do something with it! After a very, very very slow morning of coffee and calzones, we went to Antoni Gaudi’s other masterpiece of architecture, Park Guell. Park Guell is a large public garden on the north end of the city, designed originally by Gaudi as a wealthy neighborhood for Barcelona’s leading families, but no one ever moved in so it became a park instead. Which is the best possible outcome for everyone because it’s a place that deserves to be seen. All I can describe it as is Disney World meets Dr. Seuss meets a mosaic-fueled psychedelic trip. Just look at this place.
There isn’t anything exceptional to say about Park Guell that I haven’t already said about Sagrada Familia. The place is beautiful, it’s a curvy modern wonderland, it takes an exceptionally creative approach to even the most mundane aspects of park infrastructure, et cetera et cetera. Don’t let my blasé approach to its description fool you, though; it was perhaps the second coolest thing we did in Barcelona, after the Sagrada Familia and perhaps cleanly tied with the beach itself (I do like the ocean, I suppose). It’s cool and absolutely worth a visit just to see the gardener’s house alone. But after the Sagrada Familia, what more can I say about Gaudi’s architecture?
We saw some cool birds in the park, took some neat pictures and walked around, met a few stray cats that were quite friendly, and chatted for a time with this Canadian traveler Megan (or whatever her name was) who told us about how she was taking seven weeks solo around Europe to follow the F1 races around different countries, or something. And how she was partying every night and making friends with strangers in hostels, and after our disastrous experience with our hostelmates that sure made me feel some kind of way. Not sure what kind of way. But it was in Park Guell so it couldn’t have been too bad!
And that was supposed to be Barcelona! The next morning we had an early train to Geneva, Switzerland, but in a turn of events that will continue to haunt us on this trip, we did not book our train tickets ahead of time and instead assumed (wrongly) that the EUrail pass would be enough to get around on. Spoiler: it was not.
Come that last morning in Barcelona, we got to the train station with plenty of time before our train. We walked up to the lady behind the counter and said “two tickets to Geneva, please.” And she said, with the heartless disdain that only comes from the French and bureaucrats (and she might have been both), “The train is full. Ticket sales closed a week ago. You will have to go somewhere else.” As it happens, that train, although included in the EUrail pass, is so often booked that you cannot even book seats without getting them at least two weeks in advance. We did not know this. THe EUrail app did not tell us. We couldn’t even book tickets through the EUrail app. The only option to go by train was to buy first-class tickets, and at that point it dawned on us that, hmm, going by rail might be more difficult than expected. It was now cheaper to buy two day-of flights from Barcelona to Geneva than it was to buy the first-class tickets. So that’s what we did.
To be honest, I can’t even complain. We got an extra four hours in Barcelona and got to skip the eight-hour train ride between cities. Sure, it cost us about $150 more than the train would if we’d booked it beforehand, but things could have been worse. We got to see the part of Barcelona where they held the Olympics! And ran around inside the big dumb mall they constructed in the corpse of one of the olympic arenas (it had a nice interactive floor though). And we saw the outside of the Barcelona art museum, which was still very cool despite not being able to go inside. We picked up some last neat souvenirs on the steps of the art museum, too, so it all worked out in the end.
The final word on Barcelona, I suppose, is that despite the many, many trials and tribulations (including some I didn’t even mention here!), it was probably my favorite Spanish city of the three we visited, and I think that’s true of Nick, too. It might not be as consistently ritzy and glamorous as Madrid, and it might not have that old-school flair that Toledo specializes in, but it certainly had the most unique architecture, some of the coolest I’ve ever seen, and being on the ocean is such a big plus. Of every city I’ve been to, both Europe and otherwise, Barcelona is one that I would definitely want to revisit. I could see myself bringing my partner or my kids here, down the line. And I can’t say that about all of them!
But we can’t have the final word on Spain as a whole without the memes, can we? Very specially, I grace you now with the good shit from all of Spain. Please enjoy.
Between the bears in Glacier and now this uncomfortable Mario, I seem to have something for men larger than I am.
Speaking of Bears, these inflatable terrors also came in Polar Bear and Paw Patrol varieties.
Hurray for Rainbow Capitalism with the gay-washed McDonald’s:
And don’t think the rest of Spain escapes my blasphemous captions:
Nick collected an album of photos that was just pigeons sitting/shitting on statues, typically statues of holy figures. They might start a “Holy Pigeons” instagram account. I think they should.
I’m just gonna leave this next one here and if you don’t get it, well, God bless you, you sweet summer child. You are too pure. I am not explaining it.
In the cathedral of St. Eulia and her Thirteen Holy GeeseTM, they had these live-streams of the geese in the courtyard. So interspersed throughout this 12th-century cathedral, there were just a ton of televisions that swiped through upcoming church events and news bulletins, interrupted occasionally by the rather-surreal inclusion of the live footage of thirteen domestic geese. The geese didn’t do anything. They’re geese. They sat around and sometimes flapped their wings. You could see them, for free, about twenty meters outside of the main hall. But there they were anyway. I love the absurdity of it, and found it quite funny thing about some well-intentioned priest trying to find ways to update his church for the modern times, only to settle on televisions full of geese from every conceivable angle. I think he’d have a hit if they were on Twitch.
On the beach, all the life guard huts said “Salvament,” but I kept reading them as “Suavemente.” You can imagine how quickly I made this.
But then the time came for our flight and we left Spain! I quite enjoyed Spain, looking back. The food could have been better and it was too hot, but I enjoyed getting to use my very-rusty high school Spanish skills once again and it was exciting to be in cities that are very clearly old. But there is so much of Spain we didn’t get to see, even if I don’t particularly feel the need to go to Madrid again. I think I’ll be back, someday in the far future. It’s got a lot to offer, and they seem to have moved on from their eras of senseless violence and unceasing brutality, so that’s a plus! What can I say; it’s a great vacation spot.
Oh, and one more final thing: please observe the pastries and snacks in this deli counter at a restaurant in the Barcelona airport on our way to Geneva. Guess what major chain restaurant we found these in. You might be surprised. Is it Starbucks? Dunkin Donuts? Pizza Hut? Go on, just guess:
If you guessed McDonald’s, you’re unfortunately right! Nick and I went to a handful of McDonald’s in Spain, mostly because the Spanish restaurants were weirdly bad or expensive (or closed), but we noticed a certain consistency of quality across all of them. They had these crazy dessert options, each one had some sort of weird little cute bakery like this, and there were way more interesting things on the menu than just cheeseburger and McNuggets. Nick and I concluded that McDonald’s in Europe are lightyears ahead of American McDonald’s in terms of options. (Although now, writing this from October in Sweden, I don’t know if I feel the same way anymore. I’ve noticed that McDonald’s burgers in Europe seem to be missing something. They don’t have that delicious, juicy, greasy burger taste that McDonald’s burgers in the U.S. do. They taste cleaner, yes, and are probably “better” for me here, but if I’m going to McDonald’s, I want my burgers to taste like they were cooked in grease that hasn’t been changed since Reagan was president. I just can’t get that in Europe.)
But still. Options. This burger has camembert cheese on it. The Swedish McDonald’s let you add mushrooms. Lightyears ahead.
And with the McDonald’s from the Barcelona airport, that brings us to the end of our time in Spain! It was quite, uh, an explosive time in the cities of Madrid, Toledo, and Barcelona, and we did and saw a ton. Tune in next week for part three more pictures from Sweden, since my dad is coming to visit this week for my birthday! And we’re going to Norway! But we’ll get back to Big Europe eventually; tune in some other time for when Nick and I get to Prague! Will it be here in two weeks? Three? Maybe more? I don’t know, and I don’t really care. It’ll get here when it gets here, and even if I’m breaking my five-year record in regular blog posts, and even if my SEO website ranking takes a hit, well, what do I care? I’m not making a living off of this anyway, and if I’m going to take time out of my busy life to write, then it better damn be fun. So I’ll see you eventually! I promise it’ll happen. Just when I feel like it.
I love these! So glad when you post again. Even though I gotvto hear the live version of your trip. Love you!! ❤️