Catalunya!

Our travels in Europe have come to a mid-way point now, and we are in Berlin. Before we report on this fabulous city, we would like to have one more entry on Barcelona.

When visiting Barcelona, we were not necessarily visiting Spain, but Catalunya. To visitors the people of Barcelona speak Spanish, but to each other they speak Catalan, their native language. While I couldn’t understand what was being said on many local TV programs, I could tell they were definitely not speaking in Spanish.

We spent several days visiting and appreciating the sites this town had to offer. We loved Miro Museum and Museum of Comtemporary Art, Barcelona (MACBA). We stopped in to enjoy the local art galleries. Our favorite new art, however, was the graffiti painted on the many public walls throughout the city. It’s possibly the best mural/graffiti art we’ve seen anywhere in the world. Instead of making it a crime to paint in public, Barcelona offers artists public walls for artistic expression. How progressive, and as a result, the paintings offer insightful, thoughtful, and fun images throughout the city.

The local food consisted of a rich variation of fruit, vegetables, meat, cheese and, of course, an amazing selection of fish. To satisfy the sweet tooth, bakeries offered delicious pastries and croissants to go along with a cup of rich espresso.

During our stay, our initial naive and trivial awareness of the rich traditions of Catalunya grew day by day as we learned more about the history, traditions and culture that make up the strong Catalunya culture.

Our apartment in the Les Corts neighborhood was within walking distance of the Camp Nou Stadium. One evening, I made the last minute decision to take in a football game. It was a friendly match commemorating the retirement of Stoytchkov, the national hero of Bulgaria and a local hero to the people of Barcelona. A crowd of about fifteen thousand came out to say thanks and so-long to this great player. From 1991 to 1994 Stoytchkov played a leading role in bringing FC Barcelona to victory, claiming the Spanish Football League championship for a full 4 years. This was a dream for Catalunya and as a result the people of Barcelona will never forget Stoytchkov.

During the Franco era, the language of Catalan was prohibited. In defiance, the Catalunyans held classes in their native language at the FC Barcelona clubhouse. In thanks for their role in keeping the local culture intact, the football club continues to be well supported by both local football fans and those who don’t follow the game. The FC Barcelona team represents far more than football to the Catalunyan culture and carries with it political undertones.

Perhaps it is too forward for me to say “we weren’t in Spain” but it is certain that much of the cultural we experienced in Barcelona was Catalunya.

Spanish Rhythm

This is our first experience with the Spanish rhythm of living. I had read about Siesta in the guidebooks, but, wasn’t familiar with the details. Compared to Amsterdam, few people here speak fluent English, and it is hard for us to strike a conversation with them and get information. After observing the locals for a day, I asked the owner of Hostal Hill, a Japanese man from my hometown of Kyoto, about the inner workings of Siesta. Even after this detailed explanation in my native language, I still don’t have a full understanding of it.

According to the hotel owner, Spanish don’t necessarily take a nap during these few hours in the afternoon, but rather take their time eating a late lunch, and chatting with friends and neighbors before going back to work until around 6 or 7pm. Typically, they eat their last, small meal around 9:00pm before retiring for the evening. The Japanese hotel owner felt that this eating schedule wasn’t very healthy according to up-to-date nutritional knowledge.

Sunday morning, 2AM. The excitement of Saturday night is far from over. So many people were still on the streets. A family with a young girl, about 4-years-old, was enjoying their night out. The girl was wide-awake running around the sidewalk. As travelers here, we need to adjust to their rhythm.

We moved to an apartment near Estadi Camp Nou, the home of FC Barcelona. There are two different church bells that we can hear at this spot. Like any church in Europe, they let us know the time of day. Between these two bells, there is a lag of three to four minutes. I am warming up to this neighborhood with this lag, that I hear every hour. I would imagine, however, that there are no such lags in Switzerland where we plan to visit about a month from now.

Right across an alley from this apartment, construction of a building is going on. They start working around 8AM and, needless to say, we don’t need to set an alarm clock. Around 10AM, the noise quiets down for about a half an hour. During Siesta between 1PM and 4PM or so, nobody is at the construction site. The end of a day comes after a couple of hours after Siesta. When would this building be completed? In any case, I would say this is the pace of life for the people of this city. By the way, we also heard that there is no Siesta for the employees of American multinational corporations who have offices here.

The sun is definitely of the Mediterranean, really bright. We will spend next ten days in this city, hopefully in the sunshine.

Easy Entry

We arrived at Barcelona in the early evening on the 22nd of May, a delay of one day in our plans. We felt the difference in the air immediately. Higher humidity and, of course, warmer than Amsterdam. But the breeze in the evening was still a bit chilly for us.

We flew from Amsterdam on Easy Jet, a discount airline that serves the EU nations. They offer the simplest services and sell tickets only at their airport counters and on the web. Arriving in Barcelona meant we were entering Spain, but, to our amazement there were no customs checks, not our luggage or our passports. When we entered the Netherlands, at least they gave us a commemorative stamp on our passport. This time, there wasn’t even an opportunity for such stamp to prove that we actually arrived in Spain.

Perhaps this is no surprise to those who travel around Europe often, but it was an eye-opener to us, as we had not flown in Europe for several years. Just two months ago, Spain experienced a terrorist bombing in Madrid, so the easy-going nature of the airport security surprised us. It might be explained simply by the fact that our flight connected two EU nations, and that might be the actual reason. Or, is it because the new president withdrew the Spanish troops from Iraq and therefore there are fewer concerns? Still, we can’t help but wonder about it.

It was even a bit of a shock to realize that they are not checking incoming foreigners at the airport, only two months after the horrible incident in Madrid. Perhaps they do background checking on all passengers traveling inside the EU. The only times we actually showed our passports to anybody was at the check-in counter and the gate to the airline’s staff, not the government officials.

It seems that the friendly, open borders are an ideal relationship between closely located nations. Europe is definitely evolving. The way Holland and Spain view and handle "National Security" is completely different from that of the United States. That much is certain.

The fears that are marketed by the governments and the media of America and Japan manifest in the logistics at airports, including domestic flights. American citizens take off their belts and shoes, turn on their laptops and PDAs, and prove that they are not terrorists. They mostly keep quiet in doing so, but sometimes they do so proudly, probably out of their loyalties to the commander in chief.

So I must ask again, what are Spanish not afraid of?