Barcelona by la Playa

Barcelona

Barcelona, the air is warming almost tropical. The rhythm of the city is flowing with a movement of alternative Catalan speaking in the air. We arrive at our hostel, called Kabul, placed strategically on one corner of Plaza Real. It is as if a party was constantly happening here each night. With music playing, pool table by the fooze ball and an photography art show on the a walls. On the walls a map of Europe’s famous hostels is on the heard wall and says “Sleep with someone famous…”
We have a dorm room with two guys from Argentina. I went to Sagria Famillia, which is Gaudi, the most famous architect from Barcelona. This master piece of a church which started in the late 1800s, has in fact been under construction for more than 100 years.

Gaudi was an eccentric artist architect who had rheumatism as a child, so he spent much of his time in nature and developed his imagination, studying the way caves made stalagmites. He would later apply the geometric shapes of nature into his architecture. For his most famous exhibition was surely the Sagrada Famillia, which has been in the process of being made for the past 100 years. It is planned to be finished by 2026.

I found the geometric shapes the collumns that were shaped like tree trunks curling into the air. I also visited Parc Ouen, which was a park overlooking the city which was financed to be built by Gaudi, by a rich fellow named when. This area is overlooking the expanse of Barcelona, and where the mountains and Mediterranean surround the city in the distance.

My father, I and a Girl named Meghan from San Fran, met in the Kabul Hostel and walked to El parque de Montjuïc, which took a couple of hours. From here you could see the whole city, and there were various canons from the Franco times, atop a castle we mounted. We took the metro from there and went to the bull fighting ring, which is about to be transformed into a mal, since Bull Fighting has been officially eliminated from Barcelona and all of Catalonia, as it is viewed as cruel in this region. The people of Barcelona have had a long history of autonomous survival, and hence the city has this alternative feel, when you walk down the streets of Plaza Catalonia across from the Soviet style looking architecture building, and see a girl with a half shaved half dread locked head, wearing 5 inched military boots with holes inside of the rubber.

http://w3.bcn.cat/XMLServeis/XMLHomeLinkPl/0,4022,290652295_303652261_2,00.html

The Catalan people who live in this region, are not Spanish, as one might generalize. They speak a language which is rooted in the region, and a mixture of French and Spanish, but have worked hard to maintain their identity and sovereignty, amongst political and social years of suppression by various rulers in Spain. Francisco Franco, was a brutal dictator during for 40 years in the country, he would actually have people killed if they spoke Catalan. I visited the Santa Anna Church, which was Gaudi’s favorite church, where he’d visit every day to find peace. It was also a church where the sides of the entrance are littered with bullets, in which Catalan or people who were against the Franco regime were massacred.

I check out the beach today, where I’ve heard there is 13 km of it, which is be lovely. I’ve been staying at a history youth hostel called Kabul in Barcelona, which is right on Plaza Real, underneath a Jazz Flamenco club. It is a constant party here, with beer flowing on the beer pong tables, and breakfast and dinner included as well. My father and I have been in a room with four people, than just the two of us, and today, we were set up to sleep in a room with 24 people, but we decided against it, since we’ve heard it can get pretty loud in there. Of to Beirut tonight, we’ll have a stop over in Milan and than Egpt for a bit as we wait to go to Lebanon...