Lost Phones and Cultural Enlightenment

Sounds like some crazy stuff is going down back in B Town. It's been a while since I've gotten my blog on, but there's not that much to update on from overseas. I guess the most ridiculous story from the past two weeks has to do with me allegedly pretending to be from Spain and that I didn't know any English while talking to some American girl named Hannah at a club. When I woke up in the morning, Dothage had a text from my phone, which Hannah had somehow obtained. Either she stole it, or I gave it to her; either option is equally possible. Anyway, I called her up (in English) and asked if I could get my phone back. She agreed, but when I called her to get it, she didn't answer... for four days. Maybe she was just pissed to find out that I was actually American, or maybe she's just crazy. Anyway, ZK and I are at a club one night, and we thought it was hilarious to go up to groups of girls and ask them if they like music (his idea). We go up to a random group and ask them how they feel about music, and it turns out that these girls are Hannah's roommates. They were also of the thinking that Hannah was kind of crazy and, in the end, one of her roommates returned my phone to me the next day, 4 days after it had disappeared. I can only imagine that between the whole only speaking Spanish thing and the whole "do you like music?" thing, these girls have to think that I'm clinically insane.

That's not all we did last weekend, though. We also went to a place called Bar Marselles. It's the oldest bar in Barcelona, and one that serves absinthe. Some of the people that used to frequent Bar Marselles included Earnest Hemingway, Antoni Gaudi, Salvador Dali, and Pablo Picasso... which would explain a lot about cubism and the moderniste architecture movement. The absinthe tasted like liquified black licorice, which I found nasty, but Dothage loved. Also, it doesn't actually do anything and, contrary to what it seems like in Euro Trip, there is no talking green fairy. This was a cool spot, but my favorite part of last weekend could probably have been heavily influenced by the things that went on in Bar Marselles. I am talking about one of Gaudi's masterpieces, Parc Guell. Antoni Gaudi was an architect who was famous for the moderniste movement of architecture, wherein everything he designed looked like it came from a fairy tale or a hallucination. It was widely believed that Gaudi took a lot of drugs when designing buildings and parks, and one look at Google images will make you see why. The architecture at Parc Guell was unbelievable. But the thing that was best about it was the very top. Parc Guell is situated at the back end of Barcelona, on a mountain overlooking the city to the Mediterranean. At the very top of the park is a large stone cross that you can climb to and look out over the city. It was, without a doubt, the coolest place I've ever been. The view of the entire city was breathtaking. As soon as I can get an adapter to put my memory card in my comp, I'll put up pictures.

This weekend, our program had a study trip for all the students to a town called Tarrogonna, which was the ancient Roman capital of the Hispanic provinces. At one point in time, it was the second largest city in the world, behind only Rome itself. Now, it's pretty much a sleepy suburb of Barcelona. The weekend was really interesting, and pretty fun as well. We were each with our own Spanish class, so I wasn't with Dothage or ZK really until the evenings, but I have a solid Spanish class so it was fun. We saw a lot of medieval Gothic Cathedrals (awesome), some castles, some ancient Roman walls, an ancient amphitheater, a huge monastery, took a tour of the Torres Vineyards, etc. etc. It was a very informative and interesting weekend. It's just amazing that there are things still standing here that were built literally thousands of years ago. The history here is just incredible. So much has happened on this land over the years, it's hard to even imagine. Really puts into perspective how young America is (don't interpret that as a bad thing... USA is still, and forever will be, the greatest country on Earth. I tried to start a USA chant in the bar the other night, but it didn't catch on. I miss the frat.).

Hope all is well at school. Heard ATO got the boot, hopefully nothing bad happens to us. Vito, I'm looking forward to whatever ridiculous story you respond to this post with. Miss all you guys, and Dothage says "fuck all you hoes, get a grip".

Long live Drew Brees.

The Madness Continues

Vito, I'm glad to hear that things are going well at the house. I knew you wouldn't disappoint. I think we'd be doing you proud over here, too. Where do I begin?

Our classes haven't really fully started yet, but we've had some intensive Spanish classes this week, so my Spanish has gotten a lot better. I'm starting to adjust to living here, getting a little bit more on their schedule (still getting used to that) and learning how things go here. I think I discovered the reason that America is the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, too. We do everything fast and efficiency is the most important thing to us. Here, they do things just to do them. Take moving walkways, for instance: we use them to walk faster, whereas they simply stand there and ride. It's a way more relaxed culture. Even Becker would seem like he was in a rush here all the time.

I've seen a lot more of the city in the last week. The old town is unbelievable. The Cathedral and Barri Gotic are really cool, and all the architecture all over the city is so different than in America. La Rambla is the most interesting street in the world. There are a ton of street performers doing some pretty weird things. Living statues, invisible men, break dancers... it's crazy (and sketchy as all hell at night). We also went to a hedge maze and got way lost there. Yesterday, we went to Parc Montjuic, where there is a lot of stuff from the '92 Olympics and a badass old castle with a ton of cannons and stuff. The food is a little weird sometimes, but then again so is frat food. And there are no preservatives or anything, so it is all fresher and healthier than Mick's meatloaf. On the whole, the food is really good.

Since we've only had Spanish classes this week, we went out a lot. The money situation here is the biggest adjustment (besides their sleep schedule). Everything is expensive in Euros, which makes it even more expensive in dollars. Going out until six in the morning, when drinks cost like 7-8 euro, can get pricey. But we've found some ways around it. The fist is El Gato Negro. It's a shot bar that serves like 500 different shots. They're crazy as hell... all flaming or have some kind of prop involved, or something (just ask ZK what the Monica Lewinski is). All the shots are 2 Euro, which makes it a good place to get bombed on a budget. The other way to save dough is to go to the grocery store and buy a 2 Euro bottle of wine to drink on the Metro. Since you can't drink out of a wine bottle on the Metro (but you can drink it out of anything else), we resorted to buying big water bottles and pouring the wine in there. Do we look homeless when we're passing bottles around behind a dumpster before we go into a bar? Of course we do. But we're Americans, so nobody says anything.

Last night, we went to the FC Barcelona - Sevilla FC futbol match. It was un-freaking-believable. Camp Nou, Barca's stadium, is the largest in Europe, and like 4th largest in the world or something. It holds 99,000 people seated. Like I said, unbelievable. Barca won 4-0, the place was the loudest place I've ever been (except for the UC when the Hawks knocked the Canucks out of the playoffs last year on Patrick Kane's hat trick). They're crazy about Barca here... "mes que un club" (more than a club). It is everywhere you go. Barca is literally like the best team in the world, too. They won every league they play in last year - 6 trophies. It's like winning the grand slam in tennis or golf, except there are 6 trophies instead of 4. Anyway, I'm posting a video from right after Barca scored their first goal. ZK lost his mind in excitement, tripped over the seats in front of us, and faceplanted in the next row. As if all the Spaniards there didn't already hate us drunk American college students watching their team as if we know what's up. Thanks a lot, ZK.

Peace out homies, keep up livin the good life in the greatest bid week of all time.

PS - The best thing about living here is that nobody even knows who Peyton Manning is.

Spanish Rap

I've been wondering what the best Spanish rap is, and I think I've got my answer. Violadores del Verso... the Verse Violators. Check out some of their stuff on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBF0EY9RZ1o&NR=1&feature=fvwp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uYOlj51dgQ

Bienvenidos a Barcelona

Que tal amigos? So it's our third day here in Barca, and the last three days have been unreal. The trip began on Swiss International Airlines flight 9. There were like six IU kids on the flight, which had free booze (yes, free booze), on demand movies in your seat (check out Zombieland, it's hilarious), FREE TETRIS (I was Trissin' hard), and some dece meals. This got the party started early, about 30,000 feet above the Atlantic. After about an hour or so, though, it was just cramped and we realized we had seven hours left, which sucked. We got into Zurich late, and almost missed our flight to Barcelona, but they held it for us and we got in without any problems.

So far in Barca, we've been getting settled in pretty much. Dothboy Fresh and I live in a homestay with our senor, Jaume Reguant. He's a cool guy... cooks twice a day for us and does our laundry twice a week. It's pretty hard so far to find our way around the city, so we've been taking a lot of cabs, which is a real good way to lose all your loot. Fortunately, we know how to get to classes, and a lot of good bars and stuff are within walking distance of our apartment.

Now to get down to business. What have we been doing at night? The first night we got here, we were told by all the other IU kids that are here to meet up with them at Murphy's Irish Pub. Doth and I googled it, and no such place exists in Barcelona. So after about twenty minutes of looking for this place online and not being able to talk to anyone cause we had no phones, we decided to just get in a cab and hope the driver knew it. He knew the place we were talking about, but it is NOT called Murphy's. It's called the George Ryan, and for a little while we had no idea if we were in the right bar or if we were just two Americans looking to get beaten up and robbed. All the other yanks were in the back, and we found them and had a great night. This old Spanish guy kept on coming up to us, absolutely obliterated, and like touching the girls' faces and singing to them in Spanish. Huge time creeper. I had been wondering for a long time what the Spanish beer is, like their equivalent to Budweiser, and I got my answer on Thursday. It's San Miguel, and if the most interesting man in the world knew about it, he'd never touch a bottle of Dos Equis again. A lot of people had class in the morning, so we just went home when the bar closed at like 2 or 3 or something. I don't really know, I have no concept of time over the last few days.

Thursday at Murphy's was a cute little preview of what last night would be. Last night was epic. We first went out to dinner at a little Mexican place around the corner from our apartment. Good food, good margaritas. This is where the night got interesting. We thought it wouldn't take that long, so I told ZK to meet us at the bar we were going to half an hour after we left for dinner (his senora cooked for him so he didn't eat with us). After we ate, we walked to the bar. It's called La Bolsa, which is Spanish for Stock Exchange. There are stock tickers above the bar, and they display the prices of drinks. The prices change based on demand, so if I ordered five shots of vodka, the price of vodka would go up. So you buy whatever is cheapest at the time, which leads to drinking a lot of different types of alcohol and getting really drunk for relatively cheap. Long story short, there was a lot of singing and dancing at La Bolsa, where they really like to play 80's music and show reruns of Walker Texas Ranger on TV. The Spanish bartenders were crazy hot... one of them looked exactly like Sloane from Entourage. So we hung out by the bar and hit on them in broken Spanish all night. Tipping isn't customary here, and we gave them a 1 euro tip at the end of the night, and they gave us like ten free shots. They loved us. Sloane told me she had two kids (at least I think that's what she told me), to which I replied "lo no creo, eres demasiado bonita para ser madre". This means "I don't believe that, you're too beautiful to be a mother." My Spanish must have been working in high gear, cause she then turned around and showed us her tramp stamp, and then I called her my novia, or sweetheart.

After the bar closed at like three, we went to this club called Razzmatazz. It was completely insane. Five floors of pure grindfest, fist pumping, and bass. I can't even really tell you what happened there, I don't remember. I somehow ended up in a cab home by myself, which is like the one thing they tell you not to do, go anywhere alone at night. Whatever. When the cab pulled up, somehow Dothage and our roommate Charlie were just strolling up to the door with some hot grub... que delicioso. We mealed, snoozed, went to orientation, snoozed again, and that brings me here. Sorry for the novel of a blog post, just a lot of stuff to talk about. The next ones will be shorter. Adios por ahora, amigos.