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.