Barcelona (Bar tha lo na)
We woke up around 11:30 and set out for an Internet cafe to try to organize our day. Rather than walk the five minutes over to the rambla, we thought we’d look for something closer to the hostel. Asking around, we landed on one very dirty, old man who at first, as seems to be the case more often than not when a local doesn’t understand my accent, thought I was asking to buy pot from him.
When I explained, “yo no quiero marijuana. quiero un cybercafé” he understood and took us through a series of small alleys. In such cases, where the threat of being mugged is eminent, Ben and I look at one another and make sure that we’re both “ready” in case something goes down. Ready to grovel on our knees or ready to take out five overmuscled criminals we never bother to make clarify. Finally, we arrived at a real hole in the wall run by a middle aged Arabic man watching some sort of Arabic television news report.
The Internet was cheap, but the ambiance of the café left something to be desired. Most of the time we were there a six and a half foot tall, poor speaker of Spanish and English, black man with half-length dreads that made him look a lot like DL Hughley He was threatening to kill the owner of the Internet café, who apparently had robbed him. Finally, they worked some arrangement out where the accuser got a free half hour of Internet and the promise never to be cheated again.
In the end I’d made a list of places I wanted to see in Barcelona so we got some lunch then decided which to hit when. First we went to the MACBA, a modern art museum located quite close to the Ramblas. That day it featured a perticular artist whose style was to observe daily, mundane occurences at very interesting perspectives, the title being extremely important to the piece. On the first floor we watched a movie that seemed vaguely parallel to the Holocaust, but in a very modern art sort of way:
When we walked in we saw a group of men dressed in tight black leather pants, tight leather jackets with silver bands on their arms, silver shirts and a black and silver mask. Cut to several shots of people in excruciating bondage, being tied in such a way that they’re stuck in extremely uncomfortable positions, not to mention the abrasions from the ropes that by that point had caused profuse bleeding in their wrists and ankles. These images were accompanied by a groan of suffering, and it was revealed that each of the images was inside only one cell in a whole series thereof.
Back to the black and gray soldiers who are marching in step towards a woman in a green dress. She was forcefully taken by the black soldiers and tied to the front of a series of hospital beds that were chained together. Soon to fill each of these hospital beds would be a pair of people of a type that were targeted by NAZIs, first the lame (three people with absurd and horrible contraptions on their legs that enabled them to limp), then the homosexual (two bald men stroking each other’s rediculously long and scraggly beards as they stared in to each other’s eyes), then the Amazon women (a stocky women in a warrior’s uniform and helmet with a bow and arrow). Cut to a shot of a table full of people sitting down to a meal. The table is dense with barbed wire, so each has to be extremely careful how they reach for their glass, fork, knife, etc.
It was at that point that things began to get even weirder. A circus composed of all of the meat and potatoes elements (bearded woman, Siamese twins, midget, strong man, etc). They passed a man dressed in a white suit and a white hat with a yellow piece of cloth hanging out to one side, and convinced him to join their parade as they danced down the street. They take him to a rooftop where the strongman performs a fire breathing show, then set all of their plates of food on fire.
Dinner was followed by a dance in which one of the Siamese twins attempts to seduce their newest member, while teh midget vainly chases her twin in circles. At that point, out of fear of falling asleep, we left.
Outside we watched a crew of teenage, shirtless skateboarders strut their stuff, that is what little stuff they had. The most impressive trick we saw landed was a kickflip; at least they never quit.
That night we went to a bar we’d heard about from Larissa called called LP, a vintage styled bar with cool music and cool people. We found it disappointingly empty at 12 but struck up conversation with two other travelers that were sitting next to us, one with short black hair that looks like Bret from Flight of the Concords, the other of whom had long blond hair. Bret was from London and the beach boy from Edinburgh.
It became apparent from the beginning that Bret was a bit sharp-tongued, always contradicting his friend and having nothing good to say about anything except for Southeast Asia, which, according to both of them, is backpacking mecca. After a while we decided to check out another place, so we four walked around until we were asked directions by two young, cute southern French girls. Turned out we were both looking for the same bar, so we walked together until we settled for an overcrowded, overheated joint close-by.
At a certain point Ben and I could no longer stand the heat and went to look for another place. When we passed by our hostel we gave each other a look of guilty pleasure and the other place turned out to be our room, where we promptly, antisocially passed out.
