hanging out with Rafa and Rosemary

Before I arrived at Barcelona Iris was really kind and called up some of her friends for me to hangout at night with. The first night Rosemary and I went out, she showed me the major areas of the city and then we had some falafel. She is a doctor who has finished school and is now going for her license. Here is one of the original city walls, I think this one was built by the romans.

The next night I hung out with Rafa who is a humanities scholar. He told me a ton of history of Barcelona as well as explaining how the culture works. Here is the famous market, hold onto your wallet!

We finally made it to some of Gaudi's work, but I can only tell you about it in person.

Day 1 in Barcelona

I got on a 3 hour bus ride from Tremp to Barcelona, then after a 6 stops on the metro I arrived at the Mambo Tango Hostel. Igor joked around with me for a few minutes, talking all different languages. I at last got to my room (room 1, bed 7), unloaded my bag, paid 8 euro for laundry, and relaxed.

(bottom bunk)

I almost immediately began walking around the city.

See the gondola?

This asshole is pointing towards the states, don't remind me!

Castello

Iris and I drove south for about an hour until we arrived at a lake. We did a quick swim in the chilly water and had some lunch.

If you squint (or big it up), you can see a tiny town on top of the mountain. After lunch we drove up, the road, which made me a bit sick since it was steep, turned every 2 meters, and we were in a tiny european car.  The town was old (obviously), and is famous for being the origin of Franco's personal physician or Franco's predecessor's....

Can you see the eyes?

Iris said something about how Catalunya did not have a flag at one point, when it at last needed a symbol was after a bloody war; someone dipped their hand in blood and dragged four lines, it's gold for the wheat.

We heard of a famous castel in the area, but found this church.

There was a massive man made cave below the church. It had tons of flies and smelled of something I could not identify.

We found the Castello just a little further down the road. It had a massive crumbling tower, one side was easy to climb up on but someone cemented a bunch of broken glass onto it.

A massive storm hit us on the way back down the mountain. My camera was unfortunately dead at the time to capture it.

strange experiences of which I do not have any photos of

Iris and I noticed it was a clear night after dinner, so we walked up the hill away from the light of the town to look at the stars. I kept hearing an animal moving but I didn't say anything to Iris, she was already partially freaked out. The moon began to rise over the mountains, it was huge, bright, amazing, and it made it difficult to see the stars. So we headed back to the house.

As we walked along the road the moon was to my left, as well as a 9 ft wall holding back the earth. I heard something walking, Iris noticed it too, I looked behind us on the road, nothing. It was a one lane dirt road that was now sort of visible in the moonlight. The noises continued, it definitely was not human.

I looked up at the moon, and there was an animal. It was walking right beside us on top of the wall only a few feet from me. Since it was directly infront of the moon it made a perfect silhouette, I could see the animal perfectly, but with no color. It was much larger than a cat, my first guess was a fox, but foxes are terrified of humans. It was over a foot tall, skinny as a cat, with a gigantic tail. It had strange proportions to be a fox, and it was larger. I began to feel fear as I realized this was definitely a wild animal, and one that I was not familiar with.

Iris began walking on my right, putting me between her and the animal. We walked faster, we could see the light of the street lamp in the distance. I looked back up at the wall, the animal was gone. Maybe we were okay.

Then I made the mistake of looking behind, and there 20 ft back was a dark figure trotting behind us at the same pace. Shit. We upped our pace, but did not run, the animal began to catch up, coming with in only a few feet. I am guessing we walked for more than a minute with this animal on our tail. Iris was freaking out, I could feel I was too, at least I am vaccinated for rabies. I could feel the hair stand up on my body as I kept glancing at the light ahead, and back at the animal, planning out what to do when it jumped for one of us.

When we were almost in the light, the animal was close, Iris yelled at it, the animal slowed down, almost confused. We dashed into the light of the street lamp, the animal stopped at the edge of the darkness, paused thinking for a second, then turned around and left.

"We must have photos by the rolls!"

The farmers are harvesting hay right now: collecting it into giant rolls, wrapping them in plastic, and then stacking them. Iris said all week, "Max, we must have photos by the rolls!", so finally we did.

locked in

Well, today was a turning point.

The building I work in has no door handles because it is still under construction, but it does have locks. As humiliating as it is, I got locked in the bathroom with nothing to open the door. At most the room was 3x4ft, and oh yeah, nobody was going to be around until the evening, maybe.

After 20 minutes of various experiments to open the door, it proved to be impossible. So I tried my luck, I waited for someone to come. What a terrible ironic metaphor to my overall situation. I got locked in around 9:30, first I flipped on the iPod and listened to Ira Glass for a while, then some other philosophy podcast, I was thinking hard. Then after a while of this thinking, I realized that my time would be better off exploring a place like Barcelona.

A little after 12, when I finished up thinking and ran out of patients, I kicked open the door. It took about 10 tries, I didn't want to break the door more than I had too. The lock flew across the room when the door flew open, I owe some money to Eulalia.

As terrible (and smelly) as that experience was it got me to take some time to step back and think about what I should really be doing with my time. I was cleaning seed 30+ hours a week alone with not to much to do around town. There was absolutely nothing wrong with what I was doing, simply, it was not what I should be doing with my time here. In fact, I will miss Iris, Eulalia, Juan, and Isis a ton.

I will miss the late night combines just outside my window as well....

And I have to admit the moon is pretty freakin' crazy here.

Well anyways. I'm going to try and get a bus into Barcelona early monday morning. Still have a few things I want to do here, i.e. the observatory.

Today I learned I am sort of in a valley, I did not realize it because it is so incredibly huge. Iris and I drove up the valley, town after town, all the way to the top where Franco built a hydroelectric dam that runs on mountain water. In fact, Franco put a pretty huge investment in electricity, most of the stuff he built is still in use, and there is a lot of it.

You know, the place is gigantic. You can see Iris sitting on the edge!

Complete with a gondola for the tourist, not me! It was not running either.

Things cleared up a bit today.

Saving Seeds Continued

Well, I am still saving seed. Here is my hightech workstation.

This photo I took over my head, I am sitting in that tiny chair. To my right you can see some of the spines and needles of the wheat, the seeds are mostly in the bowl, and the casings are everywhere, including my hair.

I am going to try and take to mourning off tomorrow to let my hands recover. Gloves slow things down.

Eulalia thinks I am loco, I was sitting in the street laughing at this photo after finishing work, I am obviously tired.

The sun lights up the mountain sides in the evening turning them from a beige into a crazy pink.

So many shades of blue.