Ashley Fetters • Spain
Some people say you should measure your life in love.
But, to be fair, most of those people are cast members in the musical “Rent.” So instead, I tend to measure my life in iTunes playlists.
The week I landed in Spain, I started a playlist that I dubbed “Arrival: Fall 2010.” It was the “sequel,” if you will, to a different mix I made at the end of August called “Departure,” which was comprised of the ten or so songs I couldn’t stop listening to in my last weeks at home. When I started it, I figured this Barcelona megamix would be a fun way to compare and contrast the “here” with the “there.”
The first few additions were just funky tracks I heard in the nightclubs and songs I listened to on the beach. But as the semester wore on, I kept adding more and more music, and it grew into a soundtrack of sorts – a musical scrapbook of the best and worst and loneliest and craziest moments of my Barcelona experience.
Today, as I flip through that same playlist in the International Departures terminal, I’m drained in every way possible. My suitcase is lighter than when I came; the number of belongings that were lost, stolen or destroyed along the way is a jarring one. My phone contract has expired, my bank account is gasping its last raspy death rattle and even my underwear supply has been depleted to alarmingly low levels. How that last part happened, I’m not entirely sure, but one thing’s clear: It’s time to go home. Four months of round-the-clock thrills have finally come to their exhausting, exhilarating end, and now it’s time for me to go home to a quiet Minnesota Christmas with evergreen trees, snowdrifts and Cade’s first viewing of A Christmas Story.
That “Arrival” playlist, though – that bizarre collection ranging from Bizet’s “Carmen” to Bon Iver to Ke$ha – is still pumping through my earbuds, reminding me that I can’t close up shop quite yet.
Like any worthwhile compilation album, this soundtrack of mine deserves a section of thank-yous. And not just a lame one, but rather a huge sappy one complete with love notes and words of gratitude to everyone involved in the making-of. So here it is – the liner notes to what’s now a 31-song magnum opus, detailing a tumultuous, carnal, surprising and ultimately stranger-than-fiction stint in Barcelona.
Many, many thanks to…
… Mumford & Sons and Rihanna; for being right about everything.
… my family, for supporting me in every way even from halfway across the world; for always reminding me where I come from, and for keeping a straight face (or at least trying to) when sometimes I forget.
… the Spanish-English translation feature on wordreference.com; for being my ever-present help in trouble every class lecture at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
… the “jazziest” 4-man entourage a girl could ask for; for introducing me to my inner frat star, picking up my slack in the domesticity department, and always making this awkward, clumsy, high-maintenance kid feel like part of the A-team.
… Hostelbookers.com and Ryanair (yes, even you, you fickle, janky, undesired stepchild of an airline); for forcing me to learn how to get creative under pressure, and for facilitating some of the most eye-opening adventures this young life has ever seen.
… the Alpha Phi Beta Chapter; for stationing friendly faces and snuggle buddies almost everywhere I traveled.
… John Mayer, Coldplay and Dave Matthews; and to the peculiar but wonderful 6-foot body pillow in each of the Melon District beds; for getting me through the night in the bleakest, most sterile white shoebox single room in the world.
… Skype, D502, and Cacaolat hot chocolate powder, for making me feel at home at the times when home felt the furthest away.
… the kitchen at E3 and Sala Razzmatazz; for sending me back to America with thousands of great memories I’ll only half-remember.
… nigella seeds, ginger cubes, 2-liter water bottles for a Euro and the 24-hour churro stand down the street; for helping me wake up in the morning feeling a little less like P. Diddy.
… sunglasses, espresso, scarves and L’Oreal Dream Mousse concealer; for helping me hide the evidence in the event that I needed to be taken seriously.
… Salvador Dalí, Francisco de Goya and Mario Testino; to the ass-naked beachgoers at Port Olímpico; to the Nova Icária women’s locker room, and – last but not least – to single dormitory living; for helping me discover that bare is beautiful, and that we could all use a little more time in our birthday suits.
… El Clásico; to the whole of Barcelona celebrating on the streets after a 5-0 victory over Real Madrid; to the determined kidnappers who sabotaged my homework, brought beer to the study lounge and then whisked me away to the city center, and to the 6’4″ guy in an FCB jersey who carried me princess-style across La Rambla de Catalunya in the midst of all the chaos; for regaling me with a 21st birthday celebration that was pretty much better than everyone else’s, ever.
… the third- and fourth-grade English classes at Escola Pau Romeva; for making my Mondays and Wednesdays the best parts of my week, and for reminding me that learning is a lifelong and generally hilarious process.
… Razz-ma-CASB — you rage-tastic bunch of geeks and overachievers — for teaching me how to bro, how to Dougie, how to shady bounce and how to “F my S,” if you will; and in the meantime, also teaching me how to suck every last drop of the marrow out of life (occasionally with a salt-and-lime chaser).
And last but not least, a huge thank-you to the Study Abroad office at Northwestern – for what I can now describe with a smile as “not spoiling any of the surprises.”
From the bottom of my heart, I mean it: Thanks, guys. I couldn’t have made it through without you.
Today is the third Tuesday of November. As I write this, I’m in a steamy kitchen being serenaded by aromas of mashed potatoes, dressing and gravy, and every so often, I offer up a halfhearted “Need any help?” from my perch at the table. Things are about where they should be, according to my calendar — except this time we’re not nestled into my childhood home, and it’s not my grandmother, or my aunts, or my mother in her flowered apron who’s whipping up festive concoctions over a hot ancient stove.
Rather, it’s my friend James. He’s wearing flip-flops and a Brown University Soccer T-shirt, bumbling around noisily in a spare, modern utility kitchen I share with ten other students from eight different countries, and we’re both about 4,000 miles from our respective homes.
This week, James and three of our friends and I have been scrambling to find easy versions of all the seasonal recipes; we’ve never cooked any of this stuff by ourselves before. Due to our dwindling budgets and our low levels of culinary expertise, we’ve had to make sacrifices, and I think we all miss our mothers more than we’d like to admit at the moment. It doesn’t help that certain commodities like cranberry sauce, yams and pies of any sort just don’t seem to exist in this country — and thanks to scheduling conflicts, the five of us will be feasting on Wednesday rather than Thursday. In short, it’s shaping up to be something less than your traditional Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving.
There’s one traditional aspect, though, that I’m determined to hang onto. At every Fetters Thanksgiving, for as long as I can remember, we’ve done something that’s always meant a lot to me: Each family member compiles an “I am thankful for” list and shares it aloud at the dinner table.
Here in Spain, where the general populace will go to work as usual on Thursday and supermarkets won’t offer whole turkeys until Christmas, it’s become easy to get cranky. While our families are at home basking in the all-American glow of holiday togetherness, we’ll be spending an orphaned Thanksgiving Day trudging through final papers and projects in a foreign language. At times like these, that “I am thankful for” list seems to shorten miserably. But even here, there’s an infinite number of things to be thankful for — so, on this unorthodox Barcelona Thanksgiving, here’s a list of five reasons I’m giving thanks. Estoy agradecida de…
Alberto, my feisty Mallorcan neighbor. Most of the real gems of colloquial Spanish I’ve learned in Barcelona have come from eating meals with Alberto in our kitchen — not to mention some of the fondest memories. Last night, I learned “pompous jerk” and “cross-eyed” while we watched Andy Roddick play tennis on TV; a few weeks ago I learned, between giggles, how to say “blacked out” when he was recounting his weekend back home on the island. As I’m writing this, he’s just poked his head in, sniffed suspiciously, and asked whether he could come see what this peculiar dish called “stuffing” looks like when it’s finished.
Skype. I recently Skyped with my chubby, awesome, now 5-month-old nephew Cade. He gazed at me for a few seconds, cooed a little, then started wailing until his grandma put him safely back down on his snuggle blanket on the floor. Probably my quickest video chat date ever. Even so, I spent the rest of the day absolutely giddy.
Vodafone (affectionately known as “Voda-fail”). To be fair, we all hate Vodafone. The Vodafone store recently made our (half-joking) list of “Top Five Places In Barcelona That Someone Should Surreptitiously Set Fire To In The Night.” However — thanks to this janky telecommunications network and the cheap device they’ve given me to use as a phone, I’ve been living clean, sober and Crackberry-free for three months now. I didn’t realize how far downward my addiction had spiraled. But now, for once, my life isn’t taking place from Facebook notification to Facebook notification, and my e-mail account can stay at home now without a babysitter. A little live-action face time here and there is kind of nice, too. The real world is friendlier than I remembered.
Paul It’s the quirky little bocadillo shop near our program headquarters that’s fostered a biweekly lunchtime tradition and spawned a verb in both Spanish and English. (Paulear, meaning “to Paul,” or alternately, “to feast on baguette sandwiches so tender and buttery it’ll make your toes curl.” For example: “Hey, are we Pauling again today after CASB?” “Yeah, let’s do it. Paulemos.”) Ego-bruisingly, my friends and I were were recently dismayed to find that our favorite quaint hole-in-the-wall joint is actually a chain found all across Europe. Nevertheless, in the future when I think back on my experience in Barcelona, scattered throughout some of my fondest memories will be the cups of Paul coffee that got me through (and let’s be honest, to) class every Monday morning and the sandwiches I almost spit out mid-laughter during lunch.
The third-graders at La Escola Pau Romeva. Two days every week, I help teach English to eight- and nine-year-olds at a primary school near the FC Barcelona stadium. Two days every week, I laugh all the way home on the metro thinking about all my little Pau’s and Núria’s and their hilarious first baby steps into that giant breach we call a language barrier. So maybe they sometimes mistakenly answer the question “How are you today” with “I am nine years old,” and maybe they all kept a wary distance for a few days after I explained that Americans eat (and generally enjoy) something horrifying called “pumpkin pie” on Thanksgiving, but I’ve found few things more endearing in this city than the bizarre, hodgepodge conversations my students patch together every week with their limited English skills. For instance: “Have you got a boyfriend?” one boy named Xavi asked me recently, in his crisp, adorable Briton English.
“No,” I replied, smiling.
“Oh,” he said. “Umm… I like corn!”
This morning, I walked into a Spanish hair salon and tried to tell a hairdresser I only wanted a trim. I walked out sporting what I’m sure I will one day ruefully refer to as my “language barrier” haircut. Like any good American CosmoGirl would be, I was (and am) a little dismayed.
…OK. That’s an understatement. Let’s be real — I left the salon completely traumatized. Not because I’m one of those girls who routinely cries in the hair stylist’s chair, but rather because my weird Euro-trendy hairstyle represents a new, scary kind of failure on my part: Today, I experienced my first total communication breakdown.
Language and communication have always been my “thing.” For example: Just seven weeks ago, I sat behind a copy-editing desk at a magazine in Rochester, Minnesota, obnoxiously picking apart other writers’ grammar. I think I clucked my tongue and audibly sighed at every comma splice.
Another example: On my flight over to Spain, I wholly devoured a book called Eats, Shoots and Leaves. It’s the only guide to English punctuation that’s ever topped the New York Times Best Seller list, and I found a punctuation error in it. I may have only managed to nail down one language in my lifetime, but damned be he who tells me I didn’t nail it down hard.
This morning at the salon, though, I tried to express to my red-haired, lip-ringed hairdresser Lorena that I only wanted the ends cleaned up; that I was growing my hair out, and wanted to keep the length and still be able to put it up in a ponytail. But when I opened my mouth to tell her all these things, I realized my vocabulary on the subject of hair care consisted only of pantomimes and nervous giggles. In what unit of Spanish class does one learn the terminology for “split ends,” or “layers”? How about “No thank you, I would rather not have my hair teased to stack up in the back like that,” or “Be careful not to thin out my bangs too much, I have a cowlick right there”? I had all the right words to tell Lorena anything she wanted to know about the overthrow of Salvador Allende, or about the traditional textile crafts of the Peruvian mountain regions, but when it came to having the right words for how to get a decent haircut, all these years of classroom Spanish studies were failing me.
I sat there in Lorena’s swivel chair and continued to fumble along in search of the right words, finding none of them. Lorena watched me with a frozen expression of sympathy until I finally fell silent, defeated. She hesitated for a moment, then wordlessly began cutting my hair.
As recently as August I was actively building a career out of how artfully I communicated, how authoritatively I wielded my arsenal of ten-point vocabulary words. In English, language would spin out of me like this golden thread, and when I wove my words together elegantly enough, the result was no ordinary tapestry but a magic carpet. I pitied those poor souls on the other side of the SAT 790 whose verbal prowess wasn’t as potent as mine.
Today, though, I stand on the opposite end of that spectrum, humbled, with my shorn hair like a Samson-esque testament to my fall from linguistic grace. Here in Spain, 4,000 miles from my native language, I’m a pauper, not a prince. I’m entirely at the mercy of those kind Iberian citizens patient enough to help me as I stumble through this big scary world of real-life Spanish. When I open my mouth now, it’s my grammar that needs a patronizing helping hand. Here, I’m just another foreigner with a puzzling haircut. However, if there’s a moral to the story, it’s this: Speaking Spanish is a territory I haven’t quite conquered yet. But I’m working to turn that around. And like any worthwhile conquest, it’s not going to come without a few unflattering battle scars.
Three nights ago, I had an encounter with God. Like most things, He’s a lot cooler in Europe.
I grew up in church, so I spent a lot of summers at church camp. Once when I was about 12, a cheerleader-y camp counselor told me she sometimes began her prayers with “Dear Dad.” Referring to her Heavenly Father as “Dad,” she said, helped her feel like God was close by; like He was there putting an arm around her when she needed Him.
“Like my real dad,” she quipped, smiling.
Like her real dad? I thought. A nice sentiment, but… wasn’t God a bigger deal than one’s real dad? To me, that seemed completely incongruous. My dad was a formidable man in his own right, but he didn’t even know how to use our toaster. Surely God – the Alpha and Omega – was more impressive than that.
But as the years passed, this idea of God as a cuddly, affectionate, best-buddy deity kept showing up. I had one Bible study mentor who described the Bible as a “love letter written to me and signed by God,” and our congregation sang songs in church about how great it was that we could be “undignified” in the presence of God and He would still love us anyway. Why was the universal Creator suddenly something like a family member, or a friend, or some kind of loyal, trusty companion? Was God having an identity crisis?
Then, one Sunday, the crisis was abruptly over. I heard a pastor explain that the problem with God was really a problem with America. Many Americans, he said, struggle with the idea of a sovereign, kingly God because we, as a nation, reject on principle the notion of absolute sovereignty. “We elect our president; we help make our own laws,” he announced. “So it’s difficult for Americans to resist acting like we get some say in His plan.”
A democracy, by definition, strives to put the power in the hands of the people, not of the elite few or the “chosen one.” As Americans, we like fairness. We dislike the idea of divine right. Nobody’s innate superiority or anointed bloodline counts in our country, no sir. When we elect our highest official, we want a man of the people, “one of our own” – so it only makes sense that we want our God, too, to be an everyman.
The Spanish, by contrast, are no strangers to absolute authority. Spain has a long, bloody history of monarchy (Isabella and Ferdinand, remember them?), not to mention harrowing memories of Francisco Franco’s violent 40-year dictatorship in its all-too-recent past. These are people who have trembled at the wrath of the powerful and know it’s not to be taken lightly.
When I went to a Sunday night mass at the 700-year-old gothic basilica known as the Santa María del Mar, there were hundreds of people in this incense-scented behemoth of a cathedral. But as the still, clear voice of the cantor wafted out from the east end, even the toddlers in the pews were silent. Red votive candles flickered solemnly, and the air seemed to hang heavy in a pregnant pause. The whole scene confirmed what I’d begun to suspect on my church-hopping escapade through Italy a few years ago: the people in this European congregation, people who knew all too well the whims and the horrors of absolute sovereignty, were in the presence of an entirely different, more serious and imposing God than I knew at home.
This God was not our buddy, or our motivational life coach, or our kitchen-challenged dad. This God was commanding, a God of capital letters and hushed voices. The Creator of the heavens and the Earth. The giver of life and breath. This God didn’t modestly deflect the reverence and splendor of the gigantic spectacle of human planning constructed in His name; rather, these marble pillars and dome ceilings were His home and it was our privilege to be in it. European God, it seemed, was so much more impressive than American God.
In Leviticus 25, God calls upon believers to “Fear your God, because I am the Lord your God.” I’ve seen the evidence to suggest that “fear” is taken a little more literally here in post-Franco Spain than where I live in comfortable, non-threatening Minnesota. Throughout the ages, bloody tyrannical rule hasn’t done anyone much good, and I doubt God Himself likes it very much. But in its own way, the rule of an iron fist in Europe has handed God back the credit He deserves.
There’s a lot to be said for picking up local jargon when you’re abroad. As a traveler, sometimes the list of vocabulary words you picked up along the way is just as good as an itinerary of the lessons you learned, or the adventures you stumbled into. Or the obstacles you overcame.
For example, the only Chinese I retained after my trip to Shanghai were the two expressions for “no MSG please” and “fiber supplement.” But that’s a story for another day. Or for, you know, never.
I’ve been here 21 days now — let’s take a look at some of the crucial terminology I’ve picked up in my first three weeks in Spain. I’ll leave the humiliating lost-in-translation blunder stories up to you and your imagination.
“Ampolla” — blister. In Barcelona, I have been doing more walking on a daily basis than I’ve ever done in my life. I walk everywhere, and it wasn’t until I took a closer look at my fourth toe and found a blister under a blister that I decided to swallow my pride and get myself to the farmácia. Appetizingly, I asked the pharmacist for a bandage to wrap a “skin bubble.”
“Leche solar” — sunblock. I recently joined a gym. Yes, I’m very proud of myself. Unfortunately, however, this gym is next to the beach. So sometimes I aim for the gym, and… don’t quite make it there. “Leche solar” literally translates to “solar milk” – which, in my mind, is some kind of futuristic comic-book invention that the Jetsons put on their breakfast cereal — and it keeps me from getting that epic Mediterranean sunburn every time I go to the, uh… gym.
“Resaca” — hangover. Self-explanatory. There’s a lot of wine here. As college kids who are cooler than me like to say, “Sorry for partying.” Moving on.
“Vale” — OK. Some of the most valuable advice I’ve gotten in Spain is to throw in the occasional “Vale” in informal conversations. Within the first few days of getting to Spain, I found that saying “OK” was a dead giveaway of my foreignness (or even Americanness); every time I said it to a shopkeeper or a waiter, he or she would immediately switch to English. It’s not like I’m here in Spain to pretend I’m Spanish, but it‘s nice to practice speaking the language with locals — so “vale” has turned out to be the most valuable weapon in my linguistic arsenal.
“Pulpo” — 1. octopus. 2. touchy-feely stranger, usually found in nightclubs. Octopus arms, I’ve found, are delicious in paella and other Spanish seafood dishes. Those octopus arms are less welcome, but no less common, in the clubs. And the bars and restaurants. And the metro trains. And the streets in broad daylight, sometimes, too. …Yeah, Barcelona gets a little awkward.
“Caixa” — ATM (in Catalan). The euro is the most painful thing that has ever happened to me. The numbers are all the same as they would be in the United States: milk costs 3, running shoes cost 100. But then my bank statement shows each transaction in bloated, uncomfortable dollar amounts hovering close to 1.3 dollars per euro, and I feel like I’ve been lied to. Every time I have to ask about the location of the nearest “caixa,” a little part of my money-grubbing American soul dies.
Additionally, as a side note, last week I learned how to tell someone to [comical tell-off involving clownfish removed due to a complaint from my mom -- sorry, everyone]. Which is apparently a pretty good insult in Spain.
And, just to do a little bonus follow-up: Can we talk about how Rafael Nadal just won the US Open? The newspaper headlines here on Wednesday read “Golden Boy” and “A legend in the making.” It’s a great win for Spain, and a great win for America, too. Yeah, Lil Wayne and I just high-fived.
On my morning train yesterday, almost every other passenger around me was face-deep in the free Spanish newspaper 20 Minutos. People all around me were sighing, shaking their heads in sad disbelief as they read; the boldface on the front page declared, “Eta announces a ceasefire so vague that nobody is convinced.”
I felt strangely outside of this whole phenomenon. And I don’t really like to be on the outside of things. So, naturally, I ventured into the unfamiliar territory that is Google España and went investigating.
Eta (short for “Euskadi Ta Askatasuna,” or Basque Country and Liberty) is a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group hailing from El País Vasco (the Basque Country) in northwest Spain. Like Catalonia, the Basque Country is vocal about wanting its independence from the rest of Spain. Eta, however, has taken the quest for nationhood to a scary new level, racking up a death toll of more than 820 Spanish nationals over the past four decades.
The story got a lot clearer when I got to my Catalan History and Culture seminar. Toni, my professor, explained that Eta has something of a track record with ceasefires. As recently as 2006, Eta released a detailed, promisingly concrete statement of its intentions to permanently swear off violence and start peaceful negotiations with the Spanish national government. It was, of course, a no-go — on December 30, 2006, Eta bombed a parking garage at Madrid Barajas National Airport. In American terms, an Eta ceasefire is a graver version of a Brett Favre retirement: Sure, you can throw it out there, but nobody’s surprised when it turns out to be an empty promise.
On a brighter note, however, I discovered that the Basque Country is the anthropology geek’s fantasyland. Like the Catalonians, they are separatists by way of language; Basques are ethnically, racially and religiously similar to the rest of Spain, but define their nationhood by a common minority language.
The language of the Basque people, known as Euskadi, is one of etymology’s great unsolved mysteries. Basically, it’s a spooky sort of linguistic anomaly — a “fossil” of the Earth’s ancient languages that doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere with its evolutionary pattern. Euskadi doesn’t sound like or share verb structures with any other language, and it can’t be definitively traced back to any common ancestor tongue anywhere. Nobody knows where or why people started speaking Euskadi; it’s literally known as a “language isolate.” (Yes, I did spend a good 20 minutes gawking at the Euskadi page on Wikipedia. Fascinating stuff — it ranks right up there with some of my other favorite Wikipedia entries, such as the Mark of Cain, beer pong, Lady Gaga, Stockholm syndrome, and the great ape personhood movement.)
What was most alarming, however, was that I’d heard so shockingly little about any of this — the Basque Country, Euskadi, Eta — outside of Spanish class. This has been going on for years now, and I can’t remember ever having heard about it in the news. Doesn’t that seem unnatural? We’re Americans; we’re obsessed with news about terrorism. We eat that stuff up. But here’s a country with a whole 40-year saga of perpetual domestic terrorism behind it, and the average American has barely heard a whisper.
Does that make you feel a little guilty for rolling your eyes when a foreigner is totally bewildered by American football?
…Yeah, me too.
A few years back, there was this really sweet rap song about Minnesota. It was called “Say Shh,” and it was by Atmosphere, an inspiration to white people and Minnesotans everywhere. In “Say Shh,” the rapper Slug rhymed that Minnesota was dope – “if only simply for not what we have, but what we don’t.” It takes a certain kind of thug wisdom to have that kind of insight, you know? He’s right. Sometimes life just needs certain subtractions.
Here’s a quick and dirty inventory of familiar things that don’t seem to exist in Spain. Some of these items are more missed than others.
Cold milk. Whenever I go out to the grocery, it’s alarming to me that I find liter bottles of milk on the shelves rather than in the fridge. After a quick consultation with the information superhighway, I found that they’re placed there because ultrapasteurization, the pasteurization method used in both Spain and France, creates — wait for it — milk that doesn’t need to be refrigerated. Seriously. European milk defies refrigeration. It transcends it. This has challenged my American understanding of the universe in ways I can’t even explain.
Spitting game. Hitting on women, I guess, is an American art. In Spanish nightclubs, a man who finds a woman attractive will simply come over and say to her, “Hello, you’re very pretty. Is that guy your boyfriend? …OK, good. Come dance.” The cranky feminist in me would love to get on a pedestal and talk about how this is personally degrading, but the truth of the matter is, I’m kind of into it. Speaking as someone who’s never really mastered the art of feminine wiles, I like having things spelled out for me. (Please raise your hand if that last sentence made you uncomfortable. If your hand is raised, sorry about that awkward dinner date that’s probably in our past.)
Facewash. Conditioner, too, for that matter. Spanish people apparently just look this good all the time without skincare or haircare help. Magical, or infuriating? I’d go with both.
Corners. Spain, it seems, is post-corners in two senses. First, the traditional street corner seems very uncommon, at least in the area where I live. Where there would be a street corner in Chicago, in Barcelona there’s a flat, obtuse edge, like when you use a pair of scissors to cut the corners off a page. Each intersection is an octagon. And second, the cityscape is punctuated by the influence of Gaudí, who liked using only shapes found in nature. Most of his architecture looks like it’s melting — thus, no corners.
One-piece bathing suits. The only “one-piece” bathing suit you’ll find in Barcelona consists of a bikini minus the top part. The classic Marilyn Monroe look just doesn’t fly on the beach here; belly buttons, it seems, are an essential part of the Mediterranean experience.
Down escalators. You can escape climbing up the stairs, but nobody gets an excuse for not walking down them. Fat, lazy, beloved home country, take note.
Demà és divendres, el quatre de setembre.
This sentence in Catalan translates to “Tomorrow is Friday, the fourth of September,” and if you tell me that isn’t the sexiest declaration of tomorrow’s date you have ever experienced, I will assume you are either mistaken or lying.
Barcelona is located in Catalonia, a northeastern province of Spain. While every native Spaniard can be expected to speak Spanish, Catalonia boasts the additional heritage language of Catalan. It’s a Romance language generally thought to be a crossbreed of mainstream Spanish (known here as Castellano) and French; to my ears, though, Catalan sounds more like Spanish and French with a little bit of Italian and un montón de hot, dripping sex appeal.
Because its usage is limited to a chunk of the world roughly the size of Maryland, Catalonians are vigilant — even arrogantly so — about the use and preservation of Catalan in Barcelona. All the street signs and store names here are printed in Catalan; when I get on the metro train, the electronic screen on the turnstile asks me to “Introduiu títol de viatges, si us plau” (Insert travel ticket, please). Being around Catalan, in an everyday, tripping-my-feet-on-it and feeling-it-breathe-hot-down-my-neck kind of way, has revealed to me why its preservation is so vital to the people of Catalonia. The language itself has become a defining part of this rebel province’s identity, differentiating Catalonia from the rest of Spain and fostering an intimacy that cross-cuts race, age, gender and class.
Catalan is something like a decorated Spanish; a more nuanced, less boldly percussive kind. It has I-X combinations that sound like “sh” and ending G’s that come out like “ch,” subtleties that don’t exist in Castellano. Until now, I’d always thought Spanish was the world’s most wildly attractive language, but apparently I was wrong. The pattering, aromatic sizzles of Catalan are some of the most beautiful human sounds I’ve ever heard.
Yesterday, all the students on our program began taking Catalan lessons. My class is taught by a clever professor named Miquel who has alternately taught classes in Spanish, Catalan and English (during a stint at Oxford), and I can already tell that three times a week, his two-hour classes will be the best part of my day.
This morning, Miquel remarked, in his distinct (and irresistible) British-Spanish accent, that we all looked tired. “Everyone must have been up late last night. I’m sure you were up all night studying Barcelona, yes?” With a twinkle in his eye, he added, “Field study, maybe?”
Everyone struggled to keep a straight face: Less than 12 hours earlier, we had all been gleefully shouting out our first day’s worth of Catalan vocabulary — expressions like “Thursday!” “Fourteen!” and “No, I live quite far from here!” — between fits of giggles at a local bar.
After two days of class, however, we are all able to pronounce the names of the nearby subway stops, as well as talk about the days of the week, the months of the year, numbers up to one hundred, several aspects of our education (“Yes, I began my classes yesterday,” etc.), and, most recently, other people, as we’ve just learned how to use pronouns. I can now say basic things in Catalan like “I bought these apples” (Jo vaig comprar aquestes pomes) and “This is his watch” (Això és el seu rellotge). Little by little, I’m getting closer to being able to say, Catalonia, your language is heaven; thank you for sharing it with me.
A recent poll in the Spanish magazine El Mundo announced that Spain’s most loved personality is tennis player and hometown hero Rafael Nadal. Fresh off of wins at Wimbledon and the French Open this summer, world No. 1 Nadal surpassed the entire World Cup-winning national soccer team and the royal family with an overwhelming 70 percent of the vote.
Bam. If you’ve ever met me, you can probably picture me marking one more tally under “Reasons to never come back to America.”
With the US Open starting this week in New York, it’s a good time to take a closer look at Nadal, whose face has become an icon of the Spanish people (and also graced a wall in my freshman dorm room). He’s far and away my favorite celebrity: Not only does the guy never give up, but he also glows in the dark. If that doesn’t make you a hero, I don’t know what does.
Five Reasons España and I Love Rafael Nadal
5. I first loved Rafael Nadal because he could beat Roger Federer. I started following tennis in the summer of 2004, when we’d just moved into a new house and one of the three TV stations we could get without a cable package was NBC’s coverage of Wimbledon. Even back then, I couldn’t understand why this boring, smarmy ponytailed jerk had to be such a trophy hog. And such a blubbering one, at that: He would win, and then cry, and then win, and then cry. I hated him.
Then, in 2005, along came this scrappy teenager from Mallorca who the invincible Fed Express simply couldn’t figure out. “Nadal’s like the kryptonite that cripples Superman,” one analyst remarked — and just like that, I was sold.
4. He’s sorta nerdy. Watch Nadal warm up and it’s painfully obvious: He’s a dork. He’s got a whole collection of odd, borderline-OCD rituals and superstitions that are less like quirky and more like just weird. Not to mention he seems to always have a wedgie. He’s shy, he wears obnoxious pants (OK, to be fair, those are cool in Spain), and he’s a 24-year-old who lives at home with his parents. Kind of uncool, by American standards. But even so, hand him a tennis racket and whatever’s across the net — be it Roger Federer, a pack of grizzly bears, or cancer — wilts out of sheer intimidation. Guys like Nadal are an inspiration to geeks everywhere.
3. He’s the rare athlete who lets his performance do the talking. In 2009, Nadal suffered his first-ever loss at the French Open; he was bidding for his fifth title in five years when he suffered a shocking fourth-round upset at the hands of one Robin Soderling. Later, it was revealed that the loss was the first sign that his knees were in trouble; he would sit out from defending his Wimbledon title just a month later. Still, after the loss, Nadal said nothing of his injuries, offering the press only a solemn “He did well; he did very, very well.”
One year later, the two met again, this time in the French Open final. It was billed as the grudge match of the year, and Nadal sent a clear message (something distinctly like “Suck it”) when he handed Soderling a resounding straight-sets punishment, 6-4, 6-2, 6-4. The next morning’s headlines read “Nadal avenges loss to Soderling” and “Order restored at the French Open.” But Nadal himself stayed tight-lipped about his “revenge” victory: “I played an extremely tough opponent,” he said. “We played at a high level, and now I’m very happy.”
2. Okay, seriously? I’m impressed with myself that I held out this long. What I love second-most about Rafa can be summed up in three words: Guns and buns. Oh, yes. Nadal is the undisputed master of exercising the right to bare arms. As for the buns part, well… there’s a Google search for that, too. And if that doesn’t convince you, please watch, as I have thousands of times once or twice in the recent past, this Shakira video.
1. I love Rafael Nadal because Lil Wayne says I should. In “Banned From TV,” everyone’s (latest) favorite incarcerated rapper spits a decisive “I go hard like Rafael Nadal” — and he recently wrote this letter to Sports Illustrated about why his homeboy in capri pants is his pick for the US Open this year. No competing with the guy who waxes poetic about tennis from prison, is there? And after all, we all know how I feel about the Lil Wayne vote of confidence: If Lil Wayne endorses it, I’m there.
I’ve been in Barcelona for three days now. I’m three days into the best vacation ever.
There’s a pool on the roof of my building. I’ve taken to wearing sunglasses and sandals every day; I’ve quit eating and started dining. My skin is already bronze with that sun-soaked Mediterranean expat glow (like Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow in “The Talented Mr. Ripley” — if slightly less chiseled). I’ve retired two of my usual three alarm clocks, and I save the remaining one for only the darkest hours of need.
What’s gotten into me? My friend Steve said it best. Yesterday, I asked Steve when he wanted to go food shopping. “What? Food shopping?” he replied. “No. Don’t even bother me with real-life things right now. I’m on vacation.” He shook his head disapprovingly, then we both dozed off again in our lounge chairs by the pool.
Class hasn’t started yet, of course, so we’re enjoying a little more free time now than we will in the coming weeks. But before anyone gets up in arms about how studying abroad isn’t a four-month vacation (hi, Mom), I should explain why, in Barcelona, it kind of is.
I knew something was up when I found out about siesta. Basically, businesses in Barcelona close for a few hours every afternoon to facilitate chilling out, recharging, and having a cortado (a shot of coffee with milk) or a quick nap. There was always something spooky about legitimate working grown-ups endorsing a two-hour city-wide coffee break — but these first three days here brought the shocking truth out at last.
Yes, the people of Barcelona have mastered the art of living on vacation. I couldn’t believe it either. But this city and its social norms, it seems, are built around a lifestyle that Americans only adopt on holiday. Except that no one in America says “on holiday,” ever.
It seems like being fashionable, satisfied and unhurried are just the natural expectations of Catalonian life. Our first night in Barcelona was a Friday night; dinner was served at 8:30 p.m. Waiters came by frequently to make sure our wine glasses were never empty, and we scarcely even thought about leaving the table until nearly eleven. It was after midnight when eight of us hopped into cabs for what we thought would be a furtive late-night excursion to the beach. Not the case — the coastal restaurants and clubs were just starting to fill up, and the beach was full of lovers and groups of friends laughing and wading into the waves. The eight of us enjoyed our first glass of cava by candlelight on the patio of a seaside bar, where in every direction there were beautiful people enjoying dinners even later than ours. Then we went home exhausted, feeling like the uncoolest people in Barcelona for having retired when the night was apparently still so young.
Since then, you could say we’ve all taken the vacation mentality a bit further than the Catalonians do. Over-compensation, I guess. We students have been gallivanting around from charming Gothic plaza to charming Gothic plaza, going out dancing at clubs like the super-trendy Sala Razzmatazz, and occasionally lamenting the fact that Deadmau5 only plays in Ibiza on Wednesdays. (Yes, the middle-class, public-school kid in me is gagging a little.) But just around the corner, life will get a whole lot more difficult when university classes start and I suddenly have a major to work toward. Which is precisely why I’m taking advantage of all this, right here and right now, before it’s time to buckle down and take a lesson from the good people of Barcelona who manage to make a vacation of every free moment and an opportunity out of every working one.
Does it matter yet that I still haven’t bothered to purchase power converters, or a decent cell phone plan? Or groceries, for that matter? Not yet, no. I’ve decided those all those real-person things will become necessary exactly four days from now. One week in. That’s when my real life in Europe will start.
But until then, there’s sunshine to be basked in, sand to be squished between the toes, wine and feasts to be enjoyed, and more glorious Barcelona to be explored. In the meantime, I’m on vacation.
