Cris´s 31st Birthday was 2 days after I arrived and she was kind enough to invite me along on a big ol excursion. I took the Metro to meet her 2 friends, Alvaro and Pep near their house. They picked me up in their silver Peugeot and we headed out to a town on the other side of the mountain to the west where we picked up Jose. Alvaro and Pep were both real nice and interested in getting to know me. They both spoke good english and after trying to communicate in Castellano for a while, English was clearly more efficient. We picked up Jose who had two baguettes sticking out of his backpack and stopped for a coffee in a typical little bar (which I would describe as borderline tacky and serving low quality food and bev) to wait for the rest of the crew. These bars are ubiquitous in Barcelona and it´s rare that I ever see anyone actually eating anything in them, despite the advertised menus. Usually there are an old guy or two sitting at the bar nursing a beer and talking to his bartender pal. As far as I could tell, they only served various arrangements of cured pork on white bread.
Speaking of cured pork (my 3rd favorite topic), there are these fucking pig legs EVERYWHERE in this city: at the crappy supermercado, at the nice supermercado, in bars, at meat shops, and they´re generally around 70€. I would totally buy one and play tennis with it, but there are no tennis courts nearby, except the ones on top of Montjuic in the old olympic village and I don´t know anyone who could afford to buy themselves a pig leg to play against me. Anyway, I appreciate the hoof being attached ´n all. In AMERICA that shit´d be as least leg-like as possible and wrapped in some impenetrable barrier to keep the sneezes and subway hands of people like me from coming too near. Instead the legs and layer of fat and mold (I guess) are right there for the poking. And poke I did!!! Once. THere´s really no reason to do it thrice.
Speaking of cured pork (my 3rd favorite topic), there are these fucking pig legs EVERYWHERE in this city: at the crappy supermercado, at the nice supermercado, in bars, at meat shops, and they´re generally around 70€. I would totally buy one and play tennis with it, but there are no tennis courts nearby, except the ones on top of Montjuic in the old olympic village and I don´t know anyone who could afford to buy themselves a pig leg to play against me. Anyway, I appreciate the hoof being attached ´n all. In AMERICA that shit´d be as least leg-like as possible and wrapped in some impenetrable barrier to keep the sneezes and subway hands of people like me from coming too near. Instead the legs and layer of fat and mold (I guess) are right there for the poking. And poke I did!!! Once. THere´s really no reason to do it thrice.
Alvaro asked me if I was dreaming a lot, as he found he did when he was in an English speaking country and I realized that I´d been sleeping really soundly and having pretty vivid dreams, I guess from all my Spanglishing. When the others arrived at the bar we all introduced ourselves with kisses from all the ladies, and handshakes for the fellas. It´s a lot easier to remember someone´s name when you kiss them. Twice. We got back in the cars and drove up to the vast state park which was situated among sheep farms and a type of oak trees I´d never seen before. We arrived at the ancient house of one of the group´s uncle and aunt where we dropped off the lunch foods.
On the way to the trailhead I saw some nettles and got all excited and went to eat one when a few of the group were all, ¨No!!! That shit stings!¨ I was all, ¨this shit´s fine if you roll it up, see?¨ even though I took a couple stings when picking it. Alvaro and Pep (both biologists) and a couple others called it Urtica, which when pronounced with in Spanish doesn´t sound anything like when I heard it spoken in American. Oh!!! I realized. The name is Urtica, like Urtica Dioica, Latin for Stinging Nettles! THen I saw a bunch of mallow and went to grab some and said, ¨Malva¨and they were all, ¨ÿup!¨ and I realized that all the Latin names I learned are the names that the Spanish use! Finally, some applicable education! I also told Pep that my naturalist teacher was all ¨ Ït´s an extinct language so you can pronounce it however you want¨ and Pep was all, ¨That´s some bullshit¨ and all was well. Now when we go on plant walks I´m gonna tell you plant names in Spanish and you´ll think I´m pretentious, yet correct.
As we hiked along the trail, I got to talking with Pep about plants n stuff and he pointed out strawberry tree, an Arbutus which is related to dogwood or somethin´that I´d read about on Becky Lerner´s blog, but had never seen in real life. IT had some ripe fruit on it and it was pretty tasty! Now I´ve eaten wild foods in 2 countries! Our hike led down to an neolithic multi burial site that had been reconstructed into a little stone slab building with a bunch of rocks strewn around it. We climbed around on it and took some birthday photos then moved on to a spot in the trail where a string was tied leading off up the wooded hill. We followed the string for a ways, ducking and ´schwaking til we got to a huge boulder pile upon which we climed to see the valley below and the mountains in the distance. It was pretty neat. On the hike back to the house I had a nice convo with one of the dude´s who´s name I can´t remember about his travels in India and what it all was like, and I came away from it feeling excited to be going. It was all in Spanish and I understood him perfectly, which was the first time so far on this trip that that had happened.
When we got back to the house we set up the upstairs of the house which functioned as a sort of visitor´s/educational center and overnight house for kids coming on field trips to the park. We ate tons of toasted white bread, delicious squash soup Cris had made, cured meat, and tomatoes. The conversation was mostly in Catalan and I sort of just laughed when they laughed and smiled when they smiled and occasionally someone would explain to me what was going on, but I couldn´t for the life of me understand the conversation. I could pick out words here and there, but normal speech amongst Spaniards, or Catalunyans in this case was not intelligible. It´s also super tiring trying to process all that information so I mostly tuned out to save my mental juice.
After lunch, tea was made and a box of different tea cookies was set out right in front of me. I don´t think anyone noticed, but I´m pretty sure I ate half the box. I have no self control when it comes to sweets I have not tried before. Because, seriously: when am I going to have the opportunity to try them again? WHEN??? Exactly. Reason and sugar are good friends.
Then we played a variation on what Drew D. Hill call Salad Bowl where everyone writes a famous person, an object, and a movie on pieces of paper and throws them in a bowl, or in this case, a bag. There are two teams and one round is description, the next is charades, and the next is a one word description. Being preoccupied with pig legs, I wrote pierna de cochon, thinking that cochon is spanish for pig, but it turns out, much to the amusement of everyone there, that it´s French, and possibly Galician, but not Spanish or Catalan. Cerdo is Castellano, whereas in my previous experience in Guatemala, it´s Coche (much to my disappointment as it ¨coche¨ is much easier to say than ¨carro¨ for CAR). We had a great time playing and the girl team won. Then Pep and Alvaro drove me to a suburb where I could take the train back to Barcelona, but not before talking a lot about the USA, telling me about a guitar bar I should check out that night, and inviting me to hang out with them and eat Tapas a couple of days later. ¨Holy shit, I´m making friends in another country!¨
When I got back to Barcelona, I stopped into a Locutori, or internet cafe that smelled quite a bit like urine, though it was packed and no one seemed to be bothered by it. Then I wandered around as per usual looking for the place Alvaro had told me about with the guitars and I found it, but it was packed and I had my backpack. It was also in a small square populated by north African fellows, moms with kids in strollers and a bunch of what looked to be, no, actually were a bunch of hookers. I made eye contact with one of em which I knew would result as it did in her following me around for a bit til I made it out onto the Ramblas (the main touristy drag) and found a nice falafel joint. I figured this would be a good way to lose her since hookers typically don´t like falafel. Falafel is usually the one hooker/meat-free thing I can eat while traveling and this would be the first of many. I walked back to Cris´s house with the intention of dropping my backpack and going back to the bar with the guitars, but instead ended up talking to her and her housemate Xell, who has a V'drum kit in their living room. Xell was real intense in a good way and real kind, though hard to understand through the Catalan.
Put that in your favorite hooker´s skull bong and smoke it.
When we got back to the house we set up the upstairs of the house which functioned as a sort of visitor´s/educational center and overnight house for kids coming on field trips to the park. We ate tons of toasted white bread, delicious squash soup Cris had made, cured meat, and tomatoes. The conversation was mostly in Catalan and I sort of just laughed when they laughed and smiled when they smiled and occasionally someone would explain to me what was going on, but I couldn´t for the life of me understand the conversation. I could pick out words here and there, but normal speech amongst Spaniards, or Catalunyans in this case was not intelligible. It´s also super tiring trying to process all that information so I mostly tuned out to save my mental juice.
After lunch, tea was made and a box of different tea cookies was set out right in front of me. I don´t think anyone noticed, but I´m pretty sure I ate half the box. I have no self control when it comes to sweets I have not tried before. Because, seriously: when am I going to have the opportunity to try them again? WHEN??? Exactly. Reason and sugar are good friends.
Then we played a variation on what Drew D. Hill call Salad Bowl where everyone writes a famous person, an object, and a movie on pieces of paper and throws them in a bowl, or in this case, a bag. There are two teams and one round is description, the next is charades, and the next is a one word description. Being preoccupied with pig legs, I wrote pierna de cochon, thinking that cochon is spanish for pig, but it turns out, much to the amusement of everyone there, that it´s French, and possibly Galician, but not Spanish or Catalan. Cerdo is Castellano, whereas in my previous experience in Guatemala, it´s Coche (much to my disappointment as it ¨coche¨ is much easier to say than ¨carro¨ for CAR). We had a great time playing and the girl team won. Then Pep and Alvaro drove me to a suburb where I could take the train back to Barcelona, but not before talking a lot about the USA, telling me about a guitar bar I should check out that night, and inviting me to hang out with them and eat Tapas a couple of days later. ¨Holy shit, I´m making friends in another country!¨
When I got back to Barcelona, I stopped into a Locutori, or internet cafe that smelled quite a bit like urine, though it was packed and no one seemed to be bothered by it. Then I wandered around as per usual looking for the place Alvaro had told me about with the guitars and I found it, but it was packed and I had my backpack. It was also in a small square populated by north African fellows, moms with kids in strollers and a bunch of what looked to be, no, actually were a bunch of hookers. I made eye contact with one of em which I knew would result as it did in her following me around for a bit til I made it out onto the Ramblas (the main touristy drag) and found a nice falafel joint. I figured this would be a good way to lose her since hookers typically don´t like falafel. Falafel is usually the one hooker/meat-free thing I can eat while traveling and this would be the first of many. I walked back to Cris´s house with the intention of dropping my backpack and going back to the bar with the guitars, but instead ended up talking to her and her housemate Xell, who has a V'drum kit in their living room. Xell was real intense in a good way and real kind, though hard to understand through the Catalan.
Put that in your favorite hooker´s skull bong and smoke it.
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