I speak Spanish!

So if I didn’t mention in my last post, I spent last week in beautiful Barcelona! Well, kind of beautiful…much of my time was spent in the city doing university work. That was fun…not. Also not many people would believe I was in the sun since I didn’t tan….I don’t tan; I freckle and burn.

Anyway we had to speak to the locals while in Barcelona since our work was based on opinions to the recently-cancelled referendum in Catalonia on their independence. Two words accurately described the struggles we faced: language barrier. Not only is it very difficult to get people to actually talk to you, but none of our class spoke fluent Spanish so we had to go around asking people if they spoke english (in Spanish of course, I knew that much!). It was more difficult than one would think as many people just flat out reject you. Thankfully the group I worked with were amazing at this, which actually thinking about it makes me feel really bad.

Other than walking around and doing work, we did get to see a few things while there. Unfortunately not a lot since we were doing work, but what we did see made me quite happy. I went to Barcelona with the intention of hopefully seeing La Sagrada Familia (The Holy Family in Spanish). My wish came true and oh my god is it amazing. For those who don’t know, La Sagrada Familia is a huge unfinished cathedral designed by Gaudi that has been under construction since 1906 (or ’09). It will always be under construction though because by the time they finish it, restoration of the older parts would need to be underway.

We travelled extensively using the subway, which was pretty damned good and efficient once you understood the maps and destinations. I quite enjoyed riding the subway as well as walking about.

There were other churches that we went to see; one being the Sant Marie (I think) which we saw twice and was quite pretty. It was very beautiful on the inside but I couldn’t get any pictures of it as I didn’t have any batteries then. We did get to see another church but I don’t know the name of it since I missed the induction thanks to my bloody panic attacks creeping out of nowhere once again (damned you!).

We also got the see the Spanish Arc de Triomf, which is a huge stone arch and there are similar arches in other countries (like Paris and London). I loved the stone angels on the arch and it was just beautiful. I hope to see the other arches in the other countries sometime in the future.

I don’t really have anything else to mention about my time in Barcelona as we really didn’t have a lot of time to just go exploring. The nightlife seemed interesting from what my friends tell me (I really don’t do clubs) and I did get drunk on sangria two nights in a row. Some of the tapas was wonderful and Sant Sebastia was beautiful but since I didn’t get to see much, I can’t say anymore. I plan to go back and just explore all the sights when I have the chance, such as Park Guell! In the meantime, here are some other pictures I took of the city while I was there; enjoy!