dreams in catalunya

this is a bit dated, but philip just sent me this picture, taken the day i arrived back in budapest from my bike trip. i miss that bike.

in the present: monday night i stayed in narbonne with a french couchsurfer named valerie. that town felt great- i read by its tree-lined canal for a few hours while i waited for valerie to get off from work. she was very generous, driving me out to the beach for a walk and cooking me dinner.

on tuesday it was a bit dicey getting out of france. the train workers went on strike to protest job cuts, but the union agreed to provide a minimum of service to keep some things running. it was chaotic, but everyone was very helpful and i eventually got out into spain.

when i arrived in barcelona i dropped my bag off at a hostel called INOUT, which is actually a non-profit that employs disabled people, located up in the hills outside of town in a national park. then i went back to town to try to find tristan. this was kind of a nightmare, as his directions were things like "If you´re exiting the train station then you take a left" (who knows how many entrances there are to barcelona´s two train stations), "the main plaza...I don´t know if it´s the actual main plaza" and " then walk about 3 minuites" (what a way of describing distance). so i scoured that town for four hours without ever finding him. and he failed to find the hostel, staying somewhere in town that night.

i would have been madder at him if i weren´t enjoying my walk. the architecture and character of the neighborhoods i explored felt great, some of my favorite i´ve seen in europe.

wednesday i found tristan sitting at the base of the mirador de colum, a big statue of columbus at the end of la ramblas next to the harbor. we spent the day walking around the neighborhoods near la ramblas, watched portugal beat czech republic in the eurocup, played frisbee in plaça catalunya, and just generally had too much fun.

thursday was daydream festival, the event that brought us here to barcelona. i enjoyed some of the opening bands, like cuchillo, m83, low and ENEMC. but the headliner was radiohead. they played a two-hour set that really just defies description, so i won´t try.

at about 1 am we made our way to nightdream, an aftershow at razzmatazz club back in town. we had to kill a few hours until the trains started running again at 5, so we did it in style, rocking out with the beautiful spanish people to music that was far too loud. my ears are still ringing.

we´ve basically been recovering ever since. some walks in town, running errands, getting groceries, watching more eurocup games, tossing disc in parc de la ciutadella, recklessly gambling on our utter lack of poker skills- which feels fine as long as it´s just between eachother.

being here in the heart of the 1936-7 workers´ attempted revolution that i now know backwards and forwards, i was excited to see what the barcelona museums had to say about that bit of history. so i spent a few hours at the museu d´historia de catalunya, which had big exhibits on industrialization and the spanish civil war, periods that were raging with class conflict.

i was fairly impressed with the content- it was surprisingly class-conscious, but at the same time containing the standard demonization of anarchists, repetitively calling them terrorists while omitting the far more common state terrorism used against the workers, as well as the government's use of agents provocateurs using terrorist tactics to give the state the pretext to suppress worker organizations. but generally very detailed information- i learned a few things i missed last fall.

the movement is certainly still alive here. right near the university i found the fundació d´estudis llibertais i anarcho sindicalistes, proudly flying the black and red CNT/FAI banner. it contained a huge bookstore of radical material, the equivalent of lucy parsons in boston or left bank in seattle. the person at the desk spoke almost no english though (and my spanish is pathetic), and their english book section was about half of one shelf. the movement turned in on itself, down in a little national hole. shame. if (when) i come back i will work on this problem...

so this is it. this was the climax, partaking in the urban festival club bar culture, dipping toes in the waters of what appears to be the all-too-standard young traveler regimen.

so the romp is at an end. in a way it was a long indulgent vacation. at the same time much of it was uncomfortable, and frugality and austerity kept me from getting too soft. some of the time i was moving fast, hardly getting to know a place before i dashed off to another, just a manic tourist frolic. at other times i balanced this with longer stays- wandering the same neighborhood or wwoofing or slowly hiking through foothills. parts of it were frustrating because i missed so many things, wasted time on things i later regretted, pursued a dead-end toward russia, and so on. but if i think of it all as scouting, just impulsively exploring, then i can accept my myriad mistakes and confustions and distresses as learning the hard way. if its scouting, it all makes sense. as scouting, i forgive myself for being shortsighted and ignorant of so much. traveling in the future i will be that much more competent and capable.

tomorrow i fly back to the states, to return to alaska for another summer of commercial fishing. i am actually thrilled to go back, having gone through a few cycles of travel burn-out now. i am tired of being homeless, living out of my pack. i miss the comforts of family and home. so this ending feels right.

this is the last post, unless i feel i have anything insightful to write about re-integration into US society, the infamous reverse culture shock. kop kum kop, kop jai, shishi, bayarla, kosonom, merci, gracias, thank you for keeping me company.