World Wanderings

As of a day or two ago, I am one third of the way through my trip. It´s almost a bit hard to believe that it´s been just over a month since I left the states. Looking back at the past couple of weeks, it all seems a bit of a blur. It feels like I was just in Paris the other week, and now I´m in Barcelona. There were a lot of places between these points in time. I hope to enjoy the rest of my trip as much as I have so far, and I also hope that it continues to fly on by.

I have to say that I miss home and friends (more of the friends and family than Syracuse as a city). I have an adorably cute little nephew that I wish I could see, he´s smiling and giggleing now. But soon enough. I have lots of traveling left, and lots of sights and places to see. I´m excited to for whats next (which is Switzerland then to Italy).

So I´ve been in Barcelona for the past 4 nights, with the original intention of heading off tonight. That plan fell through when it would have cost me an additional 50 Euros to get to Geneve from here on the overnight train. I´m kind of a little fed up with the whole having to pay an arm and a leg (for me) extra, on top of the money I spent on the pass. So yesterday, when I was told the price, I said I would think about what I´d do, and just left the train station. This is, of course, after waiting 40 minutes in line to get to the ticket window. I figured I would just pick a spot in France, buy a ticket an hour beforehand and just go. I felt relieved as I left the station, and was ready for an awesome day (details to follow). Well it turns out the there is a large festival in Barcelona tonight, and if I had headed off when I was originally intending, I would have missed yet another one. It all worked out in the in.

As many things didn´t work out yesterday, in the end everything turned out just fine. The train ticket situation turned out for the best. I missed my friend here in Barcelona at our original meeting spot, but managed to catch her at her place later on. Not before running into a barber shop (which I had been looking for one most of the day) with a good 5 Euro cut. Can´t complain at that price. I´m now slightly less shaggy, though I still plan to just let my beard grow. There were one of two other small things, but in the end it was a great day.

I spent the entire day going Gaudi´s works. La Sagrada Familia, La Pedrera, and Parc Güell. All amazing examples of a archetect ahead of his time. When I think of modern architecture, I don´t think of the plain, flat, angular, empty spaces that define the current modern architecture scene (from what I´ve gathered), but of the flowing, organic buildings of an artist like Gaudi. If you don´t know who he is, I´ll try and post photos later, but do a quick google image search for his stuff.

I'm a huge fan of the art nouveau style, growning up in a house laden with furniture from that period and from the craftsman style. So it's so exciting to see whole buildings designed in this manner. La Sagrada Familia was my first stop for the day, and the size, style, and decoration just blew me away. I think it has to have one of the tallest cielings I have yet to see in a cathedral. And by now I've been in some pretty large cathedrals. Within the mess of an interior, filled with temporary fences, scaffolding, and workshops, there is amost a beauty in it's construction. The open area is only one side of the building, the other half is almost in darkness, filled with scaffolding, but filtering through this maze of workers are glimpses of bright, highly saturated light, from the distant windows. Did I mention that I'm also a stained glass fan? The windows in the interior where georgious, abstract yet highly geometric/organic, and made with bright primary colors. They filled the space with unadultured color. And what a space to fill. Gaudi, taking a lot of his inspiration from nature, designed the main columns to look like a forest of trees, with each one beaching out far above my head.

Anyway, I could go on for days about the building, but will try to post photos of it later on and let you see what I saw.

Next up was La Pedera, a housing complex that Gaudi built. The tour started with the attic, which was build all out of arches, undulating in shape and size, truely an awesome space to wonder through. This lead to the roof, which flowed to and fourth, up and down, filled with fun chimneys. I spent a food half hour, just wondering around it. And my visit ended in an art nouveau apartment, one in which I could live. I'm not sure if there where any straight lines within the entire building.

In the past few days of Barcelona, I've taken it a bit slow (hopeing to kick this cough), but have seen other fun things. Such as Gaudi's Parc Güell, what was to be a community for the wealthy which flopped and is now a fun park filled with more fun arcitectural elements. I also visited the Picasso museum, which housed a lot of his early work. For those of you who don't know, Picasso painted amazing, realistic, canvases in his early years before he pioneered cubism, and they had many of those paintings at this museum.

Barcelona has been fun, and I have one more night here before I head off. I think I'll write more on the past month as a whole tomorrow, while on the train. There is plenty to write about.