Barcelona

Right, lets wrap up this little trip. I’ve probably got an irrational hatred of Barcelona inbuilt but, after the traumas of getting my wallet stolen, I have to say I did manage to have a pretty good time there. Still, I probably won’t be hurrying back.

I met up with Suzanne again on the Tuesday morning and we planned to head to the Dali museum at Figueres, which is about 90 minutes out of town but, after checking the bus times and, eventually, finding the right train station we concluded that we didn’t really have time to do the place justice as she had a class to teach that night so we instead headed to one of the Gaudi designed houses in the city, Casa Battlo. Although I baulked a bit at the €16,50 entrance fee it was actually worth every penny – it’s much easier to savour a place when you have someone else with you and we had fun messing around with the audio guides, lounged around eating lunch on the terrace and generally wandered around the place at a gentle pace. It really is a superbly designed building, even if some of the claims made on the audio guide are a little spurious.

After that we stumbled upon an Islamic photography exhibition a couple of doors down, which was interesting enough, and got me thinking of Egypt again, before we headed over to Parc Citiduella, which was nice enough with a stunning water feature, lots of ducks and a great big mammoth, but lacks the class of the real top parks, like the Retiro or Bradford’s very own Lister Park!!

Once we had done strolling we took the metro across the city and aimed for Tibidabo, which has a church and amusement park on the top of a big hill with great views of the city. There is usually a funicular that takes you up there but it was out of service and, after a vain chase after a replacement bus, we decided to just walk it – not realising just how far uphill the place was. It was a nice walk and it was good to be out of the city for a bit of air, but we never made it to the top as, after it dawned upon us just how far away it was, we managed to walk into what was basically a lovers lane type place, only but the female “lovers” in the cars were being paid for! For some reason encounters involving prostitutes seem to feature highly whenever I travel somewhere in Europe!!

After a bit of break when Suzanne went to take care of her professional commitments (far away from the hill I should point out) we met back up to get something to eat, and ended up sat inside Maoz (a veggie type fast-food place) eating, and then just sat chatting there for two hours before tearing ourselves away from our seats to have a little wander around the old town and Gothic quarter, taking in some of Barcelona’s undeniably fine architecture before finding a nice little coffee shop where we sat down with a drink and chatted some more. Before saying our goodbyes for the evening we headed back to my hostel and played the worst game of pool ever seen, I think the first five shots were all fouls and it took about 40 minutes for us to finish, but it was a fun end to a pleasurable day, and being able to spend it with a friendly face helped me not to dwell too much on what had happened the day before and stopped me feeling sorry for myself.

The next day turned into a bit of a write-off in terms of sight-seeing. We met up again in the morning and headed for the Catalan Palau National Musica (via a bizarre shopping centre which seemed exclusively for sex shops and maternity clothing stores), which was one of the superb buildings we had seen the night before, but the tours of the building were a bit pricey so we gave it a miss. After grabbing a coffee and more chat we headed for what was basically a showroom of mosaics that you could decorate your place with if you were super-rich and we had fun in there dreaming for a bit looking at the elegant, not so elegant and downright distasteful ways you could waste a lot of cash. Later in the day we headed for the Palau Guell, another Gaudi house, only to find it closed for renovations and, with Suzanne due in a class, we just walked about chatting for a bit before heading our separate ways.

At this point I was intending to finish off my time in Barcelona by visiting an Egyptian museum, and another of Gaudi’s houses but, like the magnet I am, I happened to yet again bump into a fellow backpacker I had met elsewhere in Spain on my trip, and we ended up going for a two hour long coffee, and squeezing in a visit to a photography exhibition before she headed to Paris on an overnight train.

Before heading back to my hostel I took a walk round the christmas shopper filled streets, watched some street entertainers and bought some beer and snacks, that were duly demolished back at the hostel with the help of an Aussie couple who, strangely enough, are heading to Bradford to spend christmas with family, and Suzanne re-joined us later before we eventually went our own ways as she went home, and I crawled into bed preparing for an early departure.

While I enjoyed my couple of days, it was certainly a case of the people (or person) I was with making the place. Although I am a massive fan of some of the architecture, in particular Gaudi’s work, the city just has a vibe that I don’t really connect with, tourists (including plenty of obnoxious pissed-up Brits) are abundant and it’s about as Spanish as good customer service or a meal not containing ham. I don’t think I’ll be back in a hurry, though it was good to see some of the sights I missed on my visit in 2005.

The welcome to hell, and why you need friends you can rely on….

Ok, maybe “hell” is a little strong, but when I was in Barcelona last year I just didn´t like the place, no-one can deny the beauty of some of the architecture here but, without wanting to sound pretentious, there was just a vibe about the place I didn´t like.

However, I am nothing but a fair kind of guy so I decided to give the place a second chance, most other people seem to love it so there has to be something about the city so I fly in from Madrid on Monday and what´s the first thing that happens to me? My pocket gets picked and my wallet is stolen. Welcome back Asim.

I´m not one of these paranoid travellers constantly worried about getting things stolen, and I carry all my cards and cash in my wallet though I usually keep a little cash and a credit card for emergencies hidden away in my backpack, except when I am flying in case the bag goes astray. As I was flying this, of course, meant I lost everything, bar a few loose euros I had in my pocket.

Now I knew I had my wallet on the plane, because I bought some water on there, so after discovering the wallet missing, me being a trusting type immediately presumed I must have left it on my seat when I had got it out. With that in mind I headed to the luggage enquiries desk for the airline I flew in with and explained what I thought had happened, a couple of phone calls were exchanged and, after about ten minutes, I was told the plane had been searched and a wallet had been found, the relief was immense and I was told to leave the arrivals area and go to the main airline office in the airport, and the wallet would be brought for me. This I promptly did, I waited for a while and eventually an air stewardess headed over with the recovered property, which wasn´t a wallet at all it was a folder with some kind of papers in. The relieved feeling disappeared extremely quickly.

After clarifying with someone at the desk that my wallet hadn´t been recovered it suddenly dawned on me that I was in a bit of a predicament – after weighing up my options I decided to head into the centre on the train with the few euros I had to my name and get to my hostel which I could then use as a base to sort things out. Upon getting there I was met with a semi-helpful response, I called the card companies to get my cards blocked but I was informed that I couldn´t give the hostel phone number to someone to call me and, unless I somehow came up with some cash, I couldn´t stay there that night – which was nice – and that I should contact someone to send me some money I could collect via Western Union, which was actually a better idea than the one I had of someone paying for me to fly home at the earliest opportunity, so I guess I should be thankful for that.

Enter my friends to come to the rescue. I didn´t really want to freak my mum out by telling her what had happened and having her trying to initiate a money transfer in a state of panic so, after some deliberation (I figured I have quite a few friends I could rely on in such a crisis, which is nice) I contacted Darren who, after some hassle trying to do it online, got to a Western Union office and sent me some money to tide me over, for which I will always be grateful. That wasn´t the end of that though as, in the meantime, most of the Western Union offices in Barcelona had closed for the night and I went on a bit of a dash trying to find one that was open, eventually finding one that didn´t close for another half an hour, unfortunately when that half hour had passed I was still stood in the queue and the counter was closed on me, which was nice.

Luckily, in the meantime, I had managed to meet up with Suzanne, a girl I first met a few weeks back in Madrid and who is now teaching here and she gave me some money so I could pay for my bed and get some food. At about 11 we headed to my hostel, I finally managed to check in, and we spent an hour or so having a chat and making arrangements for sightseeing the next day.

After an interrupted night of sleep I was outside a Western Union office as soon as the place opened to collect my money, and all was well with the world again. I´m not a panicker, and at no stage of the whole thing did I really lose it, but I guess that´s because I know I have friends that I can rely on and something was always going to be worked out. No doubt there are plenty out there who aren´t so lucky.

Anyway, apart from that start Barcelona hasn´t been too bad. I fly home tomorrow so I´ll give the full run-down when I get back, and have a decent curry safely encased in my stomach!