Continental #1 wrapup

This is the wrapup I promised you last night. I still ended up saying loads more than I’d initially planned - the whole Liege incident certainly made for a tale and a half. What am I trying to achieve here? Local fragmentation, that’s it - deconstructing and reconstructing and contextualising and recontextualising.


There’s not a lot I can say about how I felt about this trip at the time because it’s already been two years and all I have left are handfuls, vignettes, glimpses - a remembrance of things past. In search of lost time, says Proust. This was my very first trip to Europe on my own, my maiden voyage, the journey that set the yardstick for all other journeys to come. It was here that I fell in love with travelling, and May the bitterest month a la TS Eliot - the month where I kindled alight my wanderlust.


I stil vividly remember flying to Carcassonne for the first time and wandering the cobbled streets of the city centre. The old town and the fortress; and then taking the Thalys train to Toulouse and seeing my dad again. That was nice, that was. The wonderful panini shop on the Rue St Rome and buying 4-EUR paninis, and eating them on the Place du Capitole. Pacing the banks of the Canal du Midi and then napping under the green boughs - which is far less romantic than it sounds; there were gnats and flies and the water was tepid and far less impressive than the pictures. The unexpected hailstorm when I was eating at the restaurant off the Pont-Neuf.


Barcelona was a visit that changed my life, not spectacularly, but subtlely. How can I forget how wildly I fell in love with Alin, and he with me? And Nadja and our afternoon at the Font Magica. The Thai restaurant off the Espanya and the creepy waiter there who followed me into the toilet and asked me for my phone number. The Thai was good, though.


This trip, in a sense, was me on sensible mode. Continental #4 was much more spontanous, me and my pivot through post-Soviet eastern Bloc, saying stuff in my theatre of the absurd. I met other travellers equally la rambla and la loca. ‘Wine is a grand thing,’ says Hemingway, ‘it makes you forget all the bad.’


I know this is supposed to be a wrapup of continental #1 and not #4, but couldn’t resist. Memories, of course, are constantly being rewritten to fit our self images.


My favourite cities this trip were probably Toulouse and Lisbon. I would like to include Barcelona because I enjoyed my time there so much, but that was because of the people I met, not the city. The city I found hot, stifling and too similar to Taipei. Lisbon was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever had the fortune to visit, but the people there were bland. I do remember chatting with my roommates at the hostel, but they too were unmemorable and unremarkable. The scenery though was wonderful.


Barcelona, always Barcelona, and meeting next to the Font Magica. Do you subscribe to the fancy, if you will, that everything happens for a reason?


I liked Maastricht, and the feeling of making coffee in Eddie’s kitchen. I would stretch myself out on his long sofa, like a leopard, and carry my mug of coffee over to the table there, and sip at my coffee and read Nadja and Anja’s emails, and message Alin.


Again, I am clear conscienced, though still those voices are calling from far away.

Still Lisbon

Barcelona, part VIII - Barceloneta, La Rambla and Parc Guell

It's been almost a year since I last updated, and I feel ashamed to say it, but at this rate it's almost been two years since the trips themselves - it's May 2016 now and I went on this trip in May 2014, so I can't recall a lot of the details, but it's astonishing what photos can do to jog your memory.

The last Barcelona entry because this is the eighth one of this series and I really want to wrap this up. There isn't a whole lot left to say about Barceloneta that hasn't already been said - I went there with Nadja and the gang, but most of them left before I did since I planned my stay for seven days, because this was my first proper trip after all, and it was a bit of a trial run for me. In any case, that made me realise that I would require about 3 days tops in a city, and probably about a day and a half for smaller towns or cities that only consisted of an Old Town or three.

Barceloneta though. At this point nearly all of the old gang had gone on to other places - Henri and Piia to Nice, Nadja to Morocco, Luis and Jozef-Pedro to Portugal, Alin on to Greece, and Yuta back to Lille. I remember sitting in the communal kitchen sipping my coffee capsules as I always do, feeling really quite desolate and missing my new friends, and then as always stiffening my upper lip and going off to wherever it was I'd decided to go for the day.

Barceloneta and the Mediterranean. The ticket I'd bought for the Royal Shipyard included a tour of a skiff, which of course I had to visit. It wasn't anything too fancy, but was definitely worth a visit.

Went off to the infamous and ultimately overrated La Rambla, which was just a long boulevard. Apparently there are a lot of pickpockets here but no one wanted to pick my pockets. I suppose I look poor and destitute.

Obligatory picture of the street sign

Last day of Barcelona. I had a late afternoon flight to Lisbon, or Lisboa, and I decided to to to the Parc Guell in the morning because the hostel was basically right next to the Parc. Gloomy, overcast sort of day, terrible for photographs. Parc was yet another architectural wonder by Antoni Gaudi. I wasn't overly fond of it again, but it was another of those "must-see" places, plus it was right next to the hostel and I had time to kill before my Lisbon flight, so I spent the better half of the morning there.

Went back to the Espanya where I'd gone with Nadja previously. There was a bus that went straight to the El Prat airport, and I still had my Hola Bon pass. Adios Barcelona for now.

This was the bus I eventually took to the aeroporto

In the El Prat airport. I was peckish and got something to eat at the McDonald's of all places, used the airport wifi for a bit (all 30 minutes of the free access it provided) and waited around for my flight. I feel that a lot of my trips consist of loads of waiting; waiting for buses, waiting for flights, waiting for the planes and the buses to reach their destinations, etc etc.

That concludes it for Barcelona. I'm not sure if I want to come back here again - I feel I've had enough of it - but perhaps some other parts of Spain in the future, like Seville, Madrid or Valencia.

Barcelona, part VII - La Pedrera - Casa Mila and Barcelona Royal Shipyard

I mentioned in my last entry that the Big Three Gaudi buildings were (are?) the Sagrada Familia, which I already discussed at length, the Casa Batllo, which unfortunately I was unable to get any pictures of as its exterior was undergoing massive reconstruction, and the Casa Mila. The House of Mila, so to speak. Ha - wonder if that was the name of Garak and Enabran Tain's house? Casa Mila.

I'm sure lots had been said on the subject by people much more qualified (and interested, I'm sorry to say) than myself, so I'll just say here that Casa Mila really stood out. It's located on one of those typical Barcelonan boulevards, one of those large, straight, sunny and spacey ones - rather aptly named Diagonal. There's another one called Parallel which was not too far away. Anyway, Casa Mila was located somewhere between the metro stations Diagonal (Green Line, L3) and Passeig de Gracia, which I think is a lovely name. Then again I think most of the street and metro stations in Barcelona have wonderful names. I mentioned this in a very early entry I wrote early this year or late last year. Drassanes, Catalunya, Ciutadella, La Rambla.

I didn't take the metro though, since I found that one of the buses next to the hostel went straight there, so I buckled down. As it turned out the bus took more than an hour to get there, which would have bored me under normal circumstances, but it was nice to see more of Barcelona's hot, dusty, straight roads. I realise this is not the most flattering of descriptions but that's how I felt about Barcelona. "Fair enough," I'll say when asked about how I liked Barcelona. "Overrated," I'll say when asked about Germany. Oh, but I loved Frankfurt, and I have a soft spot for some of the Bavarian towns - Nuremburg comes to mind. I loved Nuremburg for two reasons: the gorgeously quaint Christmassy town centre, and the fact that it was freezing and poured, and that I got to take a piping hot shower after being soaked chill to the skin. Strange sort of person I am; there are some sensations and experiences that I will never forget, and that is one of them. It's been almost a year and I can still feel Nurnberg's chill rainwater freezing me to the marrow, returning to that hotel/hostel and finding no one else in the room, getting into the ridiculously luxurious shower and turning the hot water on full pelt and gasping for joy and singing, even, as I washed, then coming out and settling down happily onto my lovely proper HOTEL BED.

I need to stop writing and postulating and get back there and do this again. If nothing else happens, I still have this.

I'm ashamed to say it but it's really been too long since continental #1 happened, and after that there was Romania, Gdansk, Copenhagen and continental #4, so I think I'll make this a picture entry. Casa Mila, though very picturesque, cost a staggering 16.5 euro to get in. No thanks. I'll just stand around outside like countless other tourists and take photos of the outer facade and call it a day. Actually, I could fleeting catch glimpses of the interior, and see tourists milling around in it, and... it didn't excite me that much, to be honest, so I have no regrets.

Next day. Headed down to Barceloneta sans #gang. I went to Barceloneta quite a lot as I remember, not so much because it was pretty - it wasn't, not particularly - but because it was the Mediterranean after all, and also because it was quite close to everything else - La Rambla, the city centre, the cathedrals and so forth. There was a Maritime museum located quite close to the sea, and this one was very much affordable - can't remember the exact cost but nothing over 5 euros, plus it included a visit to a skiff.

More pictures, and remember that this country was once the native land of the Invincible Armada, and that the Spaniards set sail and travelled halfway across the world four hundred years ago to colonise my ow country.

Barcelona, part VI - Basilica of the Sagrada Familia, part ii

I've been revisiting a lot of my old blogs recently. Partly inspiration, a lot of escapism, and an attempt to recapture that which has been all but lost. I noticed that I tended to skim a lot over the pictures and focus on the words - partly because I usually read my blogs in a place with zero privacy, but also because words are the soul of wit. Next time I really, really should type up my stuff when I'm still fresh.

Sagrada. Not much I can remember from that morning. I do remember sleeping slightly fitfully that night though, because the person who slept in the bunk above me, kept on tossing and turning, and everytime he did that the bunk would shake as well and it was rather annoying. He told me that he was going to the Sagrada today as well but we were going at very different times - I wasn't leaving till about 8:30 but he was up at six and planned to go there at like 8. Oh well.

Sagrada was located fairly closely to my hostel, and I chatted with the lovely hostel owners before I left as I always do. They told me to walk there - "it's only a 20 minute walk!" and even gave me a map, but I took one look out at the scorching sun, another look at my ride-all-you-can Hola Bon travelcard, and decided I'd be better off taking the metro, nohow.

Sagrada Familia has a metro station all to itself (unsurprisingly) and is located on both the blue line (L5) and the purple line (L2).

Anyway, picking up from last entry, there was a nice little museum right next to the Basilica which was dedicated to Gaudi and the process of the construction of the Sagrada, so I grandly present another medley of pictures.

A photograph of a photograph of the great man himself, Antoni Gaudi

Included in my preordered tickets were a trip up one of the Facades, the Nativity Facade, which is 50 metres high. I was scheduled (people numbers restrictions again) for a 12:00 entry and went up with a lovely English family who had two adorable little boys. Cute as the kids were and much as I was looking up to going to the facade, something pretty disgusting happened whilst we were going up in the elevator - it lurched and stopped, and the elevator lady was just as freaked out as any of us, saying extremely unhelpfully, "Well THAT'S never happened before!" and looking rather scared. We stayed in limbo for the longest 10 seconds of my life before the lift groaned back into life again and went up. The English family and actually all of the other lift passengers looked just as rattled as I felt, and one of the little boys said to me, "I think I'll be taking the stairs when I go down!"

A nice view of the city from one of the peepholes in the Nativity facade.

And, true to my word, I'm taking the stairs.

More stairs.

Some sort of architecture sticking out from the Facade.

And more pictures of the Sagrada Familia before I say adios.

The Sagrada Familia entries ended up being splitted into two entries after all, not three. Oh well, I still have heaps of pictures left for them, will do a picture recap if I ever get round to it somehow.