Culture Shock has set in

We just finished our second full week in this beautiful city.  One thing that has struck me the most is the cultural difference between Spaniards (los Espanoles/Catalanes) and other Spanish speakers (los Latinos - from everywhere else but Spain).  I belong to the latter group and the cultural differences between my culture (Colombian/Dominican/American) and that of the Spaniards who live here is quite striking.  I expected to feel more at home in this European country than any other European country.  However, people here are a bit more reserved, a bit more "European," than the Latinos that populate the other part of the Western hemisphere.  For example, in Colombia, every child learns from the get-go to greet everybody.  "Buenos Dias" and "Buenas Tardes" becomes one of the first things a child learns how to say and the first thing they say upon seeing someone for the first time that day, whether it's grandma or the lady at the supermarket.  However, when I do the same here and follow up with a "Como esta?" (How are you?), I'm given blank stares, as if the prescribed flow of employee-to-customer relations has been disrupted.  Usually, I'm greeted with a less-than-enthusiastic "Hola," followed by the command, "Dime!" which means, "tell me!" (what do you need/want).  I'm sure it's not them being rude, but being used to living in an American service-oriented culture and being raised in a (maybe overly) polite Hispanic culture means that I have some skewed preconceived notions of how a society should work...or maybe it is that people here just aren't that polite.

The woman from whom we rent our place, Maribel, is from Southern Spain and she tells us that people from there are a lot different than Catalan people.  She says that the popular notion of the hot-blooded Spaniard comes from the Andalucia region (where flamenco, guitars, oranges, and mosques-turned-churches-turned-castles all reside).  A person from Catalunya is more reserved and keeps you at arm's length, but the saying goes that once you have made a friend of a Catalan, they are your friend forever.  I don't think that will happen for us...we aren't going to spend enough time to befriend these cold Spaniards...but here's to hoping we'll leave this country having made a few life-long friends.  It's always nice and I always like to leave those sprinkled around the world.

OK...so, our second week was a ton better than our first week because we actually caught up on our sleep (or at least I did...I've been waking up before 8 on my own several days in a row now.  I haven't done that since I was a kid).  Our first major outing for the week was to the Museo d'Historia de Barcelona.

You can see the beginning of the second arch that wasn't preserved on the uppermost left part of the standing column.  These walls date back to Roman Empire times and used to surround the (smaller) city of Barcelona (Barcino to the Romans - pronounced BAR-kee-no).

You could get lost in the Barri Gotic...just like we did.  We have yet to get data plans for our phones, so our navigation consists of Google Maps directions written on paper, just like we had to do pre-google maps and Mapquest.  However, look up Barri Gothic on Google Maps and you will see that there are so many winding streets and alleyways that you can easily get lost even with directions.

Entering Barri Gothic.

Part of the column and wall that surrounded the city in Roman times.  Right near the one entrance to Barri Gothic are metal sculptures that spell out B-A-R-C-I-N-O.  Des is leaning against the O.

I would die for a courtyard, replete with fountain and mosaic tiling, in my house.  

Once you enter the museum, you go down a bunch of steps to an actual excavation site of ancient Barcino.  I guess that the museum actually used to be a church, which used to be part of a palace, which used to be the part of Barcino that was closest to the outer wall surrounding the city.  Those holes in the ground were big containers that were used to either store wine or to make this weird delicacy (called grummum?) that was made out of fish offal mixed with other stuff.  

Oh, and also learned that people would pee in these little aqueducts in the road, which led the urine into a room where laundry would be done in the town.  The urine would provide the ammonia necessary to bleach linens when combined with things like lye.  Pretty smart.

At the end of the museum, there is a permanent cinema technology exhibit.  Might sound too technical, but I tell you.  It is not boring.  It's fascinating to see how the "moving picture show" came to be, since puppet shadow boxes in the 1700s to the Lumiere video cameras of this past century (shown in this picture).  

Another day, we decided to indulge in Desmond's inherited sweet tooth (finally...something he and I could bond over!) and took him to the Museo de Chocolate in El Borne.  But first, we absolutely needed to get something to eat primarily because I was hangry and didn't want my hunger to affect my loving relationship with my husband and son and to affect my willpower at the chocolate museum.  We decided to go to Bar del Convent, which is literally right next door to the museum.  We've read about the charming cafe online and how parents love it because it's spacious and has kids' toys available for the kiddos.

The outside seating area.  Stunning, isn't it?  There is also a large courtyard (to the right of the picture) with plenty of space for children to run around while the parents have some cafe amb lloc (cafe au lait in Catalan).  The food here was pretty tasty: I had the quiche and Billy had a bocadillo (sandwich).  They usually have a plato del dia (plate of the day), which consists of salad, main course, and dessert/coffee, but we got there a bit too late.

Here is the courtyard of the Bar del Convent at night.  The bar/cafe is straight through those doors and the museo de chocolate is to the left of the picture.

In the Museo, they showed the history of chocolate making and how it originated in the new world (usually made as a bitter drink) and was taken back to the old world (where Europeans' palates couldn't take much of the bitterness, so they added fat (milk) and sugar to sweeten it into a version of what we all know and love today).  Also displayed in the museum was artistic pieces made out of chocolate.  Above is one artists rendition of the Pieta.  

Los Pitufos!

New Orleans needs a chocolate Louis Armstrong sculpture.  Maybe we'll have something similar for our vow renewal ceremony.

 Also, when you buy tickets to the museum, they come in the form of chocolate bars.  Totally made the price worth it.

Finally, we took another afternoon trip to see the Disseny Hub, an innovation and design museum.  We boarded the L3 metro towards the Palau Reial (also the exit to get to Camp Nou, FC Barcelona's stadium). As we walked into the gardens that led into the museum, we saw that the museum had been moved to a new location (new location?  What???  Where???)  Since we still did not have any wifi on our phones, we couldn't do a quick check to see where it was and how to get there.  We debated going back home, but decided to stick it out and go to the Ceramic Museum (we both yawned when we read "Ceramic Museum.")

On the grounds of the Palau Reial.

We took the elevator instead of the stairs.  If you go here, take the elevator.  It's one of those old-fashioned ones with a cushioned seat and one of those doors that you manually have to close so that it could go up or down.

Example of 15th century ceramics with the royal family's coat of arms.  Lots of ceramics were inspired by those made by Muslim artisans.  

Once in a while, Des does actually get bored in museums.  I guess ceramics aren't his thing.

Although there are some examples of beautiful craftsmanship (see the two pictures above this one), there are some pieces that make you wonder how much money the owner paid to commission something like this.  Either the artist was that bad or...

the subject was that awful looking.

At first glance, you think, oh, nice-looking plate...Good detail of the knight's (?) suit...and then you take a closer look at his sinister face.

Precursor to the Guy Fawkes mask.

The museum has interesting pictures sprinkled throughout the exhibits of past visitors "enjoying" themselves at the museum.  Such as this one.

Take a look at this closely.  Go on.  What do you see?  Is that poo coming out of that guy's bare butt?  And is he playing a tune while it happens?

And what do you think is going on here?  The first recorded instance of pantsing.

We actually had a great time at the Ceramics Museum.  There were several beautiful ancient and contemporary pieces and I learned a lot about the different types of ceramics.  Makes me want to plaster them all over my future kitchen wall.  Especially if they look like the last two pictures.  After the ceramic museum, we decided to stop into a placed called Pudding, which is a restaurant/cafe aimed at kids and teenagers.  Don't let that stop you from going, though.  It is amazing.  The decor makes you feel like you've entered an Alice in Wonderland circus show, minus the freaks, but with an English tea shop twist.  

This is the "kids'" area, at the back of the restaurant and down a level.  You could barely make out the red and white striped cloth that covers the entire ceiling of the upstairs portion.

I loved this wall.  Seen as you're walking down the stairs.

They had a little play area with Legos and trains that immediately drew Des's attention.

There is also a giant blackboard so that kids can write and draw.  If they're into something more digital and less analog, the cafe lets kids borrow ipads while they are there.

We ate underneath these giant mushrooms.  We ordered the menu del dia (Billy had a hamburger and I had quiche, again, with a delicious side salad and some dessert for around 11 Euros each...a bit pricey, but they also have menus that only include the main dish or the main dish with salad).  There are also all sorts of children's books in different languages and table and board games.  

And that was the main happenings for this week for this little family...until next week! 

Thomases in Barcelona!

The week before we were due to move to Barcelona, I pulled up the Kids in Barcelona webpage to see exactly what kinds of family-friendly activities this city has to offer. We found a wealth of information, including ongoing classes for kids and families.  We have already been to 2 things that have been suggested to us and were surprised to see that of all the attendants at the 2 events, we were, for the most part, the least Spanish family attending.

Circ Raluy:
While walking down Las Ramblas towards the ocean, we came across this little gem:

Circ Raluy: A Circus born and bred in Catalunya.  It has been ongoing for almost 100 years and all of the trailers and tents are original to the show or have been restored from other circuses.  

 It was some time in the late afternoon, so the circus wasn't open yet.  I made a mental note to look it up on the interwebs and see if I could buy tickets online.  After a little bit of research (their website seems to have been done in the late 1990s), we found out that Circ Raluy only comes to Barcelona once a year, during the Christmas holidays (setting up shop mid-November to mid-January).  We were in luck: once a week, Circ Raluy has a special "Spectator's Day," where tickets are almost half off.  We bought ours for about 7 Euros a piece, which we considered a good deal after a 1.5 hour show (2 hours counting intermission).

Des has been learning how to take pictures and this is a particularly non-blurry one he took of yours truly.  What this picture doesn't show are the beads of sweat on our foreheads.  If you happen to attend Circ Raluy, I recommend that you layer up.  It can get quite chilly at night outside (jacket + scarf), but it is quite warm inside.  I wish I had worn a short-sleeved shirt underneath my long-sleeved one because by the time the show was done, I had wet marks in the armpits of my shirt.

The inside of the circus.  There are two seating options: one for closer to the main stage and one for farther away (the ones we bought for 7 euros a piece).   As you can probably see, it is a rather intimate environment and our seats were pretty good.

I loved these old-timey lights inside of the tent.

Billy was inspired to try jazz hands after watching (and being supremely impressed by) a guy that came out as a tap dancer and quickly segued into tap dancing on his hands...and "running" up and down a staircase on his hands.

This looks pretty creepy, I know, but it was so neat to see up close.  This is one of their original organs.  They open up the back so that you can see the sheets with the little holes in them being fed into the machine, which is how the organ "read" and played the music.  Also, circus music is, in and of itself, quite creepy.  I wonder if Des is creeped out by it inherently or if it's something you just learn to be creeped out by because everyone tells you its creepy (and then you stupidly read Stephen King's It when you're in 6th grade).  

So, our recommendation is that if you're in Barcelona between November and January and have a kid 3yrs+ (Des is almost 2.5 and his attention span was rather limited), this would be perfect for you.  Word of warning: the entire show is in Catalan and there are several parts in between the acts that are comedic bits done entirely in Catalan.  My favorite part was the aerial dancers, Billy's the tap-dancing hand guy, and for Des, it was the FC Barcelona v. Real Madrid game played by dogs in jerseys (FC Barcelona won, of course).  I came out of the circus with a mile-wide smile, feeling like such a little kid again.

Food (of course):
Ahhhh...the joys of eating abroad.  To me, food has always and will always be a central aspect of my life.  I build my days around what I'm going to eat (and, if I'm lucky enough, when I'll get to nap).  Lucky for me, eating and siesta-ing are national pastimes in Spain and I've chosen to do both with gusto!

If we're to live here for a good chunk of time, it made sense to me to start with my own neighborhood, El Raval.  We walked through our neighborhood towards La Rambla del Raval.  Interesting fact: in the Rambla itself is a statue of a cat made by the Colombian artist Fernando Botero, my favorite artist (he loves to paint and sculpt fat people, animals, hands, things, etc).  We have yet to go visit it, but I can't wait to let Des loose on it to see if he could climb up its feline rotundness.

Suculent, on the northwestern side of the Rambla.  We stopped here because we were in the mood for breakfast food and they had a bocadillo (little sandwich) with tortilla de patata.

Tortilla de Patata.

Des eating his tortilla de patata.

Another evening, we decided to have some small appetizers (some like to call them tapas :) before we called it a night.  We stopped by a local favorite named Mucci's, a chain restaurant local to Barcelona that serves delicious gourmet pizzas and really great baked (not fried!) empanadas.

Des and Bill watching the game on the big screen.  Order their warm brownie...totally worth the indulgence.

I decided to look for "famous" places to eat in El Raval so that we could snootily say, "hmmmm...oh, yessss...we did happen upon such-and-such place whilst in Barcelona...yessss...delicious, if I don't mind saying so  myself...hmmmm."  So, I consulted Forbes and decided to go to the cheapest option available, the one with the one $ sign: Ca l'Estevet (in Castellano: Casa de Esteban; in English: House of Steven).  It has been open since the late 1890s and as per the server, the only thing that has changed since then were the chairs, credit card machine, and lightbulbs.

Our server was so sweet to Des.  He brought him a large coloring book and a big cup filled with crayons.  Even though this restaurant probably didn't serve a lot of children, the server came to us with a seat cushion, folded up, so that Des could sit a bit taller.

Original tile.

What I would do to take this home with me...

Small but gorgeous setting.

We tend to dine on the cheap, but eating here (although Forbes said was only one $ sign, which to them means cheap) was pretty pricey for us, costing us almost 50 Euros for an appetizer, 2 entrees, 1/2 entree (for Des), and water.  We tend to stick to about half that for lunch and we usually have leftovers.  That being said, it was delicious, typical Catalan food and I would definitely recommend it for a romantic evening.  Ask the server to give you a history of the place...pretty neat stuff.

We ended our first week here with a trip into Gracia to catch a kiddie movie at the Cine Verdi.  As part of their Verdi Kids series, we watched the film, "Amic per sempre," originally a German animated movie that had been dubbed in Catalan.

The line and wait was long, but the theatre personnel postponed showing of the movie until everyone in line had made it into the theatre.  Although I understood very little of the language itself, the movie was easy to follow along and Des seemed to enjoy sitting in a big theatre with other kiddos.  They even have little red booster seats for the kiddos!  Very family friendly theatre a bit out of the way from the hubbub of "old" Barcelona.

The last bit of this past week, I've spent sleeping off some weird illness that, coupled with my jet lag, left me sleeping for 16-18 hours each day.  Hopefully, I'm over the worst of it and can get back to eating and enjoying the heck out of Barcelona.  Only 15.5 weeks left here...

Tout le (des)mond(e)

Well, we've done it.  We've completely clambered out of our relatively safe and comfortable American lives and settled into a, um, relatively safe and comfortable European life.  Ha!  We are currently living on a little street - Carrer Gravina - in Barcelona, Spain.  It may be worlds away for those not accustomed to European life or Spanish language, but I find that I'm probably more comfortable than my husband is considering that I do speak Castellano (Spanish).  So, I guess our move overseas doesn't quite have the adventure and exoticism that I've dreamt of having before, but we are taking baby steps to achieve that.

Billy was accepted into a business study exchange out here last year.  We decided to apply on a whim, not really thinking that we would ever leave St. Louis (we rather liked it there), but we liked having the option to go.  "Hey honey, wanna go to Barcelona next year?"  "Suuuuuure!"  As far as we knew, it wasn't gonna happen.  Then came the letter that let us know that Bill had been accepted to the program.  After a 15-minute discussion, we made the decision to go.  It was pretty easy to decide...one semester in Europe?  Yes, please.  I thought of all of the places we could visit (considering we frequently took road trips averaging 10 hours a day, driving 8 hours to Paris seemed ideal!) and started really looking forward to the experience.  Plus, exposing Des to even more Spanish culture and language was a definite plus.

One day last summer, Billy called me up and asked me if I would be open to taking 2 or 3 months after the course was done to do a bunch of traveling.  I thought about the amount of educational debt we both have incurred and the amount of money we currently had and balked at the idea at first.  I came around, though, since we don't have a house/mortgage and Billy wouldn't start his job until July/August.  Once I got used to the idea of being in Europe for about 6 months, Billy approached me with a new idea: we won't sell his business, we will try to expand it internationally, and we will spend a year doing so.  Again, I balked at the idea, but I've come around and now, we are planning to spend 5-6 months in Spain and divide the rest of the year between Croatia and Turkey.  Why Croatia and Turkey?  Well, initially, we were inspired by articles such as this, this, this, and this.  However, Croatia and Turkey are both centrally located (with Turkey straddling both Europe and Asia) and can afford us with fairly quick trips to international schools in Asia and Europe if necessary.

So, that's our life for the next year.  We are going to give it a shot and if it doesn't work out, then we will come back home and regroup to see what our next steps will be.  For now, I will enjoy fulfilling a life-long dream of living abroad, eating new foods, experiencing new cultures, and learning (or becoming acquainted with) new languages.  I will do my best to keep an account of our travels (mostly as a journal to myself) and specifically what our experience will be as parents of a very active toddler in a foreign country.