The World Needs More Ninjas

We just finished up our trip to Barcelona, Spain. Matt went there to present a paper at a conference and Leigh Ann tagged along on a vacation. We left from Champaign’s airport around 5 pm on Saturday evening (April 22) and flew to Detroit where we caught the long flight to Amsterdam. Thanks to Leigh Ann’s frequent flyer miles, we got exit row seats for this flight . We also had a cool flight attendant for this flight that told us all about the flight attendant lifestyle and his favorite cities to visit. This was Matt’s first time (1) on a plane this big (an Airbus A330…2 by 4 by 2 seats) and (2) flying to a place with significant jet lag (previously he had only been to Ecuador). The trip only took seven hours and we passed the time mostly by sleeping, eating, and watching a movie (Syriana for Matt and Memoirs of a Geisha for Leigh Ann).

Up to this point, the trip was going great. Then, we had to board our KLM flight to Barcelona at Amsterdam. We had carried on all our bags to avoid losing them. However, at the Amsterdam gate, they told us the bags were too big for the overhead bins (they weren’t…it was your standard 3 by 3 seating) and that they would have to take them and we could pick them up on the conveyor belt in Barcelona. At this point, we didn’t question them because (1) we were so tired and (2) we figured that surely they wouldn’t mess up our luggage over a two hour flight. Rather ominously, the attendant asked if we had any important items in our bags such as medicine. In retrospect, the correct answer to this question (particularly when traveling international) should always be “Yes”. If nothing else, the sanitary value of a clean pair of underwear should qualify as a medical necessity.

So, as you can guess, when we waited for the luggage in the Barcelona airport, it never showed up. We had to go to a counter to file a lost luggage report. The desk clerk got our luggage description, locater numbers, etc. and gave us a printed sheet of paper with a reference number and phone number to call for updates. She told us that it should arrive at our hotel by that night or the next morning (this was about 2 pm local time on Sunday). This didn’t seem too bad as we could handle one day with our current clothes.

We split a cab to our hotel with some other people on the flight who were attending the conference. When we got to our hotel, we decided to go exploring around the local area. The day we arrived corresponded to their St. Jordi Day where men give women a rose and women give men a book. I guess it’s like some kind of bizarro Valentine’s Day or something. After figuring out that there wasn’t too much going on near our hotel (it was more of a business/university district), we rode the subway to the La Rambla area. This was a much more happening part of town and, as it turns out, we would end up going there every single day. There were lots of vendors with books and roses, of course. We just took in the sites (hoping that our luggage would be at the hotel when we returned) and ate at an Italian fast food place.

We also walked around the Gothic District. This place is quite a maze of alleys and courtyards. Pretty much all the shops are either street vendors or little holes-in-the-wall. One of the difficulties of navigating the La Rambla area is that you’d see some restaurant or something that you wanted to eat at later, but it was near impossible to find one of these little places again.

Around 8 pm we were completely exhausted from the jet lag and went back to our hotel room. Unfortunately, our luggage wasn’t there, so we just crashed assuming that it would be there in the morning. A brief word about this first hotel that we stayed at….it wasn’t exactly the Hilton. On hotels.com, it had received four stars, but it was about the equivalent of a two star hotel in America. Some of the “features” included: (1) no A/C, only a window that opened to a noisy street, (2) furniture circa 1920, (3) no wash rags, (4) an “elevator” that could barely fit the two of us and may or may not come when you pushed the button, (5) paper thin walls that combined nicely with our loud neighbors, (6) only one key for the room, (7) vents that you could open and see across to your neighbors bathroom vent, and (8) one English television channel (CNN International). A brief word about CNN International…after this I will never complain about a media bias because CNN Intl.’s completely unbiased reporting is boring as all get out. These anchors could serve as a soporific as opposed to the dueling demagogues that we’re used to. Pretty much all they talk about on that channel is the Chernobyl anniversary, soccer, and Iran. And I mean that is all they talk about 24 hours a day.

But I digress. OK, so we wake up the next morning around 10 am and still no luggage. Matt had planned to attend a student workshop in advance of his conference on Monday, but decided not to go since he didn’t want to meet potential employers in dirty jeans and a T-shirt, which was all the clothes he had at this point. So, now began our frantic calling to find out what the heck was up with our luggage. We start with the number they gave us on our lost luggage sheet. No answer. Fast forward to call number 56 and there’s still no answer. Finally, by some miracle, Matt got an answer. In limited English (more on this later), the lady told us that our bags were in the terminal and would be delivered to our hotel around 2 pm. So, we walked around near our hotel for a while to get some lunch and kill time. We visited the Parc de Palau, which was scenic.

Also, we saw their “football” stadium. As luck would have it, the Barcelona team happened to be practicing there when we visited. It was kind of wild because all these spectators were going crazy and we had no idea who the players were. We took some pictures of the madness, including one that captured Barcelona’s star player, Ronaldinho, in the background.

Then, we headed to a Starbucks for lunch and hoped to be able to access the Internet there. Unfortunately, we couldn’t and WiFi seems to be insanely expensive in Europe (relative to America’s already insane prices). At our hotel, it was about $11.50 to access the Internet for an hour or $19 for an entire day.

About 3 pm, we headed back to our hotel hoping to see our luggage waiting (this was over 24 hours since we had landed). Alas, it was not. So, now we went call crazy again. Nobody ever picked up again on the number they gave us at the airport. Even the worst customer service in America is a lot better than your average Spanish customer service. Then, we went through the phone book, trying to call the airport, local airlines, etc. Basically, anyone that could speak some level of English. Finally, Leigh Ann found someone that could look up our reference number even though he initially claimed he couldn’t. This was around 4:30 pm. He said our luggage had left the airport at 1:30 pm and it should be there soon. Our hotel was about a full 10 minutes away from the airport, so at this point we were very nervous. We sat there and played cards, on pins and needles the entire time. Finally, at 5:45 pm, we get a knock on our door and our luggage was delivered! Evidently, the driver must have taken an extremely scenic route and a couple of siestas.

So, empowered by our luggage, we took showers and set out to enjoy the Barcelona evening without that extra baggage hanging over our heads (pun intended). That night, we went out to the south part of La Rambla near the Mediterranean Sea. We walked out on this place that was very reminiscent of the Navy Pier in Chicago and ate at a Tapas Bar. Tapas are one of Spain’s favorite foods, but as best we can tell, all it means is “an eclectic mix of food that you share”. When someone talks about Tapas Bars, it sounds a lot like “Topless Bars” which lead us to wonder if there are any Topless Tapas Bars .

This experience would show us three recurring themes of Spain’s restaurants. First, the employees speak no English. The entire time we were in Spain, the only restaurant where the server spoke any English was at a Chinese restaurant. They don’t even try…they’ll just keep speaking to you in Spanish until you give up. So, if you have any question about the food, which usually isn’t translated into the name of a traditional American dish, you’re just out of luck. You just have to order and hope it’s what you think it is. In fact, the entire country is pretty antagonistic towards the English language. Multiple people who had traveled internationally before said that this was by far the least English-friendly country to which they’d ever been. Even in the most touristy places, the employees don’t speak a lick of English and basically don’t even try. From this angle, if I were given my choice of non-English speaking European countries to travel to, I would definitely prefer somewhere like Germany or France
where at least there’s enough English speakers to get around.

The second theme is that food is extremely expensive here. Basically, you’re looking at least $10 per person for any meal that you eat and for something on par with Applebee’s it’s around $20 per person. The “good” food restaurants start at about 30 Euros per person, which is almost $40. On a related note, the third theme is that water is very expensive ($2-3 for a small bottle), usually lukewarm, and never with ice.

On Tuesday, Matt’s conference started, so he was there all day until about 6 pm. Leigh Ann went souvenir shopping on La Rambla during the day. That evening, we met up with one of our friends from Champaign, Nat, back at La Rambla. We went to their produce market and ate Pitayas. Here’s an up close pic of the fruit). Then, we ate pizza cones for dinner where they even include little forks for your fries.

On Wednesday, Matt was at the conference again and Leigh Ann went to the beach to lay out by the Mediterranean Sea. That evening, we went to see some architecture by Gaudi (evidently, the English phrase “gaudy” came from his work). That night we ate at what appears to be the most popular Spanish fast food franchise, Pans and Company.

Another thing to note about Barcelona is that pretty much no place takes credit cards. Obviously, you don’t expect street vendors to accept them, but a lot of restaurants and even museums do not take them. So, you need to make sure you have a way to get plenty of Euros. Also, watch out for conversion sharks. The airport conversion rate was fine (less than 2%), but we had to convert some of the cash that was stuck in our lost luggage. So, we went to a train station, where they charged us about 10%. Of course, it’s impossible to ascertain what exactly is going on until they hand you your receipt since they can’t converse in English.

Thursday was the last day of Matt’s conference and he did his presentation that morning (which almost became afternoon when the speaker in front of him took 35 minutes instead of the allotted 20 minutes). We also switched hotels that day. This was planned well in advance of our trip as we moved to a cheaper hotel farther away from the conference but much nicer…definitely four stars even in America. That evening, after checking in to our new hotel, we walked out to explore the Olympic stadium area (Barcelona hosted the Summer games in 1992). The stadium isn’t much to see…that whole area kind of looks abandoned. However, it is up on a mountain that gives an awesome view of the city and is well worth the trip.

That night, we met up with Nat again and his wife, Ramona, who had just flown in. We went to La Rambla again and ate Paellas, another traditional Spanish food that is basically just some kind of meat on a bed of flavored rice.

Friday was our first full day after the conference to spend exploring the city. We met up with Nat and Ramona about 11:45 am (everyone slept a lot later than intended). We first went to Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, which is a cathedral that has been under construction since before his death in the 1920s. From there, we rode the subway to Parc Guell, which is a park by Gaudi. It was pretty cool and also had some nice views overlooking the city.

At Parc Guell, Leigh Ann became quite the tourist attraction for a group of Chinese tourists who all wanted to have their picture taken with her. We think that they find her curly hair unique since most all Chinese women have straight hair.

After the Parc Guell, we hit the Picasso Museum (you can see from the pic that Nat is much more skilled than Matt at making a “P” sign). We had to wait about 45 minutes to get in and it cost about $7.50 per person, but it was worth it. It takes about an hour to an hour and a half to go through and has a lot of his early work in Barcelona before he moved to Paris. One room that you walk it is all of a sudden Picasso Uncensored. Let’s just say there’s plenty of graphic sexual acts in those paintings that I’ve never seen in R-rated movies. Oddly enough, there was no warning for kids or anything that the room might not be appropriate. In the continuing theme of avoiding English as much as possible, none of the titles or painting information is translated to English.

After the museum, Nat and Ramona headed back to the hotel for a siesta while we went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant. At this point, we were kind of desperate to find places that took credit cards. Also, the Spanish restaurants aren’t very unique in terms of food…tapas and paellas…so Chinese was a nice change of pace.

One thing we wondered about at this point is when Spanish people worked as it seems like no matter what time you went to La Rambla, there were a ton of people just hanging out. That and those people love to smoke in Barcelona. Definitely a lot different than America. Without a doubt, we definitely prefer the American lifestyle, which may entail more stress, but it’s worth it for the efficiencies and organization that we enjoy.

On Saturday, we wanted to end our trip by hanging out on the beach, having seen most all the major sites. We went to the beach about noon and stayed there for three hours. It was very relaxing and made us both realize how much we miss the beach being landlocked in Champaign.

Also, we found one of the things we were longing to try, chocolate covered waffles. These things are the bomb and if you’re ever in Barcelona, you should definitely look for them near the beach. After this, we headed up La Rambla one last time and took some more pictures of Gaudi’s houses again since it was light this time (we still haven’t mastered low-light photography). We then headed back to the hotel and talked to Nat and Ramona for a while before walked across the street to get some (what we thought would be cheap) dinner. Even the cafeteria in the train station was extremely confusing and we ended up with a $24 bill (again, no English speaking to figure out what you’re buying or how much it costs). All in all, it was a fun and wonderful experience, but next time we’d definitely prefer Asia or some place that’s cheaper and more English-friendly. And, it’s wonderful to be returning to America!

Here’s our entire picture album for the trip. Also, check out some of funny signs that we saw in Barcelona (click on each picture for my commentary on the sign ).