The Trip Part One

Sunday 4th November, 2007

Getting up at 3.45am is wrong. Have I said that before? For the first time in my life I got a taxi from home to the airport, but where is the luxury when you feel sick with sleep deprivation? Where is the luxury when the valleys between Brighton and Gatwick are filled with a beautiful mist, the taxi driver proceeds with great haste and there is an underlying feeling of fear? The luxury is at the other end, on the other side of the pollution trial that we leave across the sky. The luxury is Video Bum Stop.

From the moment I saw the words ‘Video Bum Stop’, in thick black lettering against the yellow advertising board of a crusty porn shop, I knew that I had found home. I knew that posteriors on film and my sleeping hole were destined to be entwined. Of course they were; how could they not be? And how could they try and reject us, confuse us with a Microsoft drone from The Netherlands? They couldn’t for long. So there I was at 10am, at the Hotel Confortel, checked in and ready for the city rejuvenated by the 1992 Olympics and, before that, the 1888 Expo World Fair.

I was a mere stone’s throw away from the Arc de Triomf, that fine gateway to the 1888 shenanigans of old. Yes, there I stood, as the sun began to warm the slowly stirring city streets, fuelled, armed and ready for action. The famous city of sweet Pari awaited my full attention with garlic breath and rude stares. No, you’re confusing me, why did you put such thoughts in my head? I wasn’t in Paris at all. I was in the warm hearted washing capital of Catalonia. The Arc de Triompf is, was and always will be a beautiful ruse. Barcelona is way cooler than that French shit hole.

East Barcelona is a series of squares, but no Spaniard can live in squares alone. That’s why Ildefons Cerdà invented the Avinguda Diagonal. To save the Spaniards from a square rigid existence, he gave them a street that cheekily cuts right through, oh so very many rectangles, from the heart of Plaça Catalunya, past the bullet of Torre Agbar, and onwards to salty waters and the Edifici Forum.

The Edifici Forum is where Microsoft bases itself for two weeks of every year; where sea meets land, sand meets toes, and lowly geek meets geek god, or was that Gandhi? My geek companion said it was like meeting Gandhi. Being a systems architect for Microsoft is logically akin to being a major political and spiritual leader for an entire country seeking independence and civil rights. This you may not know.

The Edifici Forum Building, designed by Swiss architects Jaques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, hosts an auditorium to seat 3,200, an exhibition hall covering some 5,000 metre squares and an arrangement of construction materials that cost 144 million US Dollars to put in place. It’s a triangular building that says ‘I live on a diagonal street and I’m an awesome triangle; fucking eh!’ Opposition parties in both the Barcelona Council and the Parliament of Catalonia wondered why it cost so much to build a triangle, but they hadn’t anticipated the cost of a protractor or the needs of the corporate geek that would visit once a year. Of course the average geek spends most of their time at the yearly MSConference marvelling at this ‘new Barcelona’ architecture. They certainly don’t sit in corners all alone, nursing their laptops and contemplating code. The one I saw was definitely marvelling the architecture as reflected by his laptop screen. Very modern!

In Diagonal Avinguda, sunny Sunday vibes were in full effect. A wide promenade runs along the centre of the entire length of street, as it does in Aviguda Meridiana, Saint Joan and the frightening Rambla that fights through the city’s heart. Along the promenades, bikes, roller blades, skate boards and feet roam, glide and stutter, and people converse merrily on benches. The roads provide for life and not just gas guzzling transportation. And gas can be guzzled from bus stops, or so it seemed.

I merrily conversed on a bench myself, while eating bread rolls made in England at 4am. A lady dressed in a leotard was trapped inside the cellophane wrapping whilst doing her daily exercises. I liked the graffiti that announced it was Urbano in the corner of a dilapidated abandoned square, where perhaps a home for many had once stood. A photographer, sat in the middle of the promenade, with her camera and tripod pointed at nothing but an ordinary street, and her bottom resting comfortably on the path, said ‘Sunday’. Diagonal Avinguda is a street for locals and not for hapless tourists, beggars and the drunken fools who define their vacations by alcohol consumption. Hazy Sunday mornings are made for people like me and the locals.

From the Edifici Forum to La Barceloneta, the Barcelona lawns and prom run along the water’s edge. From Nova Mar Bella beach, I walked along the coastline to La Torre de les Aigües. Along the way, at a seaside cafe, the language barrier that separates the ignorant English from the ignorant Spanish provided for a little gentle amusement between two proud and incompetent European races. When two nationalities of great ignorance combine, good things can happen. People smile, point and, because each are the same, there is no embarrassment to endure. The everyday situation, which could be oh so very formal and dull, becomes a dance of incoherence without misunderstanding.

When both Spaniards and the English can travel so far and wide on their sweet home tongue, there is little reason for learning another. Both are truly fine languages for expression, and to learn a second language would sully the importance of the first. ‘Am I not enough?’ cries the Oxford English Dictionary to the child of grey clouds and dark poetry as they open a traitorous book of bleak translation. And ‘please do not betray me’ the La Real Academia Española pleas passionately to its beautiful sun scarred babies as they depart with warm smiles and grand hand gestures. Don’t be brainwashed by the places where hola is not hola but hello, hi or ni hao. And why would anyone learn any language when they have been born with inbuilt pointing devices and a smile?

Incredibly brave or stupid English people swim in the cold sea while the land creatures pull their coats closer to their bodies. Slender men with six packs throw cartwheels and handsprings on the beach. A cycling tour rides by and a bus tour goes the other way.

The bus tour awaits the ears, eyes and bottom. Barcelona Bus Touristic has three routes: Red Route which circles the north of the city; Blue Route which circles the south; and the Forum Route which travels to where my feet have already trodden and is not in service. At the Platja del Bogatell the bus says ‘hello’ and ‘sit down’ to tired feet. It only takes a short period of assuming the sitting position to remember the torture of sleep deprivation. A whole city, that I know so little of, lies ahead in a welcoming embrace. I have not yet heard about the impact of the 1888 Universal Exhibition or the 1992 Olympics 100 times over, and I am so very eager to. Sleep can wait a little while longer.

As my feet say ‘ahhhh’, I learn that many of Barcelona’s beaches are new; thanks to some famous sporting event in 1992. They sure are pretty and so very clean. Will Hackney get luxurious sandy beaches in 2012? I want to play volley ball on a beach in Hackney.

The Parc de la Ciutadella houses the Catalan Parliament in a zoo that was created in 1888. Most interestingly, there are 400 different species of politician held in the zoo. I never knew there were so many, and in one region alone. The Spanish and the Catalans don’t get on too well.

The Torre Agbar, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, looks rather like Norman Fosters London Gherkin. It lights up at night and is home to the Barcelona water company. The building is known as the Dildo. It accommodates the needs of many Catalan housewives. It is a very dry country.

At the Placa de Catalunya, I move to the Red Route, which starts at the Tourist Information Office. This is very much tourist land and akin to Piccadilly Circus. It is also the start of the terrifying La Rambla, with its pickpockets and living statues that move.

Soon we are to be bombarded by works of the famous architect Gaudi. My favourite Gaudi fact is that he was knocked down by a tram in 1926.

The Sagrada Família cathedral is not a real Roman Catholic cathedral because each city only has one. The term cathedral developed because Gaudi lived up his own behind and developed a building far grander than Barcelona’s real cathedral. The snails are the best part of the whole Sagrada Família Basilica building. The snails are ace. Good work on those snails Gaudi. The roof of the Casa Batlló is also pretty damn cool. There is a lot of Gaudi this and Gaudi that on this part of the tour, and perhaps my geek friend was confusing Ghandi with Gaudi when he was describing the godlike status of the source code masters. Gaudi liked to dress as a pauper in his later years. After being knocked down by the tram that led to his final demise he begged to stay in a hospital for the poor. He wanted to live like common people but to build a cathedral that would cost so much that it still hasn’t been finished to this day. My guess is that Jarvis Cocker would take him to a supermarket given half a chance.

Other points of interest, which I decided to attempt to return to later, were Park Guell, Montjuic hill, the Olympic stadium, the Montjuic cable car and Port Vell. The Tibidabo amusement park, with the Tramvia Blau - a tram that has been in service for over a hundred years - was rather disappointingly closed on weekdays by the time of my visit. A trip on the roller coasters was not to be. The tour bus got dark and cold. Sleep was beckoning. After another short trip on the blue route, Video Bum Stop called my name.