The Trip Part Four

The past is here, so read it first:
The Trip Part One, The Trip Part Two, The Trip Part Three

Wednesday 7th November, 2007 - AM

While the internet is a beautiful thing, it also lies. I have lied on these very pages. I have lied about an old man’s use of fuzzy felt and I slightly fabricated the sweet tale of Santa Eulàlia. The internet has sent me to closed or non-existent restaurants the world over, from the depressed London lanes to the officious gun toting backstreets of New York. It has inspired me to drive miles across an island in search of a canoe, only to discover that a ‘no boat hire’ season was in full effect. I have gazed longingly at beached pedalos and cursed the internet. Most entertainingly, the internet has led me to believe that I can steal software and then waltzed me into an eternal stream of pop up windows. A million bouncing breasts and pulsating groins flash at me demandingly on a loop. Look at me! I’m trying not to. Like I said, the internet is a beautiful thing.

On Wednesday, 7th November, I rose early. I rose before My Geek and went to the hotel restaurant alone. Lonely businessmen in suits provided a distorted mirror of my condition. Before long, two cyborgs clumsily landed at the table next to me, with their pitted flesh and binary thoughts. They were a poor replacement for My Geek. They looked nerdier; like poorly formed men that can only engage with their own kind, and rarely with women. I briefly side stared at them, wondering where our communality might begin and end. I had a white heart bleached into the back of my head and an inch long piercing at the nape of my neck. In a semi-slumber, my mind groggily tried to envisage the world of my almost companions and then realised that they probably have no world at all. The Microsoft Conference is their Glastonbury, their World Cup, their birthday and their New Years Eve all rolled into one. I felt safe from being digested and turned into a subroutine. The cyborg zombie geeks only scare me in mobs of 1,000 or more. Their brains may have been exchanged for logical functioning processing hardware, but their bodies remain weak, vulnerable and a blundering impediment.

I had arisen early on a quest; a quest to determine whether the shallow pits of humanity and the polite conversation of Western culture can lead to something beyond the vacuous. Prior to my trip to Barcelona, I had been a part of those conversations. ‘Oh, darling, I’ve been travelling; I’ll guide you to the best places’. Oh, the Ramblas. I could see that they were best avoided from the moment that I vaguely glanced at them. Oh, the stupidity of our kind.

A conversation about Microsoft’s .NET Framework, or the interminable white space issue in Firefox, can be more interesting than the dialogue of a person that actually believes that they, their brilliant self, can enhance your life with their own fantastic array of limited knowledge; “I went somewhere once and I know stuff”. Mostly, it’s just terminally boring. In polite conversation you have to feign interest. You can’t just close the window and watch celebrities taking crack on YouTube instead.

The possibilities in life are infinite and yet we just trudge along in our own pre-determined pathetic cycles. We’re like a pack of dogs; content with chasing our own tails and sniffing our own, or our nearest neighbours, oh so familiarly scented derrières. Okay, you sometimes wear a hat. You card. Okay, you’ve been in a same sex relationship. You fucking champion. Okay, you’ve travelled. I get it. But, think about it; are you, alone, capable of truly independent thought? Are any of us?

Sitges bloody this and Sitges bloody that. It seemed worth investigating just to see whether I would feel like building a model of the place and then kicking it to shreds. If they were right; brilliant. If I hated it; even better. I’m such a contrary motherfucker. Either way, I was likely to win. I had an excursion planned for the day. I even had a printout describing Sitges from the internet. Now, while people may have said, ‘Oh you should go to Sitges’, they neglected to tell me anything interesting about the destination. ‘It’s lovely’ doesn’t really use the full catalogue of descriptive words that our ancestors spent thousands of years developing. Well, blow me down; the internet based data was rather encouraging. It demonstrated that Sitges actually has a few really easy to remember and attention-grabbing qualities that might be passed on as ‘interesting nuggets of knowledge’; if one were to ever recommend or discourage a visit there. If I can remember something then it’s easy to remember; I assure you.

A few days earlier, the investigation had begun. I may have just belittled the oft repeated recommendation of Sitges, but I do take recommendations seriously; even when I only hear them once. I expand my breadth of experience by delving into the lives of others. I see the places that they love, I read the books that changed their life and I dance to the music that makes them feel giddied by their own existence. A new path to follow is like a small gift of life. The best experiences often come from the places that it would be so easy to dismiss. The mind stays fresh and young, and new areas for cynicism can develop well fed.

Sat at a computer with the rain beating hard against my English window, during those pre-Barcelona days, it was evident that something was amiss with Spanish rail. Every time I searched for suitable trains, the website gave me times for 11 de noviembre. I was returning home on the tenth; and the internet was laughing at me. Keen to find the foundations of this mischief, I delved into Spanish websites and, with the aid of a translation tool, came to the conclusion that the Spaniards were working on a high speed rail link from Madrid to Barcelona during my stay. The trains were well and truly fucked. Clever old me had advance warning not to attempt to travel by rail and, more importantly, the reason why. I felt triumphant at working all this out from two poorly translated and barely informative sentences. Sometimes the internet tells the truth in riddles and eventually, despite some doubt, my diagnosis proved correct.

Buses were a possibility, but it was evident that the language barrier could really present a problem, with me ending up lost and crying in the rural heartlands of Catalonia. At the end of the day, I am just another idiot who travels the world eagerly hoping to get by on English alone. I speak four words of Spanish: hola, vale (VAH-lay), grazias, and amigo. I don’t even know how to say goodbye, let alone ‘Where is the bus stop?’ or ‘A return to Sitges please’. The repetition of ‘vale’ (okay) could get me through a relatively long conversation without anyone realising that I have no fucking idea, but no fucking idea only gets you so far. Like its German counterpart - ‘genau’ (exactly) – vale is a term used over and over again, both as a conversational prompt and to express understanding. Whilst mock pretence of understanding can be fabulous - vale, vale, vale or genau genau genau - it’s not really a viable option when you’re lost and scared, or at risk of rape.

On Sunday, my Bus Turistic pamphlet sold me with all its talk of day trips and money off. I was going to Montserrat and Sitges in luxury, with a coach seat, a guide and English pleasantries. At Video Bum Stop, with the laptop pressed hard against a wall that breathed one bar of wireless internet access, I discovered that I needed to be in Catalunya Plaça before the departure time of 9am, but to arrive early to buy a ticket. I decided to arrive at 8.30am just to be sure.

With an exactness that the Germans might hail me for (Heil Fabpants!), I arrived at 8.30am as planned. I circled the square looking for my bus and with no success decided that it was probably still on its way. Down an escalator and under the Plaça, I visited the Tourist Information Office. A visit to the underworld should have allowed me to buy my ticket for the tour ‘in advance’ and provided me with an opportunity to find out where my soft cushioned bus was going to sit its wonderful plump arse. A Glaswegian in the queue ahead of me had forgotten where his hostel was and the singular staff member was in a long-term engagement with a slow-witted retard. What should happen does not always correspond with what does. Nobody said that life is fair.

I headed back up and shortly noticed my tour advertised at a bus stop. As I walked up and down a little, pondering and wondering at the lack of bus, I developed a slow building feeling that wrongness was afoot. I hadn’t had the chance to formulate my worried or confused expression, when a kindly old man stole my thoughts and stopped me. In Spanish, and then in very broken English, with the aid of the index finger pointing device, he managed to relay that the bus left at 8.30am every day, and not 9. I had missed it by a whisker. The internet had lied.

The lying bastard internet; you got me again you fiend. I thanked the man and smiled, not allowing him to know of my internal upset. With my packed lunch in tow, I felt marginally deflated, like the rose tint had already been stolen from my already precious day. It was 8.50am. Perhaps I would brave the commoners’ bus after all. Shall I, Shan’t I? The thoughts ran through my confused head. I had plans for exciting cable car rides the next day, set by My Geek’s limited availability. This was my last chance. I felt a little robbed, a bit tired and overly emotional. Vale, Vale, Sitges, Amigo, Vale. The public bus alone was not selling itself as a good idea. I was half way into town, with no information or map; I would have to walk back to the Bum Stop and make some hard decisions. Yes, whether to take my AK47 or my land mine detector.

At the hotel, I picked up my third free map of Barcelona (they turn into shreds if you dare to even look at them) and details for the public bus to Sitges and a walking tour of Barcelona. I felt a little gloomy as I reached Plaça Catalunya for the second time that morning. It was decision time. The walking tour it was. I was too scared to bus it alone. I was too scared to take the public bus to a town somewhere along its route, and chance finding myself in a hole, far away from my hotel with no ability to converse with the natives. I wouldn’t even know where to get off. Perhaps language is important after all.

I still felt torn about the following day; an afternoon with My Geek or a day out somewhere new. He didn’t care so much, but I did. I wanted to spend some time with him in the real world of the city, and not just sleep with him in the stale air of the hotel, but I also wanted to go on the tour; I had psyched myself up for it. To My Geek, Barcelona was just an amazing MSConference and a mediocre hotel. He is a geek after all, and what’s does ‘a different cultural experience’ mean to a fully fledged nerd?

Thin people are ones, fat people are zeros, and if you use Photoshop to slim down the fat people, then we are all just the same. In the geek’s mind, the world is just one big operating system and anything that does not follow a simple logical routine does not compute. ‘U R THE 1 2 MY 0’ might slip through as a sexual fantasy subroutine, but beyond that the geek mind can’t really ‘do’ people, let alone society. Cultural details elude the geek; they are not logical, serve no purpose and do not satisfy the semi-autistic mind. I am being hard on My Geek, but the Microsoft Conference of Barcelona was brainwashing him with success. This paragraph is his punishment for allowing himself to be evangelised. The last word of the previous sentence is Microsoft’s terminology and not mine. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I decided to hedge my bets, to abandon My Geek for the bus tour the following day, and hope that he would develop some cultural awareness and abandon the zombie fest for a few hours that afternoon or on Friday instead. I felt much better with a new plan in place and the rising sun started to warm my cold little fingers and nose. I was going on the free walking tour; new sights, a little company and perhaps a little fun. I had a new plan. I am a little geekish too.

I plan. I want to live my life instead of standing still in directionless indecision, and if that requires planning then I will arrive with a vague schematic of the where, when’s and how do you do’s. For more reassuring detail, I’ll cajole My Geek into being in charge. Several hours later I am presented with a 50 page document, with options and maps. Plans are wonderful things, especially when someone else has done all of the hard work. A little advance preparation enables new experiences and gives the gift of great things on the horizon to look forward to. The idea of wasting life is horrific to me. Plans add a little extra. A few printouts of places, event and restaurants can enhance your holiday experience ten-fold. A well considered list can enable you to eat well for a week, or more, after just one visit to your local shops. A little research can take you on a free walking tour of Barcelona. A little research on the internet, can lead to disappointment.

Have I told you that the internet lies? I am a fully fledged internet junky, but even I have times when I doubt its merits. At Plaça Reial, I sat at the fountain and looked at my watch. A scrappy online entry had told me that the only free walking tour in Barcelona would convene at the water feature at 10.30am every day. On my way to the meeting place, I saw fat people in football shirts; fans in search of early morning lager and BSE fried sausages. They wore blue tops emblazoned with Carling. They advertised cheap beer instead of their team, which I found both confusing and sad. I thought that they might be English. I was wrong. There had been a clue earlier in the day. Carling is a Canadian beer, but they weren’t from there either. The square was quiet, with a few whispering tourists enjoying the peace.

Plaça Reial, the Royal Square, named after Ferdinand and Isabella, is just to the east of the hustle, bustle, pickpockets and fast food outlets of La Rambla. A tired old fountain filled with still stagnant water sits at its heart. Palm trees host green parakeets that chatter and go about their elegant parrot-like business, safe from the night madness in their lofty nests. In the early morning it is quiet, but in the heart of darkness it becomes a drunken club land; a home for petty thieves, drug dealers, knives and fists. It is a beautiful square for crime. Of course, I would later find out that Gaudi left his mark, even here. The fountain is filled with his piss.

A small group of young Americans on their ‘year out’ stood to my left, and a bright studious girl was reading a French novel to my right. It felt like they might be convening, but at 10.40am, I started to question whether the tour would actually happen. Had the internet duped me twice in one morning? Eventually, I plucked up a little courage and asked those that were conversing in MSEnglish if they were waiting for a tour too. It was like intruding on a backpackers’ love in; two girls, two boys and the smell of upper –middle class sex. Anyone not sharing their view of the world was somehow inadequate. I felt that. It was an experience that I felt at university sometimes, and when I say sometimes, I mean often. I was surrounded by those that are born into wealth and snobbery for three sad years of my life.

How do such people instantly recognise each other and know who is worthy and who is not? They always have me pegged from the start; before I even utter a word. I have a northern English attitude towards money and little regard for frivolity, superiority or a know-it-all attitude, but I don’t dress in a flat-cap and cover myself in soot. Can they tell, before I even utter a word - in my mostly southern English accent - that if someone explains something very obvious to me, I’d rather be polite and feign ignorance, than relay that I’ve just been told something that I already know? I am a person that will encourage a stranger to go into increasingly basic detail about a topic that I am more than fully aware of, rather than be impolite and suggest that I already know anything - at all in the whole wide world - that they might be able to share with me. Can they instantly tell that I don’t have public school training in ‘how not to act inferior’? Is it in the way that I hold my nose? Should I hold it higher? Should I focus my eyes more, and take away their hazy glaze? May be I should, but I have no desire to. I’m best off away from their kind, because they’ll never see me for what I am. They have no interest in what I am.

The Americans said little, carried on making eye contact with each other, and held a flyer aloft. The Free Walking Tour was included on the flyer and it wasn’t just a crappy entry on a poorly designed website. Hooray! There might be hope. An attempt at friendly banter failed and I returned to fidgeting and swinging my legs against the fountain’s side. At least my feet were off the ground. The company that I’d been looking forward to was poor, even from a voyeuristic perspective. It was me, four wealthy young Americans, a quiet Greek girl learning French, and a middle-aged Russian with terrible halitosis. Our host, when she apologetically arrived, after being held up by trains, was a bright, friendly, slightly chaotic Brazilian in her mid-twenties. She was on permanent vacation in Barcelona and this was her first week of guiding the tour, or perhaps she said that every week. The Russian was desperate for her attention and I moved away from the slipstream of his unbrushed teeth.

The tour – it really did exist - began with the tale of the Gaudi street lamps of Plaça Reial, and neglected to mention his piss in the fountain at all. To decorate the two lampposts in the centre of the square, Gaudi took inspiration from the Greek God Hermes; the god of merchants, messenger of Zeus and patron of the Catalan business community. Two snakes twist up a messenger’s staff and a winged helmet sits at the top. Wing helmets were used in medieval times to escape from muggers, but unfortunately fell from fashion in the late fifteenth century. Generally people don’t notice the lampposts in the square, and Gaudi’s true legacy is his rancid old piss.

The dialogue soon left Antoni G, and Barcelona’s culture and history, and drifted into an appraisal of the lesser spotted football hooligan. I soon discovered that Glasgow Rangers were the team in town. The clue had been at the Tourist Information Office. One of the American girls was keen to tell us that Glasgow is a working man’s town and is very different to Edinburgh; this makes them much more committed to football. She had the tone of someone who is an expert on the Scottish way of life, with a firm belief in her knowledge. The ancestral pride of a British descendent should not be underestimated, but I fear that she was no cultural expert. She later told us about George, the Patron Saint of Ireland. The football fans had been up until late, singing, shouting, fighting and keeping the hostel dwellers awake; she’d been fucking all night and was tired. She had no interest in what I had to say. After issuing the first two words of a sentence, I shut my mouth and it was as though those two words had never happened. What would I know? I was a mere peasant with the education of a hazelnut.

I mean, I had no idea that Saint George is also the Patron Saint of Catalonia. See ya later Saint Patrick; Georgie-Boy is going for World Domination at the behest of a bittersweet, wise American gal. If England and Catalonia weren’t enough for his dragon slaying blood, Saint George also offers his patronage to Aragón, Canada, Deptford, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Montenegro, Palestine, Portugal, Russia, and Serbia, as well a whole bunch of cities, numerous professions and, most oddly, disease sufferers. In Barcelona, Saint George or Sant Jordi’s day is celebrated on the 23rd April as ‘The Day of the Rose’. Akin, to Saint Valentine’s Day, romantic gifts and cards are given, the national dance of Catalonia, the Sardana, is performed throughout the day in Plaça Sant Juane, and bookstores and cafes host readings by renowned authors. Inside the Palau de la Generalitat, which is open to the public for just one day, huge displays of roses are shown in honour of Saint George. I think they celebrate Saint George a little better than we do. In England, George gets so little attention that a campaign has been set up just to get the day recognised. Patrick is the real winner.

The walking tour took us through the Bari Gotic area of Barcelona, and while it wasn’t the most informative of excursions, we were shown where to buy pastries and chorros, fashionable shopping streets, and most interestingly the Jewish Quarter.

The Jewish Quarter, ‘El Call’, is in the heart of Barcelona, between Plaça Sant Jaume and La Rambla. It is comprised of small winding streets, and feels a little like a medieval maze. Historically, the quarter was bordered off from the rest of Barcelona, but - despite this separatism - the Jews were respected for their financial expertise (Christians weren’t allowed to lend money), understanding of the law, and their learned persons. Practicing the Jewish faith required bible study, which ensured a high level of literacy. For many centuries, the only University in Catalonia was Barcelona's Jewish "Escuela Mayor o Universitaria".

It was all going terribly well until it all went terribly wrong. I’m talking about the Jewish Quarter, not the tour; that did neither. In the fourteenth century, under rising anti-Semitism, the Jews were persecuted during civil conflict, suffered horrible massacres, and were finally forced out under the Hitler-like regime of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492.

It’s surprising how much of the Jewish Quarter has survived, and history is what makes it so distinctive. One of the reasons that the streets in the El Call are so narrow, is because while the Jewish population was on the rise (and they were until the thirteenth century), they were still limited to the same geographical boundaries. They built new properties in the space that remained and their walkways became thinner and thinner.

In Hove, my home town, where people once drifted from tall room to tall room in their mansion like houses, more and more people now squeeze into flat conversions; half a floor of a detached house each, including servants quarters and attics. Meanwhile, gardens and grand causeways are lost to a glut of people wagons, four by fours and ostentatious sports cars; a multitude of personalised travelling boxes on wheels, spewing pollution and stealing space.

The geographical boundary of the sea, the Downs and the poverty belt – god forbid living in Whitehawk, Mouslecoomb or Portslade – keep the numbers up and the prices rising. Two retailers specialising in champagne have just opened establishments within a stone’s throw of our street, and yet our homes are so small that I type with a washing machine spinning violently behind me and a bed full of dust mites shitting twenty times a day by my side. Champagne and oysters, indeed! We are like rich Jews, enjoying the giddy heights of prosperity without the luxury of space; voluntarily imprisoned in a geographical detention centre for idiots. We opt to live like this when the Jews had little choice.

Some Jews did give up their religion to live without persecution, geographical imprisonment and finally eviction, but being forced to give up your religion to live peacefully - in the part of the world that you know as home - isn’t really a choice. It’s iniquitous from whatever religious or non-religious stance you might hail. Covertly placed in one of the El Call’s narrow streets is the Main Synagogue of Barcelona. It sits at the corner of Marlet and Sant Domènec del Call, and is one of the largest synagogues in Europe. You could quite easily walk past it without knowing; it lives in a basement.

While the Bastardilica and the Cathedral slowly gained stones year on year, the inconspicuous synagogue lay abandoned for centuries. For many modern years, it was used as a storage space for electrical materials. People did just walk past it without knowing. Its rediscovery occurred in 1995, when the property went up for sale. An historian, Jaume Riera, identified the building as a synagogue and the Associació Call de Barcelona decided to save it. Today, it is functional and open for all to visit. One gets the impression that Jews are welcome in the city these days, but as I am not a Jew and I have never experienced persecution, I don’t want to assume. What looks good on the surface may be rotten inside.

Although our delightful Brazilian guide had been enthusiastic with regard to the Jewish Quarter, her knowledge – as for the rest of the tour – was limited. Outside a furniture shop at 10 Carrer de Banys Nous (The Street of New Baths), she explained to us that most Barcelonans in historical times had been bereft of their own washing facilities, and had used communal baths instead. She also declared that some still take communal baths today, but she seemed a little confused.

It was only on returning home, that I discovered that the bath inside the store was a mikvah; a Jewish ritual bath. I didn’t actually see the mikvah, because although the tour guide had tempted us with false knowledge, she hadn’t actually taken us in. She suggested that, because the shop owner might be disgruntled by the never ending stream of snooping tourists, we could all visit later at our own leisure. Personally, I didn’t go back to the store to feign interest in overpriced furniture and half glance at history. I’d rather be rude in a group. That’s what tour guides are for; to justify bad-manners and nosey behaviour.

The last stop of the tour was my favourite. By following our leader we had arrived in a beautiful dead end square. We stood at the entrance to the square, and it felt as though we’d been transported into a peaceful medieval retreat. The tour guide said not a word about why we had gone there, and just left us agog in silent staring. It was as though we’d all become transfixed by the simple sight ahead of us. To the left of the square, a group of gently bronzed boys played football with makeshift goalposts and simple rules, and to our right, their black haired sisters skipped and whispered in small smiling groups.

Medieval stones lay beneath the square and built the walls around it. It was like an idyllic playground and the children seemed at harmony within it. No crossed words, no fisticuffs and no abandonment. No child stood alone, rejected by their fickle peers. We remained mesmerised until the pupils were called back in to study. The guide said nothing. She hadn’t been waiting for the children to finish before moving into the square. She’d had no intention of enlightening us with some half-baked fact. Perhaps she’d just got lost and felt drawn to watch us stare. There is something very beautiful and captivating about children playing their normal everyday games in an enclosed medieval square. The free walking tour had occupied me for one hour instead of two, but the internet hadn’t lied and what do you expect for free?