Massave Update

ok where to start sense last time...

Lets see, I left off after coming back from a club with the two Belgian girls. I forgot if I mentioned that I went to the Gaudi Cathedral. This is important. Anyhow the next day we didn't really have a plan. I got up early the next day and at breakfast I met a guy that lived 6 blocks away from me in the U district. He was one of the creepiest people I've ever met. Strange slur when he talked and a bright blonde mustache. Its a bit hard to describe his creepyness on words. I guess the closest thing you can do is say euro-trash. I'm a bit scared to go back to the U district :). We did meet a cool guy from LA named Kyle. He worked on an Oil Tanker 6 months out of the year and got the other 6 months off. He recommended that we go to the Picasso Museum which was half a block away from our hostel. I was unimpressed. After our second art museum we went we realized that none of us were really fans, but still had to go just because it was a once in a lifetime thing. From there we took a trip up to the Gaudi park, which was really cool. I'll append this post later with comparisons of his style in different places. In any event there we ran into the guy from LA again with a few Aussie friends that we also met at Breakfast. They invited me to go out on a Tapas tour + Flamenco thing with them that night (which I never ended up paying for, but thats another story). It was also at the park when Jeff and Lars decided to start photographing masterpieces. We also got our first Conway shot of the trip there. After that we wandered aimlessly for a few minutes looking for lunch and ended up in a Boacillo joint where we paid 2 euro for them. (Current cost of food on the trip ~50 euro). After lunch we went to the Gaudi Cathedral again and I got mad at Lars for taking to many pictures.

Then we went to the Olympic Park, which was apparently right below Barcelona's Castle (Did you know Barcelona has a Castle?!). Anyhow we wandered around the park for a bit, I looked for the pool, but couldn't find it, decided to come back the next day and find it. In any event it was very pretty and I've got pictures, just like the rest of the trip.

We were all tired at that point and went back to the hostel. I decided to go on the Tapas Tour with the Aussies and the guy from LA. It turned out to be more of a pub crawl. We had Tapas and drinks, then we went to a Flamaco performance that was designed for tourists and drinks. I met some girls from Vancouver on the tour. It was cool that they were so close to home. Also found out a bit about our host Martin, he was from Argentina and used to work for Craft. But came over here for some reason or another. Very nice guy. Then we went to an Irish pub that was designed for tourists and drinks. Finally we went to a club that was designed for tourists, this time no drinks. Mainly because it would cost 23$ for two drinks. I wasn't about to pay that much. It was a lot of fun though. At the club I found out a bit out the girl who took us out the night before. She also had an interesting past. A business major from Paris that couldn't find work in her country. So she was just hanging out down here until the economy picked up. I asked her if it ever got boring going out clubbing 7 days a week, she said it wasn't her favourite thing to do anymore. I felt kind of bad for her. Eventually you must become numb to meeting new people, and just start putting them in categories of tourists that you have to try and take out. I figured a job like that would be fun for about 2 weeks and then suck. She had been doing it for over a year. In any event at that point she wandered off with some coworkers. I ran into the two Germans (The older cousin who was really cool, and kept yelling about Clumbos and the cute younger cousin) I met the first night in Barcelona. I hung out with them until far to late and then went back to the hostel.

3 hours of sleep later...

I should take a few seconds to mention that I really disliked Barcelona at this point. I've only seen the touristy parts and really wanted to get a feel for the real city.

I woke up, compared notes of the night with Lars and Jeff (See Lars' Entry) and met some Irish girls. We then bought tickets for the next day to France, but we were unable to reserve connecting tickets from our stop in France. I was really tired, but decided that I would take a nap after I found and swam in the Olympic pool. Time of leaving: 11:00am, estimated time of return 2:00, sounds good. I was going to meet Jeff and Lars on the Beach when I got back (Just like the second day) I found the pool, swam, chipped a toe nail, and was thrown off by the topless sun bathers. All in all it was a 2000m lesson in how out of shape I am. Really need to get back in the water.

Anyhow after that I wandered around the public park that was part of the stadium. It was prefect, a true public park, not a tourist attraction. I loved seeing how people spent their leisure time. I then decided to wander back to the hostel. (Current time unknown, possibly 1:00, estimated arrival time: 2:00). I got side tracked a number of times.

The first was before I even got out of the park. I wandered my way down to the Plaza de Espania and found the fountains that Barcelona is famous for. They were nice, then I managed to wander into a Beach Volleyball tournament, with the US vs Brazil. This really changed my opinion about the city. Any city that would host that for its citizens and make it free made me happy. It was really fun to watch, but I was tired and wanted to keep moving. Also at this point I should mention that I won the masterpiece photo competition. I continued to wander back, hoping that I was heading in the right direction.

About 5 blocks away from the volleyball game I happened upon another public park. There was a flock of parrots, a nice open area, 2 great play structures and 3 open air ping-pong tables. Far be it from me to assume that this is a standard park, but it wasn't a tourist place. There were kids playing and adults sitting and drinking some beer on a Saturday afternoon. I loved it. I think its a great use of public space.

Moving on, I wandered through the residential district a bit, and to my surprise found a street like La Rumbla except where la Rumbla is a tourist trap of epic proportion this was an unassuming walking path that looked like it fostered community in the surrounding community. Spaniards were sitting relaxing eating late lunches and having a good time.

It was here that I decided to have lunch. (Estimated time: unknown probably 3:00, estimated time of arrival: 2:00)I walked into a bar, which over here is more like a fast food / cheep eat place during lunch and had some food. The waiter was Asian, and it was very hard for me not to speak Japanese to him when I was talking. I'm fairly sure I let out a few hai, hai anyway. (Count it)

I continued wandering, taking a diagonal route through the city. I had no idea where I was and long ago decided I would not use the metro if I found a stop. (Estimated time: unknown probably 3:30, estimated time of arrival: 2:00)

To get back to the hostel I knew there was about a 90% chance that I would cross la Rambla first, if I did I knew I was going in the right direction. Hitting la Rambla was an experience, I actually hit it about 4 blocks before I got to the street proper. Restraints sprang up from nowhere, Spaniards disappeared and throngs of tourists took their place. There was even a visual change between architecture of the non-tourist and tourist areas. The tourist areas were more classical and the non-tourist areas were more modern. Once I found la Rambla I just had to ignore the fact that I wasn't seeing real Barcelona anymore and it was easy to get back to my hostel. (Time of arrival 5:00)

I proceeded to take a 5 hour nap.
Upon waking up I was told two things

1)Start drinking
2)get ready for a long night out

The details of the night aren't very interesting. I went out with Jeff, Lars and the Irish girls + an American girl, ran into the Germans again and went to sleep at 7:00

We woke up at 7:30 to check out and to get on the train at 8:30

The transit day for being a transit day had quite a few things of note happen. First it should be noted that I've been focused on reading the Brothers K while in transit and letting Lars and Jeff take care of things. This worked well in Spain when they spoke the language and understood what was going on. I assumed it would work now, that was my first mistake.

The first train ride to Montpellier was uneventful. It was long and I alternated between napping and reading. Jeff and Lars mostly napped. They did mention Boacillos a few times though. We got off and had about 2 hours of down time. I needed internet to contact Gretchen and Ray so we went to a McDonalds (free internet w00t!) and had lunch and caught up on email there. Then we wandered around the city a bit, took some nice pictures look at some artwork about climate change and I made a bet with Lars that involved slides and the payoff being one Boacillo to the winner. By this time Jeff and Lars had become obsessed with the word, that obsession has continued to this day.

Anyhow traveling onward to some assbackword train station in the middle of France I continued to read my book. We arrived at Valance (the aforementioned ass backword train station) and proceeded to wait for our train. Jeff and Lars talked more about the Boacillo more while I put my head down tried not to laugh and or kill them for talking about sandwiches for the last 2 days straight. 20 min before our train came to the station we decided we should figure out what track it was on. We looked at our tickets and then at the big board and didn't see our train. We double checked and didn't see it. Then we looked closer at our tickets. We noticed that we were in Valance TGV and the train station we needed to be at was Valance Ville. We ran out to catch a cab to where ever Valance Ville was. The cab driver took one look at the ticket and said “no you can't make it on time”.

We were fucked.

We went back to the place where you book tickets in the train station and asked how to get to Geneva. After about 7 min of bored looking on the part of the person behind the counter she wandered off for a few minutes and came back saying we were in luck. Turns out there was a TGV train heading to our next stop Lyon Part Dieu. (Which btw was where the train that we got off was heading, go figure) After getting confusing instructions from the station master which boiled down to “get on the train and get off at Lyon Part Dieu” we were on our way.

One catch though. The train was full. We spent the entire hour train ride in a baggage compartment with about 7 other people. All through this I kept on reading my book, in the hot, stuffy baggage compartment. Turns out the book at the time was talking about taking 3rd class trains through India, in hot stuffy trains. I felt like it fit perfectly.

We made it to Lyon with out incident after than and quickly and carefully bored our next train. Jeff and Lars promptly fell asleep. I couldn't and kept reading, good thing to. Keep in mind we had all been running off about 30 min of sleep that day. When we finally made it to Geneva I had to shake Lars and Jeff for 30 sec each before they woke up. Ray way waiting for us on the platform. When we got off the platform the first thing we were greeted by was some kind of activist giving away swiss chocolate. Best. City. Ever. Ray drove us back to his house showed us around and fed us a hardy Mexican dinner. At around 11:30 pm we all just passed out in the best beds ever.

At 7:30 am we were woken up by Ray (as previously discussed) and drove to Mt. Blanc near the town of Chamonix. We took a Teleferic (cable car) up to a height of 3428 m. For those of you keeping track at home thats near the hight of Mt. Rainier. Amazing views great pictures immense size. Pictures speak better than words here and I'll leave it at that.

We were up there for a few hours crossed over to Italy for a bit for more views and came back. When we finally made it down to Chamonix we Ray took us out for lunch and we went poster shopping. Got some great posters for Big Blue. I'm exited. I suppose I should write more about how amazing Charmonix was, but thats about all there is to say. It was a nice little city, touristy, but in a local kind of way. It felt a bit like Leavenworth maybe. Much better than the monstrosity Barcelona had turned half of itself into. Overall rating 10/10 would honeymoon there (Like Lars' parents)

We got back to Kates house, Gretchen had dinner in the oven and I started writing this up. Dinner turned out to be roast lamb that was soft enough to be cut with a spoon. It was amazing.

Tomorrow we will explore lake Geneva and a bit of Geneva with Ray and the day after that CERN → ? with some CSE friends of mine. It should be a blast.