Packing blankets and dirty sheets, a room full of dust and a broom to sweep up...

I hate it.

Packing.

All the furniture went yesterday. You'd think that would mean today was the easy stuff. But no, that makes today the day full of the irritating little tasks. The day for sorting out all the junk that had accumulated under my bed, for mowing the lawn, for taking things to the tip, for hoovering and bathroom-cleaning (neither of which have been started as of yet). The day for frayed tempers and tiredness from sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags last night. The day for those little panics of why do I only seem to have one pair of jeans now? I'm sure I didn't pack the others yesterday and yet now there is only the pair I am wearing.

Gah.

I'd better go carry on.

Material Girl

Bedframe. Mattress. Duvet and pillow. Little bedside mini chest of drawers. Large chest of drawers. Desk. Wardrobe. Bookcase. Clothes to fill large chest of drawers and wardrobe. Too many pairs of shoes. Linen and towels. Too many little bags. Tent. Sleeping bag. Many folders of paper. Pictures. CD players. About 50 cds. About 100 books. About 100 dvds (discs, that is...about half of that is whedony goodness in boxsets). Computer. Printer. Big box of magazines. Desk lamp. Large stone bookends. Alarm clock. Hairdryer, etc. Standing candelabra. Laundry basket. Many many many useless little things. Bathroom mini chest of drawers. Dining table. Coffee table. Phone. Freezer. Ironing board. Kettle, toaster, toastie-maker, popcorn maker, slow cooker. Pots and pans. Crockery and cutlery and tupperware. Mugs beyond number. Bike. Lawnmower. Shears. Plants. 4 folding Ikea chairs.

How did I end up with so much stuff?

And by this time next week it must all be packed. Heavens above.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adéu...

And so I blog for (I am assuming) the last time in Barcelona.

Sob, wail, etc.

I have had such a great week...I almost can't believe I am saying that of a holiday where I had about 300 pounds' worth of stuff stolen...but I really have. Barcelona is a wonderful city, even if Keppet was completely right and it does smell of dog piss.

Anyway. To recap the last two days, then: yesterday I went to the Monestir de Montserrat (a somewhat cloudy picture but it does show the monastery and the bizarreness of the mountain itself) - I mostly walked, for about 3 and a half hours, climbing up to 1236 m (which I think means I still have never walked above 3000ft) to Sant Jeroni, where I met a very friendly feral cat, then back to the top of one of the funiculars (where I met an almost identical cat which must have been an incestuous relation of some sort), then back down to the monastery. During the course of the walk the weather changed from thick mist - the cloud base was sat below even the monastery when I first went up - to clear blue sky, with it changing at around the time I was on Sant Jeroni - at one instant my viewing point would be cut off from the world, surrounded by cold wreaths of white, and in the next the warmth would come back and I would be looking down 1000m onto the plain. It was very...heh...atmospheric. Literally. :) But the sun then came out properly and I managed to get myself reasonably sunburnt by the time I returned to the monstery. I did pay a brief visit to the monastery itself, going into the Basilica (that was taken from the much more ornate end but still gives you a pretty good idea of its sumptuousness), where there was a girls' choir called Cantamus from Hungary there singing some rather beautiful Ave Marias - I shall have to see if they have a website because they really were very very good indeed. I miss choral music...when I'm settled in in Derby I'll have to see if I can find a choir to join. Listening to it is second to singing it, but it was still lovely to hear, and a gorgeous acoustic in there. I then paid a very quick visit to the Mare de Déu de Montserrat and stroked her orb...snigger ye not. I then caught the cable car down and the train back to Barcelona. And went to Parc Güell to round off my day - there is no one picture I can show but it is Gaudí yet again and you may well recognise the drac or the long wiggly seat thing. Very nice on a sunny summer evening, anyway, and not even spoiled by the busker playing My Heart Will Go On on a harp...very bizarre.

Today I went to the Museu d'Història de la Ciutat (city history museum), which is a lot more interseting than it sounds as it is situated in the Placa del Rei, which is the very centre of what remains of medieval Barcelona - it contains the steps where Ferdinand and Isabella welcomed Columbus back, so you get the idea...but anyway the museum is mostly of excavations which have been done under the medieval buildings, and which show the remains of Barcino - Roman Barcelona - some 6 metres down. The amount that is there is magnificent...remains of the city wall (of which is some is actually still extant in the Barri Gotic anyway) but also mosaics of house floors, the bottom halves of huge spherical containers embedded in the floors of a fish salting factory, the flat baths used in a laundry to rinse the clothes in, the remains of the later 6th century christian church built over the old fish salting factory...just so much. Layers upon layers, and in some walls you can see earlier parts of the city (stones with roman inscriptions and the like) benig cannibalised 3 or 4 centuries later to build something new. It's utterly fascinating, and even weirder that the 'new' buildings 6 metres above it are still more than half a millennium old - as old as anything you're used to trying to imagine. Really weird to see so many successive centuries piled one on top of the other, especially when so many of the buildings were something so important.

Otherwise today...I tried to go and sunbathe on the beach a little, but it rained on me. Most rude. Probably fortuitous though as I doubt the world at large is ready for me in a bikini. And I shopped. For three hours. Oops. Much money has been...constructively disposed of. But technically yesterday was payday even though I wasn't at work...so I do not feel too guilty. Heh.

Well, that was long. But it was the last from Barcelona. There, you can stop now.

*grins* But let it be recorded that I had a great time.

Yet more Barcelona. Sorry.

Well, I am certainly using my blog a lot this week. Possibly because I don't quite know what to do with my evenings other than book, diary and internet. And because I actually have something legitimate to talk about...

Today I went to Santa Maria del Mar, La Sagrada Familia (best site I could find...sadly concentrates onl on the facade of the Nativity but the Wikipedia page has a pic of the facade of the Passion) and the medieval shipyard now housing the Museu Maritim, including seeing John of Austria's galley which was built there and was involved in the sea battle which (apparently) ended Ottoman rule of the Mediterranean.

Santa Maria del Mar is rather gorgeously austere inside and I liked it more than La Seu, I think. La Sagrada Familia...well, is astounding. I had only seen pics of it taken at a distance and they simply don't do it justice. For a start it is huge...and that's at only just over half the height it will eventually be. But mostly the detail in everything in it is just stunning...the carvings on the facades are a brilliant example and I think some of those photos gve you close-ups. Now, firstly let it be said that in general I dislike any religious architecture later than, say, 1700. :) I'm a medieval girl where churches are concerned. But somehow Sagrada Familia gets past the uncomfortableness I usually feel when confronted with cuboid-headed Jesuses suspended from curiously skewiff crosses. Because, somewhere along the line, it just gets it. Something about the symmetry, and the asymmetry, and the way that things flow into other things...it feels like a church. Not some 'let's make religion look cool for the kids' modern rubbish that I feel so uncomfortable with. The interior of the naves, with columns branching like trees and gilded mosaics on the ceiling, is beautiful and pure. The carved marble doves on the tree of life are absolutely perfect, caught in flight. Jesus lecturing the doctors (that's a translation...I can't remember that bit of the Bible too well...:/) looks like a precocious but brilliant child. And most of all the words! Words everywhere. Spanish and Latin, crawling all over the building...the Ave Maria carved into the stone around the recess containing her statue, the words of the New Testament on the doors through the facade of the Passion, 'hosanna' and 'excelsis' on the tops of the spires...ahh. Yes, I liked it. Can you tell? I will have to come back in 2020 or whenever it will finally be finished...although judging by the progress made in the last century it may not be finished in my lifetime...

The Museu Maritim was...well, it was okay. I would have benefited from a little more information in english...I got an audio guide in engish but would far have preferred there to just be a little english version of all the notes beside each item. John's galley is magnificent...if dreadful - looking at it and thinking about galley slaves was somewhat uncomfortable...were galleys used into the C19th? Because if that's the kind of 'galley slave' that Valjean is in Les Mis...*shudders* The other reason I went to this museum is that it currently has a display of objects excavated from Pompeii. Fascinating, and also frightening in that they have the plaster moulds of the dead people and dog that are so well-known...but all it really did is make me decide I must actually go to Pompeii one day.

Tomorrow I think I shall attempt to make it to Montserrat.

Today I shall mostly be getting soaked through.

The weather took a bit of downturn today. Which was amusing, as I was happy just getting very wet and everyone with umbrellas got blown across roads. But it was definitely a day for indoor occupations. Like...as you may have guessed from the earlier entry...all things religious.

I spent the morning at the Monestir de Pedralbes, which is rather pretty and very old. My sort of place. I managed to spend about an hour and a half there without really knowing how. It was a series of little scenes from Jesus' life (randomly in a cellar) that got the 'and is it true? For if it is...' line going round in my head - so clearly had to share it with the rest of you.

This evening I went back to the Barri Gotic and more particularly La Seu, as his time I was wearing sufficiently modest clothing to be allowed to enter... outside (although that face is currently scaffolded over) and inside. I wandered around for a bit benig in awe of the sheer scale and age of it all...and finding the ancient Catholicism of it all a little strange. I got a candle and lit it at Saint Theresa's chapel with a mental promise to find out why she is a saint. I am sure I used to know, as she's the saint's name I took at my confirmation...

When I left La Seu I promptly got caught in an incredibly heavy rain shower. Which was, as I said, highly amusing, and I chose to just get soaked. Cue a lot of people sheltering in doorways, though. And the wind knocking a flowerpot from a high windowsill. And people in pac-a-macs rustling so loudly that they sounded like express trains.

But I think I have now found the area of shops which will eat my bank account...around Placa de l'Angel (and that made me smile) there are a range of small specialist quaint type shops...one selling all semi-precious stones in jewellery, one selling every type of game imaginable, one selling all sorts of writing equipment...oh dear. I simply can't resist buying things from that sort of place. People whose addresses I have, you may get small gifts whether you want them or not...as it will make me feel better if I am buying for other people and not just myself.

Oh. And I officially now think Barcelona rocks. *grins*

faith

And is it true? and is it true?
The most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

From Tolstoy to Tinkerbell

Random pieces of information you do not need to know at all but which I feel nonetheless compelled to share:

My hostel dorm room is on the third floor, and so far I have used the stairs every time. It has a balcony. It is currently entirely filled by British people - myself, two guys and a group of two girls and one guy. On the street wherein lies my hostel there are several tiny 'supermercados' otherwise known as Spars. At one end there is the 'Bagdad,' advertising 'Porno-show.' The Bagdad also has many pictures of scantily-clad women emerging from genie lamps, and an advert for 'el haren del internet', which is apparently interactive. Also on my street there is a ferreteria, which sadly does not sell ferrets. My nearest Metro stop is Paral.lel, and I do not know what that dot's purpose in life is. I cannot tell the difference between Spanish and Catalan, but I know that 'exit' is sortida in one and salida in the other. If you go into a farmacia and say 'ibuprofen' in a hopeful voice, they understand you. My new bag is khaki but otherwise looks like this. I am tempted to buy ashtrays made from drinks cans even though I don't smoke and suspect the corners of said ashtrays to be nastily sharp. For Rian: someone else has taken a photo of the head-on-a-platter man. Today there was also a not-so-static statue being Michael Jackson, which was bizarre. There was a small child running around down by the harbour chewing on her balloon animal, and the sound made my skin crawl. Barcelona is probably the only city ever to have made me really want a shopping spree, even including clothing. Zara here has a home section where I bought two tablemats this morning. Gaudí is still beyond my comprehension - I walked past La Pedrera this morning. But I did like one of the other modernist buildings I passed - isn't Casa Amatller gorgeous? I bought myself pear juice this evening - I used to love the stuff as a kid (too many holidays to Italy) and used to get it at home on special occasions until M&S stopped stocking it. It's just as yummy as I remember it. And today I was unable to escape noticing the strange resemblance that juiced kiwi has to frogspawn.

I think I am beginning to get Spain now. Barcelona itself may take a day or two more. :)

Today I learned the word 'Comissaria.'

So yes. The rest of my first full day here got eaten by the Bag-Snatching Fiends.

But I'm past the whining and the anger now (apologies to Kepp, who it mostly got landed on) and am now just considering how odd the effect that it had on me is. (Oh look...I'm having Thoughts about me again. This blog is getting a little predictable...)

But my first reaction - the first thing I felt upon noticing that the space next to me where there should have been a pretty Radley bag was now completely vacant - wasn't anger, or horror, or even surprise - it was disbelief. The first thing I did was to immediately stand up so that I could see the whole area where I had been sitting - not because I thought I might have put it behind me, but somehow to impress on my brain by seeing the whole empty space that it really had gone.

Isn't that weird? As far as I can judge what I felt, it was based on the fact that in my world view, those items belonged to me. They could not have gone anywhere else because they were mine. The idea of someone else sitting, right now, with my bag and my purse that my friend bought me, is a very weird one. Why should it be so hard to grasp? No wonder I find it difficult to get my head around other people's marriages and lightspeed...

The other thing is how much it shook me. I was just so incredibly angry at myself that it was hard to do anything. I was in a hurry to get back to the hostel to phone and cancel my credit cards but had no money to get the metro with so had to walk - and that just made me even angrier. And when I am angry at myself I cry. By the time I got back to the hostel I had problems calming down enough to explain what had happened over the phone to my bank. An hour of sitting in a police waiting room and considering how much worse it could have been mostly got it out of my system, thankfully.

But how on earth will I deal with it if anything seriously bad ever happens to me? This was just mildly inconvenient.

In other holiday news...there isn't much. Except that kiwi juice is indeed utterly gorgeous stuff. I will be having more tomorrow.

La Vita é un Sogno Senza Fine

Or so say the handpainted words on the door of my hostel room. 'Twill do as a motto for the day, although it does make me want to start singing 'this is the song that never ends...'

Well, it's midday on my first day in Barcelona...and here I am on the internet. Oh dear. But I already feel like I've been here ages...and I am shortly going to go and consult my guidebook to decide what to do this afternoon, so I had to come back to the hostel anyway. I thought I might use this as a bit of a diary...but an attempt to create a written diary last night took me three quarters of an hour just to describe yesterday completely, so I won't subject you to the ordeal of reading that sort of rambling, but will just describe a couple of the things I've done so far today.

I have spent the morning wandering around the neighbourhood of Las Ramblas, picking my way through the Barri Gothic, all old medieval buildings of just the variety I adore (and they do better bridges than even Oxford or Cambridge...;) ), and then wondering at all the human statues along Las Ramblas - there is a devil who does a rather fantastic vanishing act into a box, a head on a platter, several angels and gods of various types, Obelix (who was basically just a tubby man with two beer mugs), and rather intriguingly a guy who was setting up a toilet. Will have to go back and see what he does with that...also many outdoor pet-selling stalls, where there was the rather amusing phenomenon of all the street pigeons clinging onto the outsides of the budgie cages to snaffle their food. I also had a wander around the Mercat de le Boqeuria, and I think I may head back there shortly to acquire a rather yummy-looking drink of kiwi juice. I shall avoid the Icelandic stalls of salted fish, though.

So far I am finding Barcelona a little hard to get - maybe this is because I've never been to Spain before and have never been exposed to the language even in Britain. But it feels somehow that much more foreign to me than Berlin or Paris or Milan or Rhodes ever did...I don't really know why. Maybe it will start to make more sense to me as I'm here longer.

Okay, time to go out and actually experience it a little more, methinks.

Music is my radar

Or rather it is for real people. With real people I spend time around them and notice what music they play. Sometimes discovering that people's taste in music can quite surprise me. And I do use taste in music as one way to evaluate how similar someone is to me...

But of course with you lot that doesn't work. And I really have no idea what you all like to listen to.

So a question to all of you. Desert island scenario, and you are allowed to keep the entire musical output of one band/composer/singer-songwriter/whatever floats your inflatable dinghy.

Who do you keep?

Impossibly hard to think of giving up the rest, I know. But do it.

Yes, it's R.E.M. for me. They juuuust about beat the Beatles.

Beauty

As I sit here in the glow of my computer and watch a candle flame flicker in the chilly draft from the starry night outside, I ponder beauty. How can you define it? I don't mean just in its visual form...but in every way. Beauty in music or poetry or the movement of someone's limbs or the night sky...what makes something beautiful as opposed to everyday?

I ask this question because I just rewatched a little Firefly and it struck me that Jayne polishing coins is beautiful. Despite the fact that it clearly isn't.

I think, in the end, I have to come down to excess. To unnecessary enjoyment. Something that is unrequired and technically unimportant. Obviously there also has to be a certain amount of 'good' to whatever it is...but things can be good without being beautiful. Light is good. But only beautiful if it is a luxury, an indulgence, more than just the bare necessity to see by.

Can something that is a necessity ever be beautiful?