Tag Archives: Barcelona

Aug 01 2012
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challenge, cultural, other

DAY 18 – Learning to say ‘Hello’ in as many different languages as possible

It was pretty hard to fit in a task for this day as I was moving – with all my goods, chattels and cat – from Barcelona to Birmingham, and would be spending a large chunk of the day at the airport. What could I possibly do at the airport? Plane spotting? Possible. Looking knackered? Probable, but nothing new.

Then I had a thought. Airports are a little hub of people from all different cultures and nationalities, speaking a huge variety of different languages. Perhaps I could harness this formidable linguistic opportunity and use it to teach myself something new? I resolved to accost a lot of people and annoy them until they relented and told me how to say ‘Hello’ in another language. No cheating and looking up stuff on the internet later, that’s way too easy. I had to speak to people and get them to teach me.

I learnt several important things from this day:

  1. Most people are very up for getting involved with a daft idea. Almost everyone I spoke to was super helpful and racked their brains to try and think of languages they knew. A couple of people didn’t want to be filmed, but nobody reacted with suspicion or annoyance – everyone was just great!
  2. My vocabulary needs a great deal of work. I may have been a bit shattered but seriously, there is no excuse for the number of times I introduce someone on the video as a ‘lovely lady/chap/couple’.
  3. Silly ideas are a great way of breaking the ice. I ended up getting red wine poured down my throat and having a good old chat with my mum and dad’s smashing new neighbours because I knocked on their door and asked them to teach me how to say ‘Hello’ in Gujarati!
  4. My dad’s nerdiness and obsession with learning bits of Eastern European languages really comes in handy when you have a daft scheme on hand.

Without further ado, here is the video record of my learning experience! The languages I learnt to say hello in were: English, French, Dutch, German, Chinese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian, Finnish, Portuguese, Hawaiian, Japanese, Finnish, Swedish, Russian, Gujarati, Latvian, Lithuanian, Czech, Maltese, Hungarian and Polish.

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Aug 01 2012
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food and drink, other, spiritual

DAY 17 – 24-hour fast

I’m generally a person who enjoys food. A lot. So why on earth would I embark on a fast (taking in nothing but water) for 24 hours?

Well, it’s certainly something I’ve never done before. I have seldom ever missed a meal, let alone depriving myself of yummies for such a sustained period of time. Added to this was the fact that the following day I was due to move from sunny, gorgeous Barcelona to – drumroll please – Birmingham. Fasting has long been used as an aid to meditation and to prepare oneself for taxing ordeals. Moving to Birmingham certainly sounded like an ordeal to me, so I resolved to give it a go.

Fasting is used in many religions as a way to aid prayer or meditation and to focus one’s mind on higher things. There are numerous guides on the internet to help you to use fasting as a way to bring you closer to God, a higher power, greater spiritual awareness or just to put your mind in touch with parts of it that may have lain dormant for a long while.

Of course, this being the internet, some of these websites are considerably more useful than others. Some seem almost wilfully obscure, others mix spiritual jargon with very questionable dietary homiles. I have always been very skeptical of people who tell you that something will help to ‘flush toxins from your body’. For a start, why is the verb ‘flush’ always used here, as if you are somehow a giant walking toilet? Also, what exactly is a toxin? I mean, it sounds terrible and all that, but it does seem to be a catch-all term that people use when they want to say that modern life is, like, sooooo bad. ‘Well of course you’re feeling sluggish. You’ve been eating badly and your body is just loaded with toxins.’ I’d be more willing to trust someone if they told me, ‘You shouldn’t drink coke, it’s full of (insert name of chemical here) and that harms you by (insert physiological effect here)’. But no, instead we get the delightfully vague term ‘toxin’.

Well, according to many websites, fasting does indeed ‘flush toxins from your body’. I was interested to see if this would actually happen. Perhaps I would notice some kind of green miasma oozing from my body as all the collective toxins discovered that my powerful state of Not Eating Stuff rendered me inhospitable to bad, vague, chemically… things.

I conducted my fast from midnight to midnight. Breakfast was a doddle. Normally I’d be making myself tea and toast but instead I had a big glass of water. This is easy! I thought. Really it’s just a few hours to go now! Oh well, I’ll make the most of it by seeing if it helps my meditation.

I’m a reasonably regular meditator. I find it helps a lot to keep me focussed on whatever I happen to be doing during the day, keeps my emotions on an even keel, helps me to make decisions and realise the important things for me to do… All sorts of stuff. It’s very useful to me, and I thought it might help me with the mental transfer from lovely sunny Barcelona to the Midlands. However, when I settled down for a short 20-minute breath counting meditation at about 10:30, something I’d normally really enjoy, I was all over the place. Far from focussing my mind on what I was doing, I found myself  – for the whole 20 minute session – entirely unable to think of anything but food. Not exactly, Oh I’m so hungry, but more like This fast is pretty easy. I’m a bit hungry but not too bad. I wonder if I should get some snacks in so that when midnight rolls around I’ll have something to nibble on. Oops, I should be counting breaths. Man, this fast is buggering up my meditation. Maybe I should stop it and just accept that it was a bad idea. I could do something else instead.

That’s right. Only three hours into my fast day and I was seriously considering stopping. As the day wore on I became more and more obsessed with the idea of the fast. I got snappy, irritable and really weirdly emotional. Jobs that would normally have taken me ten minutes were taking an hour. I honestly didn’t expect it to have such a huge impact.

The thing that really surprised me was the food I started thinking about. I wasn’t thinking, I wish I could have a sandwich now. Instead it was, I really want an ice cream. I’ll get some crisps in for later on. Maybe some chocolate biscuits too, just in case I’m super hungry. I truly could not stop thinking about junk food. In general I tend to think that my diet is pretty healthy so I was taken aback a bit by this revelation. Am I really so addicted to junk food? I started really thinking about my diet during the fast, about when I eat crappy foods and how much. It was a bit of an eye-opener.

In the event, I got to midnight without having crammed any chocolate digestives into my gob, and had a midnight meal of a tin of sweetcorn. I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed the fast at all, but it did throw up some unexpected results. It didn’t help my meditation – in fact it hindered it pretty badly – but it got me thinking about my diet in a way that I haven’t for along while, and made me resolve to be more careful about what I ate in future. It wasn’t the most fun thing I’ve ever done – especially with regard to the emotional ups and downs I experienced – but I think that at the end of the day it was quite valuable. I might even do it again (but, er, not yet).

I did check my pillow the next morning to see if there were any toxins on it, but unless they were in my drool then I think those toxins must still be in my body, toxinning away.

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Jul 29 2012
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extreme sport, other, sport

DAY 16 – Bridge jumping

Crikey.

Ok, I’ll admit it: I booked this without thinking terribly hard about it first. A good thing really, because if I’d sat down and thought to myself, Hmm, have I ever really wanted to jump off a 40-metre high bridge? I probably wouldn’t have done it. I did though. Twice.

Bridge jumping’s been around for donkeys’ ears, invented no doubt by some folks who thought jumping off really high stuff sounded great but weren’t so fussed about the whole ‘dying’ aspect of it. I’d Wiki the history behind it, but I honestly can’t be bothered. It’s not that important. You jump off bridges attached to a rope and it feels awesome – that’s pretty much what you need to know.

I went with the same folk who’d sorted the canyoning for me – Lifestyle Barcelona – and met the guys doing the activity at a road bridge in Sant Sadurni d’Anoia (also the home of the Freixenet cava vineyards, which were annoyingly shut today). I watched a few other people doing the jump and went, That looks awesome, I need to do this now!

‘But Helena, weren’t you terrified?’ I hear you ask. I’ll admit that earlier in the week I’d been having misgivings. 40 metres is really quite high indeed. However, I’d mentioned it to Maria (remember? My guide on the canyoning day) and he’d told me that it’s actually a lot safer than canyoning, and after that I felt fine about it.

It finally came up to my turn and I got strapped into the harness. There wasn’t a whole lot of technical chat – we had a brief safety talk and then the instructor popped over to the other side of the bridge and took up the ropes. For the first jump I climbed over the barrier and turned around. It’s funny – on the road side of the barrier you feel totally safe and secure. You’re strapped in, you’ve got a helmet on, two ropes securely tied to your harness. All is well!

On the ‘air’ side of the barrier you suddenly forget those ropes. All you’re thinking is Christ, that is a bloody long way down. You’d have to be a complete nutter to jump it, right? And then someone starts counting down from three and you’ve jumped.

It’s a weird feeling to describe because in reality it only lasts for a couple of seconds, but those couple of seconds are very vivid indeed. Reality seems to sort of slip away and it’s just you in the air, plummeting towards the ground, and you’re pretty certain you’re going to die but your head and body are in such a whirl that it almost doesn’t matter anymore. It’s an incredibly liberating feeling.

Reality check!

Then you reach the end of the rope and you’re a fast-breathing pendulum and all you can think is, I want to go again!

So I did. Here is the video of my second go. The guy started filming before I even had my ropes tied so unless you particularly want to listen to a bunch of blokes speaking Catalan and miming squeezing my arse, I’d skip to about 2:50. I was the only one, in a group consisting entirely of big strapping men, who had a go from on top of the railing. My favourite thing is when the guy turns the camera round to film himself and says, ‘Con dos cojones!’ Roughly translated: ‘She’s got balls!’

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Jul 29 2012
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art, historic building, museum, spiritual

DAY 15 – Salvador Dalí House and Dalí Theatre-Museum – Portlligat and Figueres

Metal!

When it comes to art there is nothing I love better than Surrealism and no Surrealist artist I love more than the great Salvador Dalí. There is such an element of fun in Dalí’s work that, however much else I get from it, it seldom fails to make me laugh. Dalí’s home in Portlligat is a couple of hours outside Barcelona and I determined not to leave Spain without having visited it.

Travelling to Portlligat is a much tougher prospect than I had anticipated. The train journey to nearby(ish) Figueres is only two hours but then you have to take a bus to Cadaques (or, if you’re unlucky like me, two buses), which can take anything from another hour to perhaps three. I’d been travelling for about five hours before I finally reached my goal and I’d started to wonder irritably if it would be worth it. It was.

The house-museum is quite cramped and the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation is very careful to preserve it properly, so groups of up to 10 are taken around one at a time. Because of this it’s really essential to book your ticket online before you go. People were being turned away when I arrived as the day was fully booked already. Anyway, enough chitchat, here are some pics of the house.

The house is very unremarkable from the outside, but inside it’s an intriguing maze of little rooms and passageways.

The polar bear in the hall was given to Dalí by his wealthy patron, Edward James.

The nicest room in the house, which sadly doesn’t photograph well. Dalí designed it for his wife Gala. It’s dome-shaped and has lovely acoustics.

Sleepy man in the garden made from a broken boat, pots and driftwood.

Swimming pool is willy-shaped, of course.

For the record, I’ve decided I want a pavilion.

The house was wonderful to look around. Because it’s kept as Dalí and his wife lived in it, it’s full of their stuff (which is not kept in glass cases, but placed as they would have put it themselves, protected from grubby kids’ fingers by ropes). It was like a glimpse into someone else’s life, and – despite the problems Dalí undoubtedly had – it felt like a very happy home.

It’s a bit hard to describe what happened next. After the visit to the house I walked back down to Cadaques and found a quiet rock to sit on, in the shade with my feet in the sea. I then just sat there for about two hours. Now, anyone who knows me will be able to tell you that this is just not the sort of thing I’m likely to do, unless I have a beer in my hand, a book or someone to chat to. Be that as it may, that’s what I did. I sat and looked at the sea and just thought things.

I can’t remember what a lot of those things were. I know I started to notice that the stones in the water looked very glossy and alive, but when I took them out of the water they turned dull and grey. I don’t know if I was just in a meditative mood or whether being in Dalí’s house made me think differently, but it was as if I was seeing the world in a new and more vivid way. It was strange and lovely and persisted long after I had left Cadaques once more.

I took the bus back to Figueres and discovered I still had time to do the Dalí Theatre-Museum. I’m very glad I did. It is the most beautifully arranged museum I’ve ever come across, and all housed in a spectacular building.

That Dalí, eh? He did love his eggs!

The museum houses artworks from all periods of Dalí’s career, many of them very famous. Again, it really made me giggle! I cannot see that Dalí, having created holographic artworks within a very small room, did not intend me to laugh at the sight of visitor after visitor standing and swaying in front of them to see all the aspects! Here’s a few pics of the greatest hits.

Rainy Cadillac

Ceiling of Palace of the Wind

Mae West room including ‘that’ sofa.

Tip: any guys who want to get me flowers, make sure they’re on a shark’s skull, K?

Well, there it is. My day began at 5am and ended with my train rolling back into Barcelona at 10pm. To do both museums in a day is *just* do-able, but it might be an idea to stay overnight in Cadaques (which is lovely – a bit like Hastings old town, but minus all the junkies, plus a few Brit tourists in ¡Viva Espana! hats) and have a day to see the house and have a paddle. Who knows – you might end up getting all thoughtful like I did.

I brought three of the stones back with me, in case you were wondering, and they’re sitting as happy as Larry in a little tumbler of water. as they should be.

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Jul 28 2012
2 Comments
nature, sport

DAY 14 – Canyoning

Who, me? I’m from BT, mate, just here to fix your phone line.

Aaargh! Every time I do something for this blog I end up thinking, ‘OK, this is my favourite so far!’ However, I think canyoning may really be something special. It was just awesome!

I went canyoning more or less by accident. I found a company, Lifestyle Barcelona, that organises whitewater rafting and wanted to go whitewater rafting, but the logistics were just too difficult (it was 4 hours outside Barcelona and started at a time in the morning when no train would have got me there in time to start) so I went with one of the other options their very helpful lady suggested: an introductory course in canyoning.

My notion of what was involved in canyoning was very vague indeed. I had an idea, of course, that it somehow involved a canyon and that water might be involved (as they told me to bring a swimming costume and towel as well as trainers). I had an idea that we’d walk through a canyon, maybe scramble up some bits, wade through bits of river, it would be very pretty etc etc. What actually happened was way more awesome.

When I arrived at Vilafranca del Penedes me and two other folk – a lovely Spanish couple called Adria and Andrea – were driven 30km away in a van. Here we were told to strip down to swimming costumes, given wetsuit socks to put on inside our trainers and made up packs comprising a wetsuit, helmet and abseiling harness. Aha! I thought, this looks like it could be quite cool.

We then hiked up a track for about half an hour. The hike was made all the more intriguing by the fact that Adria hadn’t brought swimming trunks with him, so was actually trekking in just his boxers.

It was so cheerfully bizarre I may start a new sport called ‘Underwear Trekking’.

We then all put on our wetsuits, helmets and harnesses and had a brief safety talk in Catalan from our guide, Marià (who spoke no English but was very good at explaining using actions and whatnot) involving warnings like, ‘When you jump into the water, do it like this’ and asked if any of us were afraid of heights. This was all sounding very promising. We looked quite cool by this point as well.

Quite chuffed with how I look in a wetsuit, tbh.

As you can see from the pic, the landscape had also got all awesome and pool-y too, which boded very well. For the next 5 minutes we walked carefully along the canyon, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the landscape, which was gorgeous. Butterflies flitting by, dragonflies and all that sort of stuff. Very lovely all round. Then we got to a big pool of water and this happened:

WHEEEEEEE!

Basically we spent the next five hours climbing up rocks and cliffs and then jumping off them into pools of water, then climbing back up them and jumping off again. I’ve recently finished teaching at an English summer school here in which we had to take the kids into the swimming pool every day, and it never ceased to amaze me how some kids would ask me to throw them in the pool, then immediately come back for more and never get tired of it. Well, that’s basically how I felt when canyoning. I could have spent all day climbing up pretty cliffs and jumping off them into pools. And the jumps got higher…

…and higher…

…and higher…

…and higher!

The climbing part was super fun and Marià actually said I had ‘climbing in my blood’ because I was good at it! I don’t entirely believe him, but I really enjoyed it! The only – the only – bad point I could pick on about this day was the thought constantly at the back of my mind: This can’t last forever. At some point we’ll have to stop and then I’ll be all sad. It would be going a bit far if I said I felt like Lara Croft for a day (I just don’t have the boobs for it) but we did all start singing the Indiana Jones theme tune at one point and I could totally have fitted in with those mental birds from The Descent.

Where are all the beasties then, eh? I’ll show ‘em who’s boss!

Marià was a wonderful instructor and – as predicted – I was so sad when it was all over (though we got a good five hours in, which I reckon is pretty good going!) It was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done, and a fantastic way to explore the great outdoors. So… London has canyons, right?!

I WANNA GO AGAIN!

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Jul 27 2012
2 Comments
historic building, museum, weird

DAY 13 – La Pedrera

Strap in, bitches, it’s culture time!

As I’m sure you’re all aware, Barcelona is bristling with Gaudi. You can’t miss the bugger, he’s everywhere. As an earnest Must-See-All-The-Famous-Buildings type (as I can be on occasion) plus something of a fan of Modernism, I’d already whipped through most of the hit parade. La Sagrada Familia, Parc Güell, Casa Batllo, Palau Güell… all had been duly appreciated and ticked off the list. The only remaining one was La Pedrera, and it would have been a scandal if I hadn’t toddled along to see it.

La Pedrera (or Casa Milà, to give it its proper name) was designed by Antoni Gaudi as a residential block for the developer Pere Milà and his wife. After years falling into disrepair it (as well as six of Gaudi’s other notable buildings) was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984 and restored to its former glory. These days it’s owned by one of the Catalan banks – Catalunya Caixa – and is taken up mainly with their offices, a few other offices, the public museum-y bit and – apparently – some residential flats.

Here’s a nice picture for you. This is in the courtyard-y bit inside, hence the sky.

Residential flats, eh? I’m not at all sure how I would feel about living in something like La Pedrera. It is constantly, constantly surrounded by tourists snapping pics, has a mile-long queue outside from 10am and the kind of place where you regularly encounter the kind of Americans who say stuff like ‘Oh my Gaaaaahd, it’s so wacky!‘ Christ. On the other hand, you would be living somewhere that looks like this:

‘Wacky’ indeed.

So, you know, rough with the smooth and all that.

I won’t babble on about how the roof is all wibbly-wobbly and the façade is pitted and all that. You probably know all this already. I’ll pop a few more pics in here and then talk about the couple of things I found really interesting from my visit.

It wibbles and it wobbles.

CATENARY ARCHES. Listen closely, my children.

Catenary arches feature pretty heavily in the slightly creepily-enunciated audioguide which I of course got for the visit (touristy I know, but I like being lectured sometimes). It seems that old Gaudi was quite fond of a catenary arch or two.  Put simply (or rather, put in the way I can remember the audioguide telling me) a catenary arch is the ideal curve that a thread or chain takes on when supported at each end, inverted to form an arch. Gaudi was a fan because the arch formed doesn’t need buttresses to support it – it has a natural strength, and frequently occurs in nature in the form of fines, creepers and whatnot.

Gaudi planned many of his buildings by drawing a floorplan for them, then suspending it from the ceiling and attaching hanging chains to show how the arches needed should be formed. The building’s shape could be seen by placing a mirror underneath the chain/floorplan combo.

Here’s one they made earlier. Nifty, eh?

I thought this was ace – a really interesting demonstration of a very practical architectural method.

La Pedrera’s exhibition space was well set-out. There was the roof to wander round, then the attic (given over to demonstrations of how Gaudi’s most famous buildings were constructed) and then a flat in the building was set aside as an example of how it might have looked in the 1920s.

Living room/bedroom

Kitchen

Hall

All in all it’s a very interesting exhibition, taking in not only Gaudi’s artistic vision but also his design and building methods and everyday life in the 20s. The audioguide was also pretty good, and didn’t have the weird, slightly frenzied adoration that you get in the Casa Batllo guide (this sentence was sponsored by the Society for the Appreciation of Excellent Audioguides about Gaudi).

While I prefer the actual buildings of La Sagrada Familia and Casa Batllo because… well, they’re fancier (and I’m a pleb like that) I think La Pedrera is the building you walk away from having learnt the most interesting stuff.

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Jul 26 2012
2 Comments
nature, spiritual

DAY 12 – Swimming in the Mediterranean at dawn

Dude, this is, like, such a trip!

Well blimey, why don’t I just go and hug a tree or something? The whole idea of this activity is so very right-on and ‘Whoa man, amaaaaaaaaaaaazing‘ it offends every English bone in my body. And yet, I’m living in Barcelona, just about the best beach-city on the globe, about to return to the UK next week – it would have been somehow wrong if I hadn’t done it.

Having decided to give it a go I then realised that the downside to seeing a beautiful sunrise over the sea is that dawn is really very early indeed. I can’t remember the last time I set my alarm for 5:30am but I know the the days since then have been happy ones, none of which have seemed any the worse for having not set my alarm for a time when decent, right-thinking people should be drooling on their pillows. However, at 5:30am I sprang out of bed (well, maybe not ‘sprang’. ‘Lurched’ is perhaps a better description), pulled my swimming costume, a pair of shorts and some flip-flops on and toddled, bleary-eyed, off to the beach.

Before embarking on this mini mission I of course checked online what time dawn was in Barcelona (6:39am at the moment) and then, it being a time when lifeguards are scarce on the beach, I checked – just checked – to see if there was anything I needed to be aware of. This was a mistake. This being the internet I had my head filled with dire predictions involving sharks (both Bull and Great White) feeding in the shallows at dawn, swarms of deadly jellyfish and predatory beach rapists. Yay! I knew that this was all very much bollocks, but it did make me ever-so slightly nervous all the same.

I got to the beach around 6:20, where the thermometer was showing a quite cool 21°. Hmm. Maybe this swim would be a freezing endurance-dip after all? (Note: while I am aware that 21° is practically tropical in the UK at the moment, in Barcelona this classifies as cold. It’s been hitting the 30s every day for two months here. Indulge me.)

Leaving my glasses and clothes on the beach I popped a toe in the water. It was lovely – cool but not cold, and eerily black in the faint light just before the sunrise. I’d brought a waterproof camera a couple of days before for just such occasions so in I went with it. Barceloneta beach – usually thronged with sun-worshippers every single day – was incredibly peaceful and quiet, and it was lovely just to enjoy the pretty, pinkish sky; the black sea and the feeling, not of loneliness, but of solitude.

Quite nice, I suppose.

But wait, what was that coming over the horizon? This may make me sound like a moron, but I hadn’t actually expected – not really – to see the actual sun come up. For some reason my expectation had pretty much been, ‘It’ll get lighter, that’s probably quite nice’. But then, it being sunrise, of course the bloomin’ sun came up!

This would be the ‘Whoa man’ moment.

Without wishing to turn this into awful teenage poetry, I reckon I now ‘get’ why watching the sunrise over the sea is such a classic. It was just beautiful – the pinky-orange sun setting fire to the sky as I swam alone in a tranquil sea. My photography, as I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, is of the point-and-shoot variety, but despite the inadequacy of the pics I took, nothing will make me forget the unexpected loveliness of that moment.

When I finally emerged from the sea, somebody had stolen my ancient, beaten-up specs (come on, it’s Barcelona and I hadn’t tied them down – of course somebody had stolen them) but not even this bit of quite useless thievery could dull the moment I had had, swimming around alone and watching the world unfurl itself around me. It was magical.

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Jul 25 2012
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other, park, sport

DAY 11 – Slacklining

Damn my unladylike lack of poise! If only I’d gone to finishing school!

One of the places I like most in Barcelona is the Parc de la Ciutadella. It’s pretty, there’s plenty of shade  for picnicking, there’s an awesome mammoth statue and an amazing fountain with griffins. One of the other things you always see in this park is people with lines strung between trees, practising slacklining. I’m not sure why it’s always this park – maybe the trees are a good slacklining distance away from each other or something. Anyway, yesterday I decided to go down there and see if I could persuade someone to teach me how to be a slacker.

It was simplicity itself. On arriving at the park I found a group of folks practising slacklining with their slacklines strung up next to each other. Within 10 minutes I’d convinced one of them – a lovely chap called Paco – to show me how it was done.

Slacklining is essentially a variant of tightrope walking, in which the rope is replaced with a strap of webbing stretched between two anchor points (such as trees). In the sport a slacker must use his/her arms and free leg to balance and to stop the slackline from wobbling (easier said than done, as I found out). Unlike a tightrope, a slackline isn’t kept completely taut but is quite bouncy. The slackline can thus be used as the base for tricks such as bounce walking, jumps, 360s, chest bounces and flips. However, I did not get this far.

Paco and I had an interesting slacklining lesson, as my Spanish is dire and his English was non-existent. We got by though! Paco told me that the best way to start was to try and get my balance on one foot, and then to switch to the other foot, get my balance on that and slowly keep switching feet until I was walking. He made it look like a piece of cake. *mirthless laughter*

The first moment  put a foot on the slackline it began to wobble like crazy and I fell off immediately. Paco helped me out by putting his foot on the slackline to keep it more steady and then told me to keep my arms high up and the foot that wasn’t on the line close to the line, so I could use them for balance. He also told me that I should remember to breathe (always a handy hint) and that I shouldn’t look at the line beneath my foot but at a point on the line a little further away. I found this very difficult – your instinct is to stare at your feet and make sure they’re still on the line!

Slowly, slowly we made progress, until I was able to balance with one foot on the line (though not to switch feet) without Paco keeping it taut. Paco then thought I should try walking along the slackline, holding onto his arm to help me balance. At first I found this impossible, the slackline was wobbling so much, so Paco again put a helpful foot on the line for me.

Paco lends a foot.

This was much easier and we progressed to a point at which I could walk the line without Paco standing on it (though sadly still with his arm to help me balance).

Baby steps…

Pretty sure I fell off about 2 seconds after this was taken.

I definitely had fun trying out slacklining and can see why people really enjoy it. Sadly my dreams of casually strolling across the slackline unaided that afternoon died with the realisation that my sense of balance is still hopeless, but I definitely made progress, thanks to Paco’s very patient tutelage.

If you’re interested, give it a go! It’s a rapidly growing sport and equipment is easy to find on the net. A beginner slackline will only set you back around £50 and then all you need is a couple of handy trees (and preferably a patient person like Paco to show you where you’re going wrong)!

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Jul 24 2012
2 Comments
food and drink, weird

DAY 10 – Eating a brain

Apparently I’m going to eat you. Yaaaaaay.

*Sigh*. The things I’m making myself do for this blog. Yes, I ate a brain. A little brain, to be sure. But a whole brain. I saw a packet of two sheep’s brains in a supermarket, thought Ooh, I’ve never eaten a brain before!, bought the brains (€2.50) and then… well, I was kind of committed to doing it. I won’t say I leapt into the activity with no misgivings. The brains did look pretty… well, brain-y.

See?

Stiff upper lip though eh, best foot forward and once more unto the breach, dear friends. You never know – in some cultures (Chinese for example) eating brain is supposed to help cure innumerable ailments, from impotence and epilepsy to forgetfulness and a simple bump on the noggin. As far as I know I’m neither impotent or epileptic but I am quite forgetful and I knock myself about a fair bit. Oh well, let’s see if brain helps me! I’m also a big fan of zombie films, so having these around gave me a great opportunity to shuffle around my flat going ‘Braaaaaaaains… Braaaaaaaaaaains…’

Should any of you wish to cook yourself a brain, here is a handy step-by-step guide. I got the recipe off the internet somewhere.

Step 1: Wash your brains thoroughly in cold water.

Step 2: Boil the brains for 10 minutes in salted water with a dash of vinegar added. My brains went grey in the first 30 seconds.

Step 3: After 10 minutes of boiling, plunge the brains into cold water. When they’re cool, drain them and pat dry with kitchen towel.

Step 4: Using a sharp knife, cut away any membrane or veins from the brains. I also cut away the stem, because it was freaking me out slightly.

Step 5: Roll the brains in a mixture of flour, salt and pepper until they are coated all over.

Step 6: Dunk the floury brains into beaten egg until they are coated.

Step 8: Melt some butter in a frying pan and drop the brains into it, turning them from time to time until they look brownish and the egg is cooked. It’s basically like making French toast only… French brains.

Step 9: Not really a step, but at this point the pan started to fill with white froth. I’m not sure whether this was something to do with the butter, or whether it was just brain juice.

Step 10: Eat the hell out of those brains! I served mine with carrot sticks, chives and a squeeze of lemon, because I’m fancy like that.

Ok, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so how were the brains, I hear you ask. Sadly nobody accepted my invitation to eat the second brain, so I was all on my own with this. They actually didn’t smell too bad – sort of sweet and chickeny. Here is my reaction to the first mouthful:

Not a good start. The texture was mushy and it was quite sweet. What did it remind me of…?

My initial reaction was not, as you can see, one of joy. I’m not a big fan of mushy-textured meat and this was very mushy indeed, a bit like blended ham fat or something. It definitely reminded me of something specific though, which I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The carrot sticks began to be a great help to me. As long as I could balance out brain with carrot stick, I was ok.

Perhaps a squeeze of lemon will help? It didn’t.

I think this was the exact moment when I realised that what it reminded me of most, texture- and smell-wise, was cat sick. From this moment on I really struggled.

Only a little left to eat but AAAAAARGH! Only one carrot stick left! By this point I was swigging diet coke like there was no tomorrow

Chewing the last mouthful. Are we done yet?

Yay, clean plates club! I did it! The other brain sadly went in the bin – I couldn’t even get my cat interested in it.

Well, what can I say: eating a brain was quite astonishingly awful. I did it, but I will not be in a hurry to do it again. Maybe someone else out there would enjoy it. I don’t generally like offal apart from liver and I’m suspicious of meat with mushy textures so I probably wasn’t the best candidate for this experiment. It really was shit though. Oh well…

And they all lived happily ever after.

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Jul 23 2012
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animal, cultural, dance, historical, other, weird

DAY 9 – Tortosa Renaissance Festival

They played for me, pa rum pum pum pum!

Sometimes when I’m getting on with whatever it is I’m doing during my day, I’ll stop and wonder about something. These little ponders can be about anything. For example, I might wonder how, when I put a train ticket into one of the machines at the platform gates, the machine knows whether it’s valid or not. I might perhaps wonder if I was swimming with a gun and a shark attacked me, whether or not I could use the gun to shoot the shark or whether the gun’s being wet would render it useless and I would be better using it to bop the shark on the nose.

Deep philosophical questions like these often occur to me. One of the most regular ponders I get when seeing somebody doing something in the nature of a hobby is, ‘I wonder how s/he got into doing that in the first place?’ Yesterday my whole day was pretty much one long extension of that very ponder.

While idly browsing the net yesterday looking for new things I found out that Tortosa – a town a couple of hours away from Barcelona by train – was celebrating the last day of its four-day Renaissance Festival. Not one to pass up an opportunity of a new experience these days, I jumped on a train and headed for Tortosa. When I arrived in Tortosa at about 6:40pm I discovered that the last train back to Barcelona was leaving in 45 minutes’ time. The first train in the morning left at 6am. I had a decision to make: should I have a quick shufty at the festival then beat a hasty retreat, or should I try and make it an all-nighter and take the first train back? I of course plumped for the latter option, and I am very, very glad I did.

I arrived just in time to see three bands dressed in Renaissance garb playing drums and shawms (a kind of medieval oboe) marching down the road. I marched right after them and came upon a park full of people milling around dressed in Renaissance costumes.

What? I’m just relaxing with my pal, Mr Half-An-Eagle.

It’s a Renaissance interpretation of a snowy owl. Or something.

For the record, it was bloody hot, I have no idea how they coped.

Dude in the middle was a massive flirt, it was highly satisfactory.

The costumes everybody wore were amazing – so detailed and beautiful – and I was really happy to be pottering about amongst them all and chatting. Well, that was definitely worth staying for, I thought. Perhaps I’ll find somewhere to sit down in a while for a coffee. Little did I know this was just the precursor to a gruelling schedule of fun.

As I wandered back down the road the crowd seemed to have grown noticeably larger. Something looked like it was about to happen. It did. All the assembled Renaissance folk in the park gathered together and took part in a giant parade down the main street. They were led by two riders on beautiful high-stepping horses who danced their way down the parade route.

Horsies!

They were followed by everything you could possibly imagine.

Mythical beasties!

Giants!

Musicians!

The military!

Tumblers!

Stilt walkers!

Geese!

Trumpeters!

Fishermen!

Mini horses!

Horse display team!

CAMELS!

I’ll tell you, there is nothing that makes a day better than unexpected camels. They were so lovely! I’ve decided that some day I want to own a camel. I’ll give it a good stock camel name like Alice or Hump-phrey and we’ll ride around together all day long. This is my new mission.

Anyway, when that had gone past I realised that the party was just getting started. For the festival the whole of the old neighbourhood of Tortosa is transformed into a Renaissance town and so far I had only had a tiny glimpse of it. All the streets were hung with banners – not plasticky Disneyworld-Renaissance-Experience affairs but festoons of velvet and gaily coloured cotton emblazoned with heraldic sigils and gold thread.

Rejoice!

Ain’t no party like a Renaissance part-AY! HO! HEY!

Stalls packed into the little winding streets sold everything from spices to swords, hippy jewellery and fans to stinking cheeses and lanterns, mead to mojitos. The scale of the thing was just mind-boggling.

I decided to try and find a hostel room – not an easy task considering the streets were packed with thousands upon thousands of people and there appeared to be only two hotels. However, as luck would have it I got a room immediately at a very comfortable hotel with breakfast included for only 15 euros. SCORE! Back to the party!

The choice of food was endless but I settled for a no-doubt terribly Renaissance baldana (black pudding) sandwich and a timeless frosty beer.

Giant racks of ribs being sizzled to a crisp.

The cauldron had some kind of potion in it no doubt.

It would be useless for me to enumerate all the awesome things about this festival. I would go back in a heartbeat. It had the atmosphere of a metal festival, but enclosed in a small, cosy town with a castle, amazing cathedral and more monasteries than you can waggle a monk at. Highlights included an impromptu Renaissance flag dancing display at midnight, being serenaded by a guy playing a lute and chatting to some terribly attractive bagpipers.

Seriously. Amazing.

The town itself is worth going to as well, though I didn’t get to see inside the cathedral this morning as it was closed. My hotel – the Tortosa Parc – was very comfortable and gave me a breakfast which included ham, eggs, cheese, pains au chocolat, orange juice, coffee, bread, jam and chocolate Swiss roll. AMAZING.

The gigantic slab of a cathedral.

Cathedral from the castle above it! The castle is now a hotel, which is a bit of a shame but hey.

Oh, and just one more thing, just in case you needed an extra incentive to go to this insane and lovely festival…

I totally met some camels. BOOM!

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