On day 3 we took a bus to
Park Güell,
designed by Catalonia’s favorite architect artists Antoni Gaudi and
commissioned by Catalan Count Eusebi Güell, for whom the park was named. This place
was AWESOME. It’s located on a hill in the northern part of Barcelona, so in
addition to being just a really cool park, it offers fantastic views of the
rest of the city, much like Montjuic. We started by climbing up as high as we
could, in order to enjoy the great view, which included the ocean, Mount
Tibidabo (which happens to be the future name of Michal’s non-existent future
pet), La Sagrada Familia, the harbor, and most other landmarks.
Church on top of Mount Tibidabo, with the amusement park in the foreground
Gurken-esque building and La Sagrada Familia
The park was filled with these
structures called viaducts, which you can see in the pictures and video below.
You could walk on and under the viaducts, and the ones near the entrance to the
park had gorgeous bright mosaics on the underside.
The highlight of the park is the
fountain (sadly dry because of the winter) where the tile starts to get really
crazy. Although in the video we said the stuff is gaudy, it’s gaudy in the
COOLEST WAY POSSIBLE. Gaudi really was a genius. His works is so unique and so
beautiful! In front of the fountain were these two cool huts that I thought
looked like Gingerbread Houses (they were described in Lonely Planet as “Hansel
and Gretel-esque Structures”). I thought they were very adorable. One of them
houses the gift shop and the other a little mini art exhibit, so they even have
purpose! We again had beautiful weather so Michal and I spent a lot of time
just roaming through the park. There were lots of people selling jewelry, a guy
making huge bubbles (he had dreds and parachute pants), and many musicians
playing throughout the area. Some of them were really quite talented, including
one woman playing a steel drum kind of instrument, and another guy singing and
playing blues on his guitar. Aside from the park being pretty crowded,
everything was pretty much perfect.
The fountain and A LOT of people are behind me
One of my favorite tile patterns
Lizard fountain
Random house in the park that is really pretty
On our way back downtown we saw a huge,
awesome-looking building from the bus so we got off at the next stop to check
it out. Turns out it was a hospital! We stopped for lunch at a restaurant next
to it and when we sat down, realized that the street we were on connected
directly to Sagrada Familia. And, it was called Gaudi street. And we ordered
something called Gaudi pizza. All very fitting for the theme of our day!
After a delicious lunch we went to the
Music Museum, which included an impressively extensive collection of instruments
from historical periods ranging from the middle ages to modern electric stuff.
The exhibit went through the history of music and each section had music
playing that fit that time period (and the instruments that went along with
it). At the end there was a huge section with instruments from various
geographic regions and a really cool video montage of music all over the world.
The final room had instruments you could try playing yourself including a mini
organ, cello, harp, and electric guitar! Since Michal and I were the only ones
in there we had a lot of fun, although Michal said the cello desperately needed
rosin and one of the strings was apparently completely shot. I also tried in
vain to tune the guitar, but it was pretty hopeless. Oh well.
Cool horse statue in the courtyard of the Music Museum
Because it was New Years Eve that night
we chilled at home for a few hours in the evening. Around 11:15 we headed out to Placa
Catalunya to join the masses celebrating the New Year. I peppered Michal with
“let’s reflect” questions on the walk there, which caused us to discuss the
year’s biggest films, political events, news stories, celebrity drama, etc. We
were pretty depressed that there was no Dick Clark or Ryan Seacrest to tell us
exactly when to celebrate (celebrating 6 hours before the ball drops just feels
wrong), but we did enjoy observing how various groups of Europeans all seemed
to think midnight came at different times. Some French guys started cheering
while the Italians were still counting down, and the Spanish folks next to us
didn’t seem to care one way or the other. We successfully dodged several
bottles of raining champagne and escaped the crowds unscathed, making our way
to the Arc de Triompfe park, which was basically empty but quite beautiful. We
were home and in bed by about 1:00, happy to have been able to experience a
different country’s New Years celebration!
The next day we headed up to Montjuic, a mountain in the southwest part
of the city. The bus dropped us off near the Olympic Stadium, built for the
1936 Olympics (which was moved to Berlin because of the Spanish Civil War) but
used in the 1992 Olympics. We were able to walk around the stadium, see where
the torch was lit, and then roam the grounds, imagining what it was like filled
with athletes (and also thinking about what Bob Costas would have had to say
about it). There were also nice views of the city of Barcelona from the Olympic
park.
Olympic Park
Other highlights of Montjuic include a stunning, huge building that now houses the Museum of Catalonian Art, and lots of gardens and fountains. There is one very large fountain, the Font Magica, which does water shows in the evenings, but that’s just during the summer, sadly, so we didn’t get to see it in its prime. We wandered throughout the park for several hours, visiting some smaller art exhibits, and enjoying the perfect weather. We also finally sampled Spanish churros, which don’t have cinammon (lame) but do have the same perfect crunchy yet soft consistency churros are meant to have. Delicious.
Museum of Catalonian Art
Font Magica (sadly without water)
Looking down on Placa Espanya from the Museum
It took us forever to climb up to the castle. The road we followed kept winding and winding, ascending
and ascending, until we finally reached the highest point of the mountain.
While the castle itself was a little disappointing (it was super lame actually)
the views from the top were stunning. On one side was the sea, with the sun
getting ready to set, and the other side the entire city of Barcelona. We were
able to see from this view just how huge and dense the city is. Looking down we
could see basically nonstop buildings, with very little green breaking up the
sand-colored blurr. Barcelona is surrounded by a series of hills, so we could
see the hills on the other side looking across, which also made for a lovely
picture. Since it was so sunny up there we decided to sit and read for a bit
before heading back down to the city for dinner.
View of the harbor from atop the castle
The kid who took this picture for us was less than enthused.
I’m especially glad I got to
relax in Bonn because the next week was a whirlwind. I flew from Cologne to
Barcelona (with a hilarious and eventful RyanAir experience which should
probably be the subject of its own blog post) to meet up with Michal! Here is a
brief overview of what we did. Check facebook for many many more pictures J
Day 1: We began our
Barcelona experience with the classic old city. La Ramblas is the most famous
touristy kitchy but fun street running from Placa Catalunya (a main downtown
square) to the port. We walked down the street, stopping at anything that
looked cool: pretty churches, really cool and very bustling market with
mouthwatering produce, cheese, meats, etc, and eventually the many harbor-side
buildings and monuments. I loved the harbor promenade. There was a huge
monument to Columbus (reminiscent of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square) as
well as lots of beautiful old buildings lining the port.
Old bullfighting arena, right next to the place we stayed
Buildings lining Placa Catalunya
Newer building behind a statue also in Placa Catalunya
Inside the market on La Ramblas
Columbus memorial
One of the harbor-side buildings
We walked along the sea side into the Barri Gotic, the old city, which has your typical narrow alleyways, winding cobblestone streets, and of course lots of churches. There are ruins of an old roman wall (those Romans were everywhere) and a very large Cathedral that, frankly, was kind of strange. The courtyard was part jungle, part zoo, party mini golf course. There were creepy statues and tacky little fake rivers all over the place and lots of exotic birds and tropical plants. It was kind of strange. Definitely memorable though.
Roman ruins
Cool arch over one of the Barri Gotic streets
Courtyard of the Cathedral. I told you it was strange.
One of my favorite
structures/areas of the city is the Arc d’Triompfe. Barcelona’s version of this
landmark seems to represent the Spanish cultural mix very well. You can
definitely see the sort of Islamic influence mixed with more classical European
elements. The part around the arch is lovely and leads right up to another
park, which might be my favorite spot in Barcelona. There is this awesome, huge
fountain, with dragons and other animals, a large lake with people on little
rowboats, Alice-in-wonderlandy gardens, and lots of museums that were in very
pretty buildings. Poor Michal probably got so annoyed of me exclaiming how cool
everything was.
We also visited the Picasso Museum, although it took us about an hour to find…the Barrio Gotic is super confusing, people. I’ll be real with you, it was kind of disappointing. There was a lot of stuff from Picasso’s Pre-Cubism days, which was definitely interesting, but I was expecting more of the real PICASSO kind of stuff. I very much enjoyed learning about how he developed as an artist and seeing the process by which he transformed from realism to cubism, including all of his influences, but I would have liked to see more than 2 or 3 cubist works. Oh well. Our final stop of the day (after souvenir shopping in this awesome awesome ceramic store with BEAUTIFUL stuff for quite cheap) was the Modern Art Museum. It was a Modern Art Museum. We’ll just leave it at that.
It’s been a while but I’m back at school,
attempting to slip back into routine, and I’m going to do my best to recap
everything I’ve been up to the past several weeks (broken up into several blog posts)!
To start my vacation I went into Vienna to
meet up with my friend Annie, who had tickets to see this German Hip-Hop
group called Blumentopf and invited me to come with. Although we had no idea
what we were getting ourselves into, the night certainly did not disappoint.
The opening act was this Asian German hip-hop rapper who said a lot of things
about Jewish people/Nazis that we couldn’t really understand (we just kep
hearing the words Jew, Nazi, Hitler, etc). We can only assume they were anti-Nazi
rather than anti-Semitic, but one can never be entirely sure. Although I’m
generally anti-rap, I thought Edgar Wasser was actually quite good. He was kind
of funny and satirical, so I enjoyed him more than I expected.
Similarly,
Blumentopf were actually pretty awesome and really fun as well (video below, if you're interested). However the
real highlight of the night was the people-watching. Annie and I are both hilarious, and we provide witty commentary to literally every second of our lives, so
this setting provided prime material for us. We looked super out of place (Like Quakers at a war rally, we remarked) and I’m pretty sure we were judged super
hard by the Austrians around us (including one guy who read a caption I was
putting on an Instagram photo over my shoulder and literally laughed out loud,
and then proceeded to explain to his friend who also laughed, causing me to be
quite embarrassed), but we were judging them too, so all is well. After 2 hours
of hip-hop (we left early because we literally could not handle one more
second), we went home and listened to lots of Fleet Foxes and smooth jazz to
attempt to balance out our brains. It was a super super fun night and a great
way to kick off my break!
we so hardcore.
I knew I wasn’t going to go home for
Christmas so I was delighted when I was invited to Bonn, in the western part of Germany, to spend Christmas with
the host family I lived with when I studied there during Spring Term of
sophomore year. I developed a great relationships with Ela and the rest of the
clan when I was there for spring term abroad, and we’ve kept in touch since. It
was so so lovely to just relax at home with wonderful people, truly enjoying
vacation like it should be. I read a lot, watched lots of movies, ate a lot of
cookies—basically everything you want to do on vacation. Ela and the family are
such awesome and welcoming people that I felt so at home, and they really made
my Christmas special. Of course it was really difficult being away from home
this time of year (especially considering how obsessed I am with Yadlin Family
Christmas Traditions) but if I couldn’t be at home, this was exactly where I
wanted to be!
When I was last here, the Rathaus was under construction, so it was lovely to see the beautiful finished product! Complete with a Christmas tree of course!
Christmas Dinner: Raclette! Yum!
Wandering the city itself was really fun because I got to go back to all the places that were so dear to me during the study abroad trip. Since that trip was my first experience with study abroad, and really my first big trip abroad without family, it was a very special time for me. All the fabulous memories that came rushing back to me made me super nostalgic for my
Spring Term trip, and W&L in general!
Part of the University of Bonn
The building we had all our classes in!
I also got to go to this AWESOME
exhibit at the Bonn art exhibition hall called Pixar: 25 Years of Animation. It was not
only about the history of Pixar and how it developed from a tiny company
working out of a high rise office with donated furniture to one of the most
successful production companies of all time, but also about the techniques used
in the making of the films. They used one scene in Toy Story 3 to show the
various stages of the animation process, from sketches to storyboards to
animated storyboards to adding each and every detail including light and sound
to all the frames. It’s absolutely incredible how much thought and detail goes
into every tiny piece of a film. I don’t often think about how with animation you
have to artificially create all the lighting and sound effects, and make it as
true to life as possible. Each and every piece of fur on Lotso or bubble in
Finding Nemo is animated precisely and intentionally, making these films all
the more impressive, even just from a technological standpoint. They also talked about how Pixar works to create entirely new worlds that seem to defy reality, but then operate within those worlds under strict restrictions. For example, the world of Toy Story seems to be such fantasy, but then there are rules that restrict the world, most notably the fact that the toys cannot be seen moving by any people. I'm not explaining it well, but it was super interesting. There's also such complexity in Pixar characters, which is something the company strives for when making these films. They really work hard to create fantastical stories with all the pathos of real life. I just love Pixar so much.
There was also a ton
of really really cool concept art from every Pixar movie, and I kept thinking
throughout the exhibit how I want basically every single piece of art on those
walls to decorate my house with. They were SO cool. If I wasn’t already in love
with Pixar, this exhibit did it for me. It’s a travelling exhibit so if it
comes to your area, GO SEE IT.
Screen caps from Up, used to provide an overview of the color scheme and lighting in the whole movie
Storyboard from a scene in Toy Story 3
Character sketch for Jaques in Finding Nemo. So detailed!
I'll be back soon with more about the rest of my break, including the trip to Barcelona!!
