Blogging marathon: Ready, Set, GO!

Well happy May everyone.  That's right, it's May.  It's already the 5th of May (oh wait, Feliz cinco de mayo!!) But yes, it is May and I will leave Denmark in 2 weeks.  How on earth has it gone this fast?  At the same time, it has been a long four months since I've gotten to hug my family, call them on a cell phone, eat Swedish fish and my mom's homemade pizza.  At least I have a lot to look forward to upon my return to the states.

There is SOOO much I need to write about.  Lucky for all of us, I have only one more class this afternoon before I am done with the entire academic aspect of my study abroad experience. I simply cannot believe it.  Of course I was anxious to be done with all the papers and the reading and the thinking (haha), but as soon as I turned my last paper in, I almost teared up.  I know that I still have 2 weeks here, but the end of the classes means my time is winding down really quickly.  I will miss my teachers, I will miss speaking Danish, I will miss hearing the accents...but I have to stop now because I am positive there will be a super long post in the future about all the things I will miss from Denmark.  Before I stop to reflect on those things, I need to catch you all up on my last few weeks.  I left off after I wrote about my Austria trip, right?  So that means that I have not said one single word about Barcelona...which was AWESOME! So I shall write about that now : )

Friday, April 15th I flew out of Austria to Barcelona, where my cousin Hannah was waiting for me.  We had a hostel booked right in Downtown Barce so the plan was for us to meet in a very popular square right where the bus from the airport would drop me off.  Would have been a perfect plan if my plane hadn't been an hour late and if my phone had actually worked like I expected.  Instead my phone did not work at all and I found myself in this beautiful square in Spain, by myself with all my luggage (backpack and duffel) at 10 at night. I was supposed to call the hostel 30 mins before I arrived so someone could go wait for me. Since my phone wasn't working I couldn't get ahold of Hannah or the hostel.  I suppose part of me was a little worried but I knew I needed to figure something out so I found my way to a Starbucks (with the help of 2 nice Spanish guys in a nearby cafe) and I called the hostel from skype.  The guy was waiting to check me in so I asked the Starbucks waiter if he knew where "La Rambla 76 (address of the hostel) was".  He said "Yes I know exactly where that is.  Me: " Umm...ok "Can you tell me where it is?"  Him: "No"  Me: *very confused look* He cracked a smile and laughed at my distress before he said "yeah of course, just go up this street, turn left and walk all the way down. It'll be on your right."  Phew, with a gracias and adios I was on my way to the hostel.  It was a longer walk than I expected but my judgement was probably skewed by the weight of my two bags pressing into my shoulders and the fact that I was pretty nervous of being pick-pocketed (something you don't really have to worry about in CPH).  I eventually made it to the hostel, walked up the dark stairs to the floor of the hostel, where a man opened the door and said "Yeah, you're Rachel?"  Me: "Yes! Thank you.  Do you know if Hannah Seyb is here yet?"  Him: "Yea....your friend?" Me: "Yes! My cousin." With that he walked into a room, picked up a brightly colored shoe and said "This her shoe?"  Me: "YES!! Yes that is hers!!"  Phew, I was in the right place!  The hostel guy started checking me in and soon Hannah and her friend Carly walked in.  It was so nice to see a familiar face!  The rest of that evening was spent settling in and then going over to Carly's place and just hanging out making plans for the rest of our trip.  We hit the hay pretty early because we were both so pooped.  Also, "early" in Spanish standards is 1 or 2 in the morning.  The real parties don't even start until about 1.  Man I felt like an old lady being exhausted at midnight :P

Thankfully Hannah and I decided to sleep in a little the next morning.  Austria was great, but I was a bit tired of getting up at 7 am for a full day of traveling and exploring.  We snoozed until the middle of the morning and then we headed out into the city.  Our first stop was the Market, just down the road from us, where we found delicious-looking fruit and baguettes.  Nothing like lunch for just a few euro- nice change from Copenhagen prices.  Oh, I can't promise my accounts of everything will be quite chronological, which would be fine except for the few of you who will read both my and my cousin Hannah's stories...she was the one who took detailed notes of all we did so I sincerely apologize if I put the wrong day with the wrong gelato flavor or the wrong weather with a different touristy thing.  Hopefully you enjoy all my stories anyway : )
Anyway, so Saturday was our first full day in Barcelona.  We planned to meet up with my friends Natalia and Mandy (from Knox) who have been studying in Barcelona since August.  We decided we would meet them "after lunch", which is actually the middle of the afternoon for us non-Spaniards, as the Spanish eat lunch around 2 or so.  Since we had lots of time to explore before meeting them, Hannah and I walked down La Rambla to the harbour area.  It was a beautiful day and we thoroughly enjoyed the large doses of sunshine.  Once we had met up with Mandy and Natalia at Plaza Catalunya they asked us what types of things we wanted to do: walk, shop, eat, get coffee and chat, any or all of the above? We mostly wanted to walk and maybe relax in a coffee shop.  So we did that. We walked up to the University where they go to classes and then found a place to sit and I ordered the only coffee type drink I will actually drink, a cortada (espresso with sugar and milk).  We then met another friend of Mandy and Natalia's and they decided they should show us a very impressive mall.  Impressive, I'll say! This mall used to be a bull fighting arena until the government outlawed bull fighting.  So then they changed it into this 5 (?) story high mall where you can shop or eat any of the delicious food inside, and you can also take the escalators all the way to the top where you can walk around the outside and look out at the city.  It was amazing!

Mandy, me & Natalia on the roof of the mall

The inside. The mall is what you see here...times at least 5. 

Saturday night was a FCBarcelona vs. Real Madrid football game...which is a really big deal.  Football is even more intense in Spain (obviously) than in Denmark, so they really go all out.  And Barca vs. Madrid is a huge rivalry!  So, to truly enjoy this cultural event, Hannah and I went with Natalia, Mandy and one of their other friends to this cute little bar near Natalia's house.  It was about 10 other people (all over 30 at least) and the 4 of us.  It was awesome! We had such a great time, seeing the way real people enjoy the cultural sports.
That was a full Saturday for us so it was off to bed after the game ended.

Part of the beautiful ceiling

Sunday we also let ourselves sleep in a bit. We woke up to music and lots of cheering out on La Rambla.  This is terrible, but I had totally forgotten it was Palm Sunday. But you definitely can't forget something like that when you are sleeping right above the main street where holy parades take place. Even though it took Hannah and I a while to get ready when we got outside we still were able to see a few a lot of people carrying palm branches, followed by a large Jesus float, followed by official church people.  That was pretty neat to see.  We met up with Natalia and Mandy Sunday afternoon to go see Park Quell, a park designed by Gaudi in the early 1900s. Story goes a man owned all the property and asked Gaudi to design a park/garden area for all the wealthy people around.  Somewhere along the way it became a public area and to this day it is free to enter and explore.  It is incredibly beautiful with lots of green grass, trees, bushes and all colors of plants and flowers.  He designed very interesting pathways, walls, stairs and an amazing pavillion or patio type thing resting atop 89 massive pillars.  You can walk underneath the pavillion with all the pillars and even the ceiling has really fantastic designs in it.  The entire park is covered in mosaic artwork.



After this we headed off to the train station to pick up our friend Chris who had just flown in from Germany.  We knew him from Knox when we were freshman before he moved to Germany.  Sunday night we got to go to a Tapas restaurant!  My very first tapas restaurant.  Although they were absolutely delicious, the tapas didn't fill me up the way a few hearty open-faced sandwiches do...therefore we all felt it necessary to go out for some waffles and ice cream afterwards!  They are called golfree or something like that in espanol :S  Hannah and I split a nutella covered waffle and one with honey and sugar. Both were amazing. That certainly did the trick of filling us up and getting us all nice and sleepy for bed.

Monday morning was when we became really good tourists.  We woke up around 6:30 I believe, were out the door by 7 and hopped on the metro towards La Sagrada Familia, the gorgeous cathedral in Barcelona, also designed by Gaudi.  Out of all the churches I have seen in Europe (and that is quite a few) this is by far my favorite. Gaudi used color in all the right places and although the forms are not what you usually see on churches, it is magnificent in its own way.  There are not too many words that are apt to describe it so I will mostly post pictures.  

Lower part of the outside

  

Some of the spires. Beautiful colors. Too much construction :(

This is maybe my favorite spot in the entire church.  With the sun shining in, that window was amazing.

Shadows from the facade decorations on the pillars/columns.  Wow.

I think I will pause for now. It is hard to follow the amazingness of that church so I will wait until tomorrow perhaps to continue on with my stories.

Come back soon!