BUCKEYES BASKING IN BARCELONA

BASKING IN BUSTLING BARCELONA

Ryanair, Europe’s self-described “on time airline,” wins our vote for being on time and on the money. Their flights are crazy cheap compared to other name brand airlines but their airports are not the major hubs but outlying venues that, in some cases, take a while even by bus to get ot.

Such was the case flying to Barcelona from Venezia. Departing from tiny Treviso airport aboard a Ryanair bus [5 euros each], the ride lasted about an hour. Treviso, about as big as the bus station in Columbus, Ohio, features not one but two gates and is waiting for its new cousin, being built next door, to become operational. Taking a Ryanair bus guarantees that it will deliver you to the station in time for the flight, which we can tell you from experience is a no frills event that leaves on time and arrives on time. No micro bags of peanuts or pretzels; no isle stewards jockeying slender carts of beverages to passengers. Just efficient, timely take offs and arrivals. That’s a winning business model for me.

Once on the ground at Girona, our Ryanair bus [11 euros each one-way to Barcelona] motored for an hour through the countryside of Spain, which here was reminiscent of parts of California.

An auspicious event happened to us as we were walking our bags along the street, having left the bus station trying to find our way to our lodging quarters for the next three days, Residencia Australia, Ronda Universidad N 11, 4-1. Asking a passing woman directions, Bridgett, a German working in Spain for General Motors [as we learned later], not only gave us directions but offered to walk us to the nearby Metro stop and guide us through buying a ticket to our station. We bought a 10-ride pass for 6 euros each, a good deal, considering the length of our stay.

Even though Ryanair arrived 15 minutes early and our bus ride was 30 minutes shorter than advertised, night had fallen and we were strangers in a new, big city. Bridgett told us to be wary of pickpockets, who she said had stolen her purse three times in the month she has lived here. She said they come up, cut the strap of the purse or camera bag, and off they go. Thinking we were walking targets by virtue of dragging our four bags behind us, our newfound sense of paranoia tainted an otherwise warm and breezy night, as we became conspicuously aware of who was around us.

The crowd riding the Metro at this time of night was light and we our destination was only three stops away. Walking up to street level from the Metro exit, we found ourselves at a big circle where several major boulevards, like spokes on wheel, converged. The third person I asked for directions, a man standing in a doorway smoking a cigarette, pointed precisely to our destination door. But for a small sign that read “Hostal Central” and had a tiny postage stamp note on the door buzzer that read Residencia Australia, we would never have found it that night.

Just as we did walk up to it, a elderly man dressed in a suit opened our door and we swept in behind him. He was a resident but gave us a lift on the elevator that was old and small but worked, as it lifted us up to the fourth floor. Wondering the nature of our accommodations, we buzzed the bell on the door and Tom, our proprietor, opened the door, peered at us and asked us what we wanted. When we told him our names, he opened the door wider so we could move our luggage in.

Once at the desk, his cat Cha Cha leapt up onto the table top and stood resolute, arching his back as cats do in a gesture to be petted, which, as a cataficionado, I did kindly obliged. A few minutes later after our business was concluded, Tom helped carry our bags back down to street level. His elevator, a vintage but fully operational 1930’s model only works when its doors are closed. One was not, forcing us to hoof it down the marble steps to the street below and then to another building where our room and nearby bathroom were located. At 73 euros a night, the location was excellent and the room itself – one double bed and one single bed – was clean, had a tiny working frig [with the smallest ten unit ice cube tray I have ever seen in it], a TV and a small table stocked with coffee, tea, cups, and silverware.

Having eaten only sandwiches I made from the breads and meats I bought earlier in the day at the panificio in D’Altino across the railroad tracks from our hotel, we were tired but hungry and asked Tom where we could find something at the late hour. Although 10 p.m. in America is when restaurant kitchens start to close, throughout Europe and Spain, the dinner show is just getting started. We walked down the street and around the corner past a number of bars with outside seating until we arrived at a corner Spanish tapas bistro. Tapas are small servings, generally two on a plate, of menu choices including fish, prawns, meats, cheeses and vegetables. Tapas bars flourish in Spain and Barcelona like trattorias do in Italy.

At La Tramoia on Rambla De Catalunya, we had potatoes stuffed with shrimp and bacalao [cod fish] with melted cheese, brushcetta with salmon and asparagus, an order of tomatoes and fresh cheese and two San Miguel beers and a glass of house red wine. Total tab was 23.49 or $29.83 USD, more than we wanted to spend, but good nonetheless.

The markets scattered through out the city were truly amazing. The one near the Liceu Metro stop was full of stalls with the most amazingly fresh vegetables, fruit, meat and especially fish of all varieties. As a card carrying member of Club Coumadin, I must balance my blood thinning medicine with foods rich in Vitamin K. Going to the market for me is like going to the pharmacy for others. My hunt for spinach, one of Popeye's and my favorite foods, took me to the market, where we also tasted luscious fruit offerings and rounded up bread, meats and cheeses for our trip to the beach, where [if you look closely at the picture, past the topless woman standing in the foreground, you'll see my head in the Mediterranean waves].

GAUDI GALLENT IN USING NATURE AND NATURAL MATERIALS TO CREATE UNIQUE ARCHITECTURAL STATEMENTS

Antoni Gaudi, the architect of some of Barcelona's most buildings and churches, translated nature and its materials into works of art that seem to defy both. The Sagrada Familia, one of Barcelona's most recognized edifices, one that someday may come to be its symbol as much as the Eiffel Tower a symbol of Paris, is still under construction, even though he died in 1926.

Several of his drooping, liquid-like facades, in my opinion, may have inspired Salvado Dali to paint pictures of melting clocks. In his own way, he seems to have invented new design systems, using simple observations from nature, like that of a leaf to produce a roof where water flows effortlessly over curved forms.

The apartment we walked through, or I should say around, since it was circular like the building it was designed for, was beautiful in every detail from the doors to the ceilings and windows. Gaudi's unique style is not gaudy, which is to say it has no conspicuous display that is out of stetp with the natural flow of the brick, stone and metal he used so creatively.


HUMAN STATUES VERSUS HUMAN STATEMENTS

If you travel much, no doubt you have seen them. The men and women who disguise themselves with white faces, sheets, robes or other props as they stand motionless, sometimes on pedestals of their own making, and hope passersby will find their solo act amusing enough to pitch a few coins into the basket sitting a few feet in front of them.

In Piazza San Marco in Venezia, where tens of thousands of tourist visit each day to gawk at the stupendous architecture surrounding them or to feed the pigeons that fly in in equal numbers to the tourists to dine on an open air buffet of seeds and bread scraps, each human statute claims a prominent position. From their tiny stage of choice, the artist can perform [if that is the right term for standing motionless for long periods of time] their solo act, which often includes a “thank you” movement when money lands in their begging cup.

The variety show we saw in Venezia included a handful of Carrara Marble white acts, although one soul went south across the Mediterranean for inspiration, dressing up as King Tut in a head-to-toe gold outfit with azure-blue eye holes to watch who favored the Pharaoh.

Here in Barcelona, most notably along the long chain of streets collectively known as Las Ramblas, the preeminent boulevard linking the Naval monument to the south with fountains of Catalunya to the north, the number of human statues and the variety is impressive.

From mid morning to mid evening, which in Spain and Italy is the traditional time to amble with your family and friends through parks and along beautiful tree-lined walkways like Las Ramblas, human statues are on the job. Although the color white is a favorite among many, evoking a dreamy sense of spirituality, black is also a solid choice as it can startle some whose eyes do not see it for what it is at first but who then stop and stare as they look into the real human eyes behind the coal-black black face starring at them.

Rambling up Las Ramblas, from the southern end where the memorial monument to the naval sector has a pointing Christopher Columbus standing atop near the Drassanes Metro stop to the northern ending at the sprawling plaza Catalunya, we counted no fewer than 13 acts. They included a Pinocchio duo riding tricycles, two women dressed as butterflies, a nondescript statue, an Indian chief, another alabaster white act and others that filled the space along Barcelona’s most walked street, which guidebooks say is about 1.2 kilometers of about 7/10^th mile.

But as with any job, rest periods are needed and workers, even fake statues, go home when the workday is over. in Venezia, we saw one human statue, face as white as snow, carrying his gear, headed home after a hard day of standing around motionless. We have also seen some solo acts take a rest period. Stepping down from their homemade pedestals, they generally remove their headgear and sit down for a smoke or a drink.

However, in each city we visited, there are human statutes of a different sort. Not offering themselves up as entertainment to amuse the swarms of camera-totting tourists who pretend not to notice them, not dressed in stark white or black or assisted by religious props like angel wings, swords or flowers, these human statutes remain motion for even longer periods than their comical cousins. Unlike their competing commercial neighbors, these human statutes offer no flourish or acknowledgement for money received.

These human statutes, usually women who may have a small child close by, are the hard-working beggars of the streets of Europe. In a city like Roma or Venezia, where the American real estate term of “location, location, location” is not relevant because every location is nearly as good as another, kneeling in a narrow, shaded street may be as effective as standing in a sunny, broad piazza. The later is less intimate but offers a bigger audience while the former reduces the numbers but because it is up close and personal, it may heighten point of sale giving.

In Roma, while walking to the Trevi Fountain through another beautiful narrow passage way, we turned a corner and saw sitting in the sun, a short, barrel-chested man with his arm and part of his shoulder missing. The sun, bright and hot, reflected off his bronzed, sweaty body. In an ironic way, he appeared almost proud of his deformity. After seeing him and walking within inches of where he sat so no one could miss him, a conjured image of Victor Hugo’s tragic hero of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” Quasimodo, flashed through my mind as I tried in seconds to fathom whether his disability was a curse or a blessing.

Kneeling on the lagoon side of Piazza San Marco in Venezia, and located across the walkway from one commercial human statue, was a woman with tear-stained cheeks and arms out-stretched skyward, as if Raphael himself had painted her, silently asking for salvation from above while accepting money from below. The next day, as we stepped off one of the “vaporetto” boats that ferry passengers through the canals and between the islands, I saw her in the same spot, crying with as much passion as when I first saw her. Was this her everyday job, I asked myself or just an act to shake down loose change from sympathetic tourists?

In Barcelona, while riding the Metro, a man with no arms boarded the train, his beggar’s cup hanging around his neck. We saw one man, who face was tragically burned, sleeping in the street; then days later, we saw him again in two different spots offering himself up for contributions.

In Europe, where public statues abound everywhere, the real statues are bigger than life. The commercial human statues are life sized and entertaining. The statements of humanity, while the fewest in number, are really reflections of each of us, because but for the Grace of God, there go each of us.