Malentiendos

Malentiendos. Misunderstandings. And oh baby are there tons. No. Not tons. Oodles. Oodles and oodles of misunderstandings.

Words. Phrases. Time. Bus stops. Showers. “Wife-ey.” Clothing. [Down beat] I had it coming.

(I feel like I am starting to sound like The Cell-Block Tango)

I have now been in Barcelona for three weeks. Three splendid weeks, and I am still encountering misunderstandings. I feel like Lizzy McGuire. So I have summed up the most prominent…the best of the best, if you will.  

Mi casa: I am living with a host family, which, in and of itself, is a host of misunderstandings and getting-used-tos. The night I arrive in Barcelona by bus from Madrid (which is a 7-hour ride and needless to say, I am exhausted), I meet my host mom. Chic. Blonde. Tiny. European. She is my picture perfect “Senora.” My roommate, Emily, agrees. But then our Senora tells us we need to walk to her “piso,” or apartment. Well, no wonder she is so skinny.  

Internal monologue – GO: “Walk?! It’s nearly 10 p.m. I’m tired, hungry and wanting to sleep. I have three, 50 lb. bags (which I am very embarrassed of) and you want me to walk?! Oh well, when in Barcelona…”

My entourage of bags and I go plopping down the streets, up the walk and finally, we arrive at the apartment building. I walk inside thinking I am almost there, almost ready to relax from a day of tons of traveling, and then Senora tells me she is on the fourth floor. And there is no elevator. (No, no, nooooooooooo!) Well I don’t know what kind of place Spain is, but the fourth floor is actually 12 America flights up and boy are they long. Because I have my three bags, and it would be physically impossible to lug up all at once, my senora stays downstairs as I begin the trudge one bag at a time. By the sixth flight of my first trip up, I am ready to die. Literally. To die. There is no way I can even make it up the rest of the stairs, much less make this trip two more times. I yank; I pull; I push; I heave; I pant; I sweat; and by some grace, I make it. Now I just want to shower. A hot and peaceful shower. Too bad wishful thinking gets you nowhere.  

My Pepto-Bismol-colored bathroom that I share with Emily and Senora has two sinks, a heater, a toilet, a bade, and one rather large tub. Ok, so where’s the shower?  Oh. There isn’t one? You don’t say.

There’s a contraption that resembles an old-fashioned telephone with some spokes. I wonder if I am some stupid American, too stuck up to know what to do. My senora says that I am supposed to stand in the pink tub, pick up the pink telephone and rinse my body and my hair. (“Yeah, like an elephant,” I think.) Then I notice a little hook where I can put my “telephone” so that maybe, just maybe, I can use both hands to wash my hair (What a concept!).

But I am a trooper…and desperately needing a shower. I turn on the water, which is ice cold because it’s January and the middle of winter, hook the telephone to the nail in the wall, step into the bathtub and push my body against the freezing cold titles on the wall so that the water can just barely dip down on me from my make-shift showerhead. There is no door or shower curtain. I am fully exposed to the entire bathroom. And the goose bumps on my entire body are more like goose pimples or goose warts. I have never in my life taken a faster shower. Never.     

By the time I am clean, all I can think about is getting online. How nice it will be to inform everyone about my first night in Barcelona, I think. Wrong-oh. My senora informs me that there is no “Wife-ey.” No, no my dear Senora. I don’t want a wife. I want the Internet. But then I realize that “wife-ey” is wi-fi said with a Spanish pronunciation.

Alright. Enough. No Internet? Are you kidding me? But it’s true. There is no Internet en mi casa. Oh well. Good thing the café two blocks away has wife-ey for me. Too bad I have to pay 2 euros each time I go and I have to practically share my personal business with everyone in the café.

Bus stops: To make my no-shower-no-elevator-no-internet situation even worse, there is no Metro near my house. I repeat, there is no Metro near my house. Que mala suerte! What bad luck. So while all of my friends can hop on and hop off a block or a few feet in front of their apartments, I have to walk – strike that – I have to TREK some 10 blocks over and about 8 blocks up to end at my home stay. Consequently, I usually end up walking. I consider this to be a miracle because the streets twist and wind and it took me a week to realize the plaques on the side of the building are actually the European version of a street sign. I have learned, however, that all streets lead “home.” I somehow end up wherever I intend (whether it be home or school or Placa del Sol in the Gracia district) even when I never think I will. I always arrive huffing-and-puffing with my hair like a ragamuffin and my purse twisted into my coat, but I arrive.  

“De puta madre” y los piropeos: Like every other large city in the world, “piropeos,” or catcalls, are awkward and downright uncomfortable. When you are not getting them, you think there is something wrong with you; when you are, you just wish they would stop or that you had a few more layers of clothes on. There is no happy medium and in Barcelona, you get them during the day, at night and in that weird period of time between night and morning when you are waiting for the Metro (typically between midnight and 5 a.m.). It’s not just the crazies on the streets who call out, though. The waiters, the bartenders and the security guards are guilty too. Take, for instance, my experience in “Los Bosques de las Fadas,” a bar that looks like the Rainforest Café turned nightspot.

Me: Hola. Como esta la sangria aqui? [Hi. How is the sangria here?]

Bartender: De puta madre como tu.

Me (in my head): What they hell did he just call me?!? “Puta” is a bad word for a woman. “Como tu” means like you. What does that have to do with my sangria?

Well, turns out that in Spain, “de puta madre,” means the best of the best. Totally fantastic. Really cool. Thanks for the backhanded compliment Sir Bartender.

Timing: Ah yes, my schedule. Life here in Europe is quite different from the states.

11 a.m. (or 12 p.m.) – this, of course, depends when I go to bed

2 p.m. – lunch – everyone here eats lunch late

3 p.m. to 7 p.m. – explore anything and everything in the city

7 p.m. to 8 p.m. – begin the hell of the trek home (because it ALWAYS takes an hour)

9 p.m. – eat dinner. An upside to my home stay is that my Senora is a great cook. Plus, I can save money by never having to eat out.

10 p.m. – shower and get ready to go out

11:30 p.m. – run to the Metro or the bus so I can meet up with my friends at a bar

2 a.m. – head to the “discotecas,” or clubs. Yes, it’s true. The people in Barcelona do not go out until absurd hours. The clubs are outrageous, with funky designs and bursting music. The only concept I find strange is the idea of a coat check. As a native Floridian, I have never had to check a coat in my life. Here in Barcelona I must check my heavy coat at ever club I go to.

5 a.m. – get on the Metro as soon as it opens for the day and go home. I have learned the only reason people stay out so late is because they wait for the Metro to open so they don’t need to spend money on taxis, which, let me tell you, gets to be a fortune.

Now, when I have class, my schedule changes a little. You see, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., I replace “explore” with “go to class,” and I wake up at 10 a.m. This slight change, however, does not mean that I don’t go out until 4 or 5 a.m. I, KP, have come to appreciate going out later than late, and I am beginning to master the art of surviving on very little sleep.

Despite the lack of sleep, I love life, knowing that I get to do it all over again the next day. Three weeks in, I have it all down to a science. I am just fine without the Internet. The shower is growing on me. My butt is looking pretty cute from all the stairs I climb daily. I have learned the city inside and out because of all the walking I need to do to get around. And my “cortado con desnatada and sacurina,” or my espresso with skim milk and fake sugar, keeps me awake during the day after a long night out. My malentiendos have become my way of life.