Paris according to me. In 250 words or less.

The Eiffel Tower is bigger and wirier in person, but when it’s lit up at night you can’t tear your eyes away. The Catacombs are disturbing and eerie, but totally awesome. Crepes with Nutella and bananas are pure bliss. The hot chocolate at Les Deux Magots, where Hemingway used to hang out, is like liquid heaven. There is such thing as fantastic red wine for less than a Euro. The Luxembourg Gardens are just as beautiful even if wet snow is falling and not sticking. The stained-glass windows at the Notre Dame Cathedral remind me of paint by numbers. The Louvre is too massive for anyone to really be able to appreciate it all. The Seine River at night is simply perfect. Orangina is deliciously tangy even though I hate soda. Champs-Elysées not only has the best shopping, but the best chocolate croissants too. It is possible to use every hand signal imaginable to get your point across. Rue Cler, a local, outdoor market, sells the best mini quiche, French baguettes and Brie for a “bicnic,” or picnic in bed. You don’t always need to buy a Metro pass. It takes some 500 shots to get one good picture of friends jumping in the air in front of the Eiffel Tower. You can buy black boots that you have been searching frantically for for 6 Euros. It’s completely possible to meet up with friends even when no one has a cell phone. And oh yea, let it be known that my sing-songy speaking voice would sound wonderful speaking French…if I do say so myself. 

No pasa nada. Tranquila.

If Americans say “Oh my God” too frequently, then Spaniards, particularly Catalonians, say “no pasa nada” like a broken record. And when they aren’t saying “no pasa nada,” they are telling each other to “tranquila.”

“No pasa nada.” Don’t worry about it. No big deal. “Tranquila.” Chill out.

It’s a great concept and fits the Spanish way of life perfectly. No worries. Slow and steady. Everything will work out as it should. But, if you know me at all, “chill out” and “don’t worry about it” do not exist in my vocabulary. My Type A personality and I do not have any inkling of either one of these concepts. Especially in tense situations.

Because I have been in Barcelona for more than a month, I decided it was time to being my travels. Irena, one of my best friends from home who is also studying here, is my tried-and-true travel buddy. And we recruited some new friends (Kyle, Willie and Miquel) to come with.

First stop: Paris. The city of amor. Where we hopeless romantic can regain some hope that there is such a thing as true love and fairy-tale endings. And the city of food. Not just food. The best food in the entire world. There was no doubt in any of our minds that we weren’t going to love life.      

The morning of our hour-and-a-half plane ride out, I decide to wake up early and shower. I want to have enough time to do my hair and my makeup without feeling rushed and then head to the Metro so I can meet up with Irena and Miquel. The three girls are flying together and will take a taxi to the El Prat airport in Barcelona. One of Irena’s friends, who is also headed to the airport for another trip, suggests we skip the taxi and take the train to the airport so that we can save our money. The train is free. The taxi is about 20 Euros divided by four. We are broke students. Free can’t be beat. Plus, it’s early. Why not? I should learn to take the train to the airport.   

So the four of us, bags in hand, head from one Metro to another until we get to Sans Estacion, where we can pick up the train to the airport. The ride on the train is about 25 minutes and we’ll have just enough time to get a bite to eat and relax before the flight. At Sans Estacion, we switch from the Metro tracks to the Renfe tracks, which are run by the Catalan government and serve as an alternate to the Metro. We ask the information desk which train we need to take to get to the airport and then wait by all the other people with luggage. When the train pulls up, the four of us rush on, eager to get a seat on our ride to the airport. We chit-chat about everything we are looking forward to doing, all the places we want to go, and all the food we plan to eat. We are in our own little fantasy world. Little children excited to be traveling and trying to come to terms with the fact that WE ARE GOING TO PARIS!! A few minutes later, the train doors close and we are off.

As we are chugging along, I look out the window to realize that airplanes are taking off in the direction our train is traveling. I glance at the digital watch on my cell phone and make a mental note that we have been on the train for about 23 minutes. We should be just about to pull into the station at the airport. So where is it?

At this point, my friends are starting to wonder why we don’t seem close either. But we were standing with all those other travelers who had large pieces of luggage, and they got on the train right? I look around. Nope. The four of us are the only fools with luggage on this train. Then again, perhaps the other travelers got on in different cars.

My heart starts pounding hard and the guy we are with decides to lean over to an older Spanish couple doing a crossword puzzle to ask when this train will get to the airport. The old man laughs and informs us that this train is not going to the airport, but if you know Spanish humor (which I am slowly starting to get the hang of), you know that half the time people are kidding. Phew. Es un chiste, no? It’s a joke, right? So Brett asks again and, once again, the gentleman tells us the train is headed to some small little village and the stop isnt for another 40 minutes.

No, no es un chiste. My eyes wander to the big train windows and I see that we are on a bridge over some body of water. Nowhere near the airport. In our haste to get on the train and get to the airport, we didn’t even notice that all the people standing around us with luggage at the train station didn’t get on behind us.     

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. My heart can’t handle this. Get a person who works on this train over here and fast!

A man in a white button-up with a train hat on comes over and reaffirms our biggest fear: the train will not make it’s first stop for another 35 minutes, putting us at a station in some far-off land at about 11:20 a.m. My flight leaves at 12:35 p.m. My head becomes a dizzy maze. I feel like I am spinning in circles. And because my flight was so cheap, there are no refunds. No refunds? I am about to miss out on my well-planned weekend and lose my money. I can’t handle this.

Think, KP, think. Think fast. OK, I’ve got it. I’ll just ask the train worker.

Mr. Train Conductor laughs when we tell him we are trying to catch a plane from the Barcelona airport. He tells us we can take a train back to Sans Estacion once we get to the first train stop, but it will take an hour for us to get back. [Aside: Oh great, then we miss the plane…what a stupid idea!] So Miquel asks him about a taxi from the train station to the airport. Again he laughs, and I really don’t see what’s so funny. He says he’s never done it because it’s too expensive and he has no idea how long it will take. And then, to add salt to an open wound, he tells us we have jumped the train and we need to pay for our tickets. You’re kidding me. You have got to be kidding me. But he is not. 5 Euros per person. So I open my already-empty wallet to pay the man for a trip I didn’t even want to take in the first place. After we all pay, he chuckles and says “Pero no pasa nada” as he walks away, leaving us to sulk.

No pasa nada? No pasa nada youself! I’m gonna miss my non-refundable flight and ruin my first away trip, and you are telling me to tranquila? You must be joking.  The four of us living out the “stupid American” stereotype.   

I look out the window and we are still over the ocean or river or whatever the hell it is. A taxi to get us back to the mainland (if there even is one) will probably cost a fortune. But desperate times call for desperate measures. We need to run off the train and get to a taxi as soon as the train stops to salvage any sense of hope we might have about still making our flight and living out our perfect weekend. Plus, the taxi will be divided by four to ease the cost.

At the train stop, we get into a taxi and tell the driver we need to get to the airport in the fastest way possible. Then I look up and realize we have a woman taxi driver. Not that I am sexist, but when I wanna get somewhere fast, I need a speed demon. A man with a heavy foot willing to step on it like never before. But she’ll have to do. We start driving and she tells us it will cost at least 100 Euros. Whatever. Just “andale!” or “venga!”. We need to get to the airport. The ride is spent in silence since the four of us are too tense to even speak. The driver’s old-school 1990’s American music playing in the background doesn’t help to soothe much either.

We pull in to the airport at about 12 p.m. and run to the check in counter. As if we haven’t had enough bad luck, I find out my bag is too heavy and I need to check it for an additional 20 Euros.

Oh no. No way. Enough. I open my bag, jerk my laptop out and switch it into Irena’s, which luckily, has room. Then the man at the ticket counter prints our boarding passes. We look to learn that we are sitting in the very last row of the plane. Though I am the most nervous flyer ever and the back of the plane is the bumpiest, at this point, I just don’t care.

When we get situated on the plane (miraculously, I may add after literally running though security!), the flight attendants inform the three of us girls that because we are in the last row, we cannot keep our jackets or our purses with us. They must be stored in the overhead compartment so we don’t start a fire. I have never in my life heard of such a thing, but as the plane starts backing out from the gate, we are heaving our items above our heads.

“Tranquila, girls, now just put on your seatbelts,” one attendant says.

Again with the tranquila? Really? I am gonna need a horse tranquilizer to tranquila, so unless you can provide me with one or two or forty, I suggest you stop telling me to tranquila!

Eventually, I sit and relax and listen to some music. Half way through the flight, when my heart starts to pitter-pat in a normal rhythm again, I tell myself that maybe, just maybe, the Spanish know something I don’t. No pasa nada because everything will work itself out. Now if only I had some tequila to tranquila.

The beauty of the world...or Spain, at least

Barcelona is "una cuidad con mucho ritmo," or a city with a lot of rhythm. And while I love to write, sometimes the only way for me to capture the beauty of the world is through my third eye - my camera lens. 

On La Rambla, street performers dress up in extravagant costumes in hopes that people will drop them a few pennies. 

Park Guell has the most fantastic architecture. Gaudi makes everything look like a cartoon brought to life. 

La Pedrera, another of Gaudi's works, is simply magnificent on Paseo de Gracia. 

A fun sculpture by Barceloneta, or the port of Barcelona. The Ferris wheel on top of Tibidabo. Some of the detailed work at El Valle de Los Caidos, where Franco is buried. 
A view of Toledo. 

How much money do you require?

My poor debit card has seen better days. The strip on the back looks like the bottom of my high-heels, which are so worn down the metal clanks when I walk, the numbers that should be raised like brail on the front are flattened and there is a shadow of black where my signature should be imprinted. Nonetheless, it works.

When I put my debit card into the “cajero,” or ATM, I am prompted to select a language. Because I am dealing with money and cannot afford – literally - to make any mistakes, I select English.  And though the English is clearly a poor translation of either the Catalan or Spanish directions, I am able to follow them.

I enter my pin. I select my account. And then, como siempre (“as always”), it flashes me a message.

“How much money do you require?”

[Aside] How much money do I require? Well, geeze, that’s a deep question, Mr. Cajero. All I wanted to do was take out some money and now the quiet inside my mind has been rippled. An entire string of other questions that I always try to avoid becomes inevitable.

How much money do I require? I mean, I know how much money I want, but require? Heck, how much money do I require for what? For today? For tonight? For dinner? For a shopping spree? Or, heaven forbid, for my life? I am still enjoying my early-20s. How can I even begin to answer this? Today I may require 100 Euros, tomorrow I might need 5, and the next I might need 1,000. But needing and wanting are so different from “requiring.” Requiring sounds regal and proper and official. Worse, requiring sounds so grown-up.

Am I just a silly girl parading around Barcelona, spending frivolously on “discotecas” and “vino” and “cervesa”? Am I requiring it or childishly wanting it? Am I spending too much or too little? Will I be broke by the time I go home? Why haven’t I been saving up for years?

My internal monologue then tries to make a deal with me. It begs me to put aside a dollar a day so that some day, any day, in the future I’ll have a few extra pennies. But then again, when’s the “future”? When will I know to use my savings? And in that case, if I don’t spend it, why am I saving it?

Snap out of it. Get a grip. You’re at an ATM; just take out some money so you don’t hold up your friends.

So how much money do I require? Well, when I look at it like that, I guess I can’t feel bad about taking out a lot. I mean, I need it right. I want to have a fun night. In order to do that, I require my glass of Sangria and I require a wristband to get into the club. Easy enough. Thank you very much, Mr. Cajero, you are absolutely right: I require 100 Euros tonight….just don’t tell my mom. 

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.   

This brought to you from 33,002 feet up

I am suspended somewhere between 10:56 p.m. and 4:56 a.m., (a God-awful time of night, let me tell you) going 560 miles per hour and wishing I could go 10 times faster. By the end of the first hour, I had lost my nerves; by the second I was in deep conversation with the Spanish man named Luis who goes by Louigie sitting next to me; by the third, I was attempting to eat soggy pasta drenched in oil (no such luck), and by the fourth, I was watching Vicky Christina Barcelona. Now, at hour five out of nine, I am ready to pull my hair out. I’d love to sleep, but I took a Mucinex to clear up my recently stuffy nose and my eyes burn from staying open so long. Perhaps it would be better if last night weren’t New Year’s, but it was. I am drunk on lack of sleep and no matter how hard or how long I try to close my eyes, my brain is still buzzing. Did I mention that my seat won’t go back because it’s broken? Woops, sorry, forgot that little detail. So even though the dimly lit plane is conducive to sleeping for everyone else, little old me is typing like a maniac, hoping someone will inject me with a tranquilizer so I can sleep.

My wit and personality have all but disappeared as I stare blankly at the neon white light exuding from my Word document. With more than four hours to go and more turbulence to endure, I figured it’s probably be a good time to flip open my computer and “escribir” (or write). While I should probably be practicing my Spanish, I am tightening my grasp on the English language (or so I tell myself so that I can justify procrastinating studying for my Spanish exam, which will determine my placement for my classes in Barcelona.)

Caught up in my lousy mood, I realize I have forgotten to even mention that I am embarking on another fabulous adventure. For four months (plus change), I will be “estudiando en Barcelona, Espana.” A girl should only be so lucky, eh? I will be living with a host family and a roommate from St. Louis as I take 12 credits and explore Europe.   

With a renewed sense of excitement at the near mention of the word “Barcelona,” I suppose I can’t complain, not even for a minute, about my long flight. Soon I will be in the land of romance languages, beautiful scenery, top-notch nightlife and “vino.” Wish me “buena suerte,” or “good luck.” In the meantime, however, a mere glance at my watch reminds me that I still have three more hours to go. I have discovered a new form of torture. Plane rides. Long plane rides. Because being stuck in a seat for nine straight hours is hell….even if Barca is only an ocean-ride away and the tapas are calling my name.   

 

Cages or wings - which do you prefer?

Just when you think you have it all planned, life throws a fast one.

It’s not just Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae that hit a downward spiral and went plummeting. I, too, seem to be going bankrupt despite the warning signs that I had telling me not to take 15 credits, start working on my senior thesis a year early, plan for law school, score a summer internship eight months in advance and finish out my term as president of my sorority. Though I have known all along that life and my aspirations would catch up with one another, I have finally nose-dived, and am secretly hoping that some greater power will step in to help me take control of my life.

But since God works nothing like the federal government (to my knowledge, at least), I decided it would be a good time for me to take control of myself and recalculate my priorities. Essentially, I am my own bailout plan. Unlike its federal counterpart, though, my plan was approved by me, myself and I, and it passed without any earmarks or pork barreling.

Between classes, getting settled back in Gainesville and re-familiarizing myself with slow-paced life, I seem to have pushed everything I once adored to the back burner: my friends, my free time, my reading for fun and my blog. School and the presidency became my top priorities, and everything else became secondary. Three cups of coffee became staples of my day, and my alarm goes of religiously at 8 a.m., even on the weekends, so I can get it all done. No one said it was easy to be the queen bee, the star student and the best friend, especially all at once. Silly me.

But if you know me, you know I like a challenge. I’m not into being cooped up in my bedroom hour upon hour doing work. So now, more than a month into my classes, I seem to have gotten a grip and figured out how to balance my hundreds of pages of reading a night with my 10-page-long papers and my smaller homework assignments. I color code my planner and make meticulous lists. It never ceases to amaze me how much pleasure I get from digging my pen deep into my Post-Its, etching out whichever project, reading assignment, paper or e-mail response I have completed. The result: a little more time for friends, a little more for fun and even a little more for blogging.

So, yes, it’s been a while. An awfully long while. And too long if you ask me. But I’m back. It’s time for me to start doing things for me because every bailout plan has some cushion to give its writers some perks.

As for cages or wings….maybe I just shoulda asked the birds.