May 2007

It is fun and the teachers, Claudio y Diana, are very good, and very patient. There are about 5 or 6 couples and we meet for 1 1/2 hours each Tuesday in a room at the Pipa Club. When we arrived we discovered it was frequented by usually old, pipe smoking men. It has a Sherlock Holmes feels to it and the decore is of the same period. Fortunately though we don’t have to share their smoke and they only have to deal with our dancing when making their way to the toilet.

This is the beginners class so we are not the only ones who don’t know what to do. There are one or 2 other foreigners but the rest are locals.
We have learnt about 4 different steps and are slowly getting better at putting them together.

All the females wear high heels, so I have been trying to learn to walk/dance in my new shoes.

The steps look great and easy when Claudio and Diana do them … we have a long way to go. As well as the lesson there are open dance nights during the week where for an entry fee you can join in and practice your steps or watch how the good dancers do it.

I haven’t learnt dance before but I am finding it very enjoyable. After another 4 weeks we might be able to show off back home. It is a shame we won’t be here longer.

We have had our first visitor. Michael Agzarian dropped in for the weekend from Sweden. It is hard to image how close the countries are. He did have to get a few flights but total flying time is less than flying across Australia.
So for a few days we did touristy things like go out to restaurants in the centre of Barcelona, shopping, ice creams on La Rambla, sculpture exhibitions, travel the metro, walk the old quarters, lunch in cafes, and generally take in the sights. It was nice to have someone besides us 3 to share things with.

Without any Spanish Michael managed to make himself understood surprisingly well, always getting what he wanted in the end – shopping for clothes, getting the markets to sell him fish even though they were shutting, internet connection , haircuts, and a taxi to meet him outside at 4.30am.

(I am writing this as I watch the soccer on TV and Ronaldiño who plays for Barcelona has just got sent off. The crowd is going wild.)

We visited a monastery in the mountains about an hour outside Barcelona called Montserrat. It was an amazing place with sheer rock outcrops in strange and striking shapes. There were a lot of people there as well as school groups filling in their last weeks before the long summer holidays start.

The cathedral was beautiful with a long queue of people waiting to touch the ‘Black Virgin’ statue. A choir of alter boys sang and then also a choir from Slovania sang too.

We walked up the mountain a bit but you could really spend a long time there walking and seeing the sights.

It is not that the beaches here aren’t nice; the water is cool and clear, the sand is raked clean daily and the facilities are impressive, it is the CROWDS, and it is not even summer or the holiday season yet!

There are thousands of people, all trying to claim a place on the sand. It is almost impossible to walk through, without flicking sand on someone.
There are groups of teenagers all armed with their MP3 players and mobile phones, groups of pale German/Swiss/English tourists who will perhaps regret their day at the beach tomorrow, as well as a lot of coconut oiled locals. There is hardly a hat in sight - the Cancer Council obviously hasn’t had much impact here.

The CROWD consists of all shapes and sizes and no one is shy. Topless bathing is very popular, even regrettably among the older, larger, and very old, very large group. It is very disconcerting for me, let alone Max (15 years) not knowing where to look or how to avoid such sights.

But when you finally muscle your way in between a few other towels, lie down, get out your book or close your eyes, you could almost image you are somewhere else … except for the general chatter of voices, phones, people signally to lost others their location and vendors battling their way through the crowd selling ‘beer-cerveza-icecream-helado-water-agua?’ in every language.

There are chairs you can hire, windsurfers and small sail boats for the adventurous, fixed volleyball courts for the athletic, toilets, outdoors showers, cafes on the edge of the sand from which drift tempting seafood smells and the sound of enthusiastic diners.

No many people are in the water though – the waves are nothing to talk about and I only saw one lifeguard for the entire beach! Only very few (probably foreign beachgoers like us venture into the deeper, open water. Jeff’s feet even float and that is saying something. –it is very salty.

We have joined a Video club to satisfy our needs to watch undubbed movies. It is very different though – no ailse of movies to select from , no people to direct you, no popcorn – it is more like an ATM – a machine in a wall. You have to put in credit and get a members card and pass word and then you have 24 hour access to their video library. You can search by genres, actors, etc and it keeps a track of films you have previously borrowed. The minimum cost at out place is 1.50 euro (about $2.25) for 6hours, or more for 12 hours, 24 hrs, 2 days and so on.
We thought there were no video shops at all to start with but now have oticed these video banks in the wall all around the place.

The TV offers about 10 real channels free to air plus a few other very sus info-commercial channels and even like classified ad channels. Some are in Spanish and some are in the local Catalan language. All the movies are dubbed which is a bit disappointing– even The Simpsons and Desperate Housewives but not Sesame Street. Sandra Bullock is in almost every move we have seen so far – either they really like her or it is ‘Sandra Month’.

We have been to one movie at a cinema where they show movies in ‘original version’ ie English for us. Yeah!! The cinema complex was enormous with 15 theatres, but I don’t know how they survive as there was only us 3 and one other person when we went to see – you guessed it Sandra Bullock in ‘ Premonition’. The movie was pretty good tough and nice to be able to hear the real voices.

The cinema had a meal deal with the Bocata Chain next door (Spanish version of Subway) so we got a meal included in the ticket price.

There is a price to pay for living in a big city – high rise living. The reduced size of the living area is not the real issue – it is the complete lack of a back or front yard and no grass, trees or flowers, no swings or trampolines, definitely no pool. Any ‘backyard activities’ are now the realm of the 1 x 3m balcony.

Hanging the washing now becomes an extreme sport as you lean over the balcony gripping clothes and pegs. The washing hangs on lines you can pull in and out to move the clothes further along and hang others on. It is a mystery to me though what happens to the odd peg or sock that never returns from an expedition to the outer reaches of the clothesline. I guess people on the ground floor never have to buy pegs and have an intriguing collection of unmatched socks and under wear.

Most people also have an alternative hanging space in a shared air/light shaft for all the bathrooms/laundries on the same floor. Max scored this very attractive view from his bedroom window.

As well as drying clothes, you can often see bicycles stored with their wheels hanging over the railing. Potted plants are high on the list of balcony additions. People on lower floors have to dodge the drops from pots above though. Unused furniture, plus the kitty or doggy litter tray often fills up the remaining space on the balcony. Considering this is such a built up area with the average height of buildings about 10 stories, I am amazed that there are so many dogs - and not just little ones.

There is a big commercial market here for pampered pooches; special foods, coats, leads and collars, shampoos, trims and lots of treats. The doggies are taken out to the local park a couple of times a day. It’s not quite the same as lying around the backyard in shade, or chasing the cat or postman as they feel like it though. I am pleased to see that most of the owners here are very responsible about collecting anything left by their animal, but the grassy areas are not where I would choose to walk or sit now that I have seen the dogs at work.