Before heading home, we went to the Mayor’s square, where I’d read that people dance in the streets in some sort of Catalan dance. I was right! There were all these old people in white shoes dancing in a circle doing some sort of tappy toe tappy toe step step step jump and be awesome dance.
The dance was forbidden in the Franco years, and you could just tell that these older people were rocking their feet off to this dainty little dance, repping their Catalunianness. The music was super cool (there was a full band in the square as well, and I gave’em a Euro…represent international civic-mindedness!) and I was happy to see some young people doing the dance as well. Things like that I just hope go on forever. If I were a Catalunian family, I’d be like, ok family, time to go dance in the square! It’s rep your heritage through vernacular dance time! And the children would rejoice, as they had grown to associate dancing with love. And I would even make my 13 year old son do it, b/c one must learn to represent one’s people through the art of dance at a young, even pubescent age!
Anyway, it was just so charming. I loved the sassy jumping old ladies. I seriously loved them. I could just feel how proud they were to be sassily jumping and tappy toe-ing! Dancing!
Made me wish that people did the St. Louis Shag in the street.
They probably used to.
Vow to myself to have authentic street dancing children? Made.
Anyway, after some napping, we went out to an excellent tapas restaurant called Taller de Tapas, where we got free champagne, the best tapas ever, felt very fancy, and had a wonderful waiter who used to live in Santa Fe (he recommends a visit…duly noted!) and who spoke English with the inflection of a game show host. How cool is that.
One bottle of wine later we went to Jamboree, the hip hop club just below our hostel. We met Colin, our favorite ginger kid, just trekkin’ his way around, as well as Kofi the American businessman who works in London, and his friend from Chicago. I celebrated as much as possible the victory of the Cardinals (or was I just dancing so that they might be infused with my good will as they were on their way to victory? I don’t know, at some point, I’d drunkenly discovered that the Cardinals had won) with every Nelly song that played…there were 2, and the dj even played Kanye for me…though most people had left for the other room by then. Met some Irish Bartender and he invited me and Emilie for a “party” (his friend and some Mexican girls and me and Emilie…interesting definition of party) and after making it through the mean streets – yeah there were prostitutes on Las Ramblas…that was a first -- we made it to the “party” and he told us all about how Sunday Bloody Sunday should be Ireland’s national anthem. Yeah, ok.
I think I made Emilie pledge that she would never pronounce Missouri the wrong way (no I don’t mean miz-ur-uh, and of course not miz-ur-ee…I mean Miss-ooohuur-aaauh and Miss-oooohurrr-eee. Sacrilege!) , and we of course had to defend our country against European public opinion that Americans are all of the breeding that produces the “stars” of the hit TV series, COPS or Prison Break, Desperate Housewives, and every Michael Moore movie known to movie screens. Don’t get me started on Borat. All my French students think Sascha Baron Cohen is American. French newspapers think he is a british comedian in the vein of Monty Python.
I think Borat is partly funny, and mostly very very impolite.
Returning to barca, in short, I said I wanted to leave the party so naturally there was passing out on the couches at the party for the night, and then we wander the morning/afternoon streets of barca back to our hostel so we can get ready to go to the beach. I’m a little hungover/angry, but we go to the sea, and I totally fell asleep on the Barcelona Mediterranean shore, as well as got a bit of a tan, despite my anger/hangovertasticness. Emilie went swimming b/c of some sort of “always swim” pledge she made with herself – but she’s Swedish, and her Viking blood, and lack of anger (unlike myself) helped her to enjoy the frigid Mediterranean waters….though it was quite hot outside at the end of October in Spain. Upon my return to the hostel, I pass out and Emilie meets our Oregon friends, who really had the potential to be awesome, but actually were not all that fun, but they were good to throw around.
Ok, we had crappy paella, but got to make our own awesome tomato bread by rubbing pink garlic (best garlic ever, seriously it is AWESOME) and tomatoes on a piece of toast. We discussed many things including how, geez, Barcelona was kicking the crap out of us. Seemed like every time we were like, no, tonight we will be calm and get in at a sensible but still late enough hour as to not be too Puritanical, we ended up just like, not coming home at all and walk-of-shaming through the afternoon streets of Barca. So before we set out for the beer drinking room of the hostel we decided to go for some reverse psychology and pledged to each other that we would attempt to become impregnated by the end of that evening.
We made it back to the hostel for some drinking games the likes of Beer goggles, one frog, Hoe Down (with the Billy Ray) and other such, if you say “mine” you have to do 5 star jumps (Jump up and say, “I’m a STAR!”) and the repeat game where if someone repeats what you say, you get to flick them in the head…all with the Oregoonies and some dutch girls and slutty Canadiennes. Emilie got to flick the one cool Oregoonie in the head b/c he repeated “I’m not an ambiturner.” I have a feeling the boys were not ready for 2 girls who could giggle and bring their A game to drinking time and actually compete. Everyone kept on being like, hey, she’s smart, she went to UPenn…she was a HisSTORY major, hahah. Ok? Anyway, Emilie lost some bet, or must have, b/c she had to spoon with the irish dude later on. I was chaperoning, no worries. We actually went to sleep (not passed out) that night, so that was nice.
Take that Barca! Score -- reverse psychology :1 Barca: 3-5
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