Barcelona (2005)
If you look around bearcave.com, you will see that I'm an avid reader. I read on a wide range of
topics, including history and travel essays. While I've been
an armchair traveler for most of my adult life, I have not traveled
much outside the United States. My freshman year in high school I
spent a month in Mexico and I've been to Cancun, as an adult (I went
scuba diving). Until I went to Barcelona, I had never traveled to
Europe.
When you reach middle age, as I have, it is clear to most people that
there is a horizon out there. I felt that now is the time to start
traveling.
Why Barcelona?
I chose to visit Barcelona for several reasons:
-
Although my command of spanish is poor, I do a speak a little bit
having taken spanish in high school. Also, as a Californian, I live
in an environment where spanish is all around me, since it is the
second language of California. I'm not an experienced traveler, so
the idea that I could speak at least a little of the local language
was a comforting idea.
-
Barcelona was the home of the architect Antoni Gaudi and the
modernista architectural movement in the late 1800s and early
1900s. I have admired Gaudi's architecture since I first saw it.
After visiting Barcelona I also came to admire his architectural
contemporaries like Lluis Domenech i Montaner.
To this day, Barcelona is a city that takes architecture and design
very seriously.
-
Barcelona and Catalunya (Barcelona is the regional capital of
Catalunya) has a long history of progressive politics. Trade unionism
strongly took root in the late 1800s. Catalunya took a strong part
against Franco and the fascist forces in Spain during the Spanish
civil war. George Orwell's novel Homage to Catalonia is based
on Orwell's experiences in this war. Almost 3,000 men and women from
the United States fought against Franco's forces as part of the
Lincoln Brigade.
Catalunya's progressive politics continues to this day. What I also
like about Catalunya is that it is "bourgeois leftism". That is,
progressive politics combined with a desire to make money and get
things done. Catalunya is one of the wealthier parts of Spain.
I went to Barcelona at the end of April, 2005. For me a trip to
Europe represents large expenditure of money, so I wanted to get as
much out of the trip as I could. This meant learning about Barcelona
and its history before I went. When I did finally visit Barcelona, I
had some context for what I saw. I list some of the books I read and
the travel guides I used on one of the sub-pages.
Travel to a foreign country, a different culture where a different
language is spoken, is not the same as taking a vacation to Big
Sur. In most cases you don't visit a foreign city to simply
relax. You visit because you have wanderlust: the desire to see new
places and new things. In my case I also wanted to get some exposure
to how people live outside the United States. I wanted to understand
a bit of the wider world.
For someone like me, who has spent his life in suburbs or small
cities, Barcelona, a city of about four million people, is a huge
city. In addition to Barcelona there are near by areas of interest,
including Terragona and Girona. There is a lot to see and understand,
so I decided to spend two weeks in Barcelona. The idea of two weeks
partially spent in a small hotel room was not very attractive. Also,
I wanted to be able to cook for myself. So I decided to rent an
apartment. I was traveling alone, since my wife does not fly
except en extremis. One of the sub-pages discusses my
experience renting an apartment and provides some links to apartment
rental web pages.
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