Barcelona – The Best and the Worst

Driving into Barcelona we were told two things by our rather useless guide. A) Barcelona is awesome. B) At least two of us out of that busload would get mugged. While it was hard to ignore the obvious excitement of being in my first Spanish city, I found myself dwelling on the second point more as I walked down to the ATM to get some cash to pay for the hostel. Our hostel in Barcelona was in a pretty dingy area, not too far from La Ramblas, but also swarming with delinquent types and prostitutes, despite being over the road from the police station. While checking into the hostel all I remember is Elena, the gorgeous German hostel manager, who had a penchant for pulling faces when people pissed her off, even though she wasn’t aware she was doing it.

After getting settled in the consensus decision amongst the group was that we would do the pub crawl tonight, the first day in town. Remembering the same decision in Prague turned a little pear-shaped, I was hesitant at first, but being easily led, and this time making sure I had a decent map, we all headed out to the crawl. There is not a lot I remember about that night. I thought I remembered most of it, but later found out that a lot more had happened than what I thought. I remember stupidly trying to hit on Lauren all night, even though she had a boyfriend back in Perth. I remember meeting Kelly, a sweetheart Canadian at the club at the end of the night. Apart from that, it’s all a mess. But I had fun (I think) and didn’t get mugged on the way home, so all in all, it was a success. My friend Ryan, however, did get mugged. They cut the watch off his arm and ran off, cutting his arm in the process. Bastards.

The next morning I woke up and went for a walk around town with two American girls in my room named Megan and Surly. Yes. Her name is Surly. I was as surprised as anyone. It felt weird to be calling someone else Surly. Very weird. So, anyway, we walked around town all day to look at the various examples of Gaudi architecture. I must admit I know nothing of Gaudi before getting to Barcelona, but it truly is awesome stuff and completely different to anything I had seen before. When I returned back to the hostel, I found that the Woo Tang Man had hit town and was looking for me. That night, Woo and I went out on the town with Kate, Erin and some lads from their room. We went out for traditional tapas and then cocktails before hitting up more bars and ending up at Boulevard nightclub at around 3am. It was good to see Woo again, and he was back to the old Woo, striking up conversation with anyone and generally having a great time being silly with everyone. We rolled into our hostel at about 4am and crashed hard.

The next day Woo and I rolled out of bed quite late and decided to go to the beach with Surly for the afternoon. We walked the 20min walk in the blazing sun and were very glad to get to the beach finally and see that it was sand (well, dirt really) and the water was cool and blue. We were on the lookout for bag snatchers as apparently you couldn’t leave any you stuff on its own or it would get promptly stolen. I started talking to a stunning German girl named Paula. We compared tattoos and generally paid out on each other’s stupidity. After a few hours on the beach it was time to leave and we made the long walk home, stopping along the way for a Gelato, and got back to hostel feeling tired, hungry and slightly burnt. Woo and I then head out to a local British pub to watch the opening Liverpool game of the season, and despite being very disappointed with Liverpool’s loss, we met some top class Irish lads who were a great laugh and demanded that Woo and I go over to meet them for some big nights in Dublin at sometime.

We had to rush out on the Irish lads, Steve and Phil, as we needed to get ready to go out to dinner with a bunch of people. Surly and Megan had offered to take us out to a “Neo-tapas” restaurant. Megan liked to dub this sort of food “bread sushi” because everything came out on a piece of French bread, in the same way that some sushi is a bed of rice, with a piece of fish on top. Woo had invited Carolyn, and German girl from his room along for the meal and I had invited Paula, although as she didn’t have a phone I was going to be waiting on a call from her to give her directions on how to meet us. However, by far the most illustrious guest was Nic, who had arrived on the bus that night, and I hadn’t seen since Salzburg a few weeks earlier, and was super excited to be seeing again.

The “bread sushi’ was pretty amazing, apart from the occasional let down, and we ate our fill of it and drank lots of sangria before the waiter came around to count our toothpicks to tell us how much we owed, as there was a toothpick in each portion of food. I finally got a call from Paula, only an hour and fifteen minutes late, and managed to give her sufficient directions to make it to the Orio restaurant. She arrived about fifteen minutes later and had a glass of sangria with us before Surly, Megan and Carolyn decided to head back to the hostel. Nic, Woo, Paula and I all decided to head out from some cocktails at the bar we had been to the night before, as we could still make it for most of happy hour. A few cocktails later and happy hour was over so we cruised around the inner city of Barcelona, having a drink or two in a few random bars before by about 3am Nic and Woo and decided it was time to return to the hostel. Paula and I decided to go down to the beach, so I grabbed my bag and we started the walk.

About ten minutes into the half hour walk, I realized that in addition to having my towel in it, my bag also contained my camera and ipod. Being as the only reason I had grabbed my bag is that I knew it had my towel in it, I was a little annoyed at myself, but I wasn’t prepared to walk all the way back to drop it off, and wasn’t planning on letting the bag out of my sight, so decided it would be fine. Paula and I arrived at the beach and put down our bags on a spot far away from anyone. We occasionally had someone walk past us, but were both very surprised to notice 30minutes later that our bags, which were sitting right behind us, were gone. I sat there in disbelief for a good ten minutes. I could not believe the incredulousness of what had just happened, however after having a conniption at the realization that I had lost my phone more than anything else, it was time put Paula on a train back to her place, and make the long walk home, going to sleep as the sun was rising.

The next morning was all about doing a police report, which took me over an hour and a half, and then heading out for some food with Ryan and Woo. I did have dreams of going to get some stuff, such as a new phone, backpack and possibly camera, but in the end I just didn’t have the energy so I ended up just sitting around the hostel for most of the day before we had all planned to go out for tapas and sangria, before going to a massive club night at Apollo. Nic’s hostel was supposed to take a big group of us to an all you can eat paella place, with cheap sangria, but that never eventuated, so we all headed out into the town to find one ourselves. As always when you have a group of lots of people and no leader, we ended up walking around aimlessly looking at menu’s with nobody making a decision for about half an hour before we finally decided on a restaurant not too far from where we were originally congregated. The paella and sangria were good, and not too expensive, and afterwards we headed out to a shot bar down one of the back streets. This bar was really cool, with thousands of different shots available, all for 2 euros each. Some involved setting the bar on fire, roasting some marshmallows on the fire, then doing the shot. Very cool stuff that would be unlikely to ever be allowed in Australia due to OHS and fire code restrictions. The problem for me however, is that I was absolutely rat-shit tired and I knew I wasn’t going to last much longer, regardless of how many shot I might have. I said my goodbyes, left the crew out and headed back to the hostel to be in my bed and out like a lamp by midnight.

The next morning Woo, Ryan and I went into the shopping district as I needed to get a new phone and a new backpack. We walked around for ages, with very little success. In the electronics store I noticed that many cameras were being bought by tourists, and I wondered how much Barcelona’s economy relies on theft. If everyone stopped getting their camera or ipod etc stolen in Barcelona, then they would have no need to buy a new one here, and I think Barcelona would see a 10-15% drop in sales of consumer electronic goods. They’re all in cahoots I say! Oh well, it’s only a theory. After finally finding a Vodafone, we were told that we needed our passports to get a phone. I didn’t have my phone so we made the long annoying walk back to the hostel to get them. Ryan, who also needed a sim card, and I, left Woo at the hostel and went back out to Vodafone on our own. I also found a new backpack along the way, and although being nowhere near as good as my previous one, it would do the job. I got my sim and finally got everything working in English and was very glad to have a phone again, even though my new phone is shit, and Spanish call plans are in no way cheap.

That afternoon I ran into Matt and Sarah, whom I had not seen since my first stop in Vienna and let them know we had decided to stay in the hostel that evening and drink some store purchased sangria. We went through about six bottles of sangria before heading out, again going to the cocktail bar, as it was all night happy hour tonight. Matt, Sarah, Ryan, Nic, Woo and I all got thoroughly destroyed on 3.50euro cocktails before at 2am deciding hitting up Boulevard would be a good idea. After 3 hours of completely spastic dancing, but no more drinks due to their ridiculous prices, we took the short walk through the shitbomb area back to the hostel.

We woke up Wednesday morning with our priority being to get tickets to the Barcelona FC game at the Nou Camp versus Manchester City. Tickets were 30euro, not terribly good seats, and we had to split up into two groups of two, but we were all very excited to be going to one of the most famous stadiums in the world and seeing the reigning champions of Europe play the richest club in the world. After getting our tickets, everybody had different plans, with Woo going out sightseeing with some of his Contiki friends, while Ryan and Nic wanted to have a nap. I planned on doing some washing but got a call from Paula, and instead hung out with her for the afternoon. There was nobody else in my hostel room, so it was nice to be able to spend some time one on one with her, without the fear of having my stuff stolen. That evening we all congregated on the hostel roof for a few hours of sangria, laughter and conversation before heading out to the Soccer game, saying my goodbyes to Paula, who is not a sport person, before we left.

The Nou camp isn’t an overly impressive stadium from the outside, but once you enter it, you realize that the ground level inside the ground is significantly lower than outside, and the hundred thousand seat stadium in a cauldron of noise, lights and Catalan pride when inside. The spectacle of it all was fantastic, and although Woo and I were nearly directly behind the goals on the opposite end of the pitch to the only goal that was scored, it was still an amazing experience to be there. The problems however started arising after the game when Nic and Ryan, who had been seated in another section of the stadium, had walked off in a different direction and had no map. Eventually we had to go find them, and by the time we returned, the metro railway system had stopped running. The game did not finish until 12:30am, with a full house of nearly one hundred thousand people, and yet there were no trains less than an hour later. Nice one Barcelona. We ended up walking nearly half the way home (about 5kms) before we finally got a taxi at around 3am and got back to the hostel to pass out after a night that ended up being a lot later than we had planned.

Thursday would be my last day in Barcelona, and like every single other day before it, I did not get up in time to take advantage of the free breakfast. I spent my morning organizing my bag and getting my washing done before meeting Paula and spending the day with her. We went to possibly the most expensive ‘model food’ restaurant I have ever been to, with meals costing 18euro and being the size of a small entrée. The next morning I said my sad goodbyes to Paula and met Nic, Ryan and a still very, very drunk Woo for the early morning taxi to the airport, and our flight to Ibiza. Woo had done to pubcrawl the night before, and got massively fucked up, missing his alarm, packing his bag that morning, waking up everyone in his room, making the taxi wait for us, and was generally loud, drunk and fucking hilarious, especially when he asked an attractive airport worker if she would like to accompany him to Ibiza. Classic Woo.

Barcelona included the absolute best and worst times of my holiday. The nightlife was outstanding. Every night there was an absolute blast. The city is gorgeous, with some of the more stunning and different architecture in Europe and your doorstep. However, the crime and consistent fear of crime is always there and dilutes any enjoyment you might be able to have in your time there, destroying your growing love of the amazing Catalan capital.