Tweedledum and Tweedledee

If I had to sum up the weekend, I’d say it’s been a successful one for speaking Catalan. Most people are kind of bemused as to why I’m learning a language that’s only spoken by a small number of people in a small part of the world. But hey, I enjoy it, and it’s only polite to make an effort. So, personal successes in speaking Catalan this weekend included:

• Actually understanding a joke on APM without having to ask what some of the words meant.

• Being invited to spend a future weekend in the country house of a Catalan family, at least in part because of my ability to string a few words together in their language. If I’d have known that being invited to Cadaqués was a possible side effect of learning Catalan, I would have paid a lot more attention in class last year.

• I managed to maintain a conversation with the old ladies who live on the fifth floor.

The latter might not sound like much, but it is a very real achievement. They live nearly at the top of the building, and are possibly as old as time itself. They have lived through the entirety of Franco’s dictatorship, and the civil war that preceded it. I like to imagine they are as old as theflat they live in. Of all the people who live in the flat they are the ones I most frequently bump into, as the sheer amount of time it takes them to walk up and down the stairs increases the possibility of bumping into them significantly. (Thankfully the Man Who Lives Upstairs is a rarely sighted creature, although sadly the mantra chanting Argentinian man and his wife don’t often venture down from their flat on the roof.)

They are always spotted together, and are almost identical. Imagine tweedledum and tweedledee in ancient Catalan form, and there you have it. Just as they are always together, so it is that they must also talk at the same time. I am normally left smiling and nodding while I play spot the difference between the two.

But! This weekend we managed a coherent exchange. I’ll spare you the details, as it wasn’t the content that was important, rather the fact we managed to communicate in some way. Who knows, perhaps by the end of the year we will be on first name terms…

Home Sweet Home

So the Genuine Catalan Popstar came and went in a disappointingly ordinary fashion. There were no diva-like demands. Instead of groupies, he brought a girlfriend, and although he mentioned going on tour, there was no boasting about his fame. The mushroom soup was a resounding success. The refined dinner party was not the uncontrolled hedonism one might expect when entertaining a local celebrity. Perhaps next time.

Instead of bringing you tales of bacchanalian excess, I’m going to talk about one of the things I love most about Barcelona; the architecture. It seems that every other building has a beautiful facade, an ornate entrance or a nod to modernism. The attention to detail is one of my favourite things. Even living in Eixample, the part of Barcelona designed in blocks to accommodate the growing city population over a hundred years ago, has a touch of beauty to it if you know where to look.

My flat, for example.

The initial stress of finding somewhere to live meant that I accepted an offer through a friend of a friend without much thought. The price was right, it was in the centre. I didn’t know quite how lucky I was, and living here is one of my favourite things about being in Barcelona. As you know, my relationship with the flat hasn’t always gone smoothly. I’ve complained about the noises from above, below and outside. Perhaps it’s the sunshine outside, or my particularly good mood this morning, but today I can’t imagine a nicer place to be. Take a look at the floor:

Then there’s the ceiling, the ornate windows, and the amazing engraved coffee table. They really knew how to build houses at the turn of the 20th century. Not to mention the outside of the house itself:

Beautiful!

If only it were a few degrees warmer on the inside…

Related articles

• The Astounding Design Of Eixample, Barcelona (presurfer.blogspot.com)

Seriously now…

I thought it was about time for my ‘serious post’. Previous entries to the blog had been far too light-hearted, I thought to myself. It was time to do something about it. Sweep away the frivolous remains of the fish and chips and move into a more austere, serious future. In this future, I would tackle key issues for the outsider living in Barcelona, perhaps moving on to general issues in Catalonia. Then broadening out to Spain in general, expanding into the European Union… eventually the whole world would be mine! Mine!

So I racked my brains thinking about my serious post, and the first step on the road to world domination. Suddenly, a cheer broke out. While encouragement is welcomed as I’m writing my blog posts, I was fairly sure the noise in question came from the bar next door, and not from a personal support team urging me on. I was also hopeful, although somewhat less than certain, that the noise hadn’t come from my own power crazed imaginings.

Obviously, it was the football. (We’ll leave the ‘serious post’ for another time, shall we?)

Whenever Barça are playing it’s possible to know the score just by sitting quietly and waiting for the inevitable cheers to erupt from any bar, café or room with a television. It seems like everyone watches. My housemates and their friends watch every game, and you can see the televisions flickering in the houses opposite.

This is where my love of the underdog comes in. I mean, Barcelona win all the time. If they draw, as they did on Sunday, it was due to some colossal effort from the opposing team and is treated in the same way as a loss by the supporters. Even as a mild football fan I can appreciate the skills of the players… but… it’s just so boring watching the same team win all the time!

 Of course everyone supports Barça with their goody-two-shoes winning antics. Ugh. Perfect Messi can never put a foot wrong. But it’s not for me. I like a bit of a dark horse, a longshot. Which isn’t to say that I would turn down a touch of Barcelona’s magic for my home side. Jealous? Me? Perish the thought!