Welcome to Fort Perry

Friday: You know that whole "I could go to class or I could stay in bed...." fight that you have when you are trying to break the whole I am a good student and can't skip class rule? I lose. Nearly all the time. I lost on Friday, when I woke up and went to one hour of Spanish before we headed to Barcelona. I figured that since it was the day after the test and there are only five students, we would probably be getting our test grades back. That was either going to be a really good way to start my weekend, or it was going to ensure a foul mood. So perhaps it was a good thing that upon arriving in class I learned that we were going to spend the first hour discussing the details of how to sign up for the official Spanish language exam that tells you exactly what level you are. It is a sort of SAT type test, and we got a full-detail work up of how to study, online materials, etc. etc. It was after forty five minutes that they mentioned the test was May 30th, two months after we leave.

I'll just preface this next part with a disclaimer: I love Barcelona and would go back in a heartbeat. It is one of my favorite cities in Europe, thus far. And yes, I do happen to have about seven favorite cities but still... I love it.

The weekend was an experience. It is my personal belief that "experience" is best used for situations that are just so absolutely strange/stressful/hilarious that you really can't decide if it rocked or sucked. The flight to Barcelona was painless and we took the bus into the Plaza Catalunya, which is the main center. Our hostel was about a ten minute walk away, which was pretty fabulous since it was only 17 euro a night and included breakfast. We were assigned to room 503, and entered it to find Fort Perry: bed number 11, with six bags of trash, a yellow Santa hat, a cowboy hat, two suitcases, three pairs of shoes, a huge empty can of tuna, and other similar homeless person belongings. Fort Perry, we would learn, is the three month long home of Perry Hicks who is sixty years old and homeless. Well, not homeless, because he lived on the bottom bunk of my bed. This is Fort Perry:

After a bit of Fort Perry freak out time over the stench and inhabitance of a homeless person living in our hostel room, we realized that there were thirteen people assigned to a twelve person room. So either someone was gonna shack up with Perry, or we were gonna be kicking someone out. I made a fantastic first impression on a kid named Ryan, who walked in to the room wearing a towel having not realized it was a mixed dorm room, and informed him that we had a situation since he was in one of our beds. Thus began the list making to determine who was not supposed to be there. Bed six was the culprit. So the manager moved the person sleeping in Bed six's stuff onto the floor and told the kid who was really staying there that he could just send the person down when they got back.

Friday afternoon, following the minor hostel situation in the hostel, we went out to explore. Exploring lead to lunch and a ramble down Las Ramblas, which is a large pedestrian street full of vendors and flower shops. The famous Barcelona market is also located off of Las Ramblas as is a cathedral. After our late lunch/dinner and our walking expedition, we found a grocery for wine and chocolate and headed back to regroup at the hostel. We then remeet three of the boys staying in our room with us: Ryan, the banker who is attempting to have a euro mullet or just got a really terrible pre-trip haircut, Bill/Will who works for his uncle Bill and looks like he spent forty minutes blow drying his hair into a large swoopy poof, and Clever, from Brazil who is studying in Ireland. This progressed into them following us out for the night.

In total, the group was five girls and then our friend Shawn and his friend Max who were staying with their friend Ty who is from Barcelona. Not confusing or anything. So we went to meet up with them with our tag alongs and progressed to wander around for an hour and a half in search of the Dow Jones bar. The bar was probably one of the coolest I have been to: on the wall they have the stock market "prices" of drinks at their highs and lows based off the stock market crash before the Great Depression. On the huge drink board there is also a really big stock market graph of the crash, and at random times the drink market will crash and for a few minutes all the drinks drop to their low prices. We headed home around two, since we were waking up at eight to start sight seeing. Perry was still not "home" when we got back, but in Bed Four the other sixty year old man was sleeping.

The bed situation worked out as follows: I was supposed to be on "top" of Perry, while Amber's feet should have been right by his head in the bunk diagonal to his. Obviously that wasn't going to work out, since there was no way I was going to be sleeping on a bunk with a homeless man and his entire existence and the smell was too awful to sleep on the same level as him with a ceiling of bunk beds trapping his smell into Amber's bed. So she ended up in Jessica's bed, Olivia didn't want to sleep across from the other old guy so I ended up in her bed and she ended up in Christina's. Which meant that when the kid who got kicked out of Bed Six got home to realize that all the beds were taken, he ended up on top of Perry.

Now we get to the really fun part of my night. I was asleep for about an hour when Bill/Will stumbles in and passes out IN my bed. Next to me. You know, no big deal or anything, let's spoon and pretend like we know each other because that is totally fine and normal. For the next hour I laid awake contemplating my escape options. Either suffer through sleeping next to a stranger, or sleep by Perry, or try to fit a third girl into the beds of the other girls. The result was me laying awake and continuously shoving Bill/Will over and squishing myself up again the side of the wall. Let's just say that I was not a happy girl the next morning, and will absolutely never stay in a mixed dorm room again. Between random kids passing out in my bed, a sixty year old homeless man and two guys snoring, by the time the alarms went off we were all about to die from horror and exhaustion. Oh, I forgot to mention that Perry joined us at around four thirty. At which time he started going through all his "trash" bags searching for a snack. The general sound of people chewing makes me pretty much want to barf, so I was about ready to smother him with his Santa hat, and if it weren't for my utter fear of his massive hair and lack of clothing I might have.

As I said... it was an experience.

So begins Saturday: breakfast, and then we went in search of the beach. Christina hurt her Achilles tendon last week, and I have a stress fracture in my foot, so we were gimping along down the subway steps and ended up at the Port of Barcelona. That's when the boys met up with us, after our failure at finding the beach. We spent the morning walking around the center area and sight seeing. The Segrada Familia Cathedral was (pause as I attempt to find a word) amazing/strange/unlike anything I have ever seen. We didn't go in, which I am kind of bummed about, but the line was two hours long and since we only had one day (half of which would be spent lost) we didn't have time to go inside. But based off the postcards, if you go there, you should definitely wait and go in. At noon, we headed back to our hostel to switch rooms (Thank. God.) We got moved into a room of Irish students who were spending five days getting belligerently drunk.... you always think that Irish people drink a lot but until you witness the amount they consume it just is an understatement/thought.

The boys didn't want to wait so they headed to lunch and told us to meet them at the subway stop so we could go together. Which, of course, meant that when we got off we got lost and after an hour and a half of trying to find them gave up and split a huge homemade paella and sangria. Somewhere during our journey around the whole city we managed to get stuck in one of the train stations... apparently the metro passes let you in the gates for the train station but once you realize that isn't where you want to be, they don't let you back out. Turns out you have to have a special train ticket to swipe yourself out, which meant that I got to explain to a really unimpressed security lady that we had accidentally gotten stuck and could she please let us out. And so we were given special "Exit Only" passes that they have for the special people like us who get stuck on the wrong side of the barriers. If only it was a Hogwarts barrier or something like that, then getting stuck would be fine. Then we began our trek to the Park Guell (also known as the Gaudi Park.) By trek I mean that you literally hike up a mountain to get there. Half of it is escalators, and the other half is to work off the sangria you are drinking/get your ass in shape. By this point Chris and I were pretty much ready to cut off our feet and just crawl up the hill, but I am proud to say that we survived. The view from the park is gorgeous and you can see the Segrada Familia standing above all the other buildings like it owns the place. Which it does.

In the Gaudi Park, which is a park full of buildings that Gaudi designed, there is a large plaza type area. I just realized maybe you don't know who Gaudi is??? He was an architect. That's actually all I know since I pretty much fail at things like that. But now you know... he designed lots of popular architecture way back when. In the plaza there are all the guys who sell things like bracelettes, sunglasses, little trinkets, and tourist type things. The only issue is that they are mostly illegal immigrants, so whenever the police show up they all scoop up their sheets of chachkies (tourist trinkets) and book it. I would gladly have them on any college track team or perhaps they could sign up for the Spanish Olympic Walking Team that I think needs to exist. Because they run faster than me if Perry tried to get in my bed.

After the park we headed back to the hostel to give our feet a bit of a nap and love. Later we set out for dinner, which we got at an Indian restaurant. It wasn't as great as Doner Kebab, but what is? Then I spent 15 euro on dried fruit and chocolate, as a present to myself for surviving sleeping in a bed with a stranger. And the latest issue of The Economist, which I spent the night reading while the group went out. Due to the whole not being able to walk issue, I didn't go out with the group and instead spent a few hours listening to the Irish group play some really crude and stupid drinking games before they left for the night. However, I was able to nurse my inner nerd with some politics and business news and get a few hours of sleep before people started getting back at five. Cumulatively I got probably seven hours of sleep the entire weekend, which is actually not bad compared the the three that the rest of the group got.

That rings us up to today. This morning we were up at seven thirty, breakfast at eight, and on the phone getting directions to the train station to go to the airport at eight thirty. The subway to the train station took it's sweet time getting there... the supposed ten minute ride took us twenty minutes, which meant that we got off the subway six minutes before the train was leaving for the airport. Which meant that Chris and I got to commit murder on our feet running in a semi-panic/freak out through the train station trying to figure out where it was leaving from. Once in the airport we had one final crisis involving Lauren leaving her passport at the security point. Which thankfully was waiting for us when we went running back.

And the thing is, after this whole eventful psychotic weekend, all I want to do is eat some cheese. Some nachos or just one of those huge bricks of cheddar that my mom gets at Safeway. Because after Fort Perry, after a fractured foot being abused all weekend, after some fantastic small streets and adventures and after some of the strangest experiences of my life: I just want some cheese. What a surprise, right?