There's this amazing company called Sandeman's which has free tours all over the world. The guides work solely for tips, and thus are supposedly much better tour guides.
We had a British chap named Leon, and he was basically the best tour guide either of us have ever had.
Leon was hilarious, extremely informative, and very helpful. He was just a regular guy living in England 11 years ago, when his girlfriend surprised him with tickets to Barcelona for the weekend. They went, and when he came home, he sold 2/3rds of his stuff, including his recording studio, and moved to Barcelona where he's been living ever since. You could totally see how much he loved the city which is a pretty great feature for a tour guide to have.
One of the things we found fascinating about the tour, and Barcelona in general, is the extreme "national" pride that Barcelonians feel. But not for Spain.
Barcelona is located in Catalonia, one of the regions of Spain. Catalonia used to be independent, and many Catalans are eager for independence from Spain. In fact, their is supposed to be a vote next year that may potentially give Catalan, and Barcelona, independence from Spain.
I'm boring you with the details, but i'll just give a few more interesting tidbits about Catalonia:
1) When we were in Barcelona, we did not see a single Spanish national flag, but saw thousands of Catalan flags
2) In Barcelona, most signs are in Catalan, which is slightly different than the Spanish that they speak in the rest of the country
3) About 7 or 8 years ago, Spain decided to recognize Catalan as a nationality, but not a nation
4) Every year, on September 11th, they commemorate the fall of Barcelona in 1714 with a massive festival (Next year marks 300 years, so definitely be there for that)
5) Apparently, at the 17:14 mark of every Barcelona soccer game, the crowd screams "Independence!"
The tour took us through the various quarters and history of Barcelona, and was really quite fascinating. We also stumbled upon this insane parade, which was never really explained, but apparently there are hundreds of daily festivals in Barcelona every year.
 |
| Catalan flag |
After the tour we headed back to the Kosher mini-market to buy some food for Shabbat. We'd arranged to eat Friday night dinner with the Chabad, and they told us that at the kiddush on Shabbat day there would be lots of food and bread to wash, but we figured just to be safe we'd buy some of our own. I don't even wanna admit how much 6 slices of turkey breast, a small container of Chummus and an even smaller container of techina cost us, but we did what needed to be done. After stocking up on some food, we headed back to the Jewish quarter and went to the Shul. The Shul is mostly underground, and very different from the grand, beautiful shuls that we'd seen in Italy. The cool claim to fame for this shul is that it is the 2nd oldest shul in the world, and one of the oldest buildings in Barcelona. For about 600 years, until the late 20th century, the Shul was many many things, but nobody figured out it was a Shul until about 1987.
 |
| Chaya, delivering an excellent D'var Torah to the group |
After Shul Friday night, the Chabad Rabbi announced that since their were a larger amount of people than usual, we'd all be splitting up for dinner into 2 groups. We're pretty sure he announced that the younger folks should come with him, while the older people and families should go the other way. We started walking with him and all of the older people (something definitely got lost in translation) when Chaya decided, spur of the moment, that we should switch groups. And it was a great call. We ran to catch up with the other group, whom we walked about 15 minutes with to the outside of a hotel. All 50 of us then proceeded to sit down outside the hotel and wait for someone to walk outside and open the automatic doors. After about 5 minutes, an extremely confused looking couple walked out of their hotel, and were greeted by 50 exuberant people, cheering and shouting "yosharkoyach!" Can't remember ever seeing anyone with such confused looks on their faces.
Anyway, the meal was being run by 2 Chabad rebbes from Israel, who were hilarious, awkward, odd and definitely new at this. They started things off with a bang. After not singing Eishet Chayil, they announced in Hebrew: "Will 2 women please come to the front and help serve?" Needless to say, all the girls were pissed and some fine gentlemen, such as myself, got up to help. (Such as myself, but not actually me.)
Either way, we had a great time and met some really nice people at our table. There was a family from Modiin on vacation, 2 girls who just finished their army service (and thought we were insane for not doing the Barcelona stadium tour - typical Israelis) and our new friend Josh. (He's the new Stevie/Sean!)
Josh was, and still is, a great guy from L.A who's currently learning in the Technion. We hung out after the meal, just the 3 of us and this 45ish year old woman from Barcelona who was hilarious and insisted that we drink a glass of her favorite drink, red wine and 7 UP. It was delicious. (On a side note, we found out that in Spain, a very popular "summer drink" is red wine, a shot of rum and orange fanta. It's all the rage. I will have to try this when I get home...)
Josh was, and still is, a great guy from L.A who's currently learning in the Technion. We hung out after the meal, just the 3 of us and this 45ish year old woman from Barcelona who was hilarious and insisted that we drink a glass of her favorite drink, red wine and 7 UP. It was delicious. (On a side note, we found out that in Spain, a very popular "summer drink" is red wine, a shot of rum and orange fanta. It's all the rage. I will have to try this when I get home...)
The next morning, after davening we feasted on an excellent kiddush (3/3 with those) comprising of 12 or so different salatim, fish, fruit, pizza and bread.
We invited Josh over to our humble abode where we had a nice seudat shlishit/lunch and hung out for a few hours.
Shabbat was really beautiful, and thankfully the heat wasn't too bad.
We were all set to head out to Madrid on a train Sunday morning, and pretty tired, we decided to get a few hours of sleep on Saturday night.
This proved to be a bit difficult however, because when I sat down on the bed, it completely broke. Now, you may assume that as a gentlemen of a larger disposition, this might happen to me fairly often, but no, jerk, it doesn't.
This proved to be a bit difficult however, because when I sat down on the bed, it completely broke. Now, you may assume that as a gentlemen of a larger disposition, this might happen to me fairly often, but no, jerk, it doesn't.
At this point, it was like 2 a.m so we just dragged the mattress onto the floor and called it a night. The next morning the owner of the apartment came over, and was super apologetic and thankful that nobody got hurt and that we weren't upset. Me and Chaya just looked at each other in disbelief with a real "well, that was a freebie" type look on our faces, and headed out to Madrid.
 |
| It was like an episode of Breaking Bed (I am so sorry for that joke.) |
No comments:
Post a Comment