Spring Break

Okay, so this is a little late, but I’ve been busy! So sue me!

I embarked on my spring break on a bleak Friday morning, with the Berlin winterscape ahead of me. I met Becca and Hannah on the train on the way to the airport, and we waited in the terminal, eagerly anticipating our trip to Barcelona and Mallorca.

We got our seats on the plane, and right as the safety instructions began, the whole plane quivered, the electricity went down, so all we heard was, “In case of emergency…”. We all held hands and accepted that this 50 euro flight could possibly be our downfall. I guess kind of literally.

We arrived in Barcelona after an easy flight, walked out of the terminal and gasped at how beautifully warm it was. In reality, it was probably in the neighborhood of 55 degrees, but we didn’t care. 55 was paradise. And there were palm trees! Quite the sight for sore eyes. It was the evening, probably about 7 o’clock, and we decided to just take a cab to our hostel. Between the three of us, it ended up being inexpensive. We walked into our hostel and it smelled clean. That was all I cared about (aside from being robbed).

We settled in, bought locks for our lockers, which ended up being a good investment, and decided that the next order of business would be to get dinner. We ended up going to a nearby restaurant, where we were introduced to Spanish culture in a not-so-kind way. The waiter sat us down and Hannah said, “You guys, don’t look to your left.” Naturally, what did we do? We looked up. It was there taht we learned that the Spanish aren’t shy about hanging cured meats EVERYWHERE. There was an entire pig’s leg (hoof and all) and part of its guts, just chilling. After our meal, we were talking and we saw our friends Matt and Jason on the street. They had just gotten off the bus, 2 hours after departing from the airport. They braved public transportation.

We all decided that we wanted to go out and have a look around the city once Matt and Jason were settled into the hostel. We took the metro all the way down to the beach. We walked around just soaking up the city, and then we saw the Mediterranean.  It was thrilling just to see a beach, let alone the Mediterranean! It was the first time I had ever seen it, and it was lit up by the moon on a beautiful beach. It was great. I was beginning to wonder why I had chosen Berlin…

On Fridays the Barcelona metro doesn’t run all night (like it does in Berlin) and we decided it would just be best after a long day of traveling to just get some rest. The metro in Barcelona is very nice and prompt, but it’s definitely not the S-Bahn. The best way I can describe it is that in Berlin, the train doors will open before the train has stopped moving. In Barcelona, sometimes the train doors don’t open at all.

The next day we headed out to Las Ramblas, the main street for tourists in Barcelona. We were told that we should keep an eye out for pickpockets and keep our valuables within view, because Barcelona has a theft problem. We went to the covered market on Las Ramblas, which was another rude awakening to the whole meat culture there. The longer I choose to be a vegetarian, the more validated I am in my choice. Seeing a sheep’s head with the eye still in it really is an appetite killer.

After that, the five of us rented some orange bikes and set off to Tibidabo, a castle at the top of a very high hill (mountain, really) in Barcelona. I’m not going to lie, it was probably not the safest thing to do, but man did we have fun! We rode all around the city and saw so much of it. Then the climb upwards almost got too much to handle. There were times when we thought that we didn’t want to go any further. It was hot. It was frustrating, but we did it. And man was the view worth it! We went all the way to the top, by my calculation (using GoogleMaps) about a 10 mile ride, most of that uphill.

We then decided to go get Pizza in the popular neighborhood called Born. The pizza was delicious and a well deserved reward for a 20-mile roundtrip bike ride. That was a definite highlight. We then decided to go back to our hostel and we got ready to go out and meet up with some other FU-Besters. After some deliberation as to where the bar actually was, we made it. It was packed! And I mean packed. We couldn’t even get a drink. We decided eventually to just call it a night after having such long day. I slept really well that night.

The next day was Sunday and I had wanted to visit the Picasso museum while I was in Barcelona, and as an added incentive, it was free after 3 o’clock. It was a great museum! There was a ton of work that you never would have guessed was done by Picasso. He was classically trained, so his work starts off as very representational and extremely composed. The museum had all of his works set up chronologically so you could see the progression of his work over time. It starts out with his early sketches of people, and portraits of a first communion, and ends with his Las Meninas series, after Velazquez’s seminal “Las Meninas.”

Brian and I walked around the city and it was so beautiful! I never wanted to leave the warm sunshine. The architecture in the city was so…European. But European with a very Mediterranean flavor. It was sophisticated, but still relaxed. The funniest part of that day was walking down Diagonál and seeing Cillian Murphy strolling down the street. That was my first celebrity sighting in Europe. I almost wish I asked him for his picture. Brian didn’t even know who he was!

We decided to part ways at about 7 o’clock. I was exhausted and hungry, and since it was Sunday, not many places were open to eat. I walked back to my hostel and then tried to get some pizza. After I ordered it, and started to cut into it, I discovered that there was a layer of ham under the cheese. I was not happy about that. I just gave it back to the girl at the counter, and went back to the place we first ate. I had a really delicious Spanish omelet with potato on a baguette. Delicious!

The next day I met up with some other FU-Best friends, Conor, Vika and Kristin. We went to La Sagrada Familia, which is the cathedral designed by Gaudí. It was breathtaking! I loved it. Then we went to the sculpture park designed by Gaudi. What a day to forget my camera at my hostel! The colors alone were breathtaking. Seeing such beautiful, bright, cheerful colors was so uplifting. Berlin has a lot of things, but it’s not big on color. Things tend to get a little grey and monotonous here. We went out to dinner, and had some great Tapas and grilled vegetables and wine. Everything was perfect. We then went to Las Ramblas because they hadn’t seen it yet, and got some gelato. We met some really nice women from the Netherlands and ended up talking with them for about an hour and a half. It was a blast! It was Monday night, and I didn’t want to stay out too late, so just before midnight I went home to pack my stuff up and get ready for the flight to Mallorca the next day.

I’ll skip over the more mundane flight stories, but after being aloft for just 30 minutes I arrived in paradise. I can honestly say that Mallorca was the most beautiful place I have ever been. It was warmer there than it had been in Barcelona, and the sun shone brightly every single day we were there.

I was exhausted on Tuesday evening, so I fell asleep at 11 PM and then Brian and I didn’t wake up until 11 the next morning. We walked around the beautiful city of Palma, and just marveled at how beautiful it was. Our hostel had a prime location at the foot of the Cathedral (a beautiful Gothic cathedral, refurbished by none other than Gaudi). We walked around there for a while, and we just took in the island. We headed over to the Contemporary Art museum, which was great. There was a huge collection of Picasso pottery and they had a bunch of Jean Míro paintings, which was a treat. We just lounged around the courtyard of the museum for a while before deciding to go back to the hostel. We had a rooftop terrace where we watched the sunset go behind a castle up on a hill. It was mind blowing.

We then went all around the island at night, walking around the harbor. We eventually landed at a bar where we went for the next couple of nights, because we made friends with the bartender, Eva, who was a native Mallorcan.

We went home, and got up the next morning with the intention of taking a bus tour of the island, but decided that renting bikes would be a better way to see the island. It was so amazing! We saw so many beautiful parts of the towns along the coast. We went to a secluded beach where there was (gasp) a nude sunbather. But that didn’t deter me, I wanted to go down and put my feet in the water. That small cove was where we had that photosession on the rock (see my facebook profile picture). When we got tired of going in that direction, we headed back in the other direction and rode along the water on a bike path. It was great!

Our last day in Palma we decided we just wanted to hang out on the beach. I the trashiest book that I could find and headed down to the beach. It was absolute the quintessence of what I wanted to do on my vacation. I just wanted to lie on some beach, somewhere, and read a stupid book. It was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

So there you have it! My spring break in Barcelona and Mallorca. By the end of it, I was sick of not knowing the language, and how expensive everything was. I was ready to come home to Berlin.

The past week has been okay. I’ve been really tired because I have a pretty bad case of tonsillitis, but now I have antibiotics for it, so I’m feeling better. We had a trip to Sachsenhausen, the concentration camp in Orienburg, a town just north of Berlin. That deserves its own post, so I’ll leave it at that.

Until then-