A few days before we were to arrive in Spain, our last port, one of the Spanish inter-port lecturers gave a lecture on 20th century Spanish history. He began his lecture by telling us about the assassination of Jose Calvo-Sotelo, the head of the opposition in parliament in Republic Spain in 1936. Jose had known he was in danger for some time and he knew that eventually someone would kill him but he did what he felt was necessary. One day when he was at home with his family the police came to his house and escorted him away. He told his young daughter that he would be back in a few hours and assured her that everything would be all right. He was assassinated a few hours later. A few days after his assassination the Spanish Civil War broke out. The young girl was the mother of our inter-port lecturer and Jose Calvo-Sotelo was his grandfather.
Spain was our last port before we returned home and many of us were sad about that. Port was in Cadiz, a rather small town, so I decided to fly to Barcelona with my brother and some friends. On our first day in Spain Mike, Eva, Carly, Emily, Tawnya, Kelly, and I flew to Barcelona. Many other SAS kids were on the same flight, my friend Hua was in sitting in the row in front of me (and he decided to take a photo of me sleeping with my mouth open). Once in Barcelona we took a crowded bus to Placa Catalunya and checked into our hostel, which was located on La Rambla, the famous shopping and entertainment district in the heart of Barcelona.
Our first night in Barcelona was destined for greatness. Sometime prior to our arrival in Croatia word had been spread around my circle of friends that Infected Mushroom were playing a live show in Barcelona when SAS would be in Spain. Infected Mushroom are two guys who play a genre of music called Psy-trance which, for those of us who do not listen to techno music (myself included), sounds in many ways identical to any other electronic dance music. As I had mentioned in my Croatia blog, I don’t normally dance but Eva explained that there would be several hundred other people, all of whom will be in various stages of inebriation, who had no idea how to dance either. We would all get to look ridiculous together. Despite my dislike of techno music and my usual unwillingness to dance I wasn’t going to pass up this opportunity. I had made a vow at the beginning of this voyage to push myself into doing things I wouldn’t normally do, such as dancing at an all-night rave in Barcelona.
We were not scheduled to arrive in Cadiz until the 23rd at 8 A.M. Before we got to Spain we all had a scare when we realized it listed the date and time of the show as 11/22 at 0:00. We had made the assumption that this meant (Friday, though technically Saturday) the 23rd at midnight which we realized makes no sense. According to what the website for purchasing tickets said, Infected Mushroom would be playing from 0:00 to 6:00 on Friday, while we were still at sea, closing in on the coast of Spain. Eventually someone inquired about this confusion and learned that our first assumption that the show was to be held from 0:00 to 6:00 on Friday (technically Saturday) had been correct. We would get to see Infected Mushroom after all.
The next issue was actually picking up the tickets. Since none of us has a Spanish mailing address we couldn’t have the tickets mailed to us so we had to pick them up at any one of some 20 locations in Barcelona. Of course, we had absolutely no idea where most of the places were but we did find one quickly only to be told that we could not pick up our tickets after all. None of us bothered reading the text on the confirmation e-mail that explained that we would have to pick up our tickets at the venue since the show was only some 5 hours away. Our trip to the music store wasn’t entirely pointless though. Eva bought tickets for her two friends Depeeka and Rekha (I don’t know if I am spelling either name properly) who flew in from London and Edinburgh respectively. Depeeka was a friend of Eva’s from a study abroad exchange program (Eva had studied in London for a year and Depeeka had studied with Eva back in Canada).
At around 11:00 P.M. Mike, Eva, Carly, Depeeka, Rekha, and I hopped into taxis (this was the first time we had seen metered taxis in months) and off we went. When we got to the venue, which had a strange façade on the front but was little more than a warehouse, there was barely anyone there. It was close to midnight and there was no sign that they were letting anyone inside. Eva, Mike, and I had to beg the people working at a nightclub nearby to let us use their bathroom which was difficult since we barely spoke Spanish. By the time they started letting everyone in the venue sometime after midnight there was a large crowd jostling and bumping up against one another to get ahead in line. Eventually our group got inside, got some drinks at the bar, and found an empty spot to stand in and talk as the place filled to capacity.
Various DJs performed for an hour or so but everyone was really waiting for Infected Mushroom to come on. None of knew anything about Infected Mushroom, we didn’t normally listen to their type of music, but as I later found out they are an international phenomena from Israel, so this show was a big deal for fans of trance music. For us however, it was just an excuse to drink and dance for hours, which we did. Eva, as I found out in Croatia, loves dancing and when she gets going she is unstoppable. As Infected Mushroom came on she pulled Deepika, Mike, and I through the crowd, which at this point was basically a sea of people rubbing up against each other, and we slowly made our way all the way to the front. We eventually got to the barricade in the front of the stage and stayed there, dancing non-stop for at least 3 hours.
I had known that some of my other friends from SAS were supposed to be at the show but it was impossible to find anyone in the crowd. I had run into Hua once before and found him again at the barricade dancing with Lucy. Somewhere nearby was Sarah and Steve, the one who had told everyone about this show in the first place. I exchanged some smiles and a few screamed words with Hua as I danced, and at one point he began pointing at his leg yelling, “Someone peed on my leg! I can’t believe it, someone peed on my leg” (as you can imagine he said it more colorfully than that). He was really convinced that someone had just peed on his leg even though, in all likelihood, someone had spilled his or her drink on him. I had may drinks spilled (and in some cases thrown) on me during the course of the night.
I can’t even begin to describe what it was like to dance for three hours straight, trying to keep up with Eva who was dancing like a crazy-woman. I really had to pee when we had first made our way to the barricade but after dancing for an hour or so it thankfully seemed to go away. I knew that if I left my spot it would be impossible to get back. So I danced, at times convinced I was going to pass out, grateful every time I felt a blast of air from the giant fans somewhere in the building. I told myself if I really felt like I was going to fall down or something I would get out of the crowd and find a place to sit down and get rehydrated, but luckily that never happened. At some point Deepika left and came back looking quite drunk, meanwhile Carly and Rekha spent most of the show unsuccessfully looking for us.
Infected Mushroom, as live performers, were really good. Although they played electronic dance music their live show consisted of two drummers, guitarists, and a singer, and I don’t recall there ever being an intermission, which means they played straight through for almost 3 hours! After the intense encore we moved towards the back of the venue, found Carly and Rekha and bought several bottles of water each. It was such a mess inside the building, and the bathrooms were so gross that none of use decided to use them. This later became a serious problem when we couldn’t find a cab. It turns out that at 5 A.M. cab drivers don’t pick you up, for reasons we never fully understood. Rekha spoke Spanish fairly well so she tried to call a cab company several times, and they promised to send taxis, but none came.
After waiting around in the cold for almost an hour we decided to find a metro station that was supposed to be nearby. We ended up walking around for more than two hours, freezing cold and having to use the bathroom so badly that most of us just went in an empty street. Deepika kept wandering off asking people where the metro station was or asking cabs to give us a ride even after we had decided that we were trying to find the metro station. We ended up asking at least 6 different people for directions and it seemed they were leading us in circles. In the end we had probably just barely missed the entrance to the subway on several occasions. By the time we boarded the trains it was 7:30 A.M. and people were heading to work. As 6 smelly English-speaking kids who looked on the verge of death we got quite a few stares.
When we got to the hostel the plan was to sneak Carly in since she did not have a reservation for that day until 11 A.M. However, things went wrong immediately. We were all asked to show our passes, which we did, but Eva had to ask Carly for hers’ since Carly was keeping it safe in her pocket book. The man at the front desk said angrily to Eva, “You don’t belong here get out”. When she began to protest he complained about how he did not like her attitude. Finally she convinced him that it was indeed her pass at which point he told Carly to leave instead. We knew the rules so we really couldn’t argue. As it turned out Carly spent some time wandering around outside during which time she was propositioned and someone attempted to take her pocket book (but she fought back). She finally went to a Starbucks where she fell asleep for a little while until she was kicked out. Finally at check-in time they let her in the hostel. At that point the rest of us had been fast asleep for a few hours.
The rest of our stay in Barcelona proved to be a lot more sedate than our first night (note: I may be recalling these events in the incorrect order). On the second day we went to the Picasso museum, partly because Eva had to write a paper for her Art and Revolution class and it required a visit to an art museum. It was interesting to see how his art evolved and how his later works, though 50 years old now, somehow seem futuristic. Since we had spent most of the second day sleeping it left very little time for us to see everything we had planned on seeing. That night we went to a football game (soccer as us Americans call it) between FC Barcelona and some other team. I found it somewhat boring, but I was not in a good mood at the time as I was recovering from the previous night of dancing, drinking, and sleep deprivation. It was interesting to see people make paper airplanes out of the programs and try to get them to fly down onto the field. Kelly and I joked about how if someone tried to do that in Philadelphia they would be beaten up.
On the third day, after wandering around a bit, we settled on taking a tour bus that went in a loop around Barcelona; we had the option of hopping on and off whenever we wanted. It ended up being a nice way to see the city. The provided audio guide pointed out buildings of interest (and there were many) along our route. We stopped at La Sagrada Familia, a massive basilica that has been under construction for a little over 125 years and is not anticipated to be completed until 2026. The famous Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi, whose buildings can be found all over Barcelona, designed it and dedicated the last 15 years of his life entirely to its construction. We walked around inside, though much of it was closed off due to construction. Thankfully I tried to take as many pictures as possible, since words cannot possibly describe it, but unfortunately the basilica is so massive than one picture only captures a fraction of the interior or exterior.
That evening we went to an erotica museum that the Lonely Planet guidebook said was so unique that it simply had to be seen. It was unique all right. One of the more disturbing “erotic” pictures was an old Japanese drawing of an octopus and a woman (I’ll leave it at that). It was interesting to see the amount of erotic art that had been produced during the Victorian Era in England, a time when sex was very much a taboo subject. That night we went to a Jazz/Blues club and saw a band play blues for an hour or so. Earlier, Mike had found a heavy metal club called Hell Awaits, and afterwards we were planning to go there. Unfortunately Emily got tired early as usual (she usually goes to sleep early) so Mike decided to head back to the hostel with her. The rest of us had no idea where Hell Awaits was, and the streets get scary at night in Barcelona, so after unsuccessfully asking a few people where we could find the club, we gave up and went back to the Hostel (after a late dinner and some sangria).
On our fourth day we took the tour bus around a different route and then went to the airport to fly back to Cadiz. That night Eva, Carly, and I walked around Cadiz for a bit and then had dinner. The following day I agreed to go shopping with Eva and Carly, though I mostly followed them around various stores wondering why anyone would pay that much for an article of clothing. Sometime after lunch we met up with some other people and Ryan K. decided to join us. We paid to walk up to the bell tower of the cathedral in the center of town and were greeted with a wonderful view of buildings hemmed in by the ocean on two sides. We also paid to walk into the cathedral itself, though the real treat lay in the basement where there was a tomb and memorial of some religious significance. What made it so interesting was that the circular room bounced sounds around making even slight tapping noises echo wildly. Ryan and I waited until the other tourists walked back upstairs and then we proceeded to make all sorts of noise by stomping, whistling, and howling. I tried recording some of it with my camera but it didn’t capture it as well as I would have liked.
Our last night in the last port was a quiet one. Ryan K., Eva, and I met Emily, Mike, and Ryan R. back at the ship and then walked to a nearby Burger King just so we could buy a beer in a fast food restaurant. We then tried to locate the nice restaurant Eva, Carly, and I had been to the night before but could not. We had to be back on the ship by 8 P.M., and in order to play it safe wanted to be back by 7 at the latest, which meant we had to eat at a time when nothing is open in Cadiz. No one eats that early in Spain, so we ended up not really doing anything. We went to a place that was serving this funnel-cake like stuff that you dipped into chocolate sauce. It wasn’t exactly a healthy dinner, but it did taste good.
Back on the ship I spent the night wandering around with Eva, Jamie, Emily O. and various other people that we ran into. An air of sadness hung over everything. We all knew that this was it and in a week we would be back in the U.S., back to our boring lives in a familiar culture. The entire trip seemed so unreal to me, even then, that the sadness I felt somehow seemed blunted. I spent the rest of my days on the ship studying hard for my final exams and spending as much time as I could with friends that I might never see again. On the second-to-last night I slept outside on the 7th deck with Eva, Jamie, Ryan R., and Emily O. We all went to sleep around 2 A.M. and were awakened at 4:30 by rain, except there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. The sprinkler system, which cleans the decks nightly, came on and soaked us all. Dripping wet, we carried our sleeping bags inside and walked tiredly back to our rooms.
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