Dei Uno

Where am I? Food coma, good wine, exhaustion…

Parked in front of my computer, the world outside me dark, it is hard to believe that once again I am so far from home. But the police siren outside, familiar but different, awakens in me the realization that I am, indeed, in Barcelona.

Banah-Banah-Banah…

I cannot pretend that I am not worn out, feeling the weight of 40+ hours without sleep, jet lag, and the sea of unfamiliar faces that is swimming around me, in the lobby, on the tour, at dinner… These people, 20 in all, whom I have no doubt I will get to know intimately over the course of the next two weeks but who, for now, are strangers in a strange land. I feel I laugh too loud, tell too many stories, too many jokes, trying for a camaraderie that will or will not come. It is too soon to tell.

In accordance with my course requirements for this Study Abroad, I am required to keep a journal. Instead of trying to blog and record my academic thoughts on Spain as they unfold, I am combining the two. My friends will recognize my ramblings on historic preservation and architecture, I am sure. Being my friends, they will read on or choose to skim over. No hard feelings…

Here in this metropolis I feel again the suffocation of the big city… the smog is present, the cars outside my window are loud, and again with the police siren. The people on the street are too numerous to count, all speaking in a foreign tongue that in some ways makes me feel like an outsider, but in reality affords me a certain anonymity that I could never have in my own town. There I know too much, too many. Here, I am alone.

But surrounded as I am by the throng of the masses, I feel beauty here. This city of Barcelona, it has so many stories to tell. The area in which our Hotel Aston is located features buildings of similar height but varying style and function. The street corners taper at off 45 degree angles to accommodate cafes and pedestrians. There are structures reminiscent of Savannah and New Orleans, with their wood shutters and wrought iron railings. Buildings of organic nature that beg to be examined more closely (will go more into Gaudi later). And older, more decrepit regions which the historian in me has already fallen in love with. And always the stoned paved sidewalks with their varying patterns.

We haven’t even begun and already I am giddy… or perhaps that’s just the wine and lack of sleep talking. Time for bed, all is well.