Barcelona, Spain

In Marseille I saw lots of campaign posters for Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. I would like to say something about France, since I have now been there twice in my life. Both times were wonderful. I have no idea where the rumor about the French being rude came from. I have never experienced this. I took a French train from Marseille to Montpellier, and transfered to a Spanish train to Barcelona. The couple sitting across from me started talking to me in Castilian, which I could understand, but when they spoke amongst themselves I didn't understand a word, so I hoped that they were speaking Catalan. But no, they were from Chile. OK, fair enough, out of all Spanish dialects Chilean is considered by far the ugliest and the most difficult to understand. The train stopped in Cerebere, the last town in France. I thought this would just be a normal stop, but all of a sudden the French Police Nationale were walking through the car demanding everybody's passport. WHAT???!!! My understanding of the Schengen Agreement was that this wasn't supposed to happen unless there was a terrorist attack or a World Cup. Since I crossed into Finland my passport hadn't been checked at a single border or airport. I guess this was probably normal, but I'm still not sure due to some things that happened on the Spanish side of the border (read on). Then the train just sat at Cerebere for a very long time, and nobody knew why. There was no explanation for the significant delay. Finally we got going again, only to a few minutes later stop again and an announcement was made that they would be switching the train for Spanish train gauges. WTF. This actually didn't take too long, and soon I saw signs in Castilian and Catalan and realized we had crossed the border. Annnouncements on board had been made in French and Castilian, but immediately after crossing the border they felt no need to speak French anymore, but added an announcement in Catalan after the Castilian announcement. Right after crossing the border we stopped in the first town in Spain. Soon it became apparent that this stop was also taking longer than normal. Then I heard some commotion from the next car, and a man exclaiming defensively in a frightened voice "¡no lo conozco! ¡no lo conozco!" The Chilean guy looked through the window and reported back that they were arresting somebody. Then I heard a woman talking loudly on a radio, spelling out names in the phonetic alphabet. They were Arab names. I immediately thought back to the passport check in France, and how I thought this wasn't supposed to happen unless there had been a terrorist attack. Realizing that the police were proceeding into our car, the Chileans got their passports ready. This wasn't necessary as they just came through, looked at everyone's face and demanded passports from the two Arabs in the car. Shit, a month ago I was being hassled by the police in Kazakhstan, but now in Europe my white ass is on the right side of things. Then later there was more commotion as several police officers were literally running through the train and all around the station, yelling loudly and talking on their radios as if they were actually in pursuit of somebody. I don´t know exactly how to describe it, but it wasn´t pretty. Finally, the train started moving again and everybody clapped. As we pulled out of the station I saw one of the guys they had arrested start to resist and they went all Guantanamo on his ass. We got into Barcelona well over an hour late and it was pouring rain. Today it´s just overcast. I came here with the intention of hating Barcelona, but I must admit it is pretty cool. But this is the problem. My God, it´s more touristy than Paris. It´s a Wednesday in April and I can´t move anywhere because there are so many tourists. I want to vomit seeing all these filthy backpackers with their RyanAir luggage tags. Of course I´m one of them, but the last thing I want to see is more of me, though this is inevitable anywhere in Europe. And then there are the French, and the Germans. I´m gonna be sick. The cool thing is that apparently I blend in here, since the Japanese tourists come up to me and ask me for directions, then take a picture of me. Just kidding about the picture, but you´d be willing to believe it. Some Spanish tourists even came up to me and said "hola, ¿eres de aquí, de Barcelona?" Even if Barcelona is a cool city, the things it´s famous for are stupid. Sagrada Familia is a hideous monstrosity. I want to say that Gaudí was an idiot, but actually I guess he was a genious to have designed the world´s ugliest building and gotten people to come from around the planet to come see it. And don´t even get me started on La Rambla. I walked down the entire thing and at the end thought "you´ve got to be kidding me." Why is that famous? Honestly, the Copenhagen Mermaid is cooler. At least you can get relatively cheap food here.

One month ago I was in Almaty.
Two months ago I was in Manama.