Being cultured in Barcelona

After a Friday night of going out, it was time to go to the market on Saturday. Apart from a lot of people screaming (and then I mean a lot!) and quite a few vegetables I had never seen, there isn't much there.

Saturday around tapas time Karime and I went to Barcelona to join our other flatmate Everling and her friend Maria for some drinks and food. It turned out that we went to some place which looks a bit like the German beer feest, only instead of the beer they drink pink champagne/wine.
But people did eat Frankfurters and a lot of hamburgers. Since it was happy hour drinks were around 0.60/0.70 cents per glass. So after three drinks Maria was already quite jolly and she wanted to find a cocktail bar to have a Moijto. And we did find a Moijto bar! And we had a Moijto! When we came home around midnight Karime mentioned that Moulin Rouge is on television (in Spanish ofcourse because everything is dubbed here). Only the songs were in the original language, so we sang along (and didn't wake anyone up!)

First Sunday of the month almost all museums in Barcelona let you in for free, since we are all (poor) students we took this chance to have a cultured day. To use this day optimal we had to leave at 9am sharp (sharp in Spain is, we leave somewhere around that time). When we left everybody wore gloves and scarfs, an hour later when we came out of the metro the sun was shining and the scarf could go :) We had to wait for Maria and then we were all good to go to see the National Museum d'Art de Catalunya. Which is to big to see in half a day (the museum would close at 14.30h). So after a short orientation we decided we first wanted to see the Gothic Art. When we almost finished the room someone found out that there were guided tours. Luckily no-one speak Catalan so we had the Spanish tour. The tour guide was over-enthusiastic, which made it impossible for me to understand what he said. Luckily I got the summary afterward from Karime :)

After the National Museum tour, we wanted to go to the archaeological museum, but they were only open for another 30 minutes. Because it was 14.30h and I was pretty hungry, I suggested that we should have lunch luckily the rest agreed and we went back into town to have lunch. If you ever decided to take a bus in Barcelona (I don't mean the tourist buses) I think you should have a pretty strong stomach. Bus drivers believe that everybody will stop for them and else you just honk for as long as it is necessary to make the other vehicle/pedestrian/cyclist/dog stop.

We survived and found the place someone mentioned we should go. It was a sort an all you can eat buffet, but people weren't greedy and the food looked quite good too! I was quite happy that there was no limit of how may plates you could take, because I was hungry! I did eat a plate of pasta salads, pizza, and some warm Italian dishes and some green salad. Of course there was a dessert Yogurt chocolate ice and at least 4 types of fresh melon! And to end lunch: tea. Now I know why people have siesta, eating makes you slow and drowsy.

After a little rest we didn't want to climb the Sagrada de Familia which was the original plan, we went to see a park and didn't do to much exercise anymore.

Christiana and Antonio went home, and the four of us went to the park which has a big fountain with ducks in there. The white ducks swam in top layer of the fountain and the black ones in the lowest layer. We were wondering if they were trained, if there was some discrimination going on in the fountain, no-one had an answer for us!? After some relaxing in the park I went home, but before I got there I did something very un-Spanish. I ran to catch a metro, I thought it would come 15 minutes later but on Sundays they have a different time table. When I saw on the sign that it would leave in 2 minutes I took my chances and ran downstairs towards the platforms. People were very alarmed by me running past, apparently they don't mind to wait 30 minutes in a drafty metro station...