can't sleep [ so much on my mind ... not even funny]... so here goes some Spain action

By 9:00 on the 27^th I was sitting on the Air plane headed to Barcelona. As the landing gear pulled away from the ground and headed back into their cubby holes, the view of the city filled my tiny oval window. At that point my heart sank; this amazing city was no longer going to part of my daily life, but now just a memory.

On the plane I was seated next to two Canadian guys. One was Arabic and was taking up my entire arm rest, the other guy was an Asian wearing a Compton hat, and I kind of found that funny. His voice reminded me of that of a radio announcer for monster truck rallies. It was deep but at the same time, cheesy.

By the time the plane landed in, and our luggage was picked up, I was so excited to get out of the airport and to our hostel. After one bus ride, three metro stops, and three blocks of narrow sidewalk, we hade made it to Barcelona Dream Hostel, great name if a say so myself. Shortly after getting settled we managed to make our way to the Gran Via, a long mostly pedestrian street with shops, street performers, restaurants, and little kiosks selling every postcard known to man and random souvenirs ranging from giant pencils to stuffed cows. We found a place to eat and after chowing down and wandering some more we headed back to our hostel via the shadiest street ever. For the two and a half blocks Chris and I witnessed, prostitutes looking for their next pay check, drug dealers making their sales and the users reeling from their merciless high. I held close to my purse and kept my eyes from wandering too far from my feet hitting the pavement. Upon reaching our place I headed down to the lounge and while waiting for a computer, I watched the daily football highlights. It was then I met a man named Robert who was traveling with his daughter, both from Australia, however Robert seemed to have more of a Polish accent rather than one form the down under. I spent about 15 minutes talking to the pair and was glad to get some Barcelona tourist suggestions from them.

Upon recommendation from Robert and Clair, we visited the Andy Warhol exhibit next to the main Cathedral in the city Center. The exposition was pretty good with some of Warhol’s most famous works including the Marilyn Monroe, the Campbell’s soup dress, and Liza Minnelli.

The Barcelona cathedral was pretty nice it had horrible lighting so all of my pictures turned out kind of orangey yellow. However the pictures that I took while meandering through the cloister turned out beautiful. The clear blue sky and the green palm trees really gave me this feeling of paradise and peacefulness despite the crazy bustling world that lay just beyond the stone walls.

Another favorite museum of mine was the Picasso Museum. The pieces ranged from the beginning of his education to the completion of his life’s work. They had many of his sketch books and practice paintings. It was great to see that even the masters such as Picasso try their out ideas out more than just once and master pieces are made from hard work and practice, not just luck.

for the next few days we discovered what the city had to offer. One of the sites was the church of the sacred family. As it turns out the church was still under construction and had been for the last 100 some odd years. But I have to say it was most impressive to see the construction workers put this massive truly authentic cathedral together, block by block a piece by piece, as opposed to steel beams and dry wall like most of the new churches are build today. It was a new world church with the craftsmanship of the old world.

seriously what have they been doing for the last 100 years?

Next we hit up the beach, only after spending all day in a museum and in mies van der rohe’s Barcelona pavilion [which was pretty cool.] The beach, though nice, was packed! Every square inch filled with flesh. While we didn’t really spend all that much time at the beach we dipped our toes in the water and dodged sun bathers littering the hot sandy coast line.

Soon we made our way back to the hostel to get our selves sorted for our meeting with Luke and Mackenzie. Tonight would be our last night [Chris and I] in Barcelona, but the first night for the dynamic duo from Wichita. We meet up near the Grand Via and scouted out some good locations to have our last meal together. After finally settling for one of the outdoor venues we partook in some sangria and Spanish delicacies. Except for me, I choose to have what turned out to be the horrible, horrible cannelloni…I am a sucker for cannelloni. After we finished our meal together we walked back to our hostel and continued to have drinks on our roof top overlooking the beautiful city. It wouldn’t be too long before Chris and I had to get up at 6 in the morning to get to the airport for our early flight to Madrid, the last and final stop.

mmmmmmmmmmk I swear I will write about Spain, I swear! But for now I have some catching up to do here at home. I am currently working on my portfolio for an AIA St. Louis scholarship interview on Friday. And I think I might have actually started it before Sunday had God not decided to drop a tornado on St.Louis and cause our power to be out for three horrible miserable days. But it's all good cause when the lights came back I stood in shock for three seconds before running around the house turning all the lights on off, just cause i could! So long story short, by Friday Spain will be inducted in to the blog-o-fame.

As you can tell I am taking a break from my computer on my parents computer (at least this one has internet). Wow is that wrong. I have been for the past two days, finding drawings, finding photos, altering them in various ways, linking them into a spread in adobe in design and hoping that when I print them out for the first and only time on Wednesday that it will look great. I guess I could print it off more than once to safe guard against an ugly looking stack of papers, but when it's 11X17 color and Kinko’s is printing,[ ha ha can you say rip-off-ville?] needless to say once is enough.

But it is looking ok I have just a few minor alterations that will enviably take 10 hours but at least I can then say that I have completed some thing in which I have set out to do. Which reminds me, I gotta get back and re-link all of my Islamic mosque project drawings, whoo-hoo!

I am back: back home, back to reality, back to work, back to normal [?]. My boxes came today, and guess that is a sign from the powers above that it is time that I stop procrastination on this blog and finish the tale of this amazing journey.

[Funny that now that I am writing about Prague the music on my I-pod just switched to one of Czech Republics most famous composers, Bedřich Smetana. Even weirder the song name is “My Country: Vltava.” It is the wonderful musical tale of the Czech River the Vltava and winding journey it takes through the country sides and cityscapes of the Czech Republic.]


Here we go…

After taking the 6:50 am train from Budapest to Prague. My bones were tired and nothing but excitement filled my entire body. I was so happy to be back at home where I knew I have a “comfy” bed to sleep in and all the other creature comforts of home.

Although I had only two days to get all my belongings sorted and all the little arrangements to get into order, I knew I had to enjoy the last hours in my beloved city. The first order of Business was to buy all the last, minute souvenirs, not for friends or family, that was already done, but for the hardest person to shop for, me. I walked all over old town and went into all the souvenir shops I had passed by a thousand times before now. Ultimately dreading the moment when I had to cross the threshold of their doors and loose my credit as a resident and become nothing but a lowly tourist. I picked out a couple of shirts, trinkets, and a bottle of Becheroka. After returning to the door I gathered my previously packed boxes of odds and ends and headed to the post office to pick up a box and to mail two others.
Now, to pick up a box at the Ceska Posta, it’s not as simple as picking up a box off of a display on the wall, like here at the U.S. post office. HECK NO! They do it the Czech way! I had to walk up stairs to the secret second level. Find the 4”X 4” white buzzer on the wall and soon after pressing the button had to wait for a responding buzzzz of acceptance. When I entered the next room, my immediate assessment was that this space felt like a secret compartment. Almost as if I was a spy getting my next assignment [which is what the room probably doubles as anyway.] But the room was about the size of a bathroom stall and contained a glass wall with a counter at one end and the door I just walked through on the other. There behind the glass wall was series of assembled boxes of various boxes, different sized envelopes, and a very large scary Czech woman with no trace of a smile on her face.
Trying to making things simple as possible, I pointed at the on the far right and slid nine crowns into the metal tray linking to two sides of the glass wall. And without delay they woman reproduced a large flat sheet of cardboard. As the woman made here way back to the counter she began to fold the box up like a clown twists a balloon to horse, bunny or any other assortment of animals. The lady soon had created my particular box, and before I knew it, a secret panel on the lower half of the glass wall spun around to revel my box in it’s entirety. I grabbed my box and left the windowless postage jail cell.
I spent the rest of the day meandering through the city soaking up all that I could, trying to preserve the memory of all the Czech culture that surrounded me. I wanted all the sights, smells and feelings to be burned on my mind. So that when I reached my house I could still close my eyes and step into Wenceslaus square, just as if I had gotten off at Mustek subway stop and stepped into the large over crowed square.

Soon after seeing the city for one last time all of the K-Staters got together for one last Czech Meal. We all boarded the tram and rode it to the National Concert Hall and picked a restaurant in true Czech Fashion. The menu was mostly filled with goulashes and beer. Two thins that I couldn’t resist getting for one last go around. Bread dumplings, Beef goulash and an ice cold Krusovice made for a perfect good bye dinner. We sat around the table reliving stories of the past semester, laughing uncontrollably and wishing we could all do it again.
After dinner we meandered around the city a bit, but soon headed back. I finished off the evening with making sure I had packed every thing that I needed, and made sure everything was in order to my 9:00 flight to Barcelona. It wouldn’t bee long until we were flying over the city. Saying good bye for the last time.