Nómadas

A couple of weekends ago was my favorite weekend so far. My roommate and I flew to Barcelona to do touristy things and see my favorite Spanish band in concert. We were able to fly from Granada rather than take a bus to Málaga and fly from there, which was easy.

We arrived late Thursday night and we had to figure out how to get to our hostel. Luckily with smartphones everything is easier, and we managed to find our bus with only a little confusion.

This was my first trip to a different autonomous region of Spain, so I thought it was really cool getting to hear new accents and even a new language: Catalán. Instead of "supermercados" we saw "supermercats" and instead of "libertad" there was "libertat." Catalán reminds me of speaking Spanish but with your teeth clenched; I love it!

In this example on the left, the Catalán is almost identical to Spanish--only a few changes. "Utilizar Google Translate no es saber idiomas" (Using Google Translate is not knowing languages).

However, my roommate and I went to an Egyptian museum where the signs of an entire floor were only in Catalán--no Spanish and definitely no English. Luckily, knowing Spanish and a little bit of French, we were able to figure it out. Equipados para la eternidad. Equipped for eternity. In general, it looks a lot like Spanish, but there are many French words as well, such as "mort", "temps", etc. My roommate and I were sounding out one of the signs together, getting excited when we could piece together an entire idea. We didn't realize that there was a Catalán speaking couple right behind us, trying to read the same sign although we were in the way! Hopefully they were at least impressed with our effort to understand the language.

I originally wasn't interested in studying in Barcelona simply because I did not want the Catalán to confuse me while I'm trying to develop my Spanish, but after that trip I realized how cool it would be to pick up Catalán as well. I bought a book in Barcelona of Catalán poetry from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (with translations to modern Catalán in the footnotes), which isn't going to make me super cool at parties but it will be fun to study it and see how this romance language has changed.

Anyways, enough about Catalán. We didn't do any of the typical touristy things in Barcelona because I didn't realize that things like La Sagrada Familia (that really fancy cathedral that everyone who goes to Barcelona visits) require booking in advance. I know this cathedral is special because it's still unfinished and it was a project of the architect, Gaudí, but I've seen enough cathedrals for awhile. Maybe that makes me sound spoiled, but Spain has a lot of cathedrals and alcazars that start to look the same after awhile. Oh well, something tells me that won't be my last time in Barcelona.

One tourist attraction that we did visit was Las Ramblas, a market that reminds me of Pike Place in Seattle.

There were some unusual options, too, such as a pig's head. I would love to have a dinner party one day and surprise my guests with that!

We walked around the city, killing time by going to different plazas and looking at monuments. There was a plaza named after George Orwell, but unfortunately there was nothing there that had anything to do with him. There was a giant monument to Christopher Columbus, which was a good photo op, although I'm not the biggest Christopher Columbus fan.

We ran into a couple men from Saudi who asked us to take their picture and I managed to practice Arabic with them. They laughed at my Arabic because I either say things that are really Jordanian or really standard/formal.

The real highlight of the trip was getting to see my favorite Spanish band. I found them on Spotify about three years ago because I was looking for music to practice Spanish that I actually liked and that I wasn't just listening to because it was Spanish. I knew they wouldn't tour anywhere near me in the States, and I never thought I would be going to Spain, but here I am! I wanted to see Barcelona anyways, but I planned the trip around that concert. They're called La M.O.D.A. and they sound like Mumford and Sons or The Lumineers. Whenever I bring them up to Spaniards they have no idea what I'm talking about, so I think I've found myself something off the beaten path.

The concert was my favorite night in Spain so far. First, I met the singer! I told him in probably the most broken Spanish I've spoken since I've been here "thank you for your music" "I never thought I'd get to see a concert" "you helped me with my Spanish" (after I said that one he asked me if I was French).

Then, the opening act. Even they were really good! They sang mostly in Catalán, but their songs were catchy and I ended up buying their CD, because where else can I find music in Catalán? La M.O.D.A. was incredible. I was right in the front, singing along like I did while driving in the U.S. I'd post a video here, but I am singing embarrassingly in all the videos I have, so instead I'll leave one of my favorite songs of theirs. It's called Nómadas, and when he introduced it at the concert, he said something like "this song is for all the people who travel for music... there's some people who have traveled many kilometers to be here" and I thought of the mini conversation we had before the concert.