nothing australian about this place

barcelona 2

diana and i eat at a cafe and then go back to the hostel to nap. at the cafe, while using our poor spanish to try to communicate our order to the waitress, we realize: they don't speak spanish here. they speak catalan - sort of a mix of spanish and french. meaning anything and everything we know about how to communicate with these people is probably completely wrong. .....this will be difficult.....

when we wake up we walk back along the beach strip until we hit La Rambla, barcelona's central street. at the south end of the street sits the Monument a Colom, or the Christopher Columbus Monument. we snap some photos and turn onto La Rambla.

it's cold. we decide to find food for the sole purpose of getting inside out of the wind. "Diana," i say, "I'm going to need a drink to keep walking around in this. i suggest you join me." i look up at the bar spot something familiar: tequila sunrise (my mommy's drink). i order it. not sure if the motivation was due to missing her or it just being the only thing i could read on the drink menu. then i think of just exactly how she orders it - with only just a splash of grenadine (and then how it was always a pain in the ass ordering it for her because i could never remember "grenadine") - and wonder if i should order it the same way. the place is kind of empty, so we finish our drinks and tapas and keep moving.

we continue walking up La Ramba searching for potential english-speaking, 20 (+/- 4 or so) year-olds that we could actually have a conversation with. i spot north face jackets, jeans, and tennis shoes. "Americans," i say and i lead diana over to a bar called Hogans, an australian bar with two bartenders that are 100% not australian. There are no seats close to the american boys we see so we sit at the bar, order the cheapest drink they have, and look around. cowboy hats and a boar's head decorate the walls, while a shania twain's "man, i feel like a woman" music video plays on the screen above the bar. ...this is australian? i think i'm in tennessee...

one bartender is a buff girl with tattoos and blonde hair shorter than my little brothers, who is from finland; the other is a tall brunette slovakian guy. both speak perfect english, so in the end we succeeded in the purpose of coming into this bar in the first place - conversation (which the american boys left after 10 minutes anyway, probably because a bottle of heineken was 7 euro). i ask if either of them had been to australia. no. the girl explains when she came here, she was only supposed to stay for 5 months. it's now been 2 years. slovakia's situation was similar. i start to think about my time in madrid. i'm only supposed to stay for 4 months... but the more i think about it, i know i couldn't end up like these people [and not just because i could never work in a bar with shania twain music videos blaring and hairy snouts used as decor and call it my career]. everyone in europe has it ridiculously easy. you can get a flight to finland for 30 euro. you don't have to fly over 2,500 miles of ocean. skype is not the only option for calling home. i could take a bus and, within hours, be in france [america's favorite root for both humor and hatred]. or take less than a 2 hour flight and be in italy, one of the world's most romanticized countries (which i will be doing the following weekend). being international for these people is like crossing a state border for americans. plus a passport.

an unfamiliar, horrible song comes on in the bar (something american, from the 90s?) and just as i'm about to point this out to diana and then ask the bartenders to change it, diana starts singing along. "are you serious?" "you don't know this?" she asks in return. um, no, i would prefer to be deaf. she and i debate the musical quality of this song, the fact that i don't recognize it (kind of like the percolator), and whether or not the woman singing in the music video is black or not (it looks like she has a weave, to me). slovakia states that finland also can't stand the music in this bar.

since we have now somewhat befriended the bartenders over the one beer we each had, we ask them where some cheaper local bars are (because, let's face it, La Rambla is a tourist hot spot meaning everything is double in price for half the quantity). finland draws us a mental map to a place she calls plaza trippy (a plaza with cheap local bars but supposedly the crowd is a little ... trippy?). i tip them (partly for the insider info and partly for just simply being able to speak english) and we set out to find this plaza trippy. ....only we get sidetracked when we see a stand selling gelato and gaufre's (hot waffles with melted chocolate, whipped cream, ice cream, and other options). i get a gaufre with melted chocolate and whip while diana gets gelato - which she immediately regrets after seeing (and trying a taste) of my hot, chocolaty confection. "why the hell did you get ice cream when it's freezing out here??"

we get dinner after we indulge (why save the best for last?), then head back to the hostel for the night.