Todo es possible en la vida

Sunday morning we set out to go to Montserrat, but I first got robbed. We went to the Metro and Orlando and Beza got gypped by some guy into paying 3 euros for a Metro ticket, but I was smart and bought mine at the machine for only 1.25. Then, somewhere in between looking at the Metro map and walking to our train, my little purse-wallet went missing! We backtracked and I hadn’t left it anywhere, so my conclusion is that someone took it from my bag. Luckily I still had other valuables like my phone and camera, but I had forgotten to leave some of my newly changed euros in the room and ended up losing about 100 euros and a credit card. I filed a report with the police and we continued on to Placa Espanya, where there was supposedly a train that could take us to Montserrat. The worst part of being a foreigner is not having simple things you’re used to having. After I got robbed it was hard calling home because my phone wasn’t working – I had refilled my Swiss SIM card before leaving, but it didn’t go through immediately and after I went negative the account was frozen. I tried using Orlando’s phone, but it didn’t work, and I tried using Beza’s phone card, but first had to find a public phone, which isn’t as easy as you’d think it would be. I finally ended up calling collect and woke my parents up at 3 in the morning to tell them to cancel the credit card, and had to borrow money from friends the rest of the day.

Montserrat is a mountain about 60 km outside the city, with a monastery at the top and a famous boys choir and the Virgin Negra. Before going there we passed through a town on the outskirts of Barcelona, which was very nice and local too. Beza and Orlando got lunch at the Pizza Hut, and I got a chorizo sandwich at a restaurant nearby. We took another train to Montserrat, then a bus to get to the actual mountain part. The church was one of the most beautiful ones I had seen so far, and the view from the mountain was amazing as well. We took a cable car up to the top, which was kind of unnerving because it was just one little car going up a cable from the base to the top of the mountain. Since we had spent some extra hours searching for my lost purse, we missed the 1pm showing of the boys choir, and the 6pm showing coincided with our last cable car to the bottom, so we didn’t get to see the choir boys.

For dinner we went to Hard Rock Café for some good old American rock music and some good old cheeseburgers, BBQ, and steaks. Afterwards we chilled at Las Ramblas for a bit and Beza and Orlando started talking to some Gambian people, which kind of sketched me out since I’m very anti-talking to strangers but we learned about how they were migrants and had worked all over Europe. When we got back to the hostel I got some computer access and went to sleep. The three of us were staying in a mixed room (ie, coed) with a couple of girls from Paris. It was really weird how hearing French was familiar and nice after walking around all day and only hearing/speaking Spanish.

I’ve also noticed that Barcelona was by far the most “globalized” city of all the ones I’ve been to so far. Paris had its share of McDonald’s and commercial stores at the Champs-Elysees, such as Niketown and Zara. Rome had McDonald’s on EVERY corner, as bad as Starbucks are in major US towns. Every city of course has its token Starbucks – Geneva only has one, and my host mom hasn’t even heard of it. But in Barcelona, we saw not only Starbucks and McDonalds, but also Pizza Hut, KFC, and Burger King. Not to mention a few other US companies like Mail Boxes Etc. It was cool though to see the links between Filipino and Spanish culture, since Spain ruled and influenced the Philippines during a large part of its history. You could already see it somewhat just in the language. I don’t know much Tagalog, but I do know there are some words that are similar if not the same, such as maiz and when my dad would say “Ven aqui” to my brother and me when we were children. But I noticed the connection even more so in Spain with the food! They have their version of embutido, flan (actually the flan was exactly the same), chorizo, adobo (not in Spain but I’ve heard of it in Mexico), paella, empanadas, ensaimada… just talking about it makes me hungry.