Did I mention how dramatically different each city in Spain is? The transition from tranquil, slow paced Sevilla to the crowded, busy streets of Barcelona has been like being thrown into a washing machine. Las Ramblas are packed and every side street, Gaudi monument and beach is full of visitors from all over the world. They are all in the washing machine together being spun around by the power of the Metro system from the beach to Las Ramblas, to Sagrada Familia, to Parc de Guell, to Plaza Mayor and finally spit out at a hostel, hotel or in our case a friend’s apartment.

Actually the night we got Barcelona we had to find a place to stay for the first time since our trip began and we welcomed a little hostelling so we could meet some more travelers for Matador. But hostel after hostel that we went to was full. Ross and I zigzagged around the city for 2 hours ringing buzzers, knocking on doors, arguing with a man about two people staying in a single room which got a bit ugly, until we finally found a bar owner who knew a guy, who knew a guy that had a room for one night. Desperate, sweating and exhausted from our last night in Sevilla we had to take whatever accommodation this guy could dig up.

Oh, and dig it up he did. Before I get into the place we ended up staying I should mention a subculture that is prevalent at this time of the year in Barcelona. Let’s call them the Lost Traveler. People who live in hostels for 3 months to a year and are caught up in the glitz, glory and glamour that is the ecstasy fueled, drunken travel to party subculture of Barcelona. Quotes from these folks are (all said with strong English accents):

“I just wanted to get the fuck out of England for a week or two, and I’ve been here for 7 months partying my ass off.”

“I wanted to learn Spanish but I haven’t been to class in a month and I hang out with all these English speaking fuckers. “

“I just can’t get enough of the drum and bass DJs in Barcelona. They just blow me away, this one guy especially. May have been the 2 pills of ecstasy, but I just fucken loved him.”

Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of other countries represented in the Lost Traveler subculture in Barcelona, but from our experience the majority we met were from England (sorry blokes).

So the place the bar tender dug up was literally where 10 of the head Lost Travelers lived, with one rotating vacancy they rented out to desperate folks like us. Now I’ve been in a fair share of shady accommodations in my time and physically this place wasn’t the worst and nothing to go into great detail about. Just imagine your classic run down crack house with a world map, flyers for bike tours and pub crawls, and 6 flights of stairs. But the characters that lived at this place are worth a sentence or two (sorry no pictures so you’ll just have to use your imagination).

Roxy: First guy we met when we got to the place. Stumbles out in his underwear, incredibly sunburned, 40 something going on 65, and falls into a chair to meet the newbies. Turns out this guy had been kicked out of another hostel that morning for being too drunk and sneaking into empty beds to sleep when he was supposed to be on a mattress on the ground. He got kicked out of the hostel and went to sleep on the beach, (thus the third degree sunburn), woke up from “taking some sun” and stumbled into a bar where he passed out again drunk on the bar. Bar tender tells him he has a place to stay (same bar tender who got us this place), but the trouble is he has horrible blisters on his feet from walking all over the city in sandals and refused to walk the 6 flights of stairs. Still not sure how he made it up, but there he was, Roxy whose “been traveling his whole life and whose girlfriend kicked him out so he cleaned off his passport and went to Spain”.
Not sure what “cleaning your passport off” entails, but it can’t be pretty. Did I mention his name is Roxy…

Girl with bunny: Enough said right. It’s 7am and we are up on the roof of this “hostel” chatting with some folks when a girl comes up in a tutu holding a baby rabbit. Nobody seems to question this costume except Ross and I. Turns out she likes to dress up when she attends the weekly pub crawl (sponsored by the bar where we got this room). As for the bunny, she simply stated, that it was her pet and she loved him. Of course, dumb question. Why wouldn’t a 26 year old have a baby rabbit in here hostel in Barcelona, she’d been living there for 7 months. She was American…

Mazy: Met here in the morning when she comes out of the kitchen eating a cup of yogurt at the same time asking if yogurt goes bad since this had been in the fridge for a month, but that it tasted fine and continued to eat it as she talked with me. Turns out she had been here for 3 months to study Spanish, but that wasn’t going so well since she hadn’t been to class and speaks with all English fuckers. She was broke and was trying to save money by not eating as much (thus the yogurt) and was trying to make money by handing out flyers for bars which she got paid $5 an hour and 15 cents commission on every person she got into the bar. Also not going so well since she spent most of her money “partying”. But she said she was one of the best damn “flyerers” in the city and the bar should bump her up to 30 cents commission soon or she would go somewhere else. She gave me two flyers, and I told her I’d make her 30 cents as soon as we could.

I could go on with 5 other people we met in the first 12 hours we spent in Barcelona, but for the sake of your busy lives I’ll leave it at that. Now I wouldn’t have mentioned these people if there circumstances had been truly dire or they had not had any control over the way they were living. But that’s the thing, they had complete control over their situation in the sense that they could all go back home. They were living like this because they wanted to travel and stay traveling/partying as long as they could no matter the physical or mental toll that may take. As we all know many people tend to blend the definitions of partying and traveling which tends to blur the “travel experience”. But you live and learn and hopefully it doesn’t take a year in a hostel in Barcelona to discover the fine balance.

Hey I’ve been there too; maybe not with a bunny rabbit, but definitely with sunburn and a tutu… But being ruffed up a bit is part of the adventure and the incredible characters are who we tend to tell our friends about back home. So to the Lost Travelers of Barcelona I salute you. Besides, nobody tops the characters that make their living by street performing. More on them later…

Still in Barcelona but out of the washing machine and at our friends apartment getting some much needed R&R while meeting with hostel owners and working a lot. More blogs about the city that Gaudi built coming soon...