first i was a bit disappointed but now i see them erverywhere: stancils and graffitis. of course i want to let you see them as well so i find myself frequently walking down the old parts of the city, the fovoured place for those things and find myself hounting singns and graphics on the walls and houses. today i will start this new album with some i recently found. to be continued....

one out of many but at the same time one of the biggest fiestas in barcelona is mercè. it took place last weekend and lasted 4 days. while friday is a holiday it starts on thursday and goes on till sunday night. it combines folklore and modern stuff and is more or less a accumulation of many other festivals as the BAM (Barcelona acció musical) or the Festival de Músics de Carrer. the city just doesn't sleep during mercè and the metro is running all night long.

At mercè there you'll meet Giants in the streets and castellers. to explain it a little: people are forming towers or castles out of themselfs up to 5 flights high. on the bottem strong men, on the top lightweighted children they are quite impressive and sometimes they crash. unfortunately i didn't see any of them, i rather went to
concerts. Still there is a picture of some giants i took.

Yes, the concerts. i expected something but not something that big and good. Almost every place in town was cramped with people standing in front of stages and were enjoying themselves while dancing, drinkin and chatting to each other. one of the biggest concerts took place in placa catalunia and it was one of the best ones i've seen for a long time. You won't probably know the artists: La Mala Rodriguez and Macaco. In between they came up with a remarkably good dj for the pause. Did i write earlier that they only listen to bad music over here? This night i learned
the better. For more information see the website of the
mercè.

Oh, and than one of the most important things is of course the correfoc. this is catalunian for "running fire" and this is to be unterstood literally. people and kids are carrying heyforcs and sticks with lots of pyrotechnic articles stuck on them who were cirling and firespitting while people are dancing and taking showers in a rain
of sparkles. they are of course all propperly dressed up for this; whiches hats, mummed and hooded whith whatever and with painted faces. there are dragons and rats in a long parade and there is firework everywhere. they say it is meant to chase the deamons and dragons out of the city and it has to work quite well. its noisy, dangerous and fun to watch. of course, when you see something really good like this you either don't carry your camera with you or the battery is empty. i experienced the latter, so i can only refer to the website:

http://www.bcn.es/merce

the rest of the time i (yes, i admit it) drunk al lot and had some
fun. enjoy your kirmes in germany and especially the zwiebelmarkt in
weimar.

the consum of canabis and cocain in espania is asumed to be the highest in the eu. 140000 young people have tried cocain and one out of three has somoked marihuana during the last year. thats what you could read in the papers on wednesday. the numbers are considered to have doubled during the last 10 years. the ministry of health considers the fight against drug abuse to be a lost one. the numbers can be compared with those of the united states, they say.
well, that doesn't surprise me. when you are in the streets, when you are in the metro you can smell it in the air, just everytime and everywhere.

whell, nobody said it would be a bed of roses, but still. first my castilan is not convenient either but my catalan is a desaster. despide all hopes i got to know today that all my courses will be held in catalan and somehow i survived my first two days of catalan lessons.
soon i'll have to choose another title for this blog in order not to get furius simply by reading any word begining with cat....
so we now have one week of intensive catalan lessons which last 4! hours every day while at least during the last hour everybody is somerwhere close to sleep. i'm looking forward to my first spanish lessons to get a base for all this. lets see how this all works out. ...and if you have nice flat mates they can still cheer you up when comming home and almost beeing dead (killed by catalan-lessons)

sorry about writing everything in english.
warscheinlich schreib ich auch mal was in spanisch
oder alemán. pero... es igual

use any tounge you like.

i am still and always was a big fan of the ilmpark in weimar. green meddows with tangled paths that make you feel the parc was twice es big as it is indeed.

now take away all the green green grass, add some hills and a stunning view over the city, some enchanted buildings, a museum of gaudi and some arcards made
out of rough stone instead of tiny caves on the sides of the park like in weimar.
instead of the kubus, imagine a big hall full of majestic pillars. than you get an area full of mediteranian vegetation which is of course worlds apart from resembling the ilmpark in the slightes way. well of course. but how could one explain when one
only knew the ilmpark bevor.

well, it may be a bit harder than it was in weimar, but it is not imposible at all. i even believe it to be a task much more easier than finding a nice room in cities like munich or hamburg.

it took me 3 days to find something nice and as a handy side effect i got to know the basic structure of barcelona on my journeys.
a website that turned out to be realy helpfull is
www.habitagejove.com

on the other hand it was impossible to find somthing in adwanced when i was still in germany. long term planing does not seem to be in favourite of some spanish people, at least not, when it comes to renting a room. every time i asked if i could visit somthing the next week or so i got a: ¿eres
aqui? ¡llamas commo eres aqui en barcelona!
but the better this way. i don't like planing in advance much either.

famous sagrade familia. everybody knows it from pictures and postcards. when standing in front of it, it is hard to belive how something like this is possible. it seems like gaudi has had some wierd ideas, likely inspired by drugs and absinth and went with this to somebody and proposed with a psychotic flicker in his eyes: shall we build this, in real, like real big and all in the middle of a city?!

that was of course not what it was like. but for more than 100 years now they are building somthing like a castle made out of wet sand on a beach right here in barcelona, whose plans seem to belong to a fairy tale. another 30 years it shall take at least to acomplish the mision at least, they say.
but nevermind. in my opinion it is one of the most enchanting buildingsites in the world and i enjoy seeing it every day.

...as i hate sending thousands of mails "home" about my stay abroad, this blog shall serve me to document my live in barcelona, a place that should better be called catalugar, as in catalunia and in lugar.