Barcelonalove

Before coming to Spain (excluding the time when I was nine when beauty of architecture i scovered with the knowing that THEREISACOOLASSPONYINTHESHOPRIGHTTHERE!!!) I have always thought that I would hate the cuture, the language and the people. But I just couldn't say no to my friend's very kind dad, who offered us a free flat five stations away from the centre of Barcelona. 

But I should say it took me about seven steps into the city to absolutely lose my mind. 

1. Fall out of the bed

2. Resist the temptation to fall back in

3. Fall on top of Dasha and sing something really really loud until she stands up to hide in the bathroom

4. Find something thhat's not out of date to eat

5. Listen to: "Yana OMG, I had a dream where I had a child!" or "Yana OMG, I had a dream where I had a chicken factory"

6. Spanish courses

Courses is another separate topic. We had an awesome teacher, he was chubby, wore red glasses and used to advise us to try nudic beaches because: "LIBERDAD" (freedom), mixing beer with schweppes and recoomend best clubs in the city.

If you have a day in Barcelna this is what I woud reccommend you do the following:
1. Go to the Passeig de Gracia metro station and have breakfast at Brunch and Cake (http://www.cupcakesbarcelona.com/es/index_bc.html)
2. If the queue is not too exausting visit Casa Batllo by Gaudi
3. Walk down to the pourt through Rambla (cos you have to be a typical tourist at least on the first day), grab some fruit from Boqueria, sit and peoplewatch-watch-people-people-mehhbreh;fvdcbhdh

Anyway
4. Go to either Gothic quarter if you want to buy unique...stuff, or if you like art you must visit National Museum of Catalan Art which is on the metro station Espana. Everyone and I mean it (!) will fing something he likes!

The dawn is always the second best part of the day for me after the morning, because that's when the nigh-the adventure, starts. 

5. When it comes closer to the night you have two choises:

• go to (again)  Gothic Quarter. Just turn left from Dressantes station and go down "the pub street", You will find a lot of good places like "Milk" bar (http://www.milkbarcelona.com/), where Dasha's hate to avocado magically turned into the deepest love or "La Clandestina" (http://barcelona.salir.com/la_clandestina) - the best tea room in Barcelona (try peach shisha).

• go to Gracia Barrio (Fontana metro station), especially if you are there around the 15th August - the time of the major festival (http://www.oh-barcelona.com/en/blog/2013/things-to-do/events-and-music/fiesta-de-gracia-1139). We went there on the first day, flopped around squeezed into crowds of bodies, sfound a quiet bar aaand the life suddenly became much better. We than stole a chocolate muffin, ran around singing for a while and went back home "before the police catches us"... Anyway there is an amazing tapas bar "Nou Candachu" (http://barcelona.salir.com/nou_candanchu) on one of the squares, where you can do what we did or just enjoy traditional spanish snacks (another whole discussion on the reasons why I don't call tapas proper food).

Things I really miss:

• the terrace where we used to eat watermelons (we could eat a whole one for dinner)
• hot german guy from courses, who used to smile aat everyone when he walked through our classroom, but I just liked thinking that others don't exist and IAMTHEONE
• Dasha's casual: "I'm thirsty", which normally meant: "Five tequillas, please"
• PEOPLE
• ...
• BARCELONAINGENERAL!!!!

What we did instead of Venice

I should probably start with explaining what kind of person my mum is. Every single time I come back from a morning run, when the whole house is still silent and asleep, she jumps out of her room and occupates the bathroom for a good 20 mins as soon as she hears my footsteps at the door. Because she obviously needs to put face lotion on before I die from being sweaty and smelly. 

There is a saying that there is no space in one house for two women. And I have never realise how true it is before I actually started to use the kitchen. Let me give you an example. On a day to day basis my fam goes to the beach in the morning as it was their job. I go really rare, and try to not stay for long. Today I left especially early, so that I can make a lemon pie. At 12:30 I was already boilind corn starch with powdered sugar, thinking I will definitely have enough time to finish as they normally come home at 2 pm and have showers. But particularly today mother's instinct told her to go back at 1 and she walked into the flat announcing that she-is-really-hungry-and-omg-yana-there-is-no-space-in-the-kitchen-how-am-i-gona-live-i-can't-microwave-salmon!!! 

On the morning when we were leavind to Italy I woke up after a two hour sleep thinking that I will be able to catch up with dreams in the car. But mum told everyone that she has a stomach ache and she that she is not going anywhere. So we had to cancel a four day trip and dad was grumpy next two days which is understandable. Especially considering that the cost of the hotel was not returned. 

In the afternoon of the day of the trip the stomach was perfectly fine and mum was moning that we should of gone at lunchtime. And after all of that she says that she doesn't do these things on purpose.

Anyway on Thursday we went to Plitvice Lakes which was magical but crowded. Not as crowded as Venice though.

The water in the lakes is rich with travertine which gives it a deep turquise colour. 

The stones are also made of this mineral and therefore are flaky and fragile. This explains an aweful amount of small waterfalls spread all over the national park.

We left at 6 am and I didn't mind at all, but to be honest I didn't thinkk it would make a big difference. The conclusion of the story is that I am majorly thankful to have such a considerative dad.

We were lucky enough to  be able to enjoy the view of the gorgeous lakes in the gentle morning rays and (!) take a half empty boat just before a two hour queue gathered at the harbour. 

The main waterfall felt like an antfarm but we have managed to kick two asians off the bench and take good pictures for memory.

But no matter how breathtaking the colour of the water is, travelling for three hours too see some lakes in the middle of the tourist season is not worth it. But I will never regret going, потому что я за любой кипиш.

Hiding from the sun

As I said before I am extremely peevish when it comes to baring with hot weather. For the las few days we've had some kind of heat wave in Croatia (I'm sure it was the same in the whole of Europe) and I have dramatically announced that I'm not planning to leave the air conditioned living room EVER. Mother has attempted to drag me out with her coming up with various excuses, however I've been pretty good with following my promice until today. 

Yesterday was storming and in the morning I the first thing I saw from the balcony was grey sky with rainclouds strewn all over. 

- What a great reading weather, - was my first thought. Hah, yeah right!

As soon as I found the most comfortable position in the world with my feet on the upper pole of the balcony fence, the curtain treacherously flapped and the face of my dad appeared.

- Let's go climbing today and have a trip to Venice tomorrow!

The book Billiards at Half-past Nine started very well, just saying.

We went to Zeleni Vir which is a waterfall in Gorski Cotar in Croatia. I wasn't expecting anything special from the place but took my camera just in case. The case turned out to be very worthy.

First we've walked through the old canyon

Then we've stopped at some kind of info point which I don't have a picture of. The cabin was empty, but my dad saw a sighn saying that the whole walking around that we've done costs 20 kunas and as the most faithful person on the planet went to find the worker and payed. The woman was so shoked that she spent good 20 mins telling us the history of the place and even gave us two ugly magnets as a gift.

Reaching the waterfall was the best part of the journey as we were sweaty, tired and hot!!! Now I know that my dream aircon will be Niagra.

And now we are back, it's 1 am, we are leaving to Venice in 5 hours and I am not even planning to sleep yet...

Austria. Vienna

One of the first things my dad asked me when I got back was: "Do you  want to go to Vienna?". Without asking how or when or why I shouted: "YES!!!". Now I know that I should have waited for th emore detailed explanation ofthe offer.

The next day I woke up because something (or someone) was shaking me from side to side and mumbling.

-Yana, Yana, ar eyou not going running today?!?!?! I looked online...blahblah...Vienna...blahblah...tickets, tour, excursion...blahblah...cool right?

It was 6:43 am so I haven't quite captured the meaning of dad's words. I asked him again later, he got offended and didn't speak to me for an hour.

Later on the same day I have learnt a life skill - living in the country and not knowing the language is a terrible, repetitive pain in the arse. I'll explain how I got to this conclusion. So to get tickets in, lets say, UK you will need to spare 5-6 mins of your time, go online and book. However in a highly developed Croatia you will need roughly 2-3 hours. Online booking here is not availible, therefore you have to go to the actual train station. That took us abot 40 mins. Than you have to spend a good amount of time explaining what you want and wait for the ticket assistant to write up all of the ticket BY HAND!!! Keeping the concentration on the face the woman handed us 4 rectangular pieces of paper with croatian writing on them. At that stage I was already bored and tired of the heat, so basically ready to go home. I was already about to step out of the station door when my dad turen right, walked to the bench, sat down and started reading the tickets. I found the idea pointless but to avoid the argument I sat down next to him and paciently waited. It took us exactly 17 minutes to understand that the ticket is only for one person. We went back, explained the situation, the angry woman shouted:

-You say you want the ticket, I give you ticket!!! I no fault!!!

The next quater of an hour we waited for her to write up another ticket and listening to perturebed wispers of the queue behind us. Finally she gave us even more papers and I was about to happily proceed to the bus stop but dad, again, stopped at the bench. This time I wasn't frustrated especially when we found out that the ticket for tha way back is booked two days later than we needed. I went back to the ticket window and found out that the woman decided to take a brake for 45 mins! Got tired of writing, твоюмать. We got our tickets in an hour and already mentally prepared for a hard trip. We were not wrong.

We took the night train so that we don't waste the whole day travelling. We thought that changes will not make much difference as we will just sleep the whole time on the train. Very naive and funny, right?

On the way there we only had to change once in Salzburg. Our first train was great, there were beds, sink and even croissaunts in the carrier.  climbed into my bed, cuddled in the hoodie and fell asleep while reading. It seemed like a great beginning. However the stripe of misfortunes begun from 1 am when I woke up and saw a ghost, all dressed in white dancing around and humming. After couple of minutes I realised that that was my dad truing to tuck in the duvey into the contitioner whole. I watched him for a bit and fell asleep again. In three hours we had to wake up again to change. 

There wasn't much time between trains so we quickly glanced at thi timetable, saw platform 3 next to our train and sprinted there. We got into the train 4 minutes before departure. Sat in the first empty seat that we saw next to a man, who my dad decided to start a conversation with straigh away. 

-Oh those trains!

-Yeah, I know.

-Such a mess! 

-True, it's always like that in Salzburg though.

-I see.

-Where are you from?

-Travelling from Croatia, decided to go to Vienna with my daughter for a couple of days.

-Vienna? But this is a train to Munchen!

At that point the conversation stopped being pointless, we grabbed our bags while running and stepped out of the train 20 seconds before the departure. We than wildely dashed around the station looking for the train needed. I asked the assistant, he looked at the timetable, that looked at the platform, said: "What the fuck?" and walked off. I am not sure how but after some time we finally found our train and dropped ourselves on the seats in a carrier next to a 20-22 year old girl dreaming about the following three hour sleep. 

However, in the next three hours I have fond out that the girl is 23, her name is Daria and a story of her life. She didn't shut up for more than 2 minutes (that's when she had to reply her funny, talkative friend). The time flew by and there we were in Vienna, with a girl who we knew better than her own mother.

We got to the centre, had a huge-ass breakfast and immediately got a call: "Hello, my name is Taras, I'm gona be your guide". From that moment we dived into a constant flow of beautiful architecture, delicious food, refreshing wind and Taras' voice.

One of the first destinations - hundertwasser house, which I wouldn't say is a house but a piece of art

Even the toilet

Dad asked to take a picture in Albertina museum, other people probably thought we are mentally unstable or smth

 
After the first 3 hour Vienna tour dad went straight to bed. I didn't want to waste time went to wonder around Vienna in the heat. After two hours I was asleep in an air-conditioned hotel room.

Liked the park. Didn't like the fact that homeless people take up all of the benches.

 In the evening we went to a local konoba to try out young white. Dad wasn't that impressed by th ewine but we both appreciated sausages!

Friendly musicians come to sing songs in any language right in your face. Loud but extremely pleasant.

The next morning we spent again exploring galleries and took a brief glance at al the other tourist attractions.

You see tourists attracted to this building

Ceiling of the building

After having one of the most delicious meals in my life (if you go to Vienna before trying traditional schnitzel you must have Tafelspitz - tender beer boiled in broth served in a vegetable and pancake soup, toated black bread, minced apple and horseraddish and sourcream sauses and... are you ready?.. brain in a sculb bone... yum) we went to Vienna forest. Dad liked old 12th century castles, I liked the wind.

There we also visited an underground lake which was magically beautiful but too dark to be beautiful on the camera screen. 

Taras didn't tell us details of the the trip. We were literally about to step into the cave when he decided to mention that temperature down there is 9 C.

I loved Vienna, the night Dunai and life there. Coming back with two changes this time was hard! I could of done with couple of more paragraphs explaining but I already took three morning to write up this post so... let's just say that I had enough inspiration and a really strong will to try new chocolate which I could only open with my mum's presence to go through another sleepless night.