Spain! Montjuïc & the rest of Barcelona. Also, theft.

After Sagrada Familia, we had lunch, a siesta, then ventured a trip up to Montjuïc.  I found a 'rainy day guide' to Barcelona that suggested taking the funicular and then air-trams/gondolas up to the top of Montjuïc.

Montjuïc was a good replacement citadel, for sure, and still reasonably nice in the rain.

closer view of the front and tower of Montjuïc

The trip included a ride up (and back down) a funicular -- although, it was a very short funicular. We wanted to take the tram cars (gondolas? Those things that fly through the air) up to the castle/fort, but the guy just posted a sign about it being closed due to inclement weather as we walked up. 

We waited 15 min for the next bus up, and on the bus, I looked back and could see the door open again and people buying tickets! Grargh.

Top of the mound, to the castle.  There were some neat mosaics outside the fortress [Spoiler alert: there will be a lot of pictures of floors and the cool mosaic things people put on the ground]:



The fortress had some really nice look-outs, where we could see…fog. And be buffeted by the wind. It was still nice despite the rain, but would be much better on a clear day (which we only had one of while in Barcelona).





We went inside and up on top of the ramparts. There was a plaque that claimed that the measurements for the prime meridian were done there and this somehow established the metric system (I thought that was that rod in a vault (in Paris?)…).

Montjuïc courtyard

There was a group of French schoolchildren trying to spell out something in that courtyard. It took them our entire rampart-walk to pull together into "Bárca" (even with the accent on the "a", formed by 3 people).  

Its outside and gardens:

The harbor reminds me a bit of Hamburg, lots of containers and cranes. I think Hamburg's might actually be bigger. But Barcelona's is more scenic, with the mediterranean right there. 

scenic view of harbor

harbor looking very harbor-ish

The way down we managed to catch the air tram/gondola/car thingies.




No pulling open doors, food, or doing fancy dancing:

On the way back, we went looking for dinner. We got out of the train station the funicular dumped us at, "Paral-lel" and started walking around looking for food. 

[Sidenote: the dash (I think it was more of a dot -- like \cdot, if you are a LaTeX user) between the "L"'s makes you say them both, as you would in English, instead of turning it into a double-l, which becomes a "y" in (several versions of) Spanish]. 

Ended up at "Restaurante Bollywood" which was super duper delicious and, true to its name, had a TV screen with non-stop bollywood(-esque) music videos. Which had a lot of non-indian backup dancers. I'm not sure if this is a symptom of a shortage of women, or more a sign of them trying to appeal to 'westerners'.  We each ordered a dish, had a samosa, naan and split 2 liters of water, which ran each of us about 11.5 euro (not bad at all).


Catalan is pretty clearly not Spanish, and has some things about it that seem to make it lie between Spanish and French (e.g. they use "L" plus apostrophe + (stuff)). Here's a sign in Catalan and Spanish:

And how one spells "kiosk" phonetically in Catalan:

I found the use of this weird red cross for pharmacies odd (I was used to the green, which is also posted):

Beautiful Barcelona Buildings: 
Barcelona had a lot of buildings with very beautiful decoration. Here's a sample of them:

Day 6: Leaving Barca (and my wallet) 

We woke up early (7am ish) to turn the keys back over to the apartment owner and get to the train by 9am. Which we did not realize was the weekend schedule and the train we wanted was actually at 8:30. When we figured that out, our options were to either wait 4 hours for the next similar train, or take the train through Madrid instead. We opted for the latter option. 

The weather in Barcelona had been getting worse during our trip, culminating in thick, pouring rain that morning. I wore leather shoes that I waxed (rainproofing) before, but still managed to step in a lot of puddles and both (1) not use my umbrella and (2) forget to use the rain-proof cover for my backpack. Yeah. 

In the process of getting from our apartment (around the corner from Sagrada Familia) to the Renfe(super-fast trains) station at Barcelona-Sants, I made the poor decision of keeping my wallet in my outer pocket of my jacket. I also had gloves in there, which are easy to mistake for a wallet when doing a cursory version of the  "pocket Macarena". Getting out of the train and up to the escalator, I checked again and realized it was gone. I had either dropped it (at the first station or in the train) or I was pick-pocketed. 

I still had my passport, phone and computer. The most annoying things to lose were my residency permit for Germany (Aufenthaltstitel), my (US) driver's license,  and my health insurance card (as I had an appointment with a doctor for when I got back). The wallet also had some cash. I was able to call my German bank immediately and what they offered to do was to put a hold on the card. I wasn't not sure what that ended up meaning, but they hung up immediately after doing it, and I didn't have the money on my phone to call them back.  We had an hour, so I went with my (Spanish-speaking) friend to the police station ~5 blocks away (again, walking in the rain) to fill out a report. 

We took the taxi back to the station and boarded the train in short order. Our tickets all ended up in different coaches. The conductor lady wanted us on the train ASAP and said "The train is completely booked" when we tried to see if she thought there'd be 4 seats all open together. I sat with a seat empty beside me and two in front empty, but didn't feel like getting up and finding the others, as I was still soggy. I know, objectively, that leaving everything on (the socks, shoes and, well, pants) is the fastest way for them to dry, but I was not happy about it. My suitcase was kind of behind me, on a shelf. I kept looking over at it, in case someone decided to make my life even more unpleasant. 

Once we got settled that evening in Málaga and I got some internet, I discovered an email, which had been sent to me about half an hour into my first train ride. 

"Good morning,

This email is to report that, maybe you don't know, you've been stolen while you were on the metro today. We managed to arrest the person who did it, and we've got your purse with all your belongings and your identification documents.

Please, contact us as soon as possible"

Pretty effing awesome. However, I had already put my EC card "on hold" (sperren lassen) and canceled my credit card. Eh.

So, there was a phone number, which we called, and found out that the guy who sent the e-mail worked the morning shift, and that he would call me in the morning (unless I woke up early enough to call him).  Great. We went for a long walk and dinner, and I had my phone on vibrate/very quiet. I didn't realize until after dinner that someone (with a blocked/unknown number) had been calling me almost every 10 minutes for the previous 1.5 hrs. As I was looking at my phone, it rang again, so I answered. This time, another policeman, but from the police station at which I had filed my report (which is not the one which had it and that I received the email from), calling to reassure me that my wallet had been recovered, and even still had the money in it, and that they'd gone to my listed temporary address (in Barcelona) but couldn't get ahold of me.  

I figured I would take a train back to Barcelona (en route to Madrid and my return flight) to fetch it personally and told him the day and he said he'd call me the day before and we could figure out how I'd fetch it. Great. 

Well, then guy #1 calls me at 8am, and I said I'll email him when I have my train ticket, and I asked if he could tell the other guy who'd called about it, and other guy is not under his jurisdiction (at which point, I realized I was being contacted by both stations). 

[Spoiler: after much phone-tag and email-tag, I went back to Barcelona towards the end of the trip and fetched the wallet]. 

Next installment: Málaga!