Romania

I'm in Romania right now with my aunt, not much time to write but for the past two days her friend drove us through the mountains near Ukraine in northern Romania and we looked at old wooden churches with no nails and beautiful cemeteries and went to this tiny little village where this woman invited us in and gave us some fruit liquor and fresh bread and pork and pickles and she showed us her cows and pigs and gave us fresh warm milk. Then we stayed at a wonderful little house for the night and they cooked us this giant dinner of Romanian food and we watched them feed goats. The next day we looked at some more churches and did a little picnicking next to a river.

Anyways, I'm flying back to Barcelona tomorrow and then on to the United States on Sunday!

Turco

I dont remember the spanısh word for Turkey but I thınk ıts Turco´maybe thats turkısh though. Anyways Im ın Istanbul and I cant really fıgure out the punctuatıon on the keyboard. Also notıce how ı ıs not i because ıts ın a dıfferent place on the keyboard. Anyways julıa and ı arrıved yesterday and met up wıth our frıend andrew from barcelona and we had dınner on the bospherous rıver lookıng over to ASIA! and there ıs cool turkısh musıc and sıngıng all over the place. Our hostel ıs really fun and they have a rooftop lounge wıth lots of turkıshy decoratıons etc.

Our flıght here was really funny because of our flıght attendant that made jokes over the ıntercom. As we were landıng she was goıng ıts been a pleasure to have served you all etc etc yada yada and then she goes - you were so much better than the last flıght . . . honestly -

Thats all for now I need to go I thınk were goıng to have a turkısh bath today - both scary and excıtıng!

Londres

Hey everybody, sorry for the lack of posts. I've been really busy moving out of my homestay and packing up. Right now I am in Brighton visiting fellow MCAD student Jenny Tondera, with my friend Julia that I met in Barcelona. Here we are!



Last weekend we visited London and saw big ben, the tate modern, westminster for an organ recital and many many other places. Today, Julia and I visited stonehenge, it was about two and a half hours away by train and a little bus. It was really cool and eerie only a little bit.
xxxxxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Todavia en Berlin

Here is one more thing I did while in Berlin. After my friends left I still had two more days in Berlin. I had read about a cool Vietnamese restaurant on the internet and since you can't get any Vietnamese food in Barcelona I decided to go even though it was like a half hour tram ride. After waiting two hours to climb up inside the glass dome of the Reichstag I hopped onto the tram and started my journey. I was getting nervous because it seemed like i was venturing into the suburbs of Berlin but as I got closer to my stop I noticed a lot of asian people getting on the tram, VIETNAMESE people, I was like okay awesome this is good. At my stop everyone on the tram practically got off and I was getting so excited....then I was like but where are they going because they were all kind of just wandering through this gate into what looked like a giant parking lot. It actually was a giant parking lot but just beyond it were three giant warehouses!!

Here is a photo of warehouse 1, or Hall 1, to the left there were two more


So inside of each there is a small hallway and you will find Vietnamese everything, clothing stories, hair salons, nail salons, restaurants, groceries and even many fake flower shops.

Here is the inside


I picked a restaurant and asked what the lady would recommend to me but she spoke no english and i don't speak german so it was kind of pointless and then she just pointed to something and I said I'll have that, it was like a chicken and pepper dish it was so delicious in like a light sauce and then you can add this sauce that is slivered garlic and hot peppers, not sure if that is true but I thought it was garlic....

Then I went to another place where i saw them grilling meat and decided to go there too, they didn't speak any english either so asking for the meat that is grilling outside was kind of hard but somehow we managed, it was pretty good and came with some vermicelli noodles, lettuce and basil assortment and i think fish sauce.

After traveling a lot I have learned to kind of just watch what the other people do and then do the same, so i saw everyone eating this jelly, coconut milky, tapioca like thing with a spoon and decided to try it. There was like a 12 year old girl who helped me and after trying some terrible german with her she revealed her perfect english to me. It was incredible! She said something like, its jelly fruits with coconut milk would you like ice with it. crazy! and then she asked if i wanted to try it but i said no and just paid her and started eating. It was just kind of like jelly candies stuff with coconut milk but it was good, there were also kidney and lima beans in the bottom which kind of freaked me out.



If you're counting i ate two giant meals and that thing right in a row and then bought a steamed bun full of meat, hard boiled egg and cabbage for the road, it was actually my favorite thing. I never found the actual restaurant I was looking for though.

Tchuess!

Tchuess is kind of like cheers in German I guess, not for making toasts kind of cheers but like a "see ya" cheers. My trip to Germany was a great success, I was in Berlin for 7 days and Weimar for about 4 days.

This is currywurst, its a sausage, supposedly with curry in it? and then it has some ketchup curry sauce and then curry powder on top. It's very typical street food in Germany, it's so delicious. I think when I get back home I will probably make it.


This is inside the Treptower park flea market in Berlin. I'm not sure how we actually managed to find this place because it's really tucked away behind some fencing inside a bunch of warehouses, but we did! and it was really incredible as you can see. This is a fairly tame photo of some of the things we found.


Some booths were a little more extreme


Here is Kate, my friend I stayed with in Weimar. She is studying there at the Bauhaus University. Together we ate tons of ice cream and sausages and this photo was taken in the entrance to her friends apartment where they made us some curried vegetables.

Weimar is also home to Goethe and Schiller and some other writers, it has lots of libraries.

While in Berlin, Kate surprised me and was also there! We met up at this scavenger hunt. This is a photo of probably just half of our team, if that. Each team had a color, ours pink, and also a large speaker blasting electro music. Our team won! I think we may have only completed two tasks but we won anyways and I got a certificate.


Berlin was my first city outside of Spain to visit. It is incredibly different than Barcelona, the climate, the people, the food, the way the city is set up and there is so much street food whereas in Barcelona there is pretty much none. Berlin is a very interesting city because it has so much incredibly recent history. Walking around you can see buildings with bullet holes. It's also a very young city, I didn't see that many old people just lots of 20-30 year olds. I also found Vietnamese food, but that is for another post.

Butifarras

Butifarras are a kind of catalan sausage. Sunday for dinner, amongst a platter of butifarras and meat was a piece of blood sausage. Romi had gone to the mountains earlier in the day and purchased some different meats. She decided I needed to try the blood sausage too, it has blood of a pig, go figure. When I put my knife into it, it just kind smooshed all over the place. The consistency was like wet and soft. Then I tasted it and I really liked it, it's kind of sweet and savory but I couldn't handle the texture, it felt so mushy. It was literally like you are eating coagulated blood, wet though. I ate half of it and then just gave up and finished watching Pasapalabra. Oh well, off to Germany I go this week to experience more sausage and also eat sauerkraut! I love sauerkraut I'm very excited, I want to try and bring some home because this german I met told me you have to put in the fridge for a couple of days to let it sit and develop flavor. Auf Wiedersehen!

Pais Vasco

I took a trip with my program to Pais Vasco, or the Basque Country. We visited Bilbao and also San Sebastian. San Sebastian was probably the most beautiful place I've ever been. Its right on the coast with tons of beaches and mountains and there are really old buildings and tons of seafood. Tapas in Pais Vasco are different because they are served on little slices of bread, they are called pintxos. It is gastronomically speaking probably the best place in spain according to all of our guides. They have many 5 star restaurants and some of the worlds best chefs. The are incredibly expensive but I managed to have some mind blowing food, like a fried ball of brie! It was melting all over my hand, but it was so good. The bars just have tons of pintxos lined up and you just start eating and then you pay for what you've eaten after. There is also a greenish wine that they serve poured from really high into a glass, it spills a lot but apparently that's just how they do it. Many things are different including the language. They speak euskara, or basque, which has no roots in any other language in the world. It has many many x's, t's, k's and seriously no us of the letter m.


Here is a photo from inside the Santiago Calatrava, from valencia, walking bridge in Bilbao, He also designed the airport. Both the bridge and airport have this incredibly light feeling. The walkway of the bridge is actually made of clear glass blocks.


Here is the Guggenheim! in Bilbao, the museum was really fun, seriously just like all fun. I saw tons of Richard serra pieces, the best piece i've ever seen by Jenny Holzer, the gigantic Takashi Murakami exhibit and they were screening a Ryan Trechartin video <--that's for you zach nash! It was really amazing, and in front is the gigantic Jeff Koons dog covered in growing flowers. The staff wear really cool dress uniforms designed for the Guggenheim, at least i'm guessing that because it had Guggenheim embroidered on them.


Here are some sculptures from Eduardo Chillida that we saw in San Sebastian, Chillida is also from San Sebastian and his scluptures are everywhere. There are some tubes as well on this stone structure against the cliff that make sounds when the wind is strong enough.

Los Pancakes

Last Saturday Romi and I made pancakes together! I found a recipe for pancakes in spanish so that I could make sure she would understand it. Romi made the batter while I took a little nap and then I helped her figure out how to cook them on the pan. She thought they were really sweet and she liked them. She said that's probably why so many americans are fat. Especially with all of the syrup on them. It was a funny experience for both of us. The photo is also for my grandparents because they wanted to see a photo of Romi.



In other food news i ate violet flavored ice cream and also chocolate goat cheese flavored ice cream. They were incredible! My friends showed me this cafe where they make all of their own ice cream flavors like black olive, raspberry vinaigrette, mojito and lavendar. There must have been more than thirty different flavors there. The owner is belgian and loves giving out samples. If you ask for one he will suggest another flavor to try combining it with like mango-curry or gingerbread-peanut butter.

Mi Habiticion etc

I've forgotten to post in a while! Here is a photo of my room, this is after Romi cleaned it though. She cleans my room and changes my sheets. Its feels so good to come home to a really clean room I love it. Also about my room, it is light purple and there is a little mold developing. In Spain, because of the humidity you need to constantly air out your room. I didn't really know this until some odd spot developed on my wall, then Romi told me to just open my window every day until they go away. Little by little they are disappearing.



and please don't judge me for the waterbottle. You can't drink the water here because it will rot your stomach. Or at least that's what I was told and I seemed to get a little sick everytime I tried drinking for long periods of time. I refill with water coolers when possible.

I am beginning to get all my plans and tickets purchased for my month of may traveling adventure. Here are the places I am going!

London
Brighton, England
Istanbul, Turkey
Amsterdam
Budapest, Hungary
Romania

For spring break I am going to Berlin with some friends and also to Weimar, Germany to see my amazing friend Kate who is studying at the Bauhaus! This will actually be my first time outside of Spain, and the amsterdam airport which i was in for an hour on my way here!

En Tarragona

Last Saturday we took a little day trip on the trip to Tarragona. It's about an hour and a half outside Barcelona. Tarragona is a very old Roman city with tons of Ruins, we walked up to their look out tower and on the walls and even over an aqueduct which was actually slightly terrifying as there were strong winds and you are walking where the water was supposed to run so there aren't really railings and its really really high. In some parts the ledge is crumbly or gone as well, really actually kind of dangerous. Oh and also, what do we find but dog poop on an ancient Roman aqueduct, Really? the dog just couldn't wait and now I have to dodge dog poop at over 100 feet?





Here's a little xurreria stand as we were leaving Tarragona, it was so clean and freaky, they sell churros they are kind of just like you know them. They have these in Barcelona too but this one seemed more cool, more like in a david lynch movie or something.



This is obviously not very Barcelona but we went to a sushi restaurant with a conveyor belt, it only cost nine euro for all you can eat sushi, beverage and ice cream! Que chullo!



Yeah somehow I ate this, it tasted like clay and garlic. Not great but not bad, my friend told me what it is but I don't remember.



You really wouldn't believe the pain I endured getting into the MACBA (the contemporary art museum of Barcelona)Library, but I did and look what I found inside, can you spot it! I really don't know why they chose to have the Walker magazine and also, not pictured, the tetsumi kudo catalog when they don't have any other magazines from any other museums in the world. How cool though no?! I had a little moment when I saw this.

Dulces y Chocolates

Here are some of my favorite new candies! Spain is full of candy stores with all sorts of beautiful, colorful candies and chocolates. I have found some amazing chocolate stores with chocolate that has wasabi, ginseng and guarana and all sorts of odd things. The chocolate can be expensive though.

This is sour strawberry spaghetti. It looks so silly and childish but its very delicious. It has held my number one candy spot for the last two days.



This is a new Milka bar I splurged on today. It has a biscuit, cracker in the middle with a layer of really creamy white chocolate. Milka is very creamy like dairy milk. I like the crunchiness and saltiness of the biscuit inside. I am going to try and save it to enjoy the whole week.

Also, I have a lot of free time today, which explains all my posts, because we had one on one interviews with our spanish teacher today instead of having class. My teacher told me that I speak well in class and he likes that he doesn't have to call on me. He asked me why I speak well but do poorly on tests. My real excuse is that I didn't realize we were taking real tests, I thought they were just assignments, honestly. So I told him I just get distracted. Sometimes in Spanish telling the truth is hard because I don't know the vocabulary for it. He also told me about books I can buy in this big store called FNAC that will help to improve my Spanish comprehension. More on my adventures in reading later.

Lunes!

Monday! I am going to elaborate a little about a kind of regular day for me during the week...

8:00 - I woke up and at some chocolate cereal that Romi bought for me. I usually don't eat really sweet cereal, but I like this kind, very chocolatey. I also ate an orange and had orange juice. I think Romi makes herself fresh squeezed orange juice some days, but not for me, she buys me orange juice, but not often. Romi makes me breakfast sandwiches, they are regular sandwiches though, but i take them for lunch a lot. Its a money saving technique.

8:30 - I walked to school. It only takes me about 20 minutes to walk to school. It probably wouldn't take me as long if it weren't uphill. I prefer it to the metro though because I find it kind of abrasive in the morning. Plus I get to walk with all the parents holding hands with their kids walking them to school, its very cute. I also found a squat that these kids are living in. I will have to take a photo because its this amazingly beautiful old house that is just kind of boarded up and there's graffiti that says things like punx rule and stuff. Very interesting. Its across from the pizza hut, go figure.

9:00 - spanish class with Francesc. I like my spanish class, it's about 12 kids and we just kind of chat about our weekends and our lives in spanish. The teacher is really nice and it is a very low pressure environment. We get small exercises to complete, nothing too big. On monday we read mystery stories and talked about them as well as our weekends.

11:00 - Spanish Art and Cultural Heritage Class with David Sanmiguel. David is the new teacher, he's much better than our last teacher who left suddenly for a month. She's from Australia and we think maybe her house burned down in the fires. Anyways David is cool and last week decided we should have a test, that i took today. The class freaked out a little but it was no big deal really, so he kind of scolded us during the class because we had a paper and no one had printed it yet. Printing facilities here aren't really up to par. I am getting lost here sorry.

12:45 - Lunch! I decided I would not eat romis ham and pate sandwich that she make. My stomach was still woozy from the flu or strep or whatever I had the last week. I saw a doctor but she only spoke spanish and didn't tell me what I had. She said I had plaque in my throat, gross i know, you should have seen it. So i went to a little cafe with my friends and ate tuna croquettes which look like mini corndogs except they have tuna mixed inside, yummmy and my other favorite, patatas bravas. They were spicy too, it's hard to find spicy food here. The spanish don't really like spicy foods.

13:45 - Yep military time. More spanish class, can't really remember what we did. Maybe we talked about our family or what celebrity our partner looks like etc etc.

15:45 - Spain in Europe. Easily the most difficult class I have ever taken. It's all about the development of urban cities and the economics of it and all this stuff. The teacher is spanish and she speaks in really fast english that is kind of you know like a little off it takes a while to figure it out sometimes. I have never studied anything like this so I am learning kind of a lot and some of it is pretty obvious but it is stressful.

17:30 - I scramble to finish a long paper that was due for spain in europe that I didn't realize was do/didn't want to do because i was sick over the weekend.

19:30 - I begin my walk home trying to avoid all of the dog poop that has accumulated in the sidewalks from the day. Don't get me wrong I love the little dogs here, they are so cute and many don't even use leashes, apparently the pickpockets don't go for dogs. I just don't like their little 'cacas' they leave everywhere.

20:00? - Arrive home and watch pasapalabra on the television with romi while eating some white bean soup with some vegetables and a tortilla de patatas. The spanish tortillas give me a little heartburn I think. Can onions do that, I really don't know what it is. Romi was using her cell phone during the program today and then after she was done she asked me if I was eating my breakfast sandwiches. I said yes I eat them while I walk to school, obviously a lie. She said oh okay, when are you going to get fat, engordar was the verb of the evening. I told her I can't get fat and that i eat a lot. Keep in mind I am a recovering sick person! She told me that if I don't start eating more I will always be a stick, which she has told me before. I told her again I just can't engordar okay! Then she asked if my whole family was thin, I said no and then I showed her some photos of my family and she said they looked strong, that I looked like my mother and my sister is guapa! I also showed her a picture of Buddy, the dog. Then she told me all about this little dog she had for a while and proceeded to dig through her photo album for twenty minutes looking for a photo of him and not finding one. She said its name was Rocco but she had to get rid of him because he was destroying the apartment. She never found the photo and then we finished watching pasapalabra, which was kind of a boring episode but they mentioned Prince! and the clue was that he was from Minneapolis! Romi likes prince, we've already talked about him, she called him the little black man.

21:30 - I was tired at this point and just went to my room and went to bed. But then I couldn't sleep so I just laid there for a while. Then i fell asleep

I hope that wasn't too boring for you to read, thats a pretty typical day for monday anyways. Thanks for putting up with typos too because I didn't proof read that at all. Adeu!

un video mas

more sitges carnaval! from Jack Randol on Vimeo.

This one is a little more tender

La mejor rua que he visto en mi vida

So I went again to Sitges for the best day of the carnaval, TUESDAY! who would think to put it on a tuesday but the Spanish. But anyways it was the best parade I have ever seen. The float isn't the most important part here. The dancers and the act before it is. They have very very elaborate costumes and they do a dance before moving on. The content was very different than in the states but also the face that the streets are so tiny made it feel different too, much more intimate. Here are some photos and I took several videos as well, some worked out better than others.

funny how her eyes match her head piece so well




Here's my video, I kind of messed up the timing and they don't start actually dancing until half way through

Carnaval in Sitges from Jack Randol on Vimeo.

los ladrones

This past week has been quite a wild ride with my friend Jenny coming to visit with her friend Ramzy from Brighton. We did a lot more sight seeing and we saw a flamenco show here in Barcelona. On saturday we all took a forty minute train ride to a little beach town to see the Carnaval of Sitges. Carnaval is kind of like halloween wear everyone dresses up except here in spain they like to dress up in groups. like a group of penguins or sheep or pirates or crayons.

here is an older photo from La Macarena in Sevilla. You can go up around the back and see the cape too.



here are the tapas I ate while filming the little video you may have seen! the left was the paella, in the middle is calamari fried, and patatas bravas on the right. Patatas bravas are some of the most amazing foods of spain. It's fried potato pieces with a hot sauce and mayonnaise or like at this place its a spicy aioli on top. These were by far the best ones i have had here in spain.


Another macarena figure I think, most of the time they are crying.


Here are some orange trees! these are all over the streets in Sevilla


Carnaval!


On the beach


In other news, I kind of am starting to miss the comforts of home. Jasmine Deli and vietnamese noodle soups, riding my bicycle, this is odd but I miss wearing big heavy coats, cooking giant meals for myself, hamburgers made of ground beef and not ham, thrift stores and being able to use my telephone without worrying about the bill. Until June I will wait.

Here's a little video of the flamenco show we saw in Barcelona, which turned out to be better than the one Sevilla, surprisingly. From what I've gathered Flamenco is all about the build up. It's like a lot of slow motions and then a big finale. Seeing it here in a video makes it seem not that cool but its very exciting in person. This time that we saw it the dancer only came out for the second half. So it was like music music waiting waiting and the dancer would come out and you'd be like oh my god for like 20 minutes and then it was over. And then they had an intermission and they would do it all again.


Flamenco in Barcelona! from Jack Randol on Vimeo.

buen tiempo en Sevilla

Last weekend we went on a little excursion to Sevilla, or seville. Sevilla is in the South of spain. It's very traditionally Spanish and we ate lots of amazing little tapas and saw a palace and a church. More photos.

Plaza del toros. We didn't see a bullfight nor do I think I would want to but the arena is strangely beautiful and peaceful while empty.


This is my friend Julia right before we took off for a bicycle tour of Sevilla. I forgot how much I love riding my bike until then. I really miss being able to just hop on my bike and go places. I love the metro and all but nothing really beats biking. BMX is very popular in Barcelona, one of my friends here brought his bike in his suitcase and he rides around and meets other people traveling to barcelona to ride bikes.


Alcazar is a palace in sevilla. It was originally a Moorish fort. It's a good example of the Moorish influence in Spain.The Royal Family can still come to Alcazar and stay in it! They would live in the upper levels.
Another labyrinth in the Alcazar! this one was pretty low though, not as difficult.


An open air space within the royal palace called the Courtyard of the Maidens.


Plaza Espana in Sevilla! There is a placa Espana in barcelona too that is pretty epic. Its right next to another plaza del toros that is going to be converted into a shopping center.....I'll let you think about that one.....


TAPAS !!! I got my video to work here it is! Bienvenidos a Sevilla


Tapas bar in Sevilla from Jack Randol on Vimeo.

Laberint d'Horta y Sevilla

I've encountered two labyrinths here in Spain so far! They really like labrynths.

this is the laberint d'horta located in the Gardens of Maria Cristina. There are a bunch of gardens here that are still kept up. Lots of fountains and pools and buildings, its very magical and also very close to the metro!





You can see all the way to the sea from here!



Here is the entrance!



In other news I just got back on Sunday from a weekend trip to Sevilla, It was very fun and Sevilla is much more traditional Spanish than here in Barcelona. I have a little video of inside a tapas restaurant that we visited twice. There is also this place called Plaza Salvador that fills with like a 1,000 people every day during siesta and they all just drink beer and wine. We went one day after eating tapas, there is only one place to buy beer it felt kind of like the state fair with just one vendor and a ton of people though. But everyone is there, kids, adults babies all sorts! Anyways, more photos of Sevilla a bit later. Jenny Tondera, another student from MCAD, is coming to visit me today she is probably on the metro as we speak, I will some photos of our adventures later!

Es lo que hay

"Es lo que hay" is kind of like saying, it is what it is. Like say at a restaurant they run out of the food you ordered so they just give you something else, or a cafe is out of to-go cups for a week, or a store you want to visit isn't open at the time it says it is, or maybe even you're teacher doesn't show up to class but also doesn't try to inform you of it. It just is what it is and that's how the Spanish operate. It's kind of like a vacation lifestyle. I mean you've got the sea and mountains right next to you, everything else is just extra.

Also I visited La Catedral de Barcelona, It's huge and they have tons of niches for different saints that you can pray to and leave flowers for. They also have coin operated electric candles. I definitely lit one for ten cents.

From the outside it doesn't look as cool but it is just massive and incredible inside. Also the photos get kind of cut off by the blog formatting so I'll need to do something different, i don't know what yet though, you can always just click on them.



There are white geese that have lived here forever too! Our tour guide said they were big white birds and forgot the name for them in english so i thought that there would be swans inside but no they are just like big white geese.









there were crypts all over the place!





Yeah I was a bad tourist at this point.

Here was a soap store we found around the corner from the cathedral



In other words I am feeling much better and my sickness is all gone except I am a little coughy due to all the smoking that goes on everywhere here. Tomorrow I hope to go to the flea market and maybe I'll take some pictures to put on here.

Classes, My classes are going just fine. Some never have homework while others have really random papers and projects assigned. Teaching in Spain seems to be a bit different. NO ONE eats in class. Drinking water is fine and sometimes coffee, although I have a teacher who will tell you to leave if you have a coffee. My I'm taking a class called Spain in Europe which I thought would be from more of a cultural Heritage perspective but its all about the economic development and growth of cities and all that. I guess they are kind of related but right now we are just getting like background education on economic growth and cities which is kind of boring me a bit.

El Mercat de St Josep de la Boqueria

La Boqueria is a big open air, sort of, market. There is a big roof that covers pretty much the whole thing. Inside you can buy everything, today we bought some items for a picnic and walked over to the Ciutadella Park. It's quickly becoming a default picnic spot. Our goal for the picnic food was ham, brie and bread and maybe also wine. Most were accomplished but after seeing entire slaughtered pigs we felt like we should skip the buying of meat. Our brie decision turned out very much in our favor as we got like half a wheel of brie for three euro. And on with the photos......

Marzipan fruits and chocolate hedgehogs/porcupines?


meatttttttt


What????


I visited the CCCB, can't remember what that stands for buts its like a contemporary art center in Barcelona, and this was the front desk you walk down under this really fancy building into this giant warehouse like lobby and theres a tiny desk. I of course fail to capture the feeling of this lobby but here it is anyways. Mainly this is for my walker peoples, enjoy!