2 nov

Barcelona. A clear blue sky, a tempting sea at our disposal, the hibiscus (if it is hibiscus Julie says it ‘s bougainville), still flowering, 25 degrees in the morning. What on earth were we doing in France?
Flew into Girona, 88 kilometres from Barcelona, but no reason for Ryanair not to call it Barcelona. Just like I left from Weeze, just over the Dutch border in Germany, which Ryanair calls Dusseldorf that is also about 100 kilometers away. Some fellow travellers didn’t realize this last thing and had driven to Dusseldorf, which has an airport by itself. They had to fly to Weeze to be in time. Luckily the German Autobahn provides in that possibility.
From Girona busses were ready to bring people to the real thing, Barcelona. Unluckily those busses also do not go to the central bus station at the Placa de Catalunya, where I would meet Julie and Claire, but arrives at Barcelona Nord.
It is only one metro stop away. If you take the right train. Which I didn’t. Some people at the station said I had to take the next train. At least that’s what I thought they said. They must have meant the opposite train. Ah well. When I got into the metro station it was light outside, when I got out it was dark.
Nice to see Claire, a shining blond haired beauty in a country of shining dark haired beauties. She’s staying with us for the next two days. A few weeks ago she wa robbed of her handbag by some guys just ripping it off her shoulder. So she decided against taking a handbag when she went out last night. She hid her key in her bra. It was gone at the end of the evening. Not the best place to hide a key, I guess, with all those curious Spanish guys around.
We went to have some dinner in Mataro, on the way to the campground, which is north of Barcelona. We walked a little bit across the beach, but were hungry at 7.30. That’s ridiculously early to be hungry in Spain. One restaurant looked a little bit open and after a deserved drink even the cook arrived so we could order a splendid assortment of Tapas. Still don’t know what cuddlefish is – squid according to Claire, but mainly because it was black – but it makes the best croquettes. The garlic potatoes were divine; the sardines sardines (what can you say); a combination of shellfish in a delicious sauce; some kind of hake, prepared to perfection and afterwards some cold creme catalan; a mouthwatering melting chocolate cake with icecream and some cheese with quince-jelly. And this with a view of palm trees and dark black Mediterranee. It hardly can’t get better than this.
So now the trip will continue. In the airplane I read most of the book ‘pilgrim without God’ from a dutch journalist who walked, at the end of the eighties, from Santiago to Amsterdam, as far away from God as possible. I was a little sceptical, but read some reviews of the new edition and liked the author Herman Vuijsje from other work, so bought it. It is a really well written book, and more sympathetic to religion than I imagined. His real struggle is with the then dominating I-culture. The idea that ones life is about self fulfillment.
I was surprised by the similarity of our thinking. Or better said, by the lack of originality of mine. Which made me realize that it is about time to focus on a theme for this trip. The 12th century it was and the 12th century it still is. But what does this 12th century represent? It is a time of relative prosperity, which results in decadence and as a counterreaction austerity. The decadence has its obvious flaws, but the austerity is extreme also. It is a perpetuum mobile, naturally, history is. But the fun thing is to try to find similarities between different areas and timeframes.
To be continued.

PS While in Holland I reread some of these blogs. I was appalled by the amount of spelling mistakes and plain broken sentences. Part of the problem is that I type these things on the iPad without spelling control. Then I transfer it to the Blog and go to spelling control. I can only do this after I have ‘published’ the blog. I thought this was no problem, because everyone would get a link to the updated blog. Which is not true. I will change this, and apologies for the many mistakes.