nuevo blog y algunos imagines

So I've now started this in blog form, save you all some inbox space.

As an added bonus, here are some Photos I've been sitting on. For two months work it's not that hot, but I have been a little distracted..

so here goes...

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Plaza St Jaume (just outside my house)

They might be Giants live at Primavera Sound

The Macba (where sonar happened)

Some skaters at the Macba

A couple chilling by the CCCB

Some sky from the Macba


The hedge maze at park orta

A roof atop Park Orta

Camper Shoes have a hotel. This is the lobby

Right next door is Food Ball
The food is all in the shape of balls and you eat on terraces!

One of guadis creations, right by my office

cafe life

Dirty Linnen (in public)

Baking sun in Barcelonetta (just by the beach)

A lot of effort goes into shop front design here

A bicycle sunbathing

Shoppers by el Born

Passeig de gracia shopfront

I just liked the colours

The arc de Triomf

Stanstead ariport arrivals

Miedo del verano

I'm a little scared of the summer. I just had a conversation about it with Alesandro (who's Woody Allenness is taking over his Hawkeyeness slowly but surely ever since things got weird with the unrequited love of his life). Apparently the reason that all the locals run away from Barna at the end of July and beginning of August is that the combination of the heat and the endless stream of tourists makes the city unbearable. Don't get me wrong, Barcelona loves tourists, it breathes them in and out and fills it's lungs with the great time they have, it's just that in summer it all gets a little too much.

I'm finding myself in a very weird situation here. I'm attracted to this city by all the things that attract the tourists, and the only real difference between me and them is that I'm effectively prolonging my stay by doing a bit of work during the week. It's not an uncommon way of doing things here - I'm surrounded by people doing the same thing, although I admit very few of them dragged their jobs with them. The only exception to this is Jose, who persuaded his job they needed a Barna office to supplement the Reading one and then became it. He's Spanish though, and so for him it's less exotic.

And yet despite this I really resent the Brits that come here. Obviously not all of them, especially not the ones I invited to come stay with me and you are all still welcome! It's the weekenders, the hen nights, the ones who come because it's cheap, and who hang out in the Irish bars and drink themselves into a stupor that isn't thwarted by opening hours. I resent them for two reasons, firstly I live on their stagger home and have to bustle through them during the day when I need to be somewhere. It's a lot like I used to feel living in Camden (have I said this before?) being the fish that swam against the current of market shoppers and night outers as I tried to visit my parents on the less fashionable end of the northern line.

Secondly though, I can't help feeling they're having more fun than me. Actually this is inevitable, they are on holiday, I'm trying to pretend to live here, it's different. It's really hard to get an early night for your Spanish exam when you can hear the party going on in the plaza round the corner. I could probably solve this by moving out of the old city but there's something just too romantic about it, and although I love the metro here I'd much rather walk or cycle everywhere.

The discrepancy between Barcelona for the English as a foreign Land (BEFL) and as a LOCAL city for LOCAL people was brought home to me this weekend at the Sonar festival. For the uninitiated Sonar (it means ring or timbre) is a three day Electronica festival which has been going for about 12 years and has gained a reputation for being the place to hear the cutting edge of Intelligent Dance Music (or IDM as people who listen to it hate it being called!). When I first went two years ago, with Catherine and Steve and Jodi, it was amazingly exotic.

It takes place by day at the MACBA, Barna's answer to the Tate (which I can't really say because the MACBA was built first) and still my favourite modern building on the planet. It's a maze of simple geometric forms, and a patchwork of all the colours you can make out of white paint - an empty space with enough personality to be an exhibit in itself but without ever detracting from what's in it. One of my problems with the Tate is that it was often nicer to enjoy the room than the works in them.

So for three days every year they put down a bit of astro-turf and hey presto it's a festival. It reminds of the first ever red nose day when one of the mother's didn't get the point and made my friend at primary school a red nose out of a bit of egg carton, some red marker and a rubber band. It's a cursory attempt, but you're still in an art gallery.

Actually it's the perfect setting for a type of music which I've always liked but never felt quite at home with. I mean what is a "laptop set" for heavens sake. The guy could be playing solitaire for all you know. That said I heard some great stuff, and the bad stuff didn't matter anywhere near as much because of the setting and the ease with which you could just wonder about.

By night it's a different story. The acts are bigger and dancier, and the setting is in the warehouse district in the sticks (as much as you can be in the sticks in such a compact city, it was still only a tenner in the cab). It's this Huge vacuous set of aeroplane hangers or conference centers or whatever the hell they are. I remember the first year I came and there was Bjork singing to thousands of people at one end of the room and bumper cars at the other end without interrupting each other. It's an all night mad party for people who like their parties large loud and anonymous, and don't get annoyed at having to buy tickets to get drinks. Oh and some of the toilets are real - and some aren't, indoor chemical toilets take some getting used to.

So getting back to my thread (sorry guys it is 4am) I was blown away by the otherness and foreigness of it all when I first came, this really isn't how we do things back home. Actually much of that was having Barcelona on hand in the in between bits - infact as I remember I bored Jodi to death telling her how much I wanted to live here. This time round it's charming in a different way, it's so great to have a party you can go back home from. I wonder down MY street, past MY favourite tapas bar into MY local art gallery and, oh look there's a festival on.

The other thing that struck me this time is how English the damn thing is. Almost everyone there, Acts and audience, where from London. It's understandable really, Catherine worked out it was cheaper to fly here, stay here and buy the ticket than go to Glastonbury. Not so for the locals. Most of my Spanish friends were complaining that they wanted to go but it was way too expensive, and Jovi called it elitist, which really threw me.

So this year, although I was exhausted after leaving the Saturday by night, I decided to go down the street a little way (it's 7am by the way) and take a look at the anti-sonar free festival round the corner, a kind of outdoor squat party. This was all locals and by the time I got there very messy. Lot's of dirt, lot's of half broken soundsystems playing unidentifiable music, loads of cheap considering but nonetheless expensive warm beer, and for good measure a derelict building nearby with people on the roof. When I went to look at how they got up there I was shocked to find there was no roof. It was just a gutted husk of a building with scaffolding up one end and loads of that stuff they make hammocks out of strung across the rafters, in which were dangling very tired party goers who looked from below like happy flies caught in a spiders web. I half wanted to have a go, and then thought better of it. I had by that point run out of film which is something I think I'll always regret.

For those who like this sort of thing, my pick of the festival were DJ Yoda, The Battles, Hot Chip, Radian, The LCD Soundsystem (although that doesn't count because I knew them already) and the incredible, indescribably talented Jamie Liddell. Thank you so much Cat and Steve for showing me round musically, I'd have been lost without you and I hope I returned the favour by helping you around the non English bits.

Anyway, enough from me, it's fireworks night tomorrow and I need some more sleep.

May your summers be one big festival and the grass always be astro-turf on the other side.

XX Danny

Treinta y una semana

I made this terrible mistake in Ecuador about 3 years ago. I'd been keeping up this online diary and I'd been on and off updating it with my travellogue, blogging before anyone had heard the term. I was enjoying it a lot, not only was it my only real link to my life back home, but it was an excellent way of sorting my experiences into perspectives and thoughts, and I can go back and read them now and the memories flood back.

Only somewhere around the border with peru something terrible happened. I began being so bogged down in actually having the experiences that I forgot to write them down. At first it was just laziness, or occasionally I had the excellent excuse that the particular backwater tourist trap hell hole I was in at the time didn't have internet access. But after a while I'd get trapped into a cycle where I hadn't written for so long that it was actually too much hassle to catch up. It's funny, I have friendships like that too, people I'd love to contact but I don't really want to have to explain myself, and excuse the time that has past.

I've realised I've managed to do this here too. I haven't written to you all for at least three weeks, which is the danger zone because any more than that and you'll never hear from me again. So despite the fact that It's four am and I have school tomorrow (both excellent reasons in their own right to not write a travelogue) here goes...

I guess the big news is that I'm now thirty. Or rather the big news is how inconsequential it feels. It happened about a week ago, and I'd love to say it crept up on me but I don't think worrying about something for over a year counts as a surprise. I'd also love to say I don't feel any different. I do. Actually I feel a bit better. There's something about the inevitability of it that's quite appealing. 29 is all about impending doom. 30 is all about not having to worry about it any more because there's nothing you can do.

It couldn't have been a nicer birthday. Ros came to share it with me, which was wonderful - I loved showing off my life here to her and showing her off to my friends out here, all though she did annoy me by finding more veggie restaurants in three days than I found in a month (thanks again ros by the way, the thali at juicy jone's is fantastic!). Friday night we drank until the wee hours in a series of progressively less convincing bars (excellent cocktails and then bad rock and roll). Saturday we burnt ourselves to a crisp on the beach (my carefully selected party outfit clashed terribly with my bright red face).

The party itself was insane. I'd absolutely promised my flatmates we'd be done by three, so at three thirty AM I played my charango to about 40 drunken europeans (and one american) and then dragged them all kicking and screaming to a night club. This was after we'd turned my very domestic and homey flat into a veritable indie club (I played cajon to the clash, I'm sure they'd turn in their limo). The next day we sat in a sunny plaza by a bodega and watched the world go by with increasingly long cava induced vapour trails behind them. I took some of the cava id collected at the party to school the next day, and learnt loads of rude words that I'm sure my teacher would never have told me sober. I think I want all my birthdays to last an entire weekend. In fact, as Ros pointed out more than once, I should have two, like the queen.

My first week of thirty has been interesting. Lots more work than usual (I guess that's the pattern of these things) although the national gallery now have a nice online simulated horse race to celebrate their stubbs exhibition (I've heard it's very good). I'm not sure it's worth the three nights of all night programming (don't worry richard I'm exagerating, and I wont invoice you for 72 hours!), but deadlines will be deadlines. My actual birthday was basically pampering myself. I had an extra long swim and gym session (I am losing weight it's not just a trick of the light) and then blew the whole thing on a slap up lunch. In the evening I was introduced to barcelona's most popular champagnary, where there's barely enough room to get your glass of cava from elbow height to your mouth without seriously invading the personal space of about 6 people on the way up. It really was heaving, so much so people had to breath in time or their rib cages would grate against eachother. Excellent wine though (terrible food).

I then got dragged out by my newly made friends (it's hard not to make friends at such close quarters) to a chupito place. Chupitos are deadly single shot cokctail concoctions, usually downed with beers to make evenings go past in brighter colours. I had a Harry Potter (tasted like a terry's chocolate orange) and a kamakazee and then something that I neither remember the taste or name of, but I do remember how much larger and nearer the floor seemed afterwards.

Somehow I ended up at a rap jam. I've never been to one before, certainly not one in three languages. Rap is something I've never really had an affinity for or any knowledge of, and certainly recorded it's always done little for me. Live however it's another matter. It really is magical, watching people spiral rhythmic improvised poetry and enthrall and audience sat around them like disciples. It was mesmorizing (I wish my portugese and french had been up to the task)

So what else is new? The Spanish is definitely improving. I know this because people keep commenting on it, and saying how nice it is to be able to have an actual conversation with me. It is also very flimsy. It only needs one weekend of a visitor from the UK to nearly destroy it (or maybe it was the cava). I have mentioned cava a lot haven't I. It's very nice! So is sangria, especially when Ros makes it for me because I'm already too drunk to work out which end of the knife will hurt the lemon, and which end wont hurt me.

OK I promise I have also spent some time sober. Risa and JP came out this week again it was a joy to play host. The other great thing about having friends come and visit is that you can catch up on your sightseeing. I've now seen park guell, which although it's meant to be an unmissable part of a weekend in Barcelona I've managed to avoid for over a month. It's wonderful, a magically imagined garden city that no-one actually moved into, complete with hansel and gretel gateway cottages and an Iconic dragon that shares with the mona lisa the dual traits of being better in person and much smaller than you'd imagined. With Risa and JP I was introduced to Barcelonas labarynth. It's in a park even further away from the city center and it's a properly annoyingly difficult maze of hedges set in a dreamy wooded hillside park. We found our way through it quite easily at first because we mistook the exit for the entrance, but when I raced JP through the right way round I got horrifically lost and he beat me by a time too embarrasing to put in writing. I really ought to have guessed that if I passed him running in the oposite direction it probably meant the way I was going was a dead end. I blame all the cava from the week before.

Tonight I sent them away from their first weekend in Barcelona by taking them to the regular Sunday flamenco jam I go to, although the pizza we ate before dragged on a little too long and we missed most of it. I take it all back about the food here. It's excellent, I just needed clever and cultured people to help me work out where to eat (and how to turn pages in a guide book). It was especially nice because Risa is opening a veggie restaurant in a few months, so we got to check out the competition and I felt a little like a G2 food critic.

What else? Camilla and leah went home, which was sad because it wasn't until they went that I realised just how dependent I'd become on them! I miss you guys loads (Camilla could you forward this to Leah, I don't have her email!). Tim and Tom came out a few weeks ago for the primavera sound festival, which needs an email in itself to describe in detail! Iggy pop was excellent, although I refuse to believe he managed to defy gravity with his unzipped jeans through force of will alone, I'm sure at his age there's glue involved. New Order were great except for Barny Sumners banter which is almost as facile as his Lyrics. They might be giants were a blast, I've wanted to see them live since I was 16 and they didn't dissapoint (except by saying they were from boston which confused the hell out of me, I thought they were canadian). Oh and thankyou tim for my discovery of the festival, the arcade fire, who are from montreal and extremely good live (if you like a bit of accordian with your heart wrenching rock).

Right that's enough now, it's incoherent, pathcy and in places inaccurate for comic effect, but I have put finger to keyboard and broken out of my radio silence. I'm an adult now properly, and I need to be more disciplined. Watch this space for another update next week, and if I don't produce one feel free to flame me. If anyone is genuinely bored of all this text in their inbox feel free to tell me, I wont be offended in the least.

May your glass of cava always be half full.

XX Danny