Episode IV: A New Hope

Making an entry with pictures obviously takes longer, and I don't like spending much time using the internet. Still, I want to put pictures on here from time to time. Here are some.

This is the inside of the cathedral La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Standing in such an immense cathedral while it is still under construction is fascinating. Can you imagine standing in Notre Dame while it was being built?


Here is one façade of the cathedral. You can find better pictures of it elsewhere online.


I saw the bulls go running from the balcony of an apartment a friend of mine in Pamplona got me access to.


This one is the Plaza del Castillo, the center of the old part of Pamplona, during the Fiesta de San Fermín. There were more people, trash, and lights than when I studied in Pamplona two winters ago.


This is the invitation-only bar above the Café Iruña during the fiesta. A friend of a friend got L. and I in here.


Three in the morning, a few hours after the Bastille Day fireworks, I had some red wine.


C. and I biked around the wine country outside of Vienna. It was a nine hour tour that led us to a few different villages. The guy in the red shirt was another member of the tour group. This was a good day.


During the Austrian wine tour, we ate lunch in the back room of a family's house in a small village. This family made their own wine, jam, schnapps, owned deer and boar, and had a small trout farm. The sausage in the foreground is filled with cheese and wrapped in bacon--this meal doubled my body weight.


And here is a picture of my friend D. entering a southeastern Ohio pond by way of zipline. This was a few hours ago.


And here is me doing the same.


Pictures never capture as much as I wish they did. They're good reminders though. Ones like these give me hope. I have some more life to live, and I want it to be as good as the moments represented above.

Episode III: Things That Seek Their Way

I have not had a cell phone or more than a few minutes of internet access for 16 days. I like it.

I saw the bulls run through the streets of Pamplona. I had a drink in an invitation-only bar above the Café Iruna in the plaza in the old part of Pamplona. I wore white pants, a white shirt, and a red bandana tied around my neck (as did 1 million others). I watched fireworks go off above Pamplona's citadel from a friend's grandmother's apartment balcony. I took a boat ride on the Seine. I bought a poetry book at an English bookstore in Paris (Shakespeare and Company) that is about New York City and written by a Spanish poet. I saw the Bastille Day fireworks from the lawns around the Eiffel Tower. I saw Sofia Coppola's new English language movie in Paris a few months before it will premiere in the U.S. I saw The Third Man--black and white film noir featuring possibly the greatest entrance in movie history--in Vienna, the city it was filmed in. I have loved this movie since early high school. And I took a picture of myself in the same doorway which that legedary, shadowy entrance centers around. I biked through the wine country and small towns an hour outside of Vienna. I swam in the Danube. I played sand volleyball with some Australians, an American from Ohio, and one Brazilian. I walked around in the ruins of the castle in which Richard Lionheart was imprisoned hundreds of years ago. I went to an outdoor Austrian horror film festival and saw a movie from 1960 starring a very young Jack Nicholson. And there have been other little adventures as well. Such as typing a weblog entry on a keyboard that has the y and the z keys switched (takes longer than one might think). I will post pictures in a few days when I am back in the U.S.

"Don't ask me any questions. I've seen how things
that seek their way find their void instead."
-Federico García Lorca, "1910"

p.s. My friend C. just showed me a picture online of her brother in a Viennese garden. The picture was taken three or four days before she and I were walking through the same garden. Sometimes paths cross; sometimes they don't.

Episode II: I Hope I Am Always This Young

Upon arriving in Barça, a city I have never been to, I felt at home. I remembered the Spanish culture and felt comfort. I have not spoken the language in many months, but the words, phrases, slang, it all came tumbling out of my mouth as instinct.

Italy beat Germany last night to advance to the World Cup final. Walking along the beach after the game, I could easily tell who the Italians were--the ones whipping their clothes off and running and screaming into the sea.

Before the Portugal vs. Italy game tonight, I visited La Sagrada Familia, the most visited unfinished building in Europe and probably the world. Gaudí started the cathedral in the 19th century, and it should be done by 2030 (fingers crossed). When asked why he was worrying so much about the details on the peaks of the towers (who would ever see them so high up?), Gaudí replied that the angels would see them. That quotation says more about the building than I ever could.

In a few days I will visit Pamplona for the Fiesta de San Fermín. Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises is set during the fiesta and the book was to the expatriates what On the Road was to its generation, both recording a time and inspiring it. In Spain the title of Hemingway's book is simply Fiesta.

Passionate experience is often associtated with youth (at least in the movies). A friend of mine posits that the reason so many people fall in love with foreign countries they visit during their twenties is because we grow so much during this time of our lives; everything is new. If this is true, I hope I am always this young.

Episode I: Hello

On September 6th, I will head to the Pacific and live on a small island for a couple years. I wanted to start a weblog for my time there, but I will be spending the next 17 days in Europe... so why not just start a blog now?

Tomorrow afternoon I will fly from Columbus, Ohio to Barcelona. In addition to Barca, I plan to spend time in Pamplona (during the Fiesta de San Fermín), Paris (around Bastille Day), and Vienna. I will return to Ohio on July 20th. I will post again when I have something I think is worth posting and when I have internet access.