Flu in Barcelona

I'm sorry to report I did not get out to see much of Barcelona since my last report, as I came down with a pretty bad case of the flu and/or viral infection. I got sick over last weekend and by Monday morning when classes began I was in an awful state. But as fate would have it, there was a doctor in my class of six students and he helped me through the worst of it. It went to my chest and became infected, but between the doctor and help from the teachers on what to ask for at the pharmacy I made it through the week! Needless to say, school was about all I could handle this week and so did not get out to explore.

It is a pretty rigorous schedule. Start school at 9:00 a.m., break for 30 minutes at 10:45, then break again for 10 minutes at 1:00. Go from 1:10 to 3:00. During the two brief breaks I attempt to scarf down some food so I don't starve to death. I study at least four hours a day after school is out. I'm not sure I'll keep that up in the weeks ahead.

Despite not feeling well, I did learn a lot in my first week. We're already conjugating verbs, and yes, speaking complete sentences. Spanish is amazing -- for every fricking verb, there are six possible ways to say the word (and this only in present tense). So for instance the verb "to have" is TENER, and depending on who the verb is refering to can be tengo, tienes, tiene, tienemos, tieneis, and tienen. FOR EVERY VERB! Anyway, I expect when I'm finally done here I will be able to speak a few sentences!

Feeling better the past couple days I did get out to find a great vegetarian/health food restaurant with a great soup/salad bar just off the la Rambla. I found it on the internet then went looking for it. Today I took a ride on the train to the beach to say hello to the Mediterranean. I was looking for the gay beach and using the gay European guide, but their directioins suck big time! I think the guy who wrote the Barcelona section was faking it. Anyway the trains here are way cool. The Sea was nice to see (ha) as well. I picked a lonely bench to sit on and meditated on the Mediterranean.

I think it will be hard for me to get into the night life here. For one thing, the bars don't start to get hopping until after midnight. The clubs after 2 a.m. And they are all filled with cigarette smoke. Everyone it seems smokes here, and the smoke is driving me crazy since I am allergic to it. So I am exploring activities and clubs I can join as a way to meet other people in the city. I'm not going to make friends in the school, as they are mostly all pimply-faced college kids, and they come and go all the time. One of my teachers is bringing in a list of english speaking clubs she knows about, as well I found one on the internet which I will explore.

There is one young blonde boy from Germany who I think may be gay and has given me the eye a few times. And there's a young girl in his group of friends who has been flirting with me as well. But I've been way too sick this past week to even think about any of that.

Until later, hasta luego.

Hello From Barcelona!

I'm not feeling particularly creative at the moment, but I felt like an update was in order.

I arrived in Barcelona late Wednesday afternoon local time, which in L.A. the time was about 6 in the morning. Although the flight in first class from San Francisco to Frankfurt was comfortable, as usual I was not able to sleep a wink. However the Melatonin I took seemed to work wonders, because I felt as if I had slept and was able to make it the rest of the day just fine until it was time to hit the sack local time.

I had a few mishaps along the way, like nearly missing my connection in San Francisco, and not checking my bags all the way to Barcelona (they stopped in Frankfurt and I had to get them, then recheck them), but all-in-all I got here safely and secure. I'd hate to think about getting here any other way than I did.

I spent the past three days getting adjusted to the local time (nine hours later), and figuring out how to get the necessities of life (food, water, alchohol, sleep). They say in Barcelona everyone eats dinner very late (around 10) and if you go out drinking or to the gay bars it is after midnight. I've not been able to do that yet. I usually have a light dinner anyway, and I've been asleep by 10 every night I've been here! I need more time to adjust to that local tradition.

I've walked the La Rambla, taken the la turistic bus around town, and today I rode the very easy to use Metro to Park Guell where I visited the casa de Gaudi where he lived from about 1906 to 1926. Gaudi is the famous architect who is responsible for many of the famous modernistic buildings in the city including the "under contstruction" Sagrada Familia which is gigantic, beautiful and probably what Barcelona is most famous for. The park itself was actually once the grounds of a rich family and their beautiful home. It was crowded with tourists on this very beautiful sunny day. The weather has been so fantastic I've been walking around in shorts and a t-shirt and been very comfortable. The air was clear and lovely, and the view from the park was spectacular. You can see the entire city of Barcelona and the Mediterranean from its many viewpoints. I heard people speaking English (mostly British), Italian, and some Japanese. There are very few Americans here. Or if they're here, they are all sleeping and only come out at night because of the huge time adjustment. In fact I heard some British girls giggling about some American girls they met who were in fact at the time I was there, sleeping.

I must go back to the park on another spectacular day like today and take some pictures. Today however, I did not want to lug my camera along with me. These first days are devoted to getting acquainted with the city with they eyes of my body, not the eyes of my camera. I will post pictures eventually.

I am struck by how white and European everyone looks. I was expecting the Spanish to look, well, darker. If I spoke fluent Spanish, I could be mistaken for a local (well maybe not, I think someone put a target on my back that says "I'm American")! And everyone dresses casually around town, which is not what some friends told me. They told me that the Spanish tend to dress up, but I've found that everyone walking around (albeit they may mostly be tourists like me) are dressed pretty casually.

It's Saturday night in Barcelona, but I'm not going to brave the gay bar scene tonight. I feel much to intimidated, and OLD to do that right now. I'm afraid of rejection, and I won't be able to communicate effectively with anyone. Instead I am going to rest up the rest of the weekend and prepare myself for my Monday 8 a.m. placement test where I will be placed in my appropriate level of course (probably beginner) and then start my six hour Spanish language regimen at 9:00 a.m. I'll be doing 30 hours/week classes for the next two months, then 2 weeks off for the holidays and then back for two more weeks.

T Minus 4 days til liftoff

Everyone keeps asking me if I'm excited about leaving for Barcelona. Although I don't tell them, the answer is truthfully "no, not really."

I know myself, and when Tuesday comes around and I'm through the airport security and my bags are checked and I'm sitting in my luxurious first class seat on a jumbo jet to Germany (my first stop in Europe) THEN I'll be excited. For now I'm passing the days and doing what I can each day to make them the most. The "most" is getting to the gym every day, eating healthy (I'm switching to vegetarian, I don't want to be remotely responsible for contributing to the cruelty of animals and besides it's healthy and less expensive), and reading through as many of the books I've retained so I don't have to pack them to Spain. I still don't have room in my luggage for everything, and so I need to somehow make room. I donated yet more clothing to charity to the point now I have hardly any clothes at all! And still I won't be sure until tomorrow when I do a practice run of packing if I have enough space yet.

Tonight is my final "goodbye party" with some good friends (mostly all straight -- I never did meet any gay friends while here in WEHO for 2.5 years, how sad). We're meeting at the Abbey for drinks and food. Tomorrow my friend S. picks me up from the hotel and takes me to where he is house sitting in Brentwood. I hang out there for a couple days and then he takes me to LA International where I say bye-bye to L.A.

Quintessential L.A.

I just got back from dinner at The Ivy with three actors. Two are working actors, meaning they actually make money at their trade, and the third wants to be in acting but for now is selling real estate. In fact the third is the realtor who represented me in the sale of my successfully closed condo. My realtor treated us all to dinner tonight!

The Ivy is a cool restaurant on Robertson that is frequented by famous actors and gets stalked by the poperazzi. In fact as we were just leaving, one could feel the eyes on our party checking us out and wondering "are they someone?" and "who are those people?" In fact as we were waiting for our car to come around, apparently some young actor from Arrested Development was just getting into his Porche. I say "apparently" because I was totally oblivious that anyone famous was anywhere near, as I talked to one of the lovely ladies in my party. It wasn't until my realtor was driving me to my "hotel" that he told me about the actor sighting. Neither one of us could remember the name of the guy (sorry star-stalkers!)

The whole evening was "so L.A." Gossip about actors who are in rehab (but "shhh" you're not supposed to know that.....), Merv Griffin is gay (apparently this is widely known, but HELL I never knew it until tonight), shaving body hair, waxing, plastic surgery, restaurants that are cool to go to, blah blah blah.

Last night I had dinner with family (or what's left of them) at La Boheme restaurant which is arguably one of the top ten restaurants in L.A. for my "retirement/going away" party. We sat in a booth on the first level and dinner was sooooo good and the wine even better. I was a little nervous about the dinner because I wasn't sure if my sister and I would be nice to each other. We were, and it turned out to be a fine evening. The young, gorgious waiters even did a little bit of flirting with me (or so I'd like to think). I commented on how I thought one of the guys was "cute" and my sister commented that she thought he was keen on me. I accepted that, and fantasized about having an affair with him the rest of the night.

Both my escrow and my Mom's escrow closed on the same day. Is that strange? I am very happy that those closings are behind me and the money is in the bank. I was kinda worried there would be an earthquake or a terrorist attack or some strange thing to screw up the closings. I believe the real estate market has topped out for now, and if things fell out of escrow I did not think I'd get full price again. As it turns out we got full price on my place and my Mom's place. Who the hell pays $439,000 for a ONE BEDROOM condo? That's what I got for mine.

You think I'm paranoid? The day before I was to sign loan documents to refinance my condo in Calabasas 14(?) years ago, the "Northridge Earthquake" hit and my condo was totaled. It was immediately red-tagged and uninhabitable.

The day before "911" I had two offers on my 3000 sq. ft. home in Reno which would not have happened if they had waited a day or two and I would have been screwed.

The day after I moved into my condo in Malibu (and I had not even purchased home insurance yet) there was a fire that swept through Malibu and I had to evacuate my place and watch helplessly as the fire approached. I watched from the highway as it burned passed, and I could feel the heat and felt the panic and horror as I realized I could lose my home in an instant, and without insurance! Everything turned out okay.

Only nine days left until I leave for my new life in Barcelona.

In Between Time

I just saw Jai Rodriquez of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy fame at the Starbucks in West Hollywood. Actually I saw him walking earlier on the Boulevard with his two young friends but did not realize who he was. I dipped in to check my mail and then proceeded to Starbucks to read for a bit when I heard someone say to a young man "Hi! You're Jai's roommate, right?" And he answered yes. It was then I realized that Jai was right there, and we made eye contact. We did a few more times actually, until he and his friends left.

I officially closed escrow on my condo yesterday at Noon! I am soooo relieved. And now I am in a cheap but decent hotel still within my neighborhood where I can walk to everything including my gym, Trader Joe's, Starbucks, etc. Today I grabbed a bus and went to Whole Foods and had a organic salad for lunch, before proceeding back to Weho and seeing Jai. In the mail was a gift from my new friends Bonnie and Mike from Florida that I met in Ajijic Mexico -- they sent me a great map of Barcelona and a guide book.

In about 45 minutes I head over to Westwood near UCLA to meet up with one of my Tuesday night drinking buddies, K., where we will get together for one of our last happy hours together. Then tomorrow night it's dinner at La Boheme in West Hollywood with my sister, niece and her boyfriend. It's supposed to be my "going away/retirement" bash with family, but somehow I ended up getting roped into paying the whole bill. That's another story for another time. Sunday I have dinner at an equally elegant restaurant (forgot the name for now, tell ya later) with my real estate agent and my old next door neighbor to celebrate the sale of our condos. Tuesday I have lunch with an old work friend, Tuesday night drinks with yet another friend, and then Friday night is my retirement bash with my closest friends. Sunday I head over to where my good friend S. is house sitting and stay with him for a couple days and then I head off to BARCELONA on the following Tuesday!

Hey Jai, wanna come sleep with me tonight and give me something as a going away present?

Everything's Gone

All my furniture was carted away last Thursday. This morning I sold my refrigerator and microwave to two seperate Craig's list buyers. I've either sold, donated or given away most of my possessions. The few things I AM keeping are in boxes and stored at my niece's place.

Tonight Kitty goes to his new home. I think this is going to be hard for me. We've been together since he was 3 months old -- 16 years. Right now he's sleeping peacfully at my feet, although he knows something is up... he got pretty upset when all the furniture disappeared. He no longer has a bed or couch to sleep on or hide behind. So he sleeps on his favorite place, my chest. I sleep on a camping matress and a sheet and blanket, and he sleeps on top of that. And we both dream together.

After Kitty, one more trip from my niece's boyfriend Monday to take a few things like the barbecue and some plants and one more box. Then Tuesday I move into a hotel and clean the apartment. Wednesday we close escrow.

My mom's place is coincidentally closing escrow one day before mine.

Don't be surprised if there's an earthquake or some natural disaster shortly after my place closes escrow, or even after I leave the country. Whenever there is a huge change or a new chapter in my life, almost always there is a huge natural event in either the old or the new place I'm moved to.

Stay tuned.