More On Settling into Our First City

Sorry folks, for the belated entry. The main source of delay has been a lack of photographs – we have been using a disposable camera since the apparently fatal injuries to our two digital cameras, and coordinating blog writing with photo development has been a challenge. And as my sister likes to remind me – a blog entry is not a real blog entry unless there are photos involved. Never fear, our au pair Eryn (see reference in next paragraph) has generally provided me with a few digital images from her camera to placate all of you photo-lovers, and I promise there are many more on the way. I have also felt a bit at sea – trying to settle in, feeling like I don’t have nearly as much time to myself as I want, and finding myself just plain tired at the end of the day. OK, enough with excuses, onto the entry.

First, the big news: Santa (as in Catalan for Saint) Eryn arrived approximately a week ago. Eryn, as many of you already know, is the poor soul who has agreed to help take care of the kids. Thus the Santa designation. Eryn, in short, is a wonderful person, and not just because she’s helping take care of Cory and Addy. She hails from Seattle – from which I believe I mentioned previously I believe all good things come – and has what I think she would describe herself as a varied background, from babysitting to managing a band and working at a radio station. Most important, of course, is that she is fantastic with kids, and kind, compassionate, and obviously curious about the world around her to boot. She was even understanding when we forgot her birthday on her second day in Barcelona - see pic of belated cake to the left. We are thrilled to have her as a member of the family.

Eryn’s arrival, and a couple of weeks of familiarity with Barcelona is allowing us to develop a bit of routine, which is good for everyone. What, you might ask, does a typical day look like for our lucky family? Here’s my best shot:

7am-ish: Matt or Rob, woken by Cory climbing into bed, wakes up and begins the morning ritual of preparing that typical Spanish childrens’ breakfast: PANCAKES. Yes folks, that’s right, we found a grocer that sells little packets of pancake mix and we promptly cleared out his entire stock. It’s pancakes every morning at our house! Only maple syrup is nowhere to be found in this town, so (Jill Gregson, mother of the soak ‘em in butter and douse them in syrup methodology, steel yourself) we sprinkle a little sugar. It actually tastes better in my not so humble opinion. Kiddie bellies full, we get some clothes on and do Addy’s hair. Eryn joins us around 8am to help out – thanks Santa Eryn!

9-10am-ish: Matt and Rob leave for some welcome alone time. This should of course mean sitting in some quaint café sipping delicious coffee and eating some pastry, but it has involved a surprising amount of errand running, emailing, trip organizing, etc. Turns out errand running is pretty much the same regardless of what side of the Atlantic it is conducted on. Net, net, there has been much less time for relaxing than we had both hoped. Oh well, cry me a river, right?

1-1:30: Matt and Rob arrive back home to meet the kids. One or both of us then goes out with the kids – to whom Eryn has fed lunch (grilled Spanish cheese sandwich, Spanish version of mini-pizza’s, BP&J – another grocery store find - or toast). The afternoon expeditions have so far generally been to seek out cool area parks/playgrounds in an attempt to further exhaust the children. We try, as we did today by visiting the famous modernist Palau Hospital complex or as we did recently in a visit to Sagrada Familia, to combine some sightseeing with the playground stuff, but let's be honest - it’s mainly about the playgrounds.

5-6pm-ish: Return home in a heap. Serve dinner to kiddos, watch a little video with them (they have been obsessed of late with the “Old Bamboo” sequence from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as well as the same tired two Dora the Explorer DVDs we've been watching since we left South Orange).

8-9pm: Kiddos in bed, adult evening begins. Usually make dinner (90% of ingredients for which come from this FANTASTIC local market about which I will soon write a stand alone blog entry), invariably involving sliced up local cheese, Serrano ham, and olives to start, and then usually some kind of more typical US entrée. This is, of course, a good excuse to talk more about the food here, which is we love. Baked goods are fantastic – the local generic grocery store has better baguettes than I have ever had in the US, and delicious croissants are ubiquitous at breakfast time. A funny side note - all cafes but Starbucks appear to have great difficulty and angst when asked for coffee "para llevar" (to go). They just don't get the whole concept, and give you this sigh as well as an exasperated look like "why can't you people just settle down and drink coffee for an hour the way the rest of us normal people do?" Then there are the tapas, ahhhh the tapas – they are basically awesome everywhere, but we have also rediscovered a famous little tapas place at which we ate during our first visit right of Passeig de Gracia called Tapas 24. My favorite dish so far is a tripe stew involving some sort of tomato and maybe cayenne soup combined with garbonzo beans, bacon, and sausage. Not exactly healthy. And then there was the fancy place – cinc sentis – that Rob and I decided to visit a few nights ago at the last minute for a 10pm dinner. Definitely out of the Ferran Adria school (his restaurant El Boulli was recently voted the best in the world, apparently)– foams and all – and easily one of the best meals we’ve had in quite some time. Food for the kids has also been pretty easy, especially given the general availability of sweets, from churros con chocolate to donuts and, dramatic pause here please, Spanish Chocolate drink, which is a bit like drinking chocolate pudding before it's cooled (see pic below of Cory and Addy enjoying their first cup).


Hardly a bad life, right? Some other revelations:

- Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise, but man is this childcare thing a tough slog! I had of course fantasized that the main thing I would enjoy in life would be “spending time with my family,” and it is of course gratifying, but dealing with two toddlers is some kind of mixture of patience, bribery, extortion, and intimidation. And then they say something really cute that makes it feel worthwhile.

- Cory and Addy are digging into the Spanish thing, also not a surprise, but really wonderful all the same. Eryn heard Cory ask a kid today, unprompted, “Como te llamas?” (What’s your name?). They are both now just as often saying ola and adios as hello and goodbye. Awesome. They haven’t quite gotten the rolling R thing yet and continue to call dogs Pedro as a result. We have decided to enroll them in a 1pm-6pm playgroup 3-4 times a week that is conducted completely in Spanish. Unbeknownst to them, they will also be dining on organic food of much greater variety than they accept at home - revenge is so very sweet!! The program is in a small two story building in a cute alley near the Poblenou subway stop, run by a woman steeped in some sort of Montessori and empowerment ideology. They have teeny little back yard with two chickens, two rabbits, and some play equipment. We think they’ll pick up a bunch of Spanish and, more importantly, get to hang out with more kids, something they clearly miss. Cory was unbelievably jazzed up after the first class, going back to singing his preschool songs, and dancing around.

- We continue to enjoy trying to understand the culture better, and appreciate the people more every day. Reading modern Catalonian and Spanish history certainly brings to light the moral and political complexity (a generous word, no doubt) of a society that tolerated a fascist leader into the 1970s (and then saw its fledgling democracy almost overthrown by a coup shortly thereafter). Barcelona, I am glad to report, was on the vanguard of the doomed socialist movement, and well known for its long resitance to Franco. Of course you can’t tell any of this when interacting day to day. What we see is a strange mixture of big city coolness, women constantly handing the kids lollypops and cookies out of their handbags (they walk around with a stock of this stuff for just this purpose!), people getting impatient with us at the grocery store while others ask expectantly if we are enjoying the city. Mainly we feel welcome and comfortable.

- One of the best things about living here to me remains the architecture, and I feel that rather than beginning to get used to it and taking it for granted, I am becoming more sensitized to it. When we decided to try to move abroad for six months, we decided to stay in only two places in the hopes of getting to sink into the culture more. Rob always spoke about wanting to be able to get to know the owner and staff of a local café at which he would drink coffee every morning. I loved this idea too. What I’m discovering for myself, though, is that getting to know the physical makeup of the place is just as gratifying. The buildings here are beautiful, and I’m coming to appreciate and enjoy them more each day. I’ve gone from focusing on their grandeur the first week or so to noticing the myriad little details, from ornamentation on bay windows to door knockers (yes, stay tuned for upcoming knocker blog entry). The influence of modernism (from steel to art nouveau in general) is clear and impressive, but it's the mixture in so many buildings of old and new style (European Baroque, Moorish, Nouveau, etc.) – a sort of design on the cusp – that I like best. I still know little about this stuff, but am learning, and generally just trying to soak up the variety. Some travel guides have said that the Eixample (the grid-like part of the city we live in) can be monotonous to walk through (one even called it a sort of urban waffle iron) but I find it the opposite - the diversity is there if you just stop to notice it.

On the architecture theme, we visited the famous Palau de Musica this morning on a guided tour that we both found very moving. Visit the link - it’s such a gorgeous place that I knew so little about before I got here.

- Rob is to be awarded the Ostrower-Gregson Medal of Honor for choosing an absolutely perfect location for our apartment. We have a subway (with a rare elevator, no less) less than a block away, and are a few blocks from both the old Gothic city as well as some of Gaudi’s most famous buildings (we literally walk past them every day). Central, central, central, and beautiful. We walk absolutely everywhere.