Fiesta

There is something in this city that at times makes one feel like a lewd cat. Not because you deadly desire opposite sex (or gender on the same side) but due to the feeling that home is a perfect place only to cut veins open and you walk around Gotic and Rambla in order to feel this spirit of unceasing fiesta instead of sitting home in a cotton SpongeBob pyjama.  

Fiesta is the phenomenon that cannot be avoided. During several weeks I woke up in my small room on Sunday early mornings from an intense wish to get earplugs and a hand grenade. Some loudmouth proclaimed a new round of fiesta of the city area with an epicenter right in front of my house. Not to say the faerie didn’t have its conceptual moments. For example, I sincerely adored how they played the Imperial March for a joyful crowd of retired and disabled.

Also, I had a chance to experience a fiesta of city-scale: a holiday in honour of the Virgin of Mercy, Barcelona’s holy patroness. The stakes were high. Ciutadella park, three stages, projectors and Russian ballet. The whole bunch of ducks from the fountain was scared to death and a half of the city became excited to all saints. Yes, the whole army of Chaikovsky’s fans who could not have moved between three locations without a massive tragedy. So, the performance began 30 minutes later from a lecture delivered by some strange character in a red-violet suit (I had grown suspicious directly – ballet and red suits reside in completely different terrains of my brain). The MC explained that the culture will be divided according to the geographic principle. Those who were stuck by the first point would see the swan drama forepart, the others – the rump. After being hissed off, the emcee whisked backstage. At that moment I realized that the red suit was supposed to save municipal money for dry-cleaning in case of a catapulted tomato.

When the poultry yard was finally properly zoned, the show started. Here I began contemplating who fiddled whom in this story. Whether Barcelona paid too little to performers so the swans decided to play dead from the onset or, on contrary, too generous fees gravitated birds down to the condition of Peking ducks? I haven’t come to any conclusions but I knew one truth… In Russia for such ballet dancers would face a firing squad right in the foyer. Some transgenderly dressed up ballerinas swayed as old mechanic watch figures, the Prince jammed the stage with his 20-centemeters jumps and pathetically stretched his hands towards the projected image of the Swan Queen, which was the only thing that danced in that part. Thanks God, this shame lasted no longer than 10 minutes.

Then we tried to conquest the second site, but every spot was assaulted before us and even some trees served as the gods. Rain started dropping. According to a legend, Merce has a saint rival that annually spoils the fiesta with foul weather. However, that day the dame got a huge handicap from the red-suit guy and his plumaged friends from St.-Pete.

The feathers topic was continued on Plaça d’Espanya. There the scene was occupied by some singer having cult status and by her company consisting of two buxomed babes wearing nearly nothing except of carnival plumage. I have a feeling I have seen all upper secondary school pupils of Catalonia. And for sure all of them noticed the only incredible bore who yawned when the raving hosts roared all songs at the top of their lungs and hearts.

I went to sleep right after this. Just to charge for some new fiesta.

There are two types of love: one from a mere sight and the other will make you first stare a bit. So I rubbed my eyes and fell prey to the amorous spirit. Now officially: I am yours, Barcelona! Of course, It will take time before I can change relationship status on Facebook because, actually, she is a good bitch. So, everything is complicated but intriguing.

Now my story. It happened unexpectedly. In the metro. I peered into a quite vague article on migration regimes and pretended being a serious feminist. Suddenly a brief look up gave me an immense “Beauvoir-blow” straight into the prefrontal cortex. It turned out that a girl who was sitting next to me wept irresistibly and an unknown woman from the opposite seat had rummaged her bag and handed her a handkerchief, smiled, and got off at the next stop.

After four years in Scandinavia it is difficult to think that you don’t know something about feminism. You are aware that women can on equal terms with men strangle a galloping moose with bare hands, lead night plunders of rich seaside villages, and even sink from a lash kick in the perineum. And here in the catholic Spain one learns that women must help women in sorrow instead of getting moral orgasm through wrestling down men in some testosterone-related hierarchical binges.

The same day in the same metro I became a witness to how a girl sat her boyfriend to her laps and I came out enlightened from the underground.

This Mediterranean feminism definitely sets everything upside down. Feel the need to go and pummel a punch-bag to diffuse the emotional tension from this discovery. 

There is one mystery less in my life. Previously I decided to open an essay contest for the best story that contemplates on my dueña’s life. The premises, apart from her tantric inclinations, were the absence of big knifes in the kitchen, the whole dinner set by Villeroy and Boch and a crutch in a closet. However, the truth came out as soon as I learned four words in Spanish and did a huge advance in the field of “manual linguistics” – now I can explain myself in a system of elaborated hand movements.

It turned out that the woman was a political journalist (what explained a daily bottle of wine) and worked in a number of South American countries (answered for the phobia of sizable cutting implements). Then she got some kind of trauma (what clarified the crutch status); so, she gave up working in media (what cleared up why her daily dose is constituted only by wine instead of a keg of tequila). Villeroy and Boch unriddled itself by the Spanish origin and the existence of the democratic product line. Thus, venerating of Dalai Lama seems to be the most obvious matter in this story and the lady’s issue is closed.

But I still have some other enigmas to explain. Therefore, I proclaim a call for essays explaining psychology of an architect who created the building N.13 in the Campus Cuitadella. From the first sight it seemed to be a bunch of wagons for workers which are usually piled up on a construction site. Only when I was explicitly directed (means “pointed with a finger”) I realized that it was actually a place for “white collars”.

The composition is complicated by the general spirit of the place. This “Box N.13” is situated on the yard of the University library. The historic building was, possibly, a factory once but retired and since then has been serving with its old brownish bricks and gloomy wide windows the mission of preserving UPF’s wisdom storage. There is even a posh palm-tree growing on the side of this honourable pensioner. And here it goes – a ridiculous bunch of metal and preposterous aquamarine plastics. Yes, maybe I am aesthetically challenged, but I wonder: does being modern necessary demands being aquamarine? Or did the architect think: “I am unable to do it talentedly but I can always sell it as constructivism”?  

Another reason for culture shock is the passages between the building’s rooms that are separated from the outside world by wire mesh.  For an offspring of a dictatorship it strongly associates with a jail. However, it was the most explainable feature. As I understood later, modern architecture in this city acquiring a tendency to look like penitentiary institutions, no matter how intensively Gaudi spins in his grave. The local analogue of the Department of Culture lacks only machine gunners on watchtowers to become undistinguishable from a special regime prison. Yesterday Olga noticed some construction that looked like a casemate and my immediate hypothesis was that it must be an art gallery. We have to check, of course, but I bet that if it is not yet, it will be soon.

Apparently, every country has its own form of sublimation.

Last Wednesday - Italian pasta, Spanish wine and Swedish bar (with the tears of nostalgia drowned in mojito). Thursday - a grand tour through the whole city dabbed “Adiós lipidos” or “Die, feet, die!”. I promised to my lower limbs never repeat it. But oops! and we did it again: Barcelona-I-seen-you-all-walk on Monday. I know this city with my heels. Legs do not talk to me anymore.

On Saturday I realized that my only chance not to become an old maiden is to die young. Because it’s already too late for this, I went to a beach with Olga, the friend of my ailing youth.

Beach in Barcelona is an interesting place. Nearly all people lie there in two layers. We bet if a pair of teenagers who coiled just in couple meters from us  would have sex right there (N.B. the time was 3 pm.). Considering the almost officially enforced ban on bikini tops, local beaches are the worst place for those who have a broken heart instead of a kilo silicone.

Then it was a degustation of paella and sangria. The latter is a “take-off”-beverage. Only two little glasses and you are sooooooo high….Paella was tasty and one can study marine biology by its ingredients.

Earlier I learned two other national Spanish-Catalonian dishes: bread with tomatoes and sandwich with omelette. Bread with tomato tasted like a slice of bread with tomato. Olga told that in some fancy restaurant all ingredients are served separately and the visitor can make it personally. So, then it is delicious. Guess that for such money and work it will seem tasty, for sure. The sandwich was neither creative: a half of a baguette with omelette. But it works for those who perpetrate genocide on own legs and feet by means of five-hour-long walks around the city. Also, on the evening of my arrival I ate a fried fish which looked suspiciously like an underage plaice and was so bony that I felt like a dog that had tried to attack a porcupine.

And yesterday I was lucky – I found a fruit store where they sell avocado that are larger than life, peaches which are like odalisques from “One thousand and one nights” and other worthwhile products. If I discover a good bakery I can safely anchor here. 

The best way to mash personality, mull away self-respect, mock out self-confidence, and spit on all best human feelings is to make an individual to obtain a residence permit. Estado de Extranjería y Emigración is the land on no return. It cherishes the strong heritage of the Great Inquisition – even if you had been a good catholic you would have sold the immortal soul only to get through application procedures retaining clear mind. Guess that if ETA had opened a service “bomb delivered”, there would have been a substantial shell hole instead of the police building on the cross of Guadalajara and Bosch.

Mine long and sad story had begun in Moscow. Communication with Spanish consulate there made me think about courting a whimsical girl. For the first, she heartlessly ridicules you out and flings your love letters into your face in front of plebs. Then you turn your pockets inside out trying to pay for her caprices and in the end of the day she does not come to a date without a call because of some strange illness. Seriously, I will never become a lesbian.  No wonder that I started the “visa corrida” like a bull at a gate and finished like a psychotic sheep bleating to heart attack at every phone call.

But Spaniards just could not let the story end up so easily. As a student one gets only a tree-month visa and has to prolong it as soon as the wandering student reaches the point of destination. For the first, one must be registered by place of living. A kind woman in the local registration body helped me by explaining where I have to go next, printed out a map, and I headed to the place. This way paved with her good intentions led me to wrong authorities. A guard handed me a paper on Spanish and another map with the right site marked. I called the “urgent number”. My friend said that even a hedgehog knows that I shouldn’t be in this place. And I needed two photos what the hedgehog knew as well.

I made a spurt to home, grabbed photos and rushed to the third point of the quest in hope not to get another map there. I didn’t. Instead it was a time for magical quizzes and errands. A man who protected the gates of the impregnable police station gave out a scrap of paper with a list of necessary documents. It is self-explainable that they were a bit different from what I initially expected. I had tried hard to bang some information out from this Spanish Sphinx. However, the absence of English saved him from revealing any secrets. I burst into hysterics.

I cried and the fairy helper came. Olga wiped off my tears, snivel and slobber, armed me with the right set of documents, and kicked some guidelines into my head.  So, on the next morning there was a fight with a monstrous serpent which appeared to be a queue of immigrants lined up around the police station. Staying there reminded me of Gypsy campsite. Whole families to the third generation from Pakistan and Latin America with infants, toddlers, pampers and daily ratios stored in pushchairs, and just some occasional white-skinned students with googly eyes. The burning sun was rising…

The line became comprehensible after three hours. Since the previous day the guy on the gates had learned “two twenty” what he triumphantly demonstrated when he explained me what time to be back. Woman’s tears are a tool of progress.  It was around one o’clock…

At five I was free. First we were gathered on the parking. I though, may be, they wanted to load people in trucks and deport us en masse. Suppose, they run out of trucks because, finally, seekers were allowed to some unconditioned room to wait their turn. Mine was 43d.

It appeared that my profile in the Ministry of Justice was filled in rather arbitrary. For example, the date of obtaining the passport stayed as a day of birth. Don’t know how their cognition functions but a three-month-old could not possibly attain postgraduate studies. However, the officer was quite amicable. He rapidly talked to me in Spanish. I just nodded and smiled idiotically with the feeling of being illegal gastarbeiter. As I understood, the officer was amused by the subject of my program. He smiled bitterly. “Democracia? Hah! Economia!” and showed a thumbs-down.

In the left over, I have my personal number, a couple of acquaintance and nervous tic. I guess, it was a lucky end for such kind of adventure. So I promise! I promise! Next time I will write about something more pleasant! I just did need a discharge. 

Holla - Holla - Barcelona!

Hi there! 

Looking through the facebook in order to find  something that is not about weather and menu for the dinner of the evening in statuses of your friends? It’s not here. I am going to write exactly about this. Just from my point of location. 

There is two types of natural heat which I have newly discovered. The first squeezed me to a near-syncope condition on the pass control in the Moscow airport, where I spent an hour and forty-five minutes trying to not be flattened by other victims of Russian transport management. 

The second has hijacked my brain on the arrival to the airport of Barcelona and is still holding the grip of a bulldog. Shut the heat down already!!! It is not funny! I’ve got my nose burned and the endless feeling of my sticky skin reminds me of the sticky disgusting ghost from Ghostbusters.

For me palm trees are a sign that I won’t spend more than two holiday weeks in a country. Here I had to rival a cognitive dissonance between the palm-tree-reflex and the notion that I am here for a year. A Russian saying states that one needs to hug a birch before dying. Here, if something happens, I will embrace a palm. What a strange fate. 

Spanish is not my strong side. Especially when English is not the strongest of Spaniards. Lamenting about the advantages of Swedish linguistic education which made Sweden such a paradise for international students. 

Apart from representing Hell on the Earth, Barcelona happens to be quite nice city with exceptional bar culture as its distinctive feature. Nearly all buildings in the city have their own bars with age-old clientele. They are always stuffed with old gentlemen and ladies, young machos and muchachas, indispensable dogs of most unthinkable breeds, bar owners and their children who are brought up in this very bar collectively by all customers, and so on. As my friend said after I was registered at the university, the second most important duty is to decide on “my” bar and my bakery where I can even leave keys… Barcelona is a city of small business so, I guess, it is also important to appoint my fruit- and vegetable seller, butcher, fish vendor, and provider of notebooks.

People live outside and it is quite natural – it is impossible to stay inside because flats are deadly small and sultry. So here am I sitting and writing this on the balcony.

I live with the owner of the flat. A nice woman with a past and a dog. She is an alcoholic and a Buddhist. I want to learn Spanish just to know what of that she has become first. And, of course, to ask where one can possibly dig out such a dog. The beast is 20 centimetres in withers, with unproportionally small head set with separate long hairs, and thin legs on the sides of a hock-formed body. My grandfather calls this “a hybrid between a pointer and a frog”. For the first she was quite suspicious and tried to bite off my fingers, but now becomes hysterically happy when I come home. She falls epileptically on the floor showing she is in dire need of a belly scratch or jumps up aiming to slobber me to a wall. Sometimes she forgets the mistress. I worry for jealousy. In Spain it is dangerous after all.

In the next episode you will know about my collisions with the aboriginal bureaucracy.

P.S. If someone disapproves of my English, take this - puta que te pario!!!

Black Swan: Bedlam on the poultry yard

Bravo! Bravo operator! Gosh. He’s been dancing instead of Natalie Portman during the whole film! He must get ”the Golden Slipper” or something else that debuting ballerinas get for the perfect performance. One more thing. When Nina finally managed to press the Black Swan out – that is worth to see. I was holding to the chair pleading not to be blown into the opposite wall by the thundering windblast that smashed me in the face even from the 300x250 pixel picture that I managed to find on this cruel all-for-the-rich Internet.

Now to the dark side of the matter. I just can sense it with all my nerves, I can feel it under my skin - this creeping, freezing quivering which is progressively conquering me from the the top of my fingers, crouching by my arms and legs, coming through the stomach and flowing into my trembling heart … and it is happening now.. when I see how the film industry is turning into kabuki theater. The same actors performing in the same stories just in somewhat different decorations. How many times have I seen those types who make yuk of American Psychiatric Association? Nina was mad. And apparently stupid because she didn’t realize that visions of herself levitating above the bath and spilling blood while she was masturbating, strictly said, were out of the norm. Besides, this obsession with tearing off pieces of skin – anyone would think at least about Valerian root. The poor waterfowl missed the time to make an appointment to a doctor. Instead she continued with this unhealthy self-touching stuff. And on and on… And of course, it was her mother who had started this evolutionary dead end. First time can see Vincent Cassel being the most normal of the team. I understand Aronofsky. Adding another completely tainted character instead of a typical “businesslikely” lecherous French would have overweighted the story. Less than that I understood how Nina managed to dance the whole last act with this hole in the abdominal cavity? The costume was white, you know…

Therefore, I think disturbed bird mind is far more aesthetic than bird flu but the later seems to be much more appropriate reason for media hysteria than the former.

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Like the word “droghandel”

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