Carving up some Cured Ham: Random Thoughts

It's March 29 and there was a full eclipse of the sun today, partially visible from here in Barcelona. However, I didn't wake up early enough to catch it. Since I just recently got DSL in my funky little gothic flat, I stayed up till 3 in the morning last night shopping for music on the iTunes store. Some the treasures I found: DJ Krush/Jaku, The Electrolux Decade, Bill Laswell/Imaginary Cuba, Cream/Disreali Gears, The Best of Lou Rawls, Muddy Waters/Electric Mud, The Jazz Influence/Kevin Yost Compilation, Nightmares on Wax/In a Space Outta Sound, and Jazzflora: Scandinavian Aspects of Jazz. Of course I didn't buy the whole albums - I just love that you can buy individual songs for only 99 cents a piece without getting the whole album. Perfect example is the DJ Krush album Jaku. Most of the songs on this album don't do much from me, but 2 in particular are masterpieces - Beyond Raging Waves and Pretense. Beyond Raging waves blends traditional Japanese shamisen music with modern, dark trip hop, in a way that only DJ Krush can pull off. It's superb, click this button to link directly to the song on the iTunes store where you can have a listen:



Aside from surfing the Web, I've been spending a lot of time lately shopping at the 1 Euro store. There's lots of 1 Euro stores in Barcelona and they are the equivalent of 99 cent stores back in the states. When I first found out about them I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread (actually better, since I don't eat bread). I must have spent 30 Euros in the past week buying stuff, most of which has since fallen apart. It seems that nearly all of the stuff you buy in these stores comes from China and is manufactured to the absolutely lowest quality standards you can imagine. I guess they think, and probably somewhat rightly so, that it's cheaper to keep buying a new tape measure or other household doodad every week than making a better quality one that lasts longer than a week that you have to charge more for. I have mixeed feelings about these places (kind of like the Walmart conundrum one faces in the good old USA). The other day I bought a phone for 7.5 Euros which is about $9. Actually it hasn't fallen apart yet but the funniest thing about this phone is the instructions that came along with it. So funny that I had to include it here to share with the rest of the world. Click on the image below and check it out, it's NOT TO BE MISSED.

Layers of History

One of the most amazing aspects of Barcelona is the tremendous amount of history that has taken place here. Growing up in America, it's rare to find a city or structure that's been inhabited for more than a few hundred years. Most places in fact don't even go back a half-century. Barcelona is different, this city has been a melting pot of cultures and religions for a few THOUSAND years.

While Barcelona keeps up with the modern world and casts its gaze to the future with as much gusto as any other modern city, it maintains deep ties to the past, and the irretractable tentacles of history run deep. One need only stroll around the immense Barrio Gotico/Ciutat Vell, the old part of Barcelona, to get a feel for the historical legacy that this city represents. Here one finds late period Roman ruins, along with Medieval cathedrals, cobble stone streets and dimly lit alley ways that predate the English langauge itself (and of course, the Catalan one as well). I recently moved into a section of the Ciutat Vell (old town) called the Born, or more specifically, the Sant Pere neighborhood, not far from the spectactular Santa Caterina market place. My building is a text book study of the multi-layered history of this city, and the Barrio Gotico in particular. The structure I live in dates to at least the medieval period, with thick concrete walls covered with ancient plaster. The ceilings are 20 feet high and reveal wooden vigas so old that they've been bent into strange angles that seem to defy the laws of physics. Fortunately, the apartment has been nicely modernized with wooden floors (real, thick, slabs of wood, not plastic wood) and modern appliances, making it a cozy and spacious place that just drips with character.




Speaking of characters, any place this old is likely to be haunted, but my experience so far indicates that the only spirits dwelling here seem to be medieval nuns from some ancient cloister. I felt their presence immediately upon moving in but I haven't actually seen them (yet?). Scoff if you will, but I'd swear on a stack of bibles that this building used to be a convent of some sort that was inhabited by more than a few nuns (with a rather nice demeanor, btw). My suspicions have since been verified after I discovered that the nearby Mercat Santa Caterina was built over the ruins of the Convent of Santa Caterina, a huge and sprawling medievel complex dedicated to St. Catherine. The remains of the convent can still be seen beneath the market, which is only 2 blocks from my house.

But like an onion, the layers of history extend deeper and deeper in Barcelona. Even these sisters were relatively new inhabitants of the structure compared to their Roman forebearers. Outside my front door is part of a Roman aqueduct, preserved in situ, as seen in the photo below (yes, this is the lobby of my building, only 8 feet from my front door). The nuns themselves were living in a place that was already over a thousand years old during their lifetimes!




Dig a little deeper and you'll find more. Outside my front window, some ancient Roman ruins were discovered while workers were constructing a new housing project. They had to change the architectural plans so that the ruins could be unearthed and studied more closely. Here's a photo showing the archaeological team at work (this is 20 feet from the entrance to my building).