Peace and Love, Reus

It's been a while, but i felt like digging up my diaries and journaling the rest of my Portugal-Spain trip, haha.

I arrived in Reus, a small rustic town off Barcelona. It's the birthplace of Gaudi, though i believe he was attracted more towards the big-city glamour of Barca!

Imagine my surprise when I was greeted by my host Blanca and her diving instructor David with a very hearty..."Selamat Datang!" Haha. Both of them are avid travelers too who've had their fair share of adventure in Asia, including a months-long biking trail across China! Definitely want to try that someday too, wow. 

We drove around for a bit, to return their diving equipment. Blanca has been taking diving lessons, to prep for her trip to Madagascar perhaps - she's going with some frens to volunteer and teach there for a year or so!! Along the way we even had a little accident with the local traffic police...but i can't really remember the details now haha.

Last stop for the night: home sweet home in Reus! Out of all the hosts I've had, Blanca had one of the most memorable homes. It was a small, cozy one-room place, intricately decorated with books, drawings, a plethora of stuff with a very personal feeling coming through - i could really begin to see what kind of person she was in the home she's built! 

I remember the little kitchen where there was barely room for two, and the fridge choke-full  of home-grown vegetables, from green pepper, chilli, onions and potatoes to carrots, long beans, tomatoes. Blanca actually tends to a small garden patch together with her other friends, and they just love harvesting them fresh for their meals. If you've never seen home-grown veggies btw, they look nothing like in the supermarkets! In fact i had a hard time identifying some of the veggies as they were in the oddest shapes and sizes.

Anyway I made dinner for us both, braised pork belly with green pepper, and vermicelli with carrots :-)

Yummy~ i hope!

 The next morning saw us taking a ride to nearby Tarragona, the capital of Catalonia with some very Romanesque ruins, from Cyclopean walls to an astounding amphitheatre!

 Managed to catch the weekly flea market by the Cathedral- an awesome experience! 

An amphitheatre by the sea - what an entertaining spectacle it must have been ~

We had a light breakfast, then snuck off for a long ride across the hilly roads of Tarragona, the scenery marred by industrial structures like power stations, processing plants. But the deeper we went into the mountains and valleys, the further we abandoned modern civilization ... until we reached the castled town of Montblanc, nestled away among the rocky Prades Mountains.

Our destination: to have a nice picnic at Blanca's frens Guillem and Cristina's house, which was still further hidden away in a nearby barren village! We first met up with her other frens Edgar and Eliz, and then shopped for groceries and lunch. Sadly Sunday is truly not a day for shopping, and only one muslim mom-and-pop store was open for us to grab some drinks and snacks.

Upon reaching Guillem's house, my eyes completely widened. Here we had a concrete blockish house that looked exactly like a hermit's adobe! Imagine it surrounded by spiny bushes, a reserve water pool, and no grid electricity or water supply - i can't imagine a closer reference to the olden times of Spain!

Reminded me of Heroes I's ogre adobe!!

If i were to choose one coolest place out of all my travels, this is it. 

Guillem, a DJ schooled in old-school traditions, housed hundreds of vinyl records and an inhouse music system in about one-third of the adobe. The other two-thirds comprised of a counter bar where flies buzzed about in the hot, dry air and cushy sofas to lounge in. We had live DJ music on his scratch pad (which Guillem taught me to experiment on - really really fun stuff to try!), and later more of their frens came to join in the picnic. Absolutely memorable sights, sounds and smells that are still coming back to me now!

Oh, something i forgot to add: besides Blanca and Edgar, none of their frens spoke english. Everyone was speaking Catalonian most of the time :)  Talk about non-verbal communication! Haha. I'm amazed i still managed to fit in somehow, as we lazed and chilled in the fun picnic atmosphere.

As evening approached, we took a quick tour around Montblanc, climbing up the old Roman fort walls. There, the setting sun cast our shadows across the town beneath, and the breeze and the bronze light cast a warm feeling in our hearts...

I guess this was the time when it struck me... that Life is long, and meant to be enjoyed, every single moment of it. To me Blanca embodied this life philosophy perfectly, in living life to the fullest yet with the deepest sense of hope, faith and love that it does not end tomorrow, but will go on forever. How vast, varied and interesting life can be! You can be anyone you want, do anything you love, and not feel the least bit of regret about it.

Yes, it was then that I felt my perspective on life has truly opened up for me, telling me that I can live life the way I want, not the way society dictates. I can lead different lifestyles and assimilate different cultures, i can explore many options on the places i'll go, the things i can do. I can slack like a bum or overwork for a cause. I can fail, cry, laugh, hug, inspire, pause, learn, read, play, go broke, seek help, volunteer ... and find fulfillment and happiness in my own life anyway.

Because Life is long, and meant to be good.

She has never voiced this out, and in fact we have never communicated that well in the sense of words and sentences due to her still learning english. But i could intimately feel her way of thinking, her way of life. It felt so deeply touching, and yet so comforting, to listen to her share her thoughts and experiences as though they were the most common thing in the world, when in fact it is so, so rare especially in this modern age of material greed and egotistic self-pursuit, a global village of disconnected individuals, a world where, so they say, Life is short.

Blanca, means white in Spanish. 

To me, she had truly brought the colour into my life perspective, like the brightness among darkness; an undying hope for a better life, a better world.

As I snuggled into the mat on the last night of my brief, yet life-changing trip in Reus, i was probably thinking...

Me siento agradecido por el regalo, Blanca.

Experience, Barcelona

The Media always gives you a distorted picture of the truth.

A brief snapshot, to be precise, of a long chain of events, bits and pieces that form up history. If you didn't know any better, you would probably come up with a perception shaped exactly by pictures, videos of the dramatic incidents shown by the Media. Yet the only way to feel and understand the present is to be there at that very moment.

The world, 2011, has seen the Arab Spring, and in Europe, a long summer of discontent arising from the financial crisis' still ongoing reverberations. I was there, ignorant and unaware of the historic Spanish protests recently. All over Madrid, and later Barcelona, young people demonstrated against high unemployment and the political establishment. What better way to feel the current situation than to live with my 20-ish host Joan, who is a university graduate and yet, like many of his peers, can't find a full-time job in one of the economic capitals of Spain! He had to accept a pay-less internship now for months, and survived on his own savings over the years.

With his friendly, happy-go-lucky predisposition, however, Joan isn't pressured into signing up for any of the protests - yet. But who knows how many disgruntled young adults facing the same predicament are readying themselves to take the streets. Spain's growth is lagging behind that of Central European countries and unemployment is at over 21 percent, the highest in the European Union. While unemployment under 25-year-olds in Spain is at a staggering 45 percent. 45 percent! That is a LOT of unhappy people, folks.

My first few days in Barcelona, I explored the city with a different slant. Walking down from the Arc de Triomf to Ciutadella Park, I witnessed a labor demonstration against the Catalan government, with blazing banners, loudhailing crowds, guards with tommyguns. Chatting up some of the protesters, I found out they were showing their discontent with some of the labor laws being proposed in Parliament today.

After all the MPs entered the building, they dispersed without any fanfare. Hum. So that's what a protest is about. It sure looks scary, but it really didn't feel so. In fact, just a few steps away, the protestors marched past a group of toddlers at play.

Scarryyy.. maybe not.

Cute! 

 I feel that there is so much information lost, from being in the moment, to written and visual media. Even an accurately captured video footage cannot convey every nuance of the atmosphere, the tone, the feelings at play. There is never a substitute for personal experience, i guess.

Anyway. Back to Barcelona. I scurried through the city with the local walking tour groups, and was lucky enough to get to know a Spanish guy from Madrid, here on vacation! That's basically the first thing i do - grab someone who speaks the local tongue (well, sort of... Barca speaks a closely related Catalonian actually). It just makes it so much easier to explore and understand the city, the culture. We managed to get a great tip on a local food joint (from an old lady, no less!).

I still count it among my favourite food experiences...Especialidade de la Casa during lunch time, a completely crowded little shop that is absolutely hidden from the masses of tourists filling the streets of Barca! In fact, it doesn't even have a signboard outside. I ordered (well, my friend helped to order - ) a sandwich: Lomo, Serrano, y Pimientos, with some Morcilla and fruity rose wine to go with it. All less than SGD10, too.

In the evening, I got to meet and know Yana's two Barca local friends, Eduard, an archaelogist, and his girlfriend, a singer. They treated me to an evening at the Poble Espanyol, admiring the musical fountain performance, Font Magica, and having an amazing Tapas dinner (at a cheap joint for students of course!), with dishes like Jamon Iberico, Tortilla espanola, Morro del Cerdo, and of course Sangria for drinks. A perfect way to spend a comfortable evening with new friends, local food and simmer in the culture. Oh, and they reminded me to grab some preserved ham for Yana, and to send their regards to her back in Munich!

Self-shot Fail. 

Sometimes I wonder why all these european friends I've met seem to hold such interesting jobs and interests. I mean, archaeologist? Singer? Not to mention: DJ, Madagascar teacher, etc, etc... Singapore's career choices seem dismally woeful by comparison. I'm pretty certain a standard of living should be measured not just by economic well-being and freedom, but also socio-cultural freedom, personal freedom. Just by being here and talking to people, I feel like i'm slowly being weaned off on my ignorance of the wider range of choices out there, be it in work or personal aspects. It's a liberating feeling... and I feel happier just by this knowledge that I can live out my life in so many, different ways.

Well, to sum up the rest of my Barca trip...i went to the beach with a couple of female couchsurfers (pictures censored), caught Messi in action at Camp Nou, hanged out with leather-clad tough bikers at the Harley Days exhibition, then took the train to Reus to meet a very, very interesting host...

But that's another story, for another time :)