Barkeno Restaurant

Barkeno is one of my favorite restaurants int he city that serves traditional Barcelonian Mediterranean food. It is a apretty expsnive meal but it is well worth it as the food, service, and atmosphere there is excellent. The seafood and fish dishes are the best here and the codfish I had there was excellent. Grilled fish platters are the most popular dishes and what the waiter usually reccommends. The restaurant has an elegant and sophisticated ambience, and is a great place to go for a classy upscale meal. The interior design is influenced by seafaring, and pictures and decorations of sailboats are evident thoughout the restaurant (see attached picture). The restaurant is located on Casp, 17 and I would reccommend it to anybody in Barcelona. It also has a nice lounge downstairs where one can sip on a few cocktails and listen to the live piano.

The Parliament approves a Law of Reception for Immigrants that reinforces the learning of the Catalonian

The Parlament has approved today the Immigrants Reception Law with 87 percent support. It establishes Catalonian as a "common tongue" and reinforces its learning among the foreigners. The law establishes that that the immigrants should learn in Catalan their process of integration. The immigrants that attend Catalan culture and language courses with a sufficient continuity will receive a certificate of approvement for the courses. This certificate will be able to count towards the expedition of the certificates that are needed in the process of regularization of the immigrants. The representative of the PSC Consol Fields has insisted that the Law of Reception is "a good law" that will permit "to invest resources in the training of the immigrants and in their process of integration" and has regretted that "some parties are utilizing the immigration to obtain electoral returns". (Source- La Vanguardia)

Barcelona is out of the Champions Leauge Tournament in the Semis

Barcelona won 1-0 against Inter Milan, but it was not enough to advance to the Champions League Final. They needed a score of 2-0 to Win, and Pique´s only goal after a spin move set up was not enough. After getting an early Red Card, Inter appeared to have no chance against a fierce Barcelona Squad. However their defense stood strong and only led up one goal the rest of the match, booting Barcelona out of the tournament and setting up an epic matchup against Bayern Munich in the Champions Leauge Final. My friends and I watched the game at a local restaurant, and the atmosphere was electric. Every time something big happened cheers were heard all throughout the neighborhood, but unfortunately Barcelona fans were let down. It was Inter´s strong defense that stood like a brick wall and stopping Barcelona from victory. Even though they played more than an hour with a man down after Thiago Motta´s Red card, they still were somehow able to come up with a win. Barca dominated the game with over 80 percent of the possession time, but the only statistics that matters is the score and on this day, 1-0 simply was just not enough.

Iceland Volcano Wrecks Havoc On European Airspace

About a week and a half ago the Eruption of an Icelandic Volcano forced the shutdown of airspace over much of Eurpe and left thousands of people stranded with no way of getting home. I was in Munich at the time and my friends and I had to hire a bus driver to drive 50 of us back to Barcelona from Munich since our flights were all cancelled. Even though the Ash cloud originated in Iceland, surprisingly the country´s airports have not been closed until April 22 since the winds had forced the Ash cloud to other parts of Europe. Since the winds had died down, the Ash cloud began to settle over Iceland. At its peak, the crisis affected 1.2 million passengers a day and 29% of global aviation. One can only imagnie how much money these airline companies lost as a result of the volcano´s ash cloud, which was numbered in the billions of dollars. The spectacular event was the worst disruption of air traffic since the September 11 attacks in 2001. The crisis started on April 14 when the Eyjafjallajokull glacier erupted on April 14 and sent a huge cloud of ash into the atmosphere.

La Tagliatella

La Tagliatella is my favorite restaurant in Barcelona that I frequent most often. Even though it is Italian food and not Spanish food I still love going there all the time. It is conveniently located right across the street and my roommates and there go there more often than any other spot. We got so lucky to have such a good place right across the street. The pizza and pasta are what are best there. I usually get pasta with either tartufo, pesto, or marinara sauce or any type of pizza. The salads there are amazing too. Oftentimes when we have visitors and guests from other places abroad we take them there for large group dinners. There is one waitress there from Romania that usually waits on us and she is also the only one in the restaurant that knows English so it is much easier to order with her. When I am in a rush I get the food to go and eat it quickly in my apartment. The food there is extremely fresh and all of the pizza and pasta ingredients are completely homemade. The seafood there is great food and I love the fresh prawns that come with the salad.

Field Trip to Gothic Quarter

One of our field trips was to the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona, also known as Barri Gòtic in Spain. The Gothic Quarter in Barcelona city might have the most traces of Spanish history evident today. Walking around in the area one feels as if they are transported to the Barcelona in the Middle Ages. Its narrow cobblestone streets contain the most concentrated array of thirteenth to fifteenth century buildings in Europe. There are parish churches, town houses, government buildings, city halls, build headquarters, industrial structure, and the famous Cathedral, all dating to that time period. During our field trip one of the things we did was to go to the Santa Mart del Pi Church, which was completed in 1391. Xavi explained to us how the church was built and funded by local citizens something that really fascinated me. We went inside the church and I thought it was extremely beautiful. I really enjoy the Gothic Style and architecture used in building the church and thought the stained glass windows were really cool as well. Another thing that we did on our field trip was to see examples of apartments dating to the middle ages. An old woman even let us into one of these apartments where the tiny claustrophobic stairwell d[Photo]ated back to the middle ages. A bunch of students climbed up the stairs and stuck our head out the top window, a something that was a funny and enjoyable experience. This field trip really lead me to appreciate Barcelona's rich history in the Middle Ages.

Spanish Unemployment Rate over 20%

According to new figures, Spain’s unemployment has risen above 20%. These figures were accidentally published by Spain’s official statistics agency on Monday, four days ahead of schedule and people around the country are angry as a result. Leaders of the opposition PP are angry that Zapatero claims that he is confident his government’s policies will achieve his goal of reducing the higest jobless rate in the European Union. He is under fire for not creating more jobs, and it seems that people are starting to get a bit panicked about the situation. According to the statistics, there are currently 4.61 million Spaniards who are out of work, obviously a very high number. As a result Spain will spend more money on combating unemployment, and to do so they will unfortunately have to increase their public deficit.

FC Barcelona vs. Inter Milan

A huge local new story is the Champions League Semi-Final between FC Barcelona and Inter Milan. Last week on April 20, 2010 FC Barcelona lost the first of two Semi-Final games 3-1. Today (April 28, 2010) game is huge because if Barcelona loses, they are out of the Champions League Tournament. If they win, they advance to the finals and a chance to repeat as European Champions (what I believe to be the higest honor in the soccer world except for the World Cup, of course). The loss was the first time Barcelona lost by a margin of more than 1 goal this year, a tremendous feat. Unfortunately, Eric Abidal and Andres Iniesta are going to have to sit out of the game with injuries, but hopefully Lionel Messi's magic left foot will be able to carry Barca to the championship round. Barcelona needs to win the match by the score of at least 2-0 because they lost their first game by two goals. The way the advancement to the next round works in the Champions League is that the winning team needs to have more total away goals if they are tied in wins. So because right now Barcelona has 1 away goal, they would need to hold Inter to less than one goal in order to advance. If Barcelona gives up more than one goal, they are out of the tournament. This should be the most exciting match of the year, and I cannot wait to see what happens. GO BARCA!

El Raval Field Trip

Our last field trip in our Barcelona Past and Present class was to el Raval area in Barcelona, which is a neighborhood in the Ciutat Vella district that borders La Rambla and is home to 200,000 people. We started at La Rambla near Placa Catalunya and went through all of the winding streets. The area had many clothing shops and places to eat, and it was great to see all of the side streets of the famous La Rambla. Xavi took us to the MACBA building (pictured in this blog), which is the Modern Art Museum in Barcelona. While I have personally never been inside, the outside was very nice and modern, with a glass facade facing the square in front of it. Xavi also explained to us that a lot of skaters come to the area from all of Europe in order to skateboard and do tricks since it is a very respected and well-known place for modern skateboarding (see picture). When we were in one of the squares in el Raval we saw a few young skateboarders trying out some of their dangerous new tricks. One boy tried to jump about five feet, kickflip his skateboard and land, but we saw him painfully fall about 10 times. It was really hard to watch for a lot of us and I thought to myself that this boy would never be able to land such a difficult trick. Another boy was holding a camera filming the skater, I guess to record the trick if its ever landed successfully. This camera man seemed to be an injured skater, as he was limping around whenever he walked. Xavi explained to us that some skaters come to the Raval area from Germany on a very cheap bus with no money and just sleep outside at night and skate during the day. They come to Barcelona because of the nice weather during the wintertime. I could never imagine myself doing such a thing but I guess these people are really passionate about their skating hobby. I could never n be homeless for a span of time just to skate but these skaters seem to be a lot more high maintenance than me.

Vila Olímpica Beach

Vila Olimpica and that beach area is a site i frequent often with my friends. It has a beautiful beach, a casino, and many great restaurants (some of which turn into night clubs). During the day when it is nice out I often go there for walks. I love being on the beach and by the ocean and this area is in my opinion, one of the nicest in Barcelona. During the nighttime there are a lot of great restaurants to chose from that later on turn into awesome nightclubs. I often go to Shoko and Opium, which are both great restaurants during the day and really fun clubs during the night time. Shoko has great Japanese food, which is my favorite in Barcelona. The beach is crowded when it gets nice out and people love going there to hang out when there is good weather. A view of the beautiful hotel W (or hotel vela as called by the locals) is visible, which is a brand new hotel that opened this year that is the talk of the town. Its architecture is absolutely beautiful and it is supposed to look like a sail in the ocean. I have been lucky to visit the hotel numerous times because my visiting friends have stayed there a couple of times. I sometimes go to the spa there as well.
There is also a McDonalds in the area that my friends and I go to all the time which contains as far as I now, the only drive through McDonalds in Barcelona called a McAuto. I have noticed taht McDonalds in Europe are a lot nicer and classes than in America. Also, the portions are a lot smaller so that a large is equal to a medium in America and a Medium is equal to a small in America. This phenomenon is very strange to me and shows a lot about how much larger our portions are in America. In the area there is also the Hotel Arts, a really nice 5 star hotel that is a really tall tower that can be seen as one of Barcelon'a tallest building. A really cool huge fish sculpture called paix that was designed by Frank O. Gehry is present next to the Hotel Arts.

Park Güell

Park Guell is a famous park and tourist destination in Barcelona that was designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi and built from 1900-1914. Features of the park include a multicolored mosaic Dragon (picture included in this post), la Torre Rosa (Gaudi House), and a long serpentine bench at the top. From the top of the park there is a beautiful view of the city as seen in one of my included pictures. I had previously visited this magnificant park with my parents in high school when I toured Barcelona and coming back was still extremely enjoyable. People from all ov er the world come to see Gaudi's special park, which is unlike any park I have ever seen. While not that big, it offers plenty of site, with weird and trippy little aspects everywhere. Gaudi's gingerbread house inspired buildings at the entrance of the park are really cool as well. There were some gypsy's that we saw at the park when we were there and I guess they go there during the day to enjoy the beautiful scenery. My friends and I went for a long walk around the park until the sun set, and it got a little scary so we left. I hope to visit the park at least one more time before my abroad experience is over and it is one of my favorite sites to visit in Barcelona.

Cerveseria Catalana

My Favorite Spanish restaurant in Barcelona is Cerveseria Catalana. It is a Tapas place located in Gracia on Mallorca 236. I have been there about 4 or 5 times and always take my visiting friends there for what I think is the best tapas in town. When I go there in large groups we order so much food and such a big selection that I have to write down my order on my phone before I can repeat it back to the waiter. I love the idea of tapas and the fact that you can have a large selection of food that you can share. I always love trying a little big of everything so a tapas meal is the perfect type of meal for me. There is usually a wait to get into the restaurant and be seated but it is well worth the wait.
I love Cerveceria's chicken salad, steak skewers, and mini hamburgers the most there. I also really enjoy Iberian ham on catalan bread. Every time I eat there my friends and I get so much food, but we always finish it all. The place is not even that expensive for being such a good restaurant. A normal bill usually runs me about 20 euro, which is not bad considering the quality of food I get there. The waiters and waitresses there are very friendly and most of them speak English (which is convenient when ordering). I would recommend this restaurant to anyone visiting in Barcelona as it is the best tapas experience that I've ever had.

Carnival at Sitges

The Carnival at Sitges was one of the most fun experiences I've had abroad. All my friends and I took a half hour bus ride to Sitges (which is known as the gay capital of Spain) at night where there was a parade and party on the beach. There was a lot of drinking, eating and dancing. Everyone was dressed up in costume and I was dressed as a cowboy. I bought a hat, wore a plaid shirt and jeans and had a water gun that I filled with vodka. I had a friend that also dressed up as a cowboy with me (see the pictures). It was really funny spraying all of my friends with vodka and getting people wet. One of my other friends shown in the picture dressed up as a skeleton and we called him "skeletor" throughout the night. Three of my other roommates dressed up as clowns. The best costume I saw that night were two guys dressed as men
My friend unfortunately lost his cell phone at the end of the night and left it on the bus ride home but aside from that incident my friends and I all had an amazing time.

Roman Barcino and Museu d'Història de la Ciutat de Barcelona Field Trip

My class and I went to Barrio Gotico and the Museu d'Historia de la Ciutat de Barcelona on our first class field trip . We explored remnants from ancient Rome throughout the Roman Barcino area and the museum had an amazing underground exhibition showing many Roman ruins. Even though it was forbidden to take pictures, I was still able to shadily take some with my digital camera. It was extremely interesting for me as a History Major and History buff to see actualy Roman ruins from thousands of years ago. Xavi gave us details about different Roman ruins throughout the area and the museum, including how the people of Barcelona used to excel in making wine, the Temples they built (including the remains of the temple of Augustus), and the different forms of pottery they made. I have included a picture of our class outside in Placa del Rei with Roman era buildings in the background and one picture I took underground in the museum of Roman columns and ruins.

Calvin Harris at Razzmatazz February 19, 2010

I went to the performance of the DJ Calvin Harris at Razzmatazz on February 19, 2010. It was an amazing time and I got to see a world famous DJ perform. For those of you who don't know, Calvin Harris is a DJ/Singer/Songwriter known as the "King of Electropop" and has two great albums called I Created Disco and Ready for the Weekend. After hearing him DJ/perform I really fell in love with his music and after that night I began to be really into electronic music. Barcelona has really helped me gain a love for techno, house, and trance music; these genres are a lot more popular in Europe than in America and being in Barcelona has expanded my taste in music greatly. I was also amazed by Razzmatazz the club/concert venue itself. Sala Razzmatazz is a huge place that was converted from a warehouse into an awesome nightclub. It is also conveniently located in Poblenou (the neighborhood I live in) and is only about a 4 euro cab away. I now frequent the club pretty often, usually on Wednesday nights. I have included a picture of my friends and I at Razzmatazz during the Calvin Harris concert (from facebook) and a picture of Calvin Harris in this blog post.

FC Barcelona Game vs Racing Santander

I went to the FC Barcelona Game vs. Racing Santander on February 20, 2010.It was my first time in Camp Nou and was truly an amazing experience. Barcelona won the game 4-0 and was absolutely dominant against a much inferior Racing Santander team. Three goals were scored at halftime: one by Andrew Iniesta, Thierry Henry, and Rafael Marquez each. The game was clearly over after the first half yet my friends and I still stayed until the end of the game to fully enjoy the victory. The atmosphere in the stadium was electric, and the crowd got especially loud when goals were scored and when players were substituted. Seeing a crowd of 100,000 people was awesome, and reminded me of and made me nostalgic of football games in Michigan Stadium at the University of Michigan. Thiago scored one last goal in the 84th minute to seal the victory. Barcelona's stats included a 67% time of possession 16 shots on goal, 6 corner kicks, and 5 saves by Victory Valdes. I had a great time during the game and got a real feeling of how great it is to go to a European soccer game. I am so lucky that I am studying in BArcelona so I can follow matches and go to the actual games of the best team in Europe. I have watched every single FC Barcelona soccer game on TV and I will continue to be a huge fan even when I go back to the United States. The picture I have included is a picture of one of my friends overlooking the stadium from our seats.

Torre Agbar

In the beginning of our abroad experience in Barcelona me and some of my friends took a day trip to familiarize ourselves with the Poblenou area where we lived. We wanted to see the Torre Agbar, which we can see from our apartment balcony. The Torre Agbar is a 33 story tower built by designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and was inaugurated by the King of Spain on September 16, 2005. The owners of the Agbar tower are the Agbar group, a holding company that include inerests in the Barcelona water supply company called Aigues de Barcelona. My friends and I were amazed by the beauty of the tower, yet many of the Barcelona locals think that the tower just looks like a giant Penis and dislike it. According to its architect the water tower was inspired by the shape of a geyser shooting into the air and Montserrat. The tower has many LED lights on the outside and it can light up into many different colors. The tower houses the head office of the Aigues de Barcelona Group. This picture was taken by me at the foot of Torre Agbar on a beautiful day.