Day one in Spain! Our first
assignment, call and cancel the power chair rental. People advertising lodging
fudge on wheelchair accessibility. We find them far too lazy to get up off
their butts and measure their elevators, even if you send them the exact
dimensions of your wheelchair in centimeters accompanied by a polite
measurement request in Spanish. We have to collapse Bird’s front feet to get
her in the elevator. So much for the power chair pipedream!
Our Airbnb host emails us,
reaffirming that we don’t owe any money. With that settled, we can begin
today’s adventures.
Today marks our first journey
on the Barcelona Metro. The automated ticket machines only accept credit cards
using the chip & pin system common everywhere except the States. The
machine rejects my card. Fortunately, Keith, ever the prepared Bear, studied up
on this and has his new Visa card with a chip, for which he’s even memorized
the pin. He buys our tickets.
We have a wonderful map of
Barcelona’s accessible Metro stops. The accessible ones have a little
wheelchair next to them while the inaccessible ones have a skull and cross
bones like a pirate flag. Elevators or in Spanish ascensores (which Keith quickly names ascenders) permit
accessibility, while stops labelled with the skull and cross bones have
“annoying stairs.”
As confused yet hopeful old
people, maps can be a bit of a challenge! The closest subway stop to our apartment,
Clot, has both a wheelchair and a skull & crossbones. Huh? WTF? We find the
street-level ascensor and descend. We
soon learn that the purple line is indeed accessible via Clot, but the red
line, the one we need, correctly bears the non-accessible skull and crossbones.
A kindly Metro employee shows us that the purple and red lines cross again at
University. Thus educated, we ride the purple line six stops west to
University, transfer onto the red line and ride three stops back east to Arc de
Triomphe.
Exiting in El Born, we walk
to the Pablo Picasso Museum. Reserving online, ahead of time, I purchased
something called an Articket BCN. Paying ahead gives you discounted admissions
to three of the museums we wish to see. We turn in our vouchers and receive
something that very much resembles a red Canadian passport. Good for a year,
each museum you visit you stamp, just like a passport. Naturally, we discover a
burning desire to visit all six museums listed.
We enter the Picasso Museum,
stamping our tickets. This museum holds a lot of Picasso’s early work. We start
with his self-portraits featuring a young very intense Spaniard staring out at
you. Picasso paints realistic portraits with just a touch of impressionistic
flair, allowing us to appreciate his mastery of all forms. We see a painting of
his sister at her first communion. She’s incredible, a veritable bride of
Christ at seven. Despite the religious trappings, the entire portrait revolves
around her, radiating her young beauty, innocence and transcendence.
Next, we see paintings from
Picasso’s blue period, spent penniless in Paris after his best friend commits
suicide. He paints not only what he sees ─ whores, misfits, beggars, street
people ─ but what he feels, filling his paintings with blue, the coldest color.
Depressing subjects and depressing colors; I shiver.
Fortunately, Picasso finds a
girlfriend and moves into his rose period. Otherwise, I think that he would
have killed himself too. He now paints numerous harlequins in cheerier oranges
and pinks.
In the early 1900s Picasso
decamps permanently for Paris, the city that calls all artists. As an aside I
wonder, must all true artists spend time penniless in Paris as a necessary
homage to their seriousness about art and the city of light?
Later Picasso refuses to
return to Spain until Franco departs. Unfortunately, Franco outlives him, so
Picasso never returns home. In his old age, examining his roots, he paints
fifty impressions of Velasquez’s Las
Meninas. We see many of these, but would have appreciated them more had we
visited the Prado (in Madrid) first and seen the original Las Meninas.
After enjoying the museum,
around three, we find another tapas place for lunch. We hear two women at a
neighboring table having a very rapid spirited discussion in Spanish.
Naturally, I don’t understand a word they say.
We pull out our subway map
since we know that we have to find the Sants
train station tomorrow to go to Dali’s Museum in Figueres. Keith has found a
metro station named Sant Antonio that
he is sure is the place. However, Sant
means saint in Catalonian. I see at least five stations named Sant on the Metro map. Despite traveling
with the ever confident Bear, I have my doubts.
I haltingly query the women
at the neighboring table, proffering our map. They quickly point out that we
want Sants Estació. They love our
Metro map with the handicap signs and the skull and cross bones, which they
interpret to mean “ugh! fucking steps!”. We learn that they hail from Argentina
and believe solely Patagonia makes Argentina shine. We disagree, pointing out
that the Pope comes from Argentina and therefore everyone from Argentina must
be going to heaven. They laugh.
To intelligently use Barcelona’s
Metro, you need to know the final stop each way. This tells you your direction.
Eventually we learn this. Keith fondly enlarges words both foreign and English
with extra letters. He adds a lot of R’s and S’s to things. So the red line
terminus Metro stop Fondo becomes “Frondo” and finally “Frodo.” The stop Clot
becomes “Clots”, and the train people RENFE become “RENFRE.” Add that to my
Spanish, and no one understands a word we say. We find we can avoid the Clot
inaccessibility mess and get on the red line by walking a couple of blocks
farther from the flat then descending to the station Navas. Keith calls this
“Narvaras” which upsets a local gentleman so much that the man shakes his
finger Keith while repeating the word Navas, Navas, Navas.
We’ve now have had some time
to observe the Spanish or more properly the Catalans. Like my dim memories of
the States in the 1970s, everybody smokes. I’ve never seen so many people
smoking. We dodge scooters everywhere. Both women and men drive them, careening
like maniacs, weaving in and out of traffic. Everyone wears a helmet.
Nearly everyone seems to be
wearing tennis shoes, often fairly brightly colored. We see bright orange,
bright blue, and bright purple shoes. But I see no one in CFM (come fuck me)
shoes aka heels. I sincerely hope the world has changed. High heels amongst all
these cobbles would really be the height of stupidity.
Spain, a proud member of the
EU (European Union), has handicap accessible bathrooms everywhere. I think that
they always build three bathrooms, women, men and family (accessible).
Intelligently, and unlike the US (especially DIA), they lock the family
restrooms. You must find an employee and prove your worth before they will
unlock the door.
We find Europe generally more
handicap accessible than the States, save the size issues. America, huge and
expansive, has big elevators, taxis and cars. Not so in Spain, where they build
elevators in broom closets. This will frustrate us repeatedly.
We have a very sad tradition
of relegating so many to being “Other” in the States. White, European
descendants, especially the wealthier ones, hold massive privilege, privilege
generally unacknowledged and unnoticed. Think about it. When was the last time
you were personally harassed by the police?
In the States you will
generally find yourself branded “Other” should you have any color and/or
disability about you. Descending into a wheelchair, I lost what I never
realized I had, as the crown of white privilege fell off of my head, rolling
away. Crippled now, I couldn’t even reach down to pick it up.
Europe’s tourist draws tend
to be old places, requiring careful thought about how everyone can visit,
including people like me. How will people in chairs get about? As I’ve said
before, Europeans still consider me foremost human, like themselves. In the
States, I am “Other,” not quite human, not deserving.
Enough ruminating on Cripdom!
Back to Barcelona… Most of the Metro stops have multiple lifts. One takes you
from street level to ticket/turnstile level, and a second down to the platform
where you board the subway train. Able-bodied Catalans have no compunctions
about using the lifts themselves, no matter how little they need them. Every
station has escalators; no one has to walk up stairs. Not just Americans harbor
amazing laziness.
In Barcelona we thoroughly
enjoy the small local shops where we buy bread, vegetables and ham. Ham or jamon, the national dish, rates its own
stores. You enter, select a pork leg hanging from the ceiling and the employees
will shave off 100 grams for you. At €100 a kilo, all we can afford is 100
grams. We also visit a wine store, finding wine from the Canary Islands,
something Keith has sought for years.
Having eaten our larger meal
at lunch, we only desire a snack. We seek a different tapas place tonight,
looking for variety. We find one which has the exact same tapas as Gent del
Barri but of massively inferior quality. They mistakenly bring me a plate of
pickled anchovies, the only bright spot in the meal. In our adventure, I try
anchovies three more times before reverting to my earlier belief ─ disgusting.
Pondering, we note that some
tapas we like a lot, specifically the Petrone peppers, salted and sautéed. We
try the various hams until Bear becomes very tired of them. We really burn out
on ham. Enough navel-gazing over tapas! We go home and turn in for the night.
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