barcelona and everything after
well… this is it.
i’ve been home for less than 72 hours so don’t get completely on me for not writing this until now and yes… it almost goes without saying but i’m hella jetlagged (kind of united’s fault — more on my 15 hour “delay” in dulles hellport later). like i can’t exist without going to bed around dinner time and wake up at the ungodly hour of 5 am, but it’s fine. i’m fine. only minorly hearbroken to be back here. but it was time to leave because i need to help my older sister move out of our house and into san francisco for her first job as a software engineer with this very site (hahaha my true intentions come out! this was all PR for alaina’s company. or was it???) anyways, it was around the time that i came back from my first run back in western springs when i tried to open up my front door holding the key upside down like how it’s done in switzerland that i was like screw all the essays i still need to write for my political philosophy of economics class. i’m not going to be able to focus until i finish my blog.
okay. so i need to speak about barcelona and the last week and i guess emotions of leaving and wow okay so i also forgot the part where i went for a run in geneva and got lost and ended up behind fences with barbed wire in a weird industrial district and passed homeless people and this might be the longest blog entry yet. saved the best for last hahaha… without further ado, alors on danse :3
síganme y descubran mi barcelona:
alright so our flight to barcelona was pretty late. like latest we’d taken so far around 7:00 pm, so i was able to get out of class, go for a run, shower, and eat before leaving cité for the airport. speaking of which now that i think of it — wow this jogs my memory a lot. good thing i’m writing this now as opposed to later — a whole host of other stuff happened before i even made it to the airport. like tyjair, who had told me the entire time that he was going to barca with all of us and even paid me for the airbnb yet had somehow failed to procure a plane ticket until the day before *or so he told me*, had a change of mind and decided to go through not purchasing the ticket which he has “reserved not bought” and then i was minorly angry and confused because it would have been nice to at least have some sort of knowledge of that BIG CHANGE ahead of time. but then he explained to me it was largely about financing (the ticket was something ridiculous… like $400) i totally understood and then rolled through ryan’s room and told him if he was down to come to barca, he could stay with us. and he was like yeah absolutely and venmoed me right away so no problems there because he had a eurorail pass and could train there and meet us friday night but then that plan got all screwed up as well… he ran to the train station and they were like no we can’t reserve you an international train 2 hours in advanced, but he somehow pulled through and made it anyways so that’s all squared away even though for a solid period of time i was scared he couldn’t make it.
anyways, i left pretty early. like around 4ish for the airport (which would actually be hella cautious for an intra-europe flight without checked bags just fyi) but then ended up going to manor to get deodorant since i’d run out and also found the atm near my lycamobile shop and withdrew some money to reimburse tyjair since cash was more liquid than venmoing him back. after those two transactions were complete, i got on the bus and went to the airport alone hoping to meet everyone there.
i got through security no problem but then my gate was in the most random removed part of the geneva airport i’d ever been in… like pretty sure we were in france. actually positive, because i passed an empty passport check thing — just more proof that no one really cares and what we went through crossing over at night from lyon was literally the dumbest thing ever SCRY. also, some woman legit left all of her stuff with me and was like i’ll be back in a little bit and i was like okay??? love how people actually trust in others’ basic goodness in europe. then i got on the wifi and logged into groupme where seun was like: phil just started taking a shower should i leave without him? and i was so so glad i hadn’t waited up for that incompetence. phil cracks me up though and he made it all fine, as did everyone else — as in like 12 other duke people on my flight. and more had been on early ones. like almost the entire program ended up in barcelona for the last weekend which was bomb planning for real.
the flight over was largely uneventful. we flew swiss air though, which meant we got free chocolate which is arguably the best thing anyone could give you at anytime, especially en route to a new place on a flying metal bird. [P.S. this chocolate is actually to die for. like i’m not really into milk chocolate, but i asked for extra on the way back. and aaditya and amna apparently got like 10 each on their flight back from amsterdam lol]
as the plane landed, i got this sort of adrenaline rush. i was like wow. spain. needless to say, i was super pumped for barcelona! just going to spain in general really excited me the entire time i’d been planning my weekend trips. i had really wanted to go to a different city (i.e.: seville or even zaragoza which was a lot closer and logistically made a lot more sense) while i was there, but my parents sort of shut down the traveling on my own thing after they heard about potsdam even though it was a part of the berlin public transport system and only like 12 miles away so i really don’t count that as traveling on my own the way my solo venture to liechtenstein qualifies. also — and this actually surprised me a bit — i was somehow burnt out from all the hectic weekends i’d had. like i got to barcelona and wanted to stay put idk if you’ve been following closely, but as the weekends went on, i sort of just stayed in a decreasing amount of places. like the idea of having as schizophrenic of a weekend as i had the first one when i went literally EVERYWHERE in switzerland except for lugano had no appeal by the end of the trip (shocker). barcelona was sort of my lazy weekend. which makes almost no sense since we still did a lot. but i guess we did spend a half day at the beach… but how could you not???
anyways, we got off the plane and stopped at an ATM in the airport which really ripped me off, but i needed extra cash to pay the tourist tax and also the late check-in fee for our airbnb since we landed around 9 pm and weren’t about to get there until 10 pm at the earliest. the 13 of us followed the signs down to buy our 3-day public transport pass (lol. like a 3-day rave at lolla, which happened this weekend back home in chicago, could even have compared to barca) and then we were on the train and i was face-to-face with a subway map figuring out how the people in my airbnb (pansy, phil, seun, and i — ryan came later) were going to get to poble sec when everyone in dustin’s airbnb was splitting up with us at espanya or thereabouts. the one nice thing was that kyle’s hotel was near where we were staying. (yes. kyle stayed in a hotel alone. leave it to him to do that… honestly this was the most so-totally-kyle thing that happened the entire six weeks.) yeah. so i can actually navigate a subway system myself now *proud moment* i know it’s probably really easy, but the spider’s web always looked like a jumble to me until i was lost in berlin coming back from my run and actually had to learn how to get back home.
we took like three different subways and then eventually emerged in el poble sec, which was the dry district but is no longer the dry district and has a lot of cool bars and restaurants, and found our airbnb: carrer de vallhonrat 20. then we buzzed apartment 1–2 and i failed to open it in time but eventually we gained entry, went up the stairs, and walked into one of the nicest accommodations i’d had the entire trip. i really appreciated our airbnb in barcelona (mostly because it offered great respite from the brutal heat). anyways, here’s some pics since i’ve failed to incorporate any thus far.
so basically after we all threw all of our cash into a pile (literally no one had any euros… and we still haven’t sorted our paying each other back based on the haphazard financing of this night), i signed the paperwork and then i reached out to kyle because he’d told me to let him know when we got in so he could come join us, but that was like three hours ago and he was already with the other airbnb people at dinner (typical dinner is at like 10 pm in spain) and we all had made plans to meet up with the other airbnb anyways later in the night at opium, which is the supposed “top club” in barcelona — i asked my friend madeline who had visited a couple weeks before and she was like yeah… it’s super hyped and in my opinion, honestly delivers. after getting ready, it was like already almost midnight and we were starving so we moseyed down the street and got food at this rando tapas place and seriously it was so nondescript looking but i had the best tapas i had the entire weekend that night/morning.
pansy was so funny. she remembers more spanish than me (mostly because idk she took it at duke??? still i had to use my spanish and at least people understood me) but she had no clue about the concept of tapas. she ordered olives and peppers thinking they’d come in the croqueta and i was like lol no hun… but anyways the peppers were bomb like i’ve never had anything as good as them and i had pork shoulder and patatas bravas (which quickly became my favorite dish to order i’m dying for real it’s basically french fries with alioli sauce but that doesn’t even do the experience of eating them justice). so we sat there and feasted on top tapas and then it was almost 1 am and we were sated and it was time to roll on through to the club.
i had already looked up how to get there in wifi (if i remember correctly, my lycamobile credit was waning at this point… but then i added more the next morning or something like). and we were supposed to take this one specific bus. so i got us to the stop and there were other people waiting there so i was like okay this is good, it’s coming. but then like we waited 40 minutes and it still hadn’t come, so we asked the girl sitting with us on the bench and she was like it’s coming. so we waited more. and then it came!!! but then i got on and tried to use my barcelona city pass, but it turns out it didn’t work on the “night bus”. fricken chamonuit all over again… so we were like shoot its 1:40. is it even worth going??? but then we decided we were too far in and would try to hail the first cab we saw. which we did and he was like sorry, no i’m closed. but then another one magically appeared and i was like #soblessed. so we got in the cab and were driven past this really cool column that we revisited the next day and along the beaches to where all the clubs are at.
so we get out and it’s already pandemonium. like people everywhere. beach right there. a whole line of clubs. music blaring. and then we get in line for opium and it’s like 1:45 and aaditya messaged me and was like lmk when you get in we are already inside. don’t forget to say your name under schaz’s list to get in for free and i’m already thinking to myself how on earth are we even going to find them? and then of course i forget to say we are in schaz’s party under my name when we finally got up to the bouncer maybe 40 minutes later because he was huge and i was intimidated so it cost us all 15€ so rip. (but then later after aaditya shamed me enough for being stupid and not following the one and only direction he gave me, i looked it up and it was like no free entry past 2 am so ha! we would’ve had to pay anyways so money wasn’t lost. also the ticket came with a free drink so i was super bougie and had champagne in a fancy club okay.)
anyways, we walked in and somehow phil and i got split up from pansy and seun walking down the stairs (underground club!!!) but then we found them like two minutes later so it was all good. so this is the thing about opium. it’s this massive like black tile/mirrored cave i guess? with really fancy lounges on the side of the dance floor and obviously dancers and ugh. i have to look up pictures because obviously it was dark and people were everywhere, but you really need to see what this was like and obviously i wouldn’t have had my camera at all because i was about to go dancing. but this even beat berlin for me. the only thing that was disappointing was the lack of spanish music. like they only played mi gente, and idk if enrique iglesias, my one true love even came on. [side note: SO SO PUMPED TO GO TO HIS CONCERT IN OCTOBER]
but we walked out into ^^^this and i’m like yeah. there’s no way we even have a chance of finding the other airbnb. then i got separated from my friends because this guy grabbed me and started talking to me and was like you’re from chicago? you know new trier? and i was like sure thing, buddy *walks away* hoping to find friends who’d left like a few minutes earlier to go to bar. luckily, i found them on the stairs. so we went to the bar, got drinks, and started just dancing by ourselves. then out of nowhere — still so unclear how this could happen — i see lauren dancing with amna and sara and i shove my way toward them and screamed and they were like omg what and then we were magically reunited with our group without even trying was quite wonderful. kyle kept disappearing, but that’s typical at clubs lmao. i know i’ve said this multiple times, but we honestly did dance the night away and the music was super fun even though it wasn’t spanish and i successfully avoided some weird guy by dancing with lauren which was pretty funny because then he asked sarah if we were a lesbian couple and we were like lol no but okay couldn’t avoid all males. i danced with some really attractive spanish man who was probably like 22 and had a great time for the most part. like we were there until like 5 am. honestly, the whole experience was probably made all the more enjoyable by how close we all were at this point. like aaditya jumping up and down and jake noodling around as he always does were just normal hilarious occurrences by this point.
we left the club and walked along the beach for a bit. it would have been cool to stay and watch the sunrise, but we were all pretty tired so split up into airbnb groups again to try and find taxis. i was pretty adamant kyle come with us, but he wanted to walk home (it was like three miles away???) so i was like fine go be unsafe just text me when you get back to hotel and then we flagged down a taxi but some obnoxious drunk girls took it and then we kept trying to hail a cab but they were all full until one of the cabbies was like la esquina and then we wandered back and took our place in line on the corner. phil bought water which we all waterfalled since we were all sweaty and parched from dancing. then we finally got a cab and headed home with even more questionable financing… like i lowkey still owe someone money but honestly unclear who it is. cab ride was normal. i think i gave the guy directions in spanish so gregie would be proud.
the next day i thanked my lucky stars we had bought tickets for la sagrada familia at 1 pm :3 we woke up so so late and then ventured to find breakfast at this cafe near the poble sec subway stop where I grabbed juice, a donut, and this delicious raspberry cookie. pansy and i were supposed to go meet everyone else at dustin’s airbnb since i had all their tickets so we had to book it to reach it before 1, which was our entry time. we speedwalked past a lot of cheap clothing and shoe stores that i made a mental mark to revisit but then awkwardly forgot things aren’t open on sunday so my 10€ shoe purchase didn’t work out in the end. pansy and i got off at the right subway stop which was conveniently labeled la sagrada familia but then couldn’t find their airbnb for the life of us. like we even google mapped it and everything and i was messaging aaditya and amna and everyone else but we ended up just going to the entrance and praying — which worked! just before 1, i saw aaditya and threamed because it was all okay and even though we’d previously been on opposite sides of the church, things had worked out in the end.
this is la sagrada familia! one of the quintessential antoni gaudi works that you have to visit in barcelona (along with parc güell, which i’ll get to. sadly didn’t make it to casa batll ó… was too expensive and i was nearly broke by this point on the trip). it’s pretty amazing. like the way it’s built with the inner pillars stretching in and the outer pillars reaching out to make it look so much bigger on the inside than it does from the outside. don’t get me wrong, it’s still a massive church — or rather basilica. and it’s not even completed yet. like construction started in 1882, but i’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be finished in 2026 so i’m pretty sure i saw a good portion of it. at least, when i showed yiayia these pictures she was like wow they added stained glass! and oh boy oh boy did they add stained glass — clearly, in line with gaudi’s original plan — in this obscenely artful abstract way at the perfect angle so that when the sun hits it the color literally dyes the air (citing sara cotsakis for that insight). i mean, seriously, have you ever seen anything else like that? the whole place literally bleeds color. aaditya loves stained glass and was basically on top of the world just walking through it. him and i went in the parts designated for prayer where you couldn’t take pictures and just sort of sat and looked around awestruck. it seriously is an incredible place. i don’t know what i was expecting, but it was nothing like it and i absolutely loved it.
after we spent like an hour wandering around the church (we didn’t purchase tickets for the tower, because once again, too expensive. like doubled the price of the ticket), we ventured out to find something cold: water, ice cream, smoothies — literally anything cooler than the blazing air around us. then, we got on the nearest subway stop and aaditya navigated us to plaza espanya, the nearby apple store to meet up with kyle, and then the gothic quarter (he had already gone there on thursday since he’d messed up his flight reservations and accidentally flew out to barca at 6 am and had to skip class because of it but martha and alex were chill about it).
the gothic quarter has all the really narrow winding streets that make me fall in love with europe all over again every time i walk down them, barcelona cathedral (yes. la sagrada familia is something entirely separate), and plenty of restaurants and shops.
after awhile of wandering we ended up in this square with brandy melville and mango, which i guess is barcelona-based, and all of the girls were like well… we are going to go shopping now. and i was like peace out! i’m starving. let’s go feed ourselves now so kyle, aaditya, and i found a restaurant where we feasted on the best paella of my entire life and i had my first sangria and was like wow apples soaked in alc are great.
while we were eating, i heard from ryan (we asked the waiter for the wifi password and he pointed to the napkin and we were all like what??? but then he was like, no. the phone number lol) and i was like wow. ryan actually made it! luckily seun was still in our airbnb so i didn’t have to go all the way back to our apartment to let him in so he could drop off his stuff. we had planned to walk to/along las ramblas — the long tree-lined boulevard with all the restaurants and shops that barcelona is famous for — and told them to meet us at the nike store on la rambla. so we finished (high key savored every bite) and then made our way to las ramblas and the nike store.
it was a pretty short walk to where we were going. but we got within viewing distance of las ramblas when i saw an atm and i was like okay, boys. we gotta stop here first, sorry. first off, i’d already donated all of my cash to the cause that was paying our apartment tourist tax. second off, i still owed a large amount of people money for transport to/from opium and actually getting into opium. so i had no cash in a city where you need cash (largely for la boquería which is a huge open air market right off of las ramblas) somehow this city had like zero atms. i’m still v unclear how that works. but we stopped and i withdrew money and then chose the option where you print out a receipt and was gifted with this massive hunk of paper that kept printing and was the most un-receipt like receipt ever received. [side note: couldn’t resist :3]
after my brief atm run, we walked up la rambla, reveling in the cacophony of melded together noises characteristic of the main artery of this world-class city: meseros taking orders, vendors selling goods (SO MANY CACTII WERE SOLD) and tourist opportunities, and street performers doing whatever. las ramblas is really cool because it’s somewhere you visit that you can’t take pictures of. you really just have to go and experience it for yourself in your own way.
we eventually made it to the nike store, went inside, and lo and behold there were ryan and seun! wohoo! so squad regrouped and then we walked back down las ramblas and then somehow ran into phil and josh right before we hit el mercado de san josé de la boquería or la boquería for short which was actually my favorite part about barcelona. like love is an open air market for real.
we all grabbed fruit and/or smoothies (those who bought stuff from the front vendors were disappointed because everything got cheaper as you went further into the market) and just sort of explored the culinary mecca for a bit. ended up in the fish section by accident which smelled, well, fishy? which kyle for some reason was into but everyone else was like no, let’s walk away… speaking of kyle, even though we’d just had a HUGE meal, he kept buying food and eating it until he basically keeled over and was like okay i’m full now.
anyways, we eventually emerged and kept walking all the way to the end of la rambla where the christopher columbus monument is. this was the cool column i mentioned earlier which we passed on our way to opium because the monument is located as the epicenter of the most important roundabout in the city. so it was nice to see it during the day hahaha. also, there was this guy blowing really big bubbles. aaditya took some pretty awesome photos playing with them. one hit me and i stumbled so they were that big.honestly looking back on it, there were a lot of bubble men in barcelona…
then, since we were so close to the beach we decided we may as well go for a walk along the boardwalk and over the bridge. unfortunately my camera died at this point, but walking over the bridge and looking back over incredibly blue water towards beautiful buildings (no real skyline) is something i won’t forget. i also won’t forget the fact that the buoys in the water were actually sculpted to look like people which i found incredibly odd. we basically made it all the way to this air conditioned mall where you could rent ferraris for a spin #justspanishthings when we realized how hot and tired we were and that we should probably head home before regrouping for dinner. so josh and aaditya left, and kyle, ryan, seun and i headed back to avenue de parallel which is the major artery of el poble sec.
and this is where the hilarious gatsby part of my barcelona experience comes in where i sent my classmates to their bourgeois doom which is honestly one of the funniest things i think i’ve ever accidentally done to other people. so… on my flight to rome on vueling, i’d flipped through the magazine (as i always do during takeoff when you aren’t allowed to use your laptop or other large electronic device) and noticed an advertisement for a bar in barcelona that was great gatsby-themed. it looked pretty cool, so i’d made a mental note to check it out when i got to barcelona. while we were on the restaurant’s wifi, i’d asked kyle and aaditya if they’d be down to go and they were like sure. so i’d made reservations for six since i figured i could convince at least a few other people to come with me. then, i put it in the groupme, and the whole world exploded. so i definitely would’ve needed more than six in the reservation, but i’d already randomly received a call from afghanistan (?) confirming that “the diana kafkes party of six would be in attendance” and lauren was like it’s okay. don’t worry about we will make our own reservation and then meet you there. so i thought that was all squared away, but then phil, kyle, ryan, and i met aaditya outside and we all showed up to this really odd alcove in a sort of shopping center that was closed and the bouncer was like hold on and then retrieved a really fancy even bigger man with one of those princess diaries earpieces that was like you are not allowed to enter because of how you are dressed. which was totally the guys’ fault because even though i insisted they rough it and wear pants (literal suicide in the barcelona heat but the only way to get into nice clubs/bar venues) they were all wearing gym shoes, except kyle. and we decided to not go because it wasn’t worth it to split up, so we just went to the chiller bar across the street to eat and get drinks. i was minorly disappointed because the guy wouldn’t even let me in to just see what it looked like…
anyways, unbeknownst to me, while we were enjoying a wide variety of mixed drinks and bomb patatas bravas, lauren, jake, madeleine, dustin, pansy, sara, etc. showed up and got into the gatsby place because they met dress code *sigh* and then proceeded to have a wonderful time enjoying the live 20s-themed performances (flapper girl, saxophone, etc.). which is all great and all but the next morning they were like diana, you literally sent us to the most bougie-ass place ever. legit. there was $4000 bottle of champagne on the menu and we were obligated to spend at least 70€ each and (this was madeleine) when we went to the bathroom, there was an attendant that offered us not only a towel, but a bunch of skin products and makeup to freshen up or whatever. apparently they all made the minimum price by buying a ton of drinks and desserts which is pretty funny. also, pansy got so so so drunk and lauren messaged me later and was like… diana, pansy needs to sleep at our airbnb tonight and i was like lol okay.
so yeah… definitely glad i didn’t have to blow 70€ in one sitting. (still part of me think it would’ve been cool to go and experience though…) me and my boys just had good food, good drinks, good conversation, and then sort of took a very roundabout way walking back home but made it anyways so no complaints there. ryan, kyle, and phil wanted to go out but i was like nah… and also was semi-confused because ryan had just promised that he’d go to parc güell with me and aaditya at 8 am the next morning which portended badly but i wasn’t about to be like “be more responsible please” to a college boy cause they won’t listen to advice like that even if they need to hear it. i enabled their alcohol purchasing at the convenience store next to our apartment that said it was open “24:00 hrs” but really meant that it was open until 24:00 like midnight and then went to bed.
the next morning, lo and behold, i could not get ryan up at 7 am which was the time we needed to leave to get to the park by public transport (was legit 50 minutes away) and he’s still salty about this but for real i tried everything short of hitting him which i was not under the impression was an okay thing to do so i messaged aaditya and was like what do i do??? and he was like: leave him. so i left. and navigated the subway system myself.
i got out in a very different part of the city. like honestly i think this was the part of barcelona i liked best. or maybe it was the fact that the sun was just coming up and everything had a lovely twilight glow to it. either way, i had to go up a street of escalators to get to parc güell (it’s on a hill above the city) which was honestly one of the coolest kind-of-semi-normal-yet-entirely-out-of-place things i’ve ever experienced. like this isn’t a mall. this is a residential street. and you approach the escalator and it’s moving super slowly but the second you step on it, it speeds up a lot. that’s pretty awesome sensor work/energy saving.
so i went up multiple escalators and then poked around the perimeter of the park that parc güell is in with some girl who was also lost and lucked out because i knew enough spanish to ask someone for directions to la entrada and know what he meant. basically, without purposefully trying, i got into the same situation as i had been at la sagrada familia where i had someone else’s tickets that was coming from the other airbnb and had to find him before i could enter the parc but of course we were on opposite sides of it again and by some miracle happened to walk straight into each other again right before the window of time when we were supposed to enter closed *phew* so that was semi-stressful but i eventually found aaditya, madeleine, and amna and we had a great time wandering through parc güell. i sort of read the brochure since i was curious and it talked about how gaudi had been contracted to make a neighborhood in the park-style that you find in the nicer neighborhoods in london/elsewhere in england but also infuse his unique modernisme catalan flare into it by eusebi güell but the project failed because others lost interest and so it lost funding. now it’s just this really cool partly-tiled, partly-not garden masterpiece. one of gaudi’s plain houses is also located inside the parc. we waited in line like 40 minutes to walk through it, but i can’t lie: it really wasn’t much.
we also walked around the gardens, which is when i learned that madeline knows a lot about shrubbery. like she flounced around smelling and identifying all the herbs and then told me how she also knew a lot about lichen which actually killed me. then, we noticed a lot of people much higher up than us near a cross so we decided we’d try to find it and we did. even though it involved a lot of stairs and sweat, we were rewarded by an incredible view of the city.
then we got really hungry and decided we’d go to la boquería for food. so i navigated us back down to the subway stop (apparently they’d taken a cab) and we went on our merry way back to las ramblas and the market. we walked through a different part of it then aaditya and i had visited the day before. we found an awesome crepe stand and really good empanadas and i ate a lot of fruit too. then, we decided we’d go to la arc de triomf which i was beyond confused about because i was like no way that’s here. i’m certain it’s in paris. but turns out barcelona also has an arc! and it’s entirely red — check that moorish influence!
i wish i knew more about the founding of barcelona (and just the history of spain in general) but from what i know, i was speculating that the arc was leftover from the original gate that surrounded the city before l’eixample. but honestly who knows… it’s still really really cool. we goofed around and took a lot of pictures before deciding we’d head back to our respective airbnbs and meet up at the beach.
so i went home, changed into my swimsuit, grabbed seun (pansy was still at the other airbnb from the night before and the guys were at camp nou seeing the fc barca stadium which was also apparently really cool but i’m not really into soccer that much so i didn’t want to spend a lot of money to do it), and headed out to get to la playa de nova icària. kyle was already there and we planned to find him as well when we got there.
we took the bus, which was really an incredibly crowded experience and then made it eventually to just a little bit of heaven on earth.
besides the hellish confusion that was congregating everyone together (especially since dustin sucks at taking directions from other people and basically took two hours to find aaditya, madeleine, amna, seun, pansy, and i), we eventually all were in a group living that lovely beach life. we jumped in the water almost immediately since it was broiling out and i was like damn, this water is the perfect temperature. everything about this is perfect. then, we came out, laid out, and got drinks. i had the most refreshing drink of my entire life which amounted to kind-of a frozen mike’s hard but really was better than even that. it was some drink specially from menorca or something like that. idk. i was just shocked because the bar let me order without wearing pants which made me even happier because #pantlesscrusading is a real movement. somehow we missed kyle (he had a really really really rough day… breakups suck and he needed to go for a walk) but ryan eventually found us (how??? still very unclear. he had no service but wandered into our group eventually. also… seun went on a four hour excursion without a phone when she told me she’d be back in an hour but then she somehow navigated her way all the way back to our airbnb and then ran into other duke people later on a bus… like what???). basically, our time at the beach was one of the highlights of my entire duke in geneva experience. it was the first time the entire program i actually relaxed and really took in the full weight of the fact that hey! i was in europe with all of my friends. and i can barely even emphasize how special that is. literally if you have the opportunity, study abroad. you won’t regret it.
we stayed at the beach until like 8 pm. then, after much deliberation, we decided we’d go to dinner before showering and then ended up splitting up anyways to go to separate places. my group met up with kyle before eating at la fonda. i split salmon with madeleine and it was pretty good. i basically had to be in charge of communication when we were paying though in order to get the check split properly. then, we all headed back to get ready, because everyone wanted to go out one last time. i wasn’t really feeling it though, but i wasn’t about to leave kyle alone on the subway system since he’d already drank like 3/4 of a handle of whiskey while ryan and pansy were getting ready after we’d stopped in his hotel room so he could change which literally killed me to watch. plus, we needed toilet paper anyways (or so i thought) so i figured i’d go steal it from dustin’s airbnb. this ended up being a really sort of counterproductive thing to do since it turned out we had toilet paper anyways in a cabinet (seun later told me) and since i forgot the roll anyways and then had to make josh walk to the subway stop at 2:30 am to hand it to me through the turnstile…
basically the only thing that came out of this evening was the fact that i got to hear josh sing despacito. the next morning everyone told me their clubbing experience sucked. which i wasn’t really all that surprised about… like they went to an alternative house club? literally when they pulled that up at dinner i was like are you sure you want to do this? but whatever. i can’t say i told you so because i really didn’t want to go because i wanted sleep which i ironically didn’t get anyways because of the TP debacle so oh well.
the next morning, i had planned to go for a run, but since i got back at like 3 am, i let myself sleep in. then i showered, grabbed all my stuff, and cleaned around so we could check out of our airbnb in time. ryan had already left since he had a flight at 9 am. i was impressed he made it. but turns out he sat outside the club and just talked to kyle for awhile, which was probably the best thing he could’ve done. phil, seun, pansy, and i went to grab breakfast from the cafe we’d been to a couple of days before. i had really delicious avocado toast (i think) with another one of those amazing raspberry cookies. then, seun and i split off from phil and pansy who were going to go to the airport early to find josh and take phil’s visa photos (which i’d tried to take earlier to no avail… rip to the megapixel quality of my camera which is actually pretty high unclear why the kenyan embassy wouldn’t accept it).
seun and i basically wandered around the entire day. i practically had a photo shoot for her since her facebook got hacked and deleted and she wanted a profile picture for when she started a new one. we went to el palacio nacional and then by the arc de triomf and parc de la ciutedella where we found madeleine before she went biking around the city. anyways, this part was kind of just photos so here are photos:
we also randomly found a lot of people learning how to juggle which was funny. then we wandered around the gothic district some more and attempted to go shopping, which was pretty much an utter failure since it was a sunday and everything is closed on sundays except for american stores such as brandy melville.
then, we headed back to hotel autohogar where we’d paid a small fee to keep our luggage in a hold for the day. we charged our devices and i went to go find ice cream. then madeleine randomly wandered in and we left to navigate the subway system back toward el aeropuerto. it took us about 50 minutes to get there.
even though swiss air had sent everyone an email saying we’d need to get to the airport 3 hours early and to expect delays since the airport workers were striking, we didn’t really have any problem. besides the fact that we didn’t actually have seun’s ticket (i just had a picture of the QR code, which fyi, for future reference, works just fine) and the security line was less of an organized line and more of a horde of people, we got through in no time and then decided to go grab food before heading to our gate.
the barcelona airport is more of a mall then an airport — like there’s stores everywhere and there’s even a part where you can go outside without leaving the airport to eat, which we did because that’s pretty unique by my experience. so we got tapas for the last time (and these were airport-mediocre and i accidentally had tuna without knowing which still sort of repulses me) and then ice cream, and then had to book it to our gate because it was about to board, but we made it. also saw this brilliant kid on the moving walkway pushing himself on a shopping cart, which made me laugh.
then we were on a plane and the weekend was over and i was sad because that was my last weekend trip and, by extension, that meant my time in europe was almost over. sara sat next to me on the plane and we talked the entire time about a lot of things. she sort of inspired me to take an econ class next semester at penn, so that ought to be interesting. kind of makes me laugh how i was always so anti-everything i studied here. i guess i’ve morphed into what i’ve hated, or rather maybe secretly loved the entire time without ever wanting to pursue it because it just “wasn’t me” because i was a scientist so i sought out other outlets for keeping people in my life that did those things so i could live vicariously through them. like in the book i’m reading (the nix) it’s sort of one of those things where you might never be a prodigy, but you can love/admire one and if they love/admire you right on back then their accomplishments in some way become yours and i guess i always thought that was enough, but now here i am and i’m ready to change because i’m done having a supportive role in all of this if it is really something i want to do. but whoa… this is getting way ahead of myself i need to go through the last week. wow. i’m sorry i wrote this so late and how everything is really morphed together and this is hella long but —
the last week:
i guess i could really just highlight several moments from this last week that were special, because in reality it was like most weeks in geneva (but isn’t that special enough?? idk) besides the fact that alex talked about memes in class. like doing my laundry one last time in the laundromat next to cité wasn’t exactly hearbreaking even though i was somewhat sad to part with my $25 laundry detergent and know that i’d never have clothes that smelled like lavendar and lily kiss ever again…
basically the entire time i was met with the so-much-to-do conundrum where i was so behind on work but still had so many people to connect with before i left. a problem exacerbated by the fact that i don’t go to duke and will not be seeing most of these lovely people again until january/february when i come on a random undetermined weekend to visit. i really did get very close to these people, closer even than i think i’ve gotten with my penn friends which sort of sucks, but i guess that’s what happens when you try to be a student athlete and literally have practice every waking moment when you aren’t at school and doing homework.
so amidst all the reading of sen i was supposed to finish, the last simulation submission my group was supposed to do (which really just josh took over, bless his heart. we seriously crushed everyone else), and the business paper i was supposed to write for martha’s class which i ended up just saving until the plane ride back, i tried to double task and hang out with people. like on monday when jaime and i went to parc de la bastions with intent of going into the library then realized we were dumb and that the library was closed on mondays (you’d have figured by now we would’ve known this) so we ended up just sitting outside and talking for awhile (lol at the limited amount of work that got done) until we legit witnessed a shady cocaine deal and then were like let’s relocate. which we did and then randomly ended up running into madeleine so we agreed to go to a coffee shop where i had the most delicious blueberry cheesecake muffin and a super artsy latte and tried to do some research on marriott international for my paper and then ended up forfeiting and wandering into the church by the train station in the middle of a catholic service by accident.
then, i headed back since i’d bought a bunch of food for breakfast for dinner which had been a longstanding plan almost the entire program since i’d been dying for ryan to make me/us pancakes (literally the only way to my heart lol). i got back before he and aaditya were done playing basketball, so i had time to go erg one last time in the gym since i couldn’t go running because i’d woken up early before class to buy the cheapest milk, eggs, and flour possible (then made ryan go get the rest to make pancakes and eggs for about eight people). my extreme-value shopping was actually an epic fail because i accidentally bought hardboiled eggs which apparently “should have been obvious since they were bright orange” (-aaditya) but ended up just making me laugh almost the hardest i had the entire time at my own incompetence. idk if you can attach videos to this thing, but we checked the eggs by shaking one of them and then throwing it to the ground. long story short, i had to make ryan go buy new eggs.
quite frankly, this ended up being one of my favorite nights. like even the somewhat-ratchet cité kitchen couldn’t detract from the fact that it was just one of those nights that you revel in togetherness. ryan had to deviate from his family recipe and kyle made bacon for the first time and i sort of just stood over them both and gave probably entirely unnecessary pointers because i like being in charge way too much… then as we were all sitting eating our pancakes with our hands and sharing a communal pot of eggs with one fork, breakfast for dinner devolved into watching weird youtube videos and vines and reminiscing on spongebob and other childhood favorites. it was the sort of moment that made me feel like i was getting what i’d been missing the entire time my freshman year. like this is what college is supposed to be about. spending time and becoming close with people you never thought you’d ever be friends with and i guess the best exhibit is kyle who legitimately asked me for first impressions and i was like to be entirely honest i was shocked you weren’t a complete douche and then jaime was like yeah… we all thought that. probably was the 270 franc gym membership. but seriously, if anything, you can never judge a book by its cover and college is supposed to be this liberating time when you can be friends with everyone and i don’t want to limit myself with preconceptions as i head into my second year at penn because it’s definitely where i’ve failed before…
tuesday was our goodbye dinner at the same restaurant we had our opening dinner at, so basically nice little bookends to our trip. the food wasn’t as good as the first time around though… like the appetizer was bomb. some sort of sauerkrat pillow with this phyllo cracker and pesto like yum, but then the salmon was almost entirely raw the dessert was a very unfortunate combo of vanilla ice cream, apples, and burnt caramel.
once we were done, martha and alex surprise roasted us, which was pretty great. i got an award for going to liechtenstein *round of applause please* and a fake camera “to take better photos for my blog”. the funniest by far was phil’s: martha was like this award goes out to someone for just being “generally pathetic”. phil just always shows up late or gets lost and it was so so accurate we all died laughing. martha made him a sign that was like “please help me. i’m late” in five or six different languages. paper plate awards are honestly great. plus, josh sang despacito in front of all of us as punishment for dipping out from alex’s berlin history tour to go to a league of legions tournament.
then, we gifted them with wine and notes we had all written in these little bound decorative books about what the duke in geneva experience had meant to us and took this actually INCREDIBLE family photo, before the real photo shoot outside commenced (which i haven’t included here because they are all on my facebook and this thing is going on almost an hour i guess. seriously, yiayia. it’s time for you to get one to stalk your grandchildren).
after we were all photo-ed out, we split into two groups: the smart people who recognized the need for getting work done and sleep and the ones who were fine throwing cares by the wayside to go downtown for a bit (and i guess to watch an important soccer game but i wasn’t interested in that) you can clearly guess which group i was with :3
we went downtown to oldtown and just sort of strolled until we found a bar. ryan, summer, jaime, and i were deadset on getting movenpick so we told everyone not to leave and then walked along the lake until we got there. then, summer, ryan, and i decided we’d buy an entire liter of swiss chocolate and eating it straight from the carton since that was more cost effective than ordering three or even six scoops. then, summer and i proceeded to eat the entire liter of ice cream while walking around the fêtes de genève looking for the salsa dancing which we eventually found (ryan didn’t pull his weight at all). its actually kind of weird to see geneva when it’s a happening place at night. like for every time except when the festival is going on and a bunch of tourists come in (largely from the middle east which is intriguing), geneva’s a pretty quiet place.
we eventually made our way back to the bar where we found the others had finished an entire beer tower which made me only nominally jealous because that definitely would have also been a fun time. yet ice cream>>> alcohol for me. then we watched the end of the soccer — sorry, football — match and headed home.
on wednesday, i finally got to take my bike trip through the vineyards to wine taste. earlier on (like literally two days before), like half of our program wanted to go wine tasting but then everyone but aaditya, madeleine, and i were like we have so much work to do!!! and i was like yes! but it’s one of your last days in geneva, switzerland. but i digress… we met madeline (other one! my friend from high school who worked at cern this summer) and her friend eliot at the meyrins-graviére bus stop but then were like lmao alex where are these bikes you told us we could find right across the street from the stop? literally nowhere in sight. after much confusion, in which we split up into separate search parties and scoped out all of the area within a two or three block radius, we sorted things out and realized we’d gotten off at the wrong meyrins stop and just had to walk like 15 minutes back along the bus route to the actual geneva roule where we rented free bikes with the improper amount of money for a deposit and then were off on our way to domaine les perrières, the winery martha had recommended.
it was literally such a beautiful ride through the countryside which was only minorly detracted from by the fact that the bikes barely worked/could barely switch gears (even though they had this cool orange graphic thing where when you shifted gears, the bike went up an incline → hill… mine was broken though so i didn’t get to play with this). the ride was also somehow exhausting. like, don’t get me wrong, it was hilly, but it wasn’t that hilly. like there was no way i should’ve been feeling that slight of an incline in my quads. but guess i just have to blame the trash bike…
anyways it was about a 40 minute bike ride to the winery and then we sort of just sat there breathing hard for a bit (see above) before we went inside and then were super confused because the doors were open but no one was there so we sort of screamed bonjour for awhile until a lady rolled through and wine tasting commenced.
i high-key got the drunkest i’ve gotten this entire trip during wine tasting, which was honestly pretty funny for all involved. like this woman kept opening bottle after bottle and pouring us each a half glass and i definitely had like 5 full glasses of wine which is sort of the limit for me in terms of alc. also, she runs a smart business. like after we were all fairly toasted she asked us to buy a bottle and of course, we didn’t refuse so i bought some muscat which somehow made it through customs #lit.
then we left and answered the age-old question of what happens when a bunch of teenagers bike drunk through the hilly terrain of geneva vineyards? which can be answered only two ways:
- they will stop along the way multiple times to steal grapes and feast on them.
- inevitably someone will lose control of their bike and crash into a bush (@madeleinecochrane literally the funniest thing i’ve ever seen. i keep replaying the moment over and over in my head and it’s literally the most comical thing ever)
i also vaguely remember posting a snapchat story of us biking, but then when i looked at it later i realized i’d put the reverse filter on it so everything was backwards and i was like lmao wow who am i? i also fell asleep on ryan on the bus ride back and then took a brief nap when i got to my bed before aaditya pounded on my door to wake me up for dinner #soblessed for real.
so we all went out for food. had really mediocre chicken curry and then came back home. i started packing and then it really hit me that i was leaving and had actually accomplished nothing in terms of writing martha’s paper so that wasn’t good…
on thursday, we had our last day of classes which was sort of emotional and then everyone started leaving. first amna, then summer, then aaditya… really i was like what. it felt so weird that the program could end just like that. like wow. the best experience of my entire life ended really abruptly.
directly after class, i went to the actual universitaire de genève with summer to retrieve our 20 franc gym deposit from the sports office (which was awkwardly relocated to a different room due to construction which we walked in on totally by accident) and then i came back to make aaditya pasta since i’d promised we’d have one more meal together (yeah… sometime within this last week we had our last chicken and vegetables day which sort of killed me, but then i guess i left all of the leftover raw meat outside of the refrigerator for like 18 hours so that was sucky because i wasted money and everything smelled like gross rotting chicken). then i went with pansy and jaime to manor one last time to look for an ornament for my mom (which i didn’t find) and to buy headphones for myself since my earbuds were dead and i wasn’t about to get on a 9 hour flight without music. i bought some british brand and then headed downstairs to the grocery section to try and find those incredibly amazing linzer cookies i’d eaten with summer the night we went to go see the concert in the park. score! i found them and also snagged some strawberries before i headed to a different souvenir shop, which unfortunately also didn’t have ornaments. so i forfeited the task and went to läderach down the street where i legitimately spent $120 on chocolate as souvenirs for people back at home because i wasn’t about to just buy some cheap airport chocolate for my fam when they had yet to experience “the real thing”. then i came back and said goodbye to aaditya and summer and sort of just cried inside while i ate the chocolate, linzer cookies, and strawberries i’d bought for myself all by myself (or… i guess ryan and jamie sort of helped).
then, i vegetated in bed (because i’d legit just ate so so much food) before going on my last run along the rhone river, which i realized would make me late for dinner but i wasn’t hyperconcerned because after all the hoopla over the fact that we couldn’t all get reservations together unless we wanted to get pizza, i was not really super excited at that prospect so figured i’d go for a run and that everything would sort itself out in the end… which it did.
my last run was beautiful as always, but also so much more focused than usual because i really was trying to take it all in: the mountains, the sound of the river, the breeze off of the leaves. for the first time, i crossed over a bridge onto the other side and just sort of stood looking out over the dam for awhile. i was thinking about how lucky i was to have an experience like this just when i needed it and i guess i’ll have to wait and see what good it did me but if there’s anything i was in need of healing at this point in my life and and i got it in a different way than i expected this summer —i expected to travel and see things and do things and gain a new perspective and feel alive and realize that my problems were small and far away, but really when it comes down to it, the real healing happened largely by means of meeting and loving incredible people that taught me so many things and validated who i was as a crazy, flawed individual by loving me right back. that’s where the real magic in this experience was. it’s that i got to do all of these amazing things with amazing people by my side.
i’m sort of the nostalgic type. so i thought all this things and picked up a rock to take home and symbolize all i’d learned this summer (my sister alaina told me this amounted to ecoterrorism but whatever it was more like a stone/pebble). and then i ran on home, realized everyone had left, and then told jaime that after i took a shower, i’d be down to go to old town to get real food since i didn’t see the point of rushing out to meet everyone for pizza. so i did just that and we went to a wonderful restaurant with really really incredible food and all these random hats along the perimeter of the ceiling. i ordered two entrees and the waiter was like “… are you sure you want to do that?” and i was like boy, i can finish anything. so i ate an entire thing of pork and fondue and a ton of bread and drank my last calvinus amber beer (with the swingtop cap hahahaha throwback to grolsch harvard business case) and just generally enjoyed myself. some band came by and this guy was jamming out on the accordion and it was just such a nice way to end the experience and totally beat pizza (sorry, friends). i just sort of took everything in.
after we were done, i tried to contact dustin or kyle but it turned out everyone was already thinking about heading back… jaime also was ready to go home, but i had one more thing that i needed to do so i got on the bus, got off at bel air, and made a beeline for the ferris wheel, which i promised myself i’d go on at least once before leaving. so yeah… i went up and looked down, went up and looked down. sort of anticlimactic, but geneva truly is prettiest at night. the jet looks beautiful when it’s lit up (this time with random rastafarian colors like what). then i sort of just walked through all the bars set up along the lake for the festival (which were blaring dance music), said one last goodbye to the imported swans, and hopped on the #3 back to crêts-de-champel one last time because kyle told me everyone was accusing me of being fake for not coming to dinner with them because they’d actually not see me for awhile since i didn’t go to duke and i was like fine team — i come.
when i finally got back, they were all congregated around martha and alex’s fake room/storage room and i gave everyone hugs, but realized it wasn’t really goodbye for everyone because a lot of us were flying out friday morning and had plans to get breakfast at 8 before we left. then, since lizzy wasn’t present, i woke her up by hitting her door with a beer bottle multiple times but it was entirely necessary because i had to say goodbye.
and that was really it. hugs. no tears. only my promise that i’d be at duke soon enough, because seriously i could never leave these people in my past.
i guess i don’t really need to go through anything else… i mean that was the end of duke in geneva for me. like the rest all just seems less important: it was raining as i got on the bus with sara and lauren which obviously fit the overall mood of leaving. i checked my bag (the guy knew i was greek somehow and started speaking to me in greek) and got through security without problem, but then almost missed my flight because i needed to spend my last couple of francs and decided to go buy a giant 3 kg toblerone and was waiting and waiting for sara to come by but then she didn’t so i had to leave but at least i saw josh before entering a way-too-long passport control line which i somehow made it through just in the nick of time to board my flight. besides the airport rush, the flight from geneva to dulles was relatively uneventful and i got about 90% of martha’s paper done and watched the movie allied which was top and jaime was on my flight too (in business class lmao) so i got to visit her but then got yelled at by the flight attendants. oh! i was also sitting next to some guy who went to UMD and interned at cern who knew eliot and was trying to covertly conceal duty-free absinthe in his carry-on and we talked for a bit. and all was fine and dandy and the 9 hours just honestly flew by.
but then dulles literally gave me hell: like sent me through the non-U.S. citizen passport line for customs (i did the thing where you scan your passport and take a picture and the print out had a giant x through it so i guess i was marked or something but then the guy only asked me about liechtenstein and i almost started dying laughing like really america??? especially with the north korean thing, you think liechtenstein is a threat?) and then there was the whole 15-hour “delay” thing which was obscene and basically stood for everything inefficient about america to me because weather and then bureaucracy got in the way of me getting home on time but at least i got to stay with madeleine in her apartment and i met a really cool biophysicist and we talked for awhile and shared food since i had opened my giant toblerone pretty early on because the entire situation depressed me. and we ended up all commiserating and sharing food. like i ate some guys’ pizza because we were all like well… this sucks. like no one had ever had it that bad before. they literally kept tempting us. like we’d board, go wait by the runway, and be turned away by the control tower and sent back to the gate where we’d deplane and then replane and repeat. it was utter communism. and i’m seriously so glad i could stay in madeleine’s apartment in reston, virginia because united refused to give voucher’s for hotels. so for the first time in my life, i left the airport before having accomplished any sort of movement. the taxi rides to and from madeleine’s were expensive, but having the opportunity to shower and sleep on a bed were worth it — as was seeing madeleine one last unexpected time!
clearly i made it home. so all is well, and honestly all the bad parts about coming home were made bearable by the fact that people come together in tough situations to at the very least laugh. also i met some random greek girl that knows amanda prokos and went on IV second session last year so that’s really awesome.
well… as i said before, this is it. i can’t believe my long project is over.
thanks to all who read all the way through. i know i’ve been long (particularly with this last entry… yike-os for real) and probably somewhat boring at points, but seriously i could never say enough about how lucky i feel to have gone on this program and met all these people and traveled to all these new places. i said it while i was there, and i’ll say it again: you never know how good you have it until it’s gone. and now i’m back here and i still can barely rationalize all of the incredible things that happened to me in just six short weeks. traveling is truly the best investment you can make. it really does give so much back to you. i guess this is incredibly dumb, especially after all the hell united put me through, but on the way there a quote popped up the little personal screen in front of me right before we took off:
“we don’t travel to escape life, we travel so life doesn’t escape us.”
i guess i believe that anyhow. you’ve got to be careful of being stuck in the same monotonous routine, because it amounts to a whole lot of nothing in terms of personal growth and development. and who am i to say any of this as a 19-year old? well… i’ve had a pretty full life because i’ve always been searching, constantly searching, for ways to live. and i honestly think that’s a lot more than most can say, no matter what the age.
but i guess it’s time for me to conclude: there’s a little more to life somewhere else. go find it.
