Whistling Flatmate's gone out and pasta's a-cooking, so a few more thoughts for today.

I'm living in one of those proper beautiful old Barcelona buildings, which sounds glamorous until I get onto my actual room - it's a shoebox. Not a shoebox in a London sense, where it may be cramped, but you probably still have enough space for someone to sleep on your floor - but about half that size. Literally - bed, desk, about 30cm across floor space, and that's it. Plus, as cell-like as so many rooms in London can be, they do at least have a small window to the outside world. I'm living in that curiously Spanish invention - the interior room. Sure, there's a window - but into the corridor outside my flat, and it's covered by a metal grid presumably to stop someone from slipping into my room at night and tripping over my head..all this sounds a trifle grim, but that's misleading. The room's oddly cosy in a way few London shoeboxes are. And the apartment's beautiful - patterned stone floors, lofty ceilings. The other rooms are pretty spectacular - our flat's kind of like an impoverished third world country with a massive rich/poor divide. I'm paying next to nothing, and getting next to nothing, and they're in breathtaking palacial suites - rooms with conjoining balconies and living rooms and ornamental iron work etc.

Another odd thing about these old buildings - it feels like the whole building is subject to moods and whims in a way that you rarely get in those Ikea flatpack cheap wooden floors/black leather sofa flats back home. Seriously, the whole flat is as temperamental as any thirteen year old girl. The washing machine has to be coaxed into working. As in, logically, I know I just have to lean against it after shutting and it should explode into life, but in reality, half the time it just stubbornly refuses to start. For anyone. As if it's just not quite in the mood right at that moment. Similarly, only one of my five other flatmates can light the oven - I think she's its favourite. The lock on the front door works like any normal lock until it knows there's nobody in to let you in, and suddenly the key just stops working (and not just my key - every other single key, too). My fave appliance strop so far has definitely been with the lift, though. It worked perfectly every single day, every single time I didn't desperately need it, but was just being lazy, it was easy as pie...the moment I brought a second suitcase back, it just. stopped. working. But kind of playfully, rather than maliciously. I'd press the button and it wouldn't do a thing. A bit like Gandhi. Passive resistance. Not locking me in or anything. But then as soon as I'd heaved the suitcase up a few flights of stairs, it sailed merrily up. What a joker.

The Beginning

Barcelona's beginnings, like those of so many cities, are a trifle murky. Romantic historians propose there are two explanations for how the city got its name:
(this is cribbed off Wikipedia)
1. In a condensed form - deriving from the name of Carthinagean general, Hamilcar Barca, who founded the city in 230 BC.
2. The explanation I much prefer - and which seems so much less likely - but so much more lovely: another historian attributes the foundation not to the boring old general, but to Hercules, some 400 years before the foundation of Rome. During the fourth of his labours, Hercules joins up with Jason and the Argonauts, in search of the Golden Fleece, travelling across the Mediterranean in nine ships. One of the ships is lost in a storm off the Catalan Coast, and Hercules sets out to locate it. He finds it wrecked by a small hill, but with crew saved. The crew were so taken by the beauty of the location (apparently unruffled by coming so close to disaster..)that they founded a city with the name Barca Nona ("The ninth ship").

This is also my beginning in Barcelona - I've been here three weeks so far and at the moment everything seems so very exciting. So this is is going to be an entirely self indulgent account of my time here..sorry. But then surely that's the very point of blogs? Self-indulgence? Hmmh.

Flatmate's got his piercing whistle on, making it entirely impossible to concentrate...so more later.