Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday August 3rd

Keith and Christine would love to hear from you with questions, comments, personal news and any news at all from Australia or wherever you are. We will reply to all emails! Please write to either windlechristine@gmail.com or windle.keith@gmail.com

We started well with some blog publishing, courtesy of having actually written some, a phone call to Paris to make arrangements to visit some people we had met on a station a month ago and who had extended an invitation to us, and some emails to some other people re visits while we were in France. We even put some washing on, although the dials were incomprehensible to us. We failed the washing machine challenge and the load was not finished when we returned from our four hour outing and we never did work out how to drain the puddle out of the bottom. Lucky it was so hot for the drying, which was done on a line attached to the wall over a light well. To access it you could open the window and lean out. Too bad if your clothes flew off; they would be gone forever.

Our outing was to Mt Juif, one of the barriers that confine Barcelona’s suburban sprawl. This is the site of the Olympic Stadium and some pretty strange other items that no doubt would make more sense if I knew anything about them. Starting in front of the hill, a grand pathway flanked by fountains leads up to the majestic Museum of Art. We did not go in, being in the sporting history frame of mind. Walking behind the building and heading up the hill, we came across some lovely gardens in a valley and a spider’s nest amongst the bushes. Higher up we came to the terrace on the top of the hill where a strange tower, probably with a telecommunications purpose but looking just like a sculpture and possibly like something related to the Olympic Flame. It was surrounded by what appeared to be lines of chimneys, a tangle of wire sculptures and a sparsely planted garden, lonely on the vast expanse of paving that seemed to be throbbing in the heat.‘Were the Olympics held in summer?’ I wondered, since surely no-one would like to run about in this heat. As a complete Olympics ignoramus, I could only guess that the events were held in the early morning or the evenings. The stadium itself did not look very ‘Spanish’ to me, and there again I am showing my ignorance of modern Spanish architecture, but it seemed to be severe and uninspiring and lacking in the zing we had come to expect here.We took a few moments to look down on the tracks and a few more to buy some post cards in the shady shop. From the post cards I saw that the terrace and building come into their own at night, when lighting effects change everything.

Our walk back down the hill through the gardens was a different experience altogether, with colonnades and cascades, albeit without water, and little garden rooms or corridors along the terraces creating a lovely environment.This is an area of museums, theatres and public offices, so grand architecture has been given free rein.I thought that the façade of the building housing the Teatro Fabia Puigserver was a fine example of a building that said ‘Spain’ to me, just as Gaudi’s buildings say it too. The marvellous Metro took us back to our apartment for our siesta.

A stroll closer in to the centre of town took us past buildings that were highlighted on our map as being of special architectural interest. We lined up to pay to enter the Casa Batllo, which is really a multi-storey apartment complex around two light wells. The beauty of this house is that it was finished and lived in, so all the concepts of design and utility were brought to fruition. To me, this was my ‘big’ Gaudi experience. It is a classic in modernist building.The Battlo family commissioned Gaudi to transform a regular city building into a family home with apartments for others as well. He took the sea as his guiding theme and explored curves, light, textures and natural shapes and colours. What I love about Gaudi is that he was so thorough, with every wood used being carefully chosen, every tile gradation from grey to deepest blue in the light wells to be placed in such a way as to respond to the different intensities of light from the bottom to the top of the light wells, everything having been thought through. The first floors were the family’s private rooms, with a glorious curvy and sensual staircase leading up to them with banisters that it was impossible not to caress. The doors had little adjustable ventilation panels as an integral part of the wood and glass rock pool effect, and colours that looked different from each side of the door. A fireplace like a cave had seats in it for a couple on one side and a chaperone on the other.

628

The central staircase wove around a lift and took us from one side to the other, passing the light wells at different levels. The apartments led off from landings, with Gaudi’s hand painted calligraphy letters in gold marking the doors of other people’s homes. A dining room leads out to a terrace, with columns breaking up a wide doorway and creating the effect of having to weave or swim a way out.All the walls and ceilings are treated with textures that evoke scales, shells, waves and the trails of worms buried in the sand. The terrace brings in the colourful mosaics in shell motifs, sea weeds, anemones and wavy walls. The floor tiles are in sand and water colours, with gradations and geometric shapes creating for me the effect of a light dappled sea floor. Wrought iron work creates a stunning contrast and links the house’s balconies to the terrace. Can you tell that I loved this house?

Climbing higher into the attic, a shared area for all the residents with allocated storage spaces, communal washing area and provision for drying, it was clear that Gaudi’s creativity and innovative ideas were grounded in the functional needs of a space. Nearly all in white, the curves still predominated in a series of caves with plenty of provision for adjustable ventilation. Crowning the building was a beautiful rooftop terrace where the chimneys had been grouped and decorated to become a feature. The front wall, which is clearly visible from the street and partially forms the roof of a little cistern room, is a magnificent dragon or Ness-type creature, covered in scales. A gap provides a space to look through exactly in line with La Sagrada Familia, but unfortunately a bank now obscures the view. An unusual cross is also part of the façade. The view from the street immediately draws the eye, with balconies with empty spaces in them looking like underwater caves, colours and textures on the walls like sand through water and over all the scaly dragon roof line.

We continued with our tour of other buildings and some were amazing, but all paled into insignificance beside the Casa Batllo.

There are so many dogs in Barcelona. Inside in apartments during the day, they all come out at dusk with their owners and prance about the streets. The corners are sometimes impassable with leads crisscrossing as dogs catch up on the news of the day with their canine friends, and the humans do too.One night we saw two dogs, tied to each other and without human companions, take each other for a walk along the tiny alleys.Another dog had chosen the middle of a narrow one way road to relieve itself when a truck approached. The driver showed some patience and acceptance of the situation but, after waiting for a moment began to edge forward. The dog, obviously old and with great urban survival skills, maintained its position but hobbled closer to the gutter, allowing the truck to pass by with only a few centimetres to spare.

There are also a lot of odours in Barcelona, with drain vent holes and anonymous wet patches and piles of rubbish awaiting collection sometimes winning over the salt air and delicious cooking smells from restaurants and cafes.