While I am going through my pictures from Madrid [was great by the way, and I got home safely yesterday] until I am ready to post a recap of my trip, I am posting this meme again. Seeing how fun the first round was [and I am very surprised with how many of you commented and how quickly y'all got the movies, by the way, there are still two quotes that haven't been guessed, so take a look at that one again, if you like; I will eventually post the ones that remain unguessed from this round and the last one, though], and that there are many more movies I love, here’s another one. Lurkers, feel free to de-lurk and take a guess, too! And fellow bloggers, feel free to borrow the meme. Here are the rules again:

1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly in the comments, and put who correctly identified the film.
5. NO Googling or using IMDb search functions. (That’s called cheating, folks.)

1. It’s not everyday you find a girl who’ll flash someone to get you out of detention. 10 Things I Hate About You, correctly guessed by Ellen.

2. As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in. Very odd, what happens in a world without children’s voices.

3. Where the hell are my spanky pants? Bring It On, correctly guessed by alyndabear.

4. I wait all day, just hoping for one more minute with you, and I don’t even know you. City Of Angels, correctly guessed by alyndabear.

5. Dear Lord, we ask that you bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies. And we ask forgiveness, Lord, for the fornication that Mr. Sprock and me committed this morning on this very table. Where the Heart Is, correctly guessed by Kirby.

6. Guys just get a stick, lets play some pool, alright? And if ya can’t find a cue just pull the one shoved up her ass. Sweet Home Alabama, correctly guessed by Tanja.

7. If I hear so much as a mouse fart in here the rest of the night I swear by God and sonny Jesus you will all visit the infirmary. Every last motherfucker in here.

8. And then one time I ate some rotten berries. Man, there were some strong gases seepin’ outta my butt that day! Shrek, correctly guessed by alyndabear.

9. Maybe we’re lying here because you don’t wanna be standing somewhere else. Serendipity, correctly guessed by Kristen.

10. People wait their whole lives to see an ex when things are going really good. It NEVER happens. You could make relationship history! Music and Lyrics, correctly guessed by Kirby.

11. You know, I don’t know… They have a class system. He’s an aristocrat and, you know, we’re… we’re commoners. In fact according to his system, we’re… I think we’re probably classified as scum.

12. Mind your distance, though. Those balloons can be a bit dodgy. You wouldn’t want one of them to pop. Finding Nemo, correctly guessed by Evi.

13. That’s the spirit. Thank you. Thank you for your honesty. Now fuck off and die, you fucked up slag. Closer, correctly guessed by Maria.

14. Look, we all go way back and uh, I owe you from the thing with the guy in the place and I’ll never forget it.

15. All I know is that a man who didn’t know who you were was with you in that room for a half-hour and came out completely besotted!

By the way, all of you who have e-mailed me lately [this month], sorry about not replying, I am very much planning to, but have been very busy the past two weeks. Anyway, I will eventually get around to it, hopefully in the next few days. The same goes for commenting on your blogs. I still haven’t caught up with all the blogs from the pas five days, not to mention commented. [But that does not mean you cannot comment on my blog, *hint hint*.]

I said I would post again with some photos from this past week here, so here it goes. I am pretty much done packing, and I spent a few hours yesterday preparing the trip, looking up how to get to the hostel, and the sights I want to see [I also wanted to see if any had any days they were open longer/shorter or admission was cheaper, but it turns out, admission is either very little or free for the museums I have picked out anyway, at least for me as a student].

Today I read a book for class, Coonardoo by Katherine Susannah Prichard. I meant to get some more work done during the break, so I am taking one book with me, and will have to do a lot of work after I get back, until Wednesday [when Bea comes to visit]. I am really behind on reading, because I have not been in the mood to read at all [in general] so I have to force myself to sit down and read more than 20 pages at a time. It does work if I really want to [or have to], like today I read this entire book of 200 pages, but I hope I will find more joy in reading again soon. I already gave a bunch of books to my parents to take back to Munich, because I knew there was no way I would read them all in the next three months. I think I have only finished one book [two including today's] in the past two months.

Anyway, tomorrow afternoon I am flying to Madrid. My flight leaves here at 2pm, and I get there at 3.10pm [what a short flight, huh?]. I will be back here on Saturday in the early evening [with many, many pictures, haha]. I will probably not be online much, but I do plan to check my e-mail sometime, and I will have my Spanish cellphone with me. I will not be having my German cellphone with me, though. [Just a note to anyone who might want to get a hold of me in the next few days.] Anyway, now for the pictures. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures, and you can see them all here.

Remember the list from this post? Well, add ‘hot water’ to that. That’s right! As of last night, we no longer have hot water. Because the boiler does not turn itself on when you turn on the hot water. And of course this happens on a Friday night, when there is a long weekend ahead of all of us! I desperately need to take a shower, and luckily Clara said I can take a shower at her place [I'll be going over there in about half an hour], but that doesn’t solve the issue at hand. We don’t have hot water! And it’s Easter! I doubt we will even be able to call anyone before Tuesday [and I will be in Madrid then, so my roommates will have to handle it]. I hope I can find a place to take a shower again on Monday morning [or sometime during the day, can't be picky now, can I?], and then after that I won’t have to deal with this issue until Saturday when it will hopefully be resolved. The really crappy thing is how unreliable Jordi is. Since he doesn’t live here, it is really hard to get a hold of him or to get him to do anything [because, after all, it doesn't affect him], but ultimately it has to be him who gives the okay to call a technician because he will be the one paying. [Oh yes, he will, that's not our job.]

My parents left today. This morning we went to the MACBA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was, well, interesting. I think some contemporary art is just too weird for me. Yesterday, we went to these gardens up in Horta [a neighborhood of Barcelona] which was really nice. On Thursday I also found a new area of Barcelona that is really nice, Pedralbes, which is a suburban kind of neighborhood and you can tell the more wealthy people live there. The houses are very beautiful, and well, they are houses, not apartment blocks. Last night we went to see the Easter procession in Barcelona, and we made it just in time to see the beginning of it [I am not sure how long it took, but it was really crowded and went very slowly, so we left after half an hour or so after getting a good idea of what these processions are like]. After that we went to see the Magic Fountain at Plaza Espana, and wow, it was crowded. It is the Easter weekend so I suppose that is why, because Barcelona generally seemed packed with tourists, but it was so strange compared to the other times I have been there. It kind of felt a little like all these tourists were stealing my city. [Which is of course not true, but it amused me to find that I feel that way about Barcelona.]

On my way back from the airport, I stopped at a mall, the Gran Via 2, a huge mall I had seen from the outside many times before [on the way to the airport and to IKEA] but that I had never been to. And gosh, it is amazing! I only had some change with me, as it was more of a spontaneous decision and I only went in there to look for flip flops [for showering at the hostel in Madrid] but I really need to go back there when I have some money to spend. There are so many cool stores and the mall itself is also really beautiful, it is very new [only five years old] and looks so nice.

Well, I will be getting ready to go over to Clara’s now [I don't think I have ever looked forward to a shower this much!], but I will be posting pictures of the past week tomorrow or Monday, before I leave for Madrid. I am really excited to go there, but after a week of playing tourist here, I really need these two days to relax a little, to be ready to be a tourist again for five days. And by the time I come back, my spring break will be almost over.

Happy Easter to all of you!

After a few days of sight-seeing with my parents I realized again how beautiful Barcelona is. The city does have its ugly parts, particularly in the neighborhoods further from the center and suburbs, but the city center is so beautiful. Yesterday we went to see La Pedrera [Casa Milà]. It is my favorite of the Gaudí buildings in Barcelona from the outside, and the inside is beautiful as well, as is the roof. It’s amazing how much thought he put into literally everything, he was a genius.

Today we went to see the Palau de la Música Catalana which is so breathtaking. It is basically a huge glass building with so much natural light, beautiful colored glass and so much detail to everything. We were not allowed to take pictures but you can see a picture of the glass ceiling of the main concert hall here. It is UNESCO world heritage [along with many other buildings and places in Barcelona].

And so many of the residential houses in Eixample, my neighborhood, are extraordinarily beautiful, like this one, just one block from mine [ignore all the trucks on the street]. Today was the first time I noticed it, but I think it was under restoration so you could not see the facade.

Tonight we had dinner at this vegetarian restaurant just a block from my apartment [it was also mentioned in the Lonely Planet: the Amaltea, just in case you ever come to Barcelona], and it was really good. I am no fan of tofu and most foods wholemeal [well, pasta and cake mainly, I do like wholemeal bread and pizza], but the dinner I had [spring rolls and a cheese pizza as starter and main dish, and apple crumble cake for dessert, and a yogi tea] was really good, and good value too [the whole menu, starter, main dish, dessert and tea for €14.50]. My parents also really enjoyed their dinner. The cheese pizza was actually so rich, I had a third left over at the end [that I took back home, I figured I could eat it tomorrow].

We also went to the Pueblo Español [Poble Espanyol] which is basically a little town in the middle of Barcelona compromised of houses from all over Spain. It was really interesting to see all these architectural styles in one place.

Most of what we now have left over to see are art museums, but I have not been to most of them yet so I hope it will not be too much. I am glad I am seeing most of these sights with my parents [well, except for the usual frustrations that come up when I spend a lot of time with my parents], though, because entrance fees are ridiculously high for most places, and with my trip to Madrid coming up next week, I am really thankful that my parents are paying for all of them.

I’ve been continuously uploading pictures from each day which you can see here. I will keep adding more in the next two days.

By the way, I upgraded Wordpress to 2.5RC1 yesterday. It is not the final version but I was too curious to wait for the final version. I like it so far, it did not break my layout [except for the list bullets in the sidebar that were not there up until now] or plugins. I also haven’t encountered any bugs so far, so I will keep this version until 2.5 comes out. I am such a blogging nerd to get so excited about a new version of Wordpress. I had actually been waiting for it as it was supposed to be released on the 10th, but then it got delayed [and boy, was I disappointed!], and RC1 was just released yesterday.

I just had to check my laundry. You see, our semi-rusty washing machine is pretty messed up. We always had to manually set it to the spinning cycle after washing, else the laundry would always be dripping wet coming out of the washing machine. It also never really washed that well. Now, it has gone one step closer to being broken. It does not stop washing any more. It gets stuck somewhere before the end of the cycle, and if you don’t stop it, it happily keeps washing for twelve hours or longer. [Twelve hours was how long it washed the first time this happened the other weekend.] It of course also keeps spinning. The last time I did laundry, I forgot about the spinning for a short while [maybe half an hour instead of the usual ten minutes] and the washing machine seemed kind of warm when I finally did stop it [and so did my clothes]. Now this was the first time my clothes came out of the washing machine as dry as they should be, but I don’t want to risk the washing machine my clothes catching on fire, so I suppose I won’t repeat the experiment. Let’s just hope the washing machine keeps “working” for another three months.

Other things I miss in this country:

• A vacuum cleaner. [All we have is a broom and a mop. I wish we had a vacuum cleaner. Spoiled brat that I am, I never had to live without one.]
• A bathroom that has a toilet in it. [Our toilet is separate from the bathroom and you have to walk from one end of the apartment to the other to get from toilet to bathroom and vice versa.]
• Heating. [Now it's okay, but there were some times in December and January that were really cold and all we have is one mobile heater in the living room.]
• Insulated windows. [I live at a busy intersection and our windows are not insulated at all. Noise + no insulation = bad.]
• The absence of cockroaches. [Granted, the one we found in December was the first and last one so I think it's safe to say there aren't any more, but just that one was pretty gross as it is.]
• An oven. [We do have a stove but no oven and no microwave. Living without a microwave is okay, but sometimes I do miss the occasional pizza or fries. Or muffins. I also miss popcorn.]
• An electric stove. [We have a gas stove, and I really do not fancy having to use a lighter to ignite the gas every time I want to cook something. I also think that gas stoves are just accidents waiting to happen. Like, someone leaves it on by accident, and boom, the entire building explodes. Or something.]

There are probably more things I miss, but these are the most obvious and also things I always took for granted. Does not mean I am unhappy here or spend a lot of time mulling over an oven or vacuum cleaner because I know this is only temporary, but sometimes I do miss them. A little.

I also noticed today that there is a hole in the cable leading from the power adapter to my laptop. Not good. I did not even realize that it would be really bad if I got water on it [and caused a short circuit] until a friend mentioned it [until then I had just been worrying about electrocuting myself]. I put some scotch tape on it, but will have to buy some insulating tape to make sure it is properly insulated against any water or coke spillage. As for how this happened, I have no clue. It’s a small hole so it may have been there for a while, and I just didn’t notice until tonight. The cable must have gotten stuck or squashed or something. I have never had that happen before.

Friday night I went to see No Country For Old Men at the movies with Maggie. What a …disturbing [but interesting] movie! Javier Bardem is a very convincing psychopathic killer. With a really bad haircut. See for yourself. The movie is definitely worth seeing if you can stomach it. [You can always just close your eyes at the gruesome scenes like I did.] I also read up more about the movie on the IMDB discussion boards, and that was really interesting, particularly as there is so much more to this movie than you can see at first glance.]

Yesterday my parents came to Barcelona. We went to Park Güell yesterday evening, as the weather was nice and I figured it would be a good idea to go now as the last time I went [with Julia] it was really foggy and you couldn’t see very far. Today we went to Sagrada Familia but we didn’t go inside because the line was very long. We’ll probably have to go there earlier in the day [like at 9am] sometime later this week. Then we ended up at the aquarium [by accident, sort of] so we went in. It was really expensive [€16 per person, with a 10% discount for students] but it was actually nice. It had a very long underwater tunnel which kind of made it worth it. I would probably not go in again, though. [Just because it really is expensive, and was the third aquarium within the last three years that I have been at. In the end they are not that different. But I would recommend it to someone who has never been at an aquarium.] After that we spent some time walking along the port / beach, had coffee at a café there, sat at the sea for a while, and then went to Parc de la Ciutadella. It was really nice today, warm and sunny. Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain, so maybe we’ll be spending most of the day at museums then, and after that we will see. They’re staying until Saturday so I think we will have enough time to see everything important.
I am really happy that two more of my friends are definitely coming to visit. Last week Aleks booked a flight for the end of May to come here for an extended weekend and tonight Bea booked a flight to come here April 2nd to 6th. I will have to go sightseeing again, and considering that Bea is coming here in two weeks already I hope I will not be fed up with it by then [from sightseeing here all week this week and next week in Madrid] but I am really excited to see them again, particularly Bea who is one of my best friends and who I haven’t seen since August last year.

Here are some pictures from today at the aquarium.

A shark. Some of them were actually pretty big. And they did not eat the diver who came into the aquarium to clean it.

This fish was really nice and didn’t move at all which is why it doesn’t look blurry at all.

A squid. It is absolutely beyond me why anyone would want to eat that.

A pretty cool fish that looks more like a plant. [The name is 'leafy sea dragon'. There are also 'weedy sea dragons', which look like this.]