Barcelona: The Aquarium 1

One of the many tourist attractions and one the kids insist on visiting every time is the Aquarium. It has a lot of thematic basins, but of course the main attraction is big shark tank with the glass tunnel. Seriously, how anybody can think of sharks as monsters after seeing them will be eternally lost on me.

Pictures are a bit on the poor side, because the light is always low and a good camera needs good light.

The Daily Bird #781

Collared Doves were another species that inhabits the camp site and that will come and pick breadcrumbs from basically under your feet.

Brown dive with a black collar on a brown background

Barcelona: The City 5: Streets

The last of the streets photos. as I already mentioned, the city is between sea and mountains and has grown in the only possible direction, which is uphill, resulting in some streets that would make San Francisco envious. There are even some where there are escalators to get pedestrians up.

A light purple house with a lamppost with a yellow ribbon

The yellow mark on the lamp post is the sign in solidarity with the political prisoners after the failed referendum last year.
©Giliell, all rights reserved

The Daily Bird #780

We’ve been neglecting the Daily Bird, which is a thing that cannot be.

So here’s a gorgeous Sardinian Warbler for you.

The funny thing about shooting with the 600mm lense is that I sometimes don’t even know what I’m shooting and only find out at home when I look at the pics on the computer screen.

Sardinian Warbler
©Giliell, all rights reserved

Barcelona: The City 5: Streets

While there are few green areas in the centre, there are wonderful planted balconies and lovely squares. One thing is that apart from the pretty fountains there are water fountains everywhere that keep the population on two legs as well as four legs hydrated.

Fountain in the middle of a sunlit place.

Another pigeon bath
©Giliell, all rights reserved

Fleckchen

As you may remember, our lovely bunny Pünktchen died some weeks ago, and of course, the first thing my dad did when he returned from their holiday was to take the little one to the breeder to get a new one. The guy breeds bunnies for shows, so those who don’t fit his breeding needs are sold as pets, which shows again that those things are stupid as the new bunny is the cutest.

So here’s the first pics of the new family member. Let’s start with Molli, being very hot and not suspecting that life would change again.

Effin’ heat wave when you’re wearing a fur coat.
©Giliell, all rights reserved

And here he is, Fleckchen.

Isn’t he pretty?
©Giliell, all rights reserved

Translating his name got me thinking again. Now, first of all, in German we make things small by adding -chen, which doesn’t always work in English. While you get a baby and a kitty, you don’t have a “cary”, meaning a little toy car. Now, the former bunny was “Pünktchen”. A “Punkt” can be a dot, but also a spot, which would be the more usual term for describing an animal’s coat. A “Fleck” is something like a larger dot. It can be a spill on your clothing, but also the colouring of an animal, so now I have two rabbits named for their coat and they could both be translated as the same word in English. So I went with “Patches” because his coat looks more like a patchwork blanket.

Brown and brown and white rabbit, separated through a fence

Molli and Fleckchen
©Giliell, all rights reserved

Here you can see the first contact between the two, with Fleckchen being in his temporary enclosure, from which he escaped the next day. Thankfully he#s still too young for making baby rabbits.

Barcelona: the City 4: Streets

Wedged in between the mountains and the sea, Barcelona’s streets tend to be narrow and dark, and beautiful.

But it’s also a place where you can see the contrast between rich and poor, with people sleeping rough, begging for change and trying to make ends meet by selling knickknacks. When you come to the harbour you will have the multi-million dollar yachts next to poor immigrants selling cheap sunglases.

I will say one thing in favour of Barcelona and that is that they don’t seem to actively work against the homeless population. There was a spot at Catalunya where our bus arrived and left where a homeless guy had his place, with a small foam mattress and a few belongings. He usually wasn’t there when we arrived, but at least nobody destroyed his things and the police didn’t remove them.

My kids were wondering about the “junk”, not knowing that this was somebody’s home, and when I explained it to them they emptied their pockets and put all their change on the mattress. I was never prouder of them than in that moment.

The Daily Bird #779

A quick birdie before I crawl back to bed.

Barcelona: the City 3: El Mercado de la Boqueria

Just off the big Boulevard “La Rambla” is the big market hall Boqueria. The front is dominated by the stalls that mostly offer their goods to tourists, but in the back you can find the Barceloneses doing their shopping. Fresh fish and fruit and most delicious baked goods for prices that let you forget that you’re supposedly in a tourist attraction.

Colourful displays of sweets and marzip figures.

Marzipan and sweets in the market.
©Giliell, all rights reserved

What I interestingly couldn’t find were signs and comemorative plates of the terrorist attack that happened there last year.

Barcelona: The City 2: La Plaza Catalunya

The centre of Barcelona is the Plaza Catalunya. Lined on one side by the traditional Corte Inglés shopping centre and start of the Rambla, the main boulevard, there’s a snowball’s chance in hell you’ll miss it. Most tourist buses start and stop there (our shuttle bus from the camp site dropped us off there and picked us up, and so did most others), the hop on- hop off buses stop there, the metro lines do, the regional train station is under it.

Above it are the pigeons.

The fountain by night.
©Giliell, all rights reserved

The fountain by day.
©Giliell, all rights reserved

Did I say fountain? What I meant was “pigeon bath”.
©Giliell, all rights reserved

How many pigeons can you count?
©Giliell, all rights reserved

Daily Bird #778

Camp sites are probably an El Dorado for sparrows, who know no shyness but really like breadcrumbs

Barcelona: the City 1

Barcelona is home to 1.65 million people, the travel destination of 7 million people a year and one of the most densely populated areas in Europe, second only to Paris. I’ll start my series on the city as such with a few panoramic shots to give you an idea. They were either shot from the Parc Güell or the Tibidabo, both which will get their own posts in the future.

Panoramic view, with the Sagrada Familia in the centre.

In the middle you can see the Torre Agbar or Torre Glóries. I never gave much of the interpretation that all towers are phallic symbols, but this one takes the cake.

The Sagrada Familia, Gaudí’s unfinished masterpiece. The Catalan architect is all over Barcelona and we will visit one of his works, Parc Güell, later. Be advised to book your tickets in advance if you want to visit the place.

Tummy Thursday: Hello and enjoy your meal

Welcome to a new installation here, which is Tummy Thursday (after the addition of Tree Tuesday the Thursday felt neglected).

Tummy Thursday is about food, and food is everything. It’s one of the most basic necessities like breathing, but it can also be a luxury item (I still don’t understand caviar). It is something mundane, consumed while walking to the bus stop (or writing blog posts) and it’s a celebrated art form. It is public and it is private. It is political. It tells stories about race, colonialism, migration, poverty and richness. It is also damn delicious.

The idea of Tummy Thursday is to show those sides and also to share recipes and our love of food. Submissions are more than welcome. We’re such a diverse group of people here, so tell me your stories, show me your recipes, send me your pics. I can be reached at nym(86-7) Ät the google thingy DOT Com.

One more thing before we come to our first recipe: the don’t be an asshole rule applies double here, since food is such a sensitive topic. There’s nothing against saying “not my taste” or some light hearted jokes about peas being a weapon invented by the horse devils, but absolutely no food shaming. Oh, and it cuts both ways. You wouldn’t be the first person that told me that eggplants are actually delicious and the reason I don’t like them is that I haven’t tried recipe X. You won’t trick me into eating cardboard again.

Giliell’s vegan chickpea curry

Nanny Ogg’s famous cookbook features a recipe for Mrs. Colon’s Genyoom Klatcbian Curry, which is introduced like this:

Few recipes in these pages have caused so much debate as this one. Anyone over the age of forty knows how the classic recipe goes, because it has been invented and reinvented thousands of times by ladies who have heard about foreign parts but have no wish to bite into them. Its mere existence is a telling argument for a liberal immigration policy. Like real curry, it includes any ingredients that are to hand. The resemblance stops there, however. It must use bright green peas, lumps of swede and, for the connoisseur of gastronomic history, watery slivers of turnip. For wateriness is the key to this curry; its ‘sauce’ should be very thin and of an unpleasant if familiar colour. And it must use a very small amount of ‘curry powder’, a substance totally unknown in those areas where curry grows naturally, as it were; sometimes it’s enough just to take the unopened tin out of the pantry and wave it vaguely over the pan. Oh, and remember that the sultanas must be yellow and swollen. And soggy. And sort of gritty, too (ah, you remember . . .)

Not only does it show again Pratchett’s genius in bringing roundworld issues such as appropriation of food and racism to a light hearted cookbook, it also is apparently still tasty, though I haven’t tried it myself. While I keep telling myself that my curry would at least be recognisable to people who actually cook curries for a living, the recipe has absolutely no claim to authenticity whatsoever.

Ingredients:

Veggies of choice, preferably some that become somewhat mushy. The exact combinations vary, but for me carrots are usually a must and potatoes for creaminess. Pictured below are carrots, a red bell pepper, half a Hokaido squash and potatoes. Not pictures are onions and garlic.

I lightly fry everything in coconut oil, then cover it with vegetable broth and let it simmer. Depending on whether you remembered to soak the chickpeas the night before or open a can, you add them now so they can cook, or later.

My seasoning varies as well, this time I used fresh ginger, allspice, black caraway seed, cumin and chilli. After about 20 minutes the potatoes start to fall apart and I add some coconut milk and the chickpeas and leave it for a few more minutes on low heat. You can serve it with naan bread or rice and it keeps well in the fridge.

Enjoy your meal.

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Barcelona: The Aquarium 1

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Barcelona: The City 5: Streets

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Fleckchen

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Barcelona: the City 3: El Mercado de la Boqueria

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Barcelona: The City 2: La Plaza Catalunya

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Tummy Thursday: Hello and enjoy your meal

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