You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O’Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person? ~ Fight Club

No sleep. Exhaustion. Fatigue. Hangover. All setting in at once. I write this not having slept in about 3 days so forgive my lackluster style and any incomprehensible babbling that I stumble upon.

So we finally got to Barcelona. Finally a Spanish speaking city. Finally we can communicate in a semi-intelligible manner with the native people. Finally.

Except the major dialect in Barcelona is Catalonese so the signs and streets are a mixture of Spanish and French. And Ryan’s excitement for speaking Spanish results in him using spanglish, por ejemplo “two aguas.” I laugh and encourage him to really speak spanish. Oh well.

So we get to our hostel late on the first night courtesy of stupid trains and check in. People are pregaming, having a good time so I think, “Hey alright another cool hostel.” Until I read the signs plastered on the walls.

No getting drunk or large bottles of alcohol. No one in the main room after 24:00. Plastic only. Rules everywhere. Well I don’t play by anyone’s rules, not even my own.

The first night we just crash cause it had been a long travel day. No stories to share really besides Ryan being verbally accosted by a prostitute demanding to give him a blow job. You know, normal stuff.

Inside the Sagrada Familia Construction

The next day we woke up early and headed out. Fortunately, Ryan has been to Barcelona before so he knew which sites to see and which to skip. We went to the major Antoni Gaudi places. For those of you unfamiliar with Gaudi (which I was until the train ride to Barcelona) he was an infamous architect who designed some of the most astonishing buildings in history. Astonishing because they are so weird. You will have to look at the pictures to really see it but it was really amazing. We visited Gaudi’s world famous Sagrada Familia Cathedral which was started in the late 1800s and is still not done. It was estimated to take 300 years to finish at the initial start. With modern technology they are aiming to complete it by 2026, the 100 year anniversary of Gaudi’s death. Ridiculous.

Ok on to the good stories. The second night was a Tuesday. I was messing around in the main room looking through their books when I stumbled across a “Party Europe” travel guide. If I could make a theme for our trip, this was it. So I immediately flipped to Barcelona and read about all the crazy bars and discos. Tuesday night. Go to Chupitos was the resounding chorus from the different writers. Chupitos means shots in Spanish and this is what they do. Shots. Nothing else. And they have about 250 unique, can’t find anywhere else shots. Game on.

So we suit up and recruit the majority of our hostel to tag along on our quest for what is certain to be a really drunk night.

Shots on Fire at Chupito’s

We get to Chupitos and it is pretty crowded. At least it existed and the 2006 book didn’t lie. It is hot. Very hot. Then I realize why: they light the entire bar on fire with almost every shot. Spraying what must have been pure ethanol from squirt bottles and essentially caramelizing the fruit they put on top of the different shots. It was nuts. So of course Ryan and I are sporting our ignorant American baseball caps this night and we meet a bunch of study abroad kids and one girl. I think she is kind of cute. She gives me her number and invites me to come over and watch the soccer game the following evening. Ryan is the first to inform me of my alcohol goggles (not beer goggles due to only shot consumption). She was only kind of attractive. Maybe.

We stumble back to the hostel and pass out only to be awoken two hours later by roommates leaving and packing up. The sun is out. I declare that I have seen all that I care to see in Barcelona and demand to be taken to the beach. I typically haven’t taken charge on this trip mainly because I think Ryan gets his jollies from logistical planning and map reading so I let him have it. So when I make demands, Ryan typically listens. To the beach.

First we need towels. We stop at a convenience store next to the beach. They have three towels. One something that I don’t even know what, one Bob the Builder, and one Tweety Bird. Score. Then we spot the refrigerated section and something sparkly catches Ryan’s eye. Canned, cold, white wine? Is this heaven? We fill our arms, giggle as we pay, and skip to the beach with our golden refreshments. Following what I think is a Bear Grylles tip, Ryan buries our wine in the sand to stay cool. (Ryan’s interjection: it worked, cold wine all afternoon, and Bear Gryll’s is a fake piece of shit, ok I’m done now.)

We get drunk. And the vendors keep coming by offering massages, beers, chips, henna tattoos, sunglasses, the works. As a result of our constant denials, Ryan and I come up with the ingenious business plan to create signs that just say “NO GRACIAS” and you stick them into the ground next to you. Then, I am fairly certain under the Geneva Convention, you are allowed to castrate and fatally wound any solicitor that approaches you. PS: we have already put in for the copyright and patent and stuff so don’t think about stealing it. We also have a new line of variations such as “Go to Hell” and “I eat babies” Order forms available soon.

When Ryan gets drunk he slings around money like Caesar to the plebes. First its beers. Buzz concentrating. Then it’s sunglasses. I declare that if he pays for them, I will wear big white sunglasses like all the cool kids in Europe. Naturally they are girls sunglasses. He buys and I can’t back down. I look ridiculous. Then we make friends with some French Canadians sitting nearby. Ryan starts drinking from their bottle of champagne and speaking in Spanglish. They do not comprehend Spanish. I shrug my shoulders. Ryan disappears. Then one of the Canucks points over and asks what my friend is doing. I realize immediately that Ryan is bartering with a henna tattoo person. Trouble.

I am at the point in the trip and this day of my alcohol induced buzz that I don’t care. Bring it on. Seal had graciously supplied us with some funding for a gay moment on this trip. I suggest that perhaps a tattoo with the name “Ryan” in it is a good gay memento. I forget how long henna tattoos last. And so it is. I get a gay tattoo on my back. No big deal.

We head back, pass out, wake up, start pregaming. Two girls that I semi-recall meeting that afternoon come in and start drinking with us. They are cute. No goggles this time. They ask if they can come along with whatever we are planning that night. Sure thing.

We head out and after some aimlessly wandering trying to find a bar “between these two plazas with an 8-ball on the sign” according to girl from previous night, we go to a bar that this cute girl knows.

It starts getting hazy here but I recall shots of tequila, pitchers of sangria and beer, and more drinks. It was unanimously decided that it should be dance time we head to a disco.

Next thing I know this girl is eating my face and I look over and see Ryan’s girl doing the same. I love Europe. We dance and make out and decide we should “get out of here.”

Ben and the Girls Crushing Sangria

Normally a five minute walk, it takes us thirty to reach the port due to the make out seshes that occur every 10 steps. I can’t help but laugh at my own immaturity in this manner.

The happy couples separate and find their own niches. My girl starts bragging about her various piercings. One of her piercings I determine is very interesting for I have not dabbled with this one before. I declare out loud that I will play with this piercing. She smells confidence and is drawn like a bee to pollen. I do not know fully what happened between the hours of 3am and 5am with either Ryan or myself but I do know how both end separately.

Hostel shower.

The girls hostel shower.

I finally collapse in my bed somewhere near 6 am. We have to wake up at 8 am for our train to Valencia. No sleep. I am Tyler Durden.

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