Cristina Nita-Rotaru
Assistant Professor Department of Computer Sciences
Purdue University
Barcelona
In an imaginary photo album where each place should be captured by just one picture, selecting the best Barcelona moment would not be an easy task. There are so many great pictures I could choose: a group hug at the Contemporary Museum with the Barcelona signature Zara bag (yes, everybody in Barcelona carries a Zara shopping bag), a tapas and sangria dinner on the lively Las Ramblas sitting how else but facing the street, an amazing seafood dinner, a hot chocolate at cafe L'Opera. Barcelona is the city of museums, good food and good wine. But most of all, Barcelona is the city of Gaudi, where cathedrals look like castle sands and parks have entrance buildings made of ginger bread. It's the city where jewels can be found in the street, disguised as houses such as Casa Batllo with its nature inspired curved walls, or casa Milla with its out of this earth roof.
The moment that I will probably remember the most is an old local man that seeing one of the tourists, putting his feet on one of the delicate, porcelain looking seats that surround the big playing ground in Park Guel exclaimed upset: ``This is art, a creation of the great Gaudi, it is made for sitting, take your feet off! '' Of course, as the old man was speaking catalan, the tourist could not understand a world. I thought the art language was supposed to be universal... It got to me that drowned in so much plastic and surrounded by so much ugliness, we stopped recognizing and appreciating real beauty. We gave away quality for quantity and that was not a good deal. It is beauty what I took with me from this very unique city. It reminded me that buildings and parks can be not only useful and ``functional'', but simply, unappologetically, beautiful.
May 2006
) Park Guel - Entrance and suspended playgound |
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) Casa Milla (La Pedrera) - Front view |
) Casa Batllo - Fireplace |
) Sagrada Famiglia Cathedral - Ceiling |
) Park Guel - Suspended playground |
) Casa Batllo - Front view |
) Casa Milla - Roof |
) Park Guel - Entrance building |