Ten Things I Love About Living in Barcelona

In no particular order, here are ten things I love about living in Barcelona:

1) Family time. We cook breakfast for the kids in the morning, we pick them up after school, we travel together, we hang out together. Julie and I go on cultural dates during the day, take Spanish classes, go to the gym together, and explore the city at night. To paraphrase Al Franken, we aren't just getting quality time, we are getting a whole lot of "quantity time."

Spending some family time in Amsterdam

 2) Our Bojon Barcelona family. How great it is to arrive in a new city, where we don't speak the language, and be welcomed by old friends, who also happen to be the warmest and most fun people in Spain.  (Sometimes too much fun - they are Bojon, after all).  You guys know who you are - thanks for making our days and nights memorable.

3) Our balcony. We look out over the top of a park and can see a sliver of the Mediterranean. The view just never gets old. Julie and I frequently end the day with a drink and a chat on the deck.  Gives us perspective

Sunset from the deck, by Tom and Lindsay.

4) Our new friends. We've met some great people through our kids' school. Many live nearby. For instance, about dead center in the photo above is the balcony of the Weubkers, who have twins in Leo's grade, a daughter in Linsday's grade, and I daresay at this point are doomed to be our lifelong friends.

The Wuebker's apartment.

5) Gaudi. Lots of Gaudi.

Casa Battlo on a beautiful winter day.

6) Barcelona is a great city for people-powered transport - walking and biking. When we do bike, we use Bicing, Barcelona's extensive bike-sharing system.  We can pick up a bike around the corner and ride the whole city. Over 400 stations and 6,000 bicycles. Julie and I bike everywhere. 

The BiCing bike share stand around the corner from our apartment.

7) The club. We joined a beautiful health club, near the school up the hill from our apartment. Julie plays lots of tennis, and I do the Sufferfest while looking out over the whole city. After we work out we can have lunch or a beer in the terrace restaurant. It's our happy place.

The pool at the club.

 8) The Menu del dia. A first course, second course, desert, and a glass of wine for 10 to 15 Euros. What a civilized way to have lunch.

9) "To go" cups are hard to find. Want a cup of coffee?  Sit down.  Take five minutes. Enjoy your coffee. Really. You have time.

10) There is always a bar. At the health club. The ice skating rink. The soccer field.  On this corner, and the next one, and the one after that.  There is always a bar. 

A Medieval Thanksgiving

What better way for a kid to spend Thanksgiving than in an actual medieval castle, complete with cannons, towers, battlements, views out over the mountains (and, for our generation of kids, WiFi too)?  What better way for all of us to spend Thanksgiving than in the company of our dear friends Michael, Laura, Miles and Mia?  We are indeed feeling grateful this week, for old friends and for this beautiful country we live in.

On Wednesday last week the eight of us drove to Cardona, a small town about eighty kilometers inland from Barcelona. There we stayed at Cardona Castle, one of the paradores, the national network of castles that the Spanish government has turned into hotels. Turns out a thousand year old castle is a spectacular place for Thanksgiving dinner:
 

Cardona castle, our hotel for Thanksgiving

The castle includes both a luxury hotel and a beautiful chapel.  They host weddings there; perhaps a good place to renew our vows next time?

Lindsay in the chapel

Cardona's lords derived their wealth from "Salt Mountain", a large salt mine just outside of town.  The mine is no longer active but is open for tours, which are especially informative if you bring Mia along to translate.

Laura checks out the salt formations.

As part of the medieval journey, we also stopped off at Montserrat, the thousand year old monastery in the jagged mountains outside of Barcelona.  It rained the whole way there, but the clouds cleared long enough for us to get a hike in with views back to the monastery.

Montserrat Monastery from the overlook

(An aside - a little mishap in the castle rendered my SLR inoperable.  I had to rely on my iPhone as my only camera.  I'm still learning how to get good photos out of the phone; it was a useful forcing mechanism.)

Full set of 25 photos here:

Tom's 2014 Thanksgiving Set 

Conserving the West: The High Lonesome Ranch

I was lucky enough to spend a couple of days in Colorado last week at the High Lonesome Ranch, owned by my friend Paul Vahldiek.  Paul is doing something truly unique at his 400-square-mile ranch in the mountains of Colorado.  First he amassed a property bigger than Badlands National Park, in beautiful southern Colorado.  Next, he started restoring the land back to its natural state by bringing back beavers, clearing out invasive species, and letting predators roam free.  At the same time, he's kept High Lonesome as a working ranch. They have 600 head of cattle, they make hay, they farm, they work the land. Traditional ranching life continues, but together with sound environmental principles.  And he has created an outdoor adventure paradise - a luxurious dude ranch, hunting, fly fishing, mountain biking, hiking, you can do it all.

And Paul is just getting started.  He realized early on that if we are going to preserve the wild lands of the western United States, we need to preserve private lands as well as public lands.  Together with Wildlands Network, he founded the Western Landowner's Alliance to do just that.  And he's creating a new model at High Lonesome, by setting up a structure where 20 trustee families will create an endowment to preserve the land in perpetuity, while creating a research institute devoted to land conservation.

In his spare time, Paul also owns Deep Water Cay in the Bahamas, the premier bone-fishing destination resort in the world.  Oh, and he's working with the local government to create a marine preserve there too.  (And he's a great host).

Check out the links to both properties below, along with a few photos of High Lonesome, and more on my Flickr page.  And if you want to visit or learn more about either place, email me and I'll introduce you to Paul.

High Lonesome Ranch

Deep Water Cay

Tom's HLR Photos

Sunset over one of High Lonesome's valleys

Buck deer along the road at HLR

Lookout Rock at High Lonesome

House at High Lonesome

Finally - La Sagrada Familia

We finally made it inside La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's masterpiece, last week when my dad was visiting.  We have seen the exterior many times since arriving in Barcelona, but I hadn't been inside the church since 1989.

Breathtaking, moving, majestic, other-worldly - the adjectives don't do it justice.

Paris in HDR

In September we took a three-day trip to Paris. It was the first time to the City of Light for the kids, and they loved it.  It was a joy to see it all through the eyes of first-time visitors - the Eiffel tower, the bakeries, the architecture, the gardens, Notre Dame, Shakespeare Books - what a magical city.

In processing my photos from the trip, I decided to do an experiment and to process all the images using HDR.  HDR stands for "High Dynamic Range" and is a way to process digital photos so that they capture a broader range of light than is normally captured in photographs.  In other words, you can get detail (and vibrant color) in both the bright and dark areas of a photo.  HDR has been around for years (I'm a chronic late adopter).  It requires a lot more digital processing, and I'm just learning, which is to say I'm not completely happy with all the results, but here they are.

A few photos below.  To see the full set, go to my Flickr page to the Paris album:

Tom Stahl 2014 Paris HDR


To read more about HDR, the debates around it, and my opinions on it all, scroll down below the photos. 

The Seine from the Eiffel Tower Second Deck

Champ de Mars from Eiffel Tower

Leo and the Louvre Pyramid

Gendarme, Luxembourg Gardens

Waiter, Boulevard Saint-Germain

A few more thoughts on HDR:

HDR was developed to overcome one of the biggest limitations in photography, which is that film or digital cameras can only capture a range of about 3-5 "stops" of light (each stop doubles the amount of light let in to the camera).  In other words, the brightest area of a photo can only hold detail if it is 3 to 5 stops brighter than the darkest area.  Areas brighter than that are washed out, darker areas turn black.

In contrast, the human eye can see about 11 "stops" worth of difference between the lightest and darkest areas of a scene, much more than a camera.  This is one reason people are often disappointed by their photos.  When you shoot a scene with both dark shadows and bright areas, typically either the shadows go black or the bright areas get washed out.  Either way, the end photo tends to disappoint versus the scene you saw when you clicked the shutter.

HDR gets around that via digital processing.  In short, you shoot several exposures of a scene, exposing for both the brightest and darkest areas.  You then combine the pictures with computer software that "selects" the best exposure for each area of the scene.  Your pictures have much greater range and they "pop"off the screen or page.

HDR is ubiquitous in published photos these days.  My iPhone camera even has an HDR filter.  However, it's not without controversy, especially among landscape and travel photographers.  Adherents claim, correctly, that it comes closer to capturing the range of light that a human can see, and that critics  don't like it because we have become conditioned to the limitations of images without HDR.  There is some truth in this - many of the same criticisms of HDR were made about digital processing in general when it first became available. Yes, HDR is "manipulation" of a scene, but so are long exposures, star trails, and many other techniques used by landscape photographers.

At the same time, there is a telltale over-saturated look that many HDR photos have.  It is easy to end up with bright, garish images that go way beyond the conditions of the original scene.  I found it tempting to do this - it's fun and new, and it makes the photos really jump off the screen.  But that over-saturated look is like eating too many donuts - the first one may taste good, but several donuts in I start to feel a little sick.  In the end, the method I preferred was to create an HDR version of a scene, then "tone it down" by blending it with the original, less saturated version in the computer.  

My other problem with HDR is the same problem I have with digital photography in general.  Yes, if you spend the time doing HDR processing, and you use a little restraint, you get wonderful, vibrant, realistic images.  However, the way you do it is by spending more time in front of the computer. I got interested in photography as a way to capture my love of traveling and the outdoors, not as a way to spend more time staring at a screen.  Still figuring out how to balance that.....

Concur de Castells

The Concur de Castells took place in Tarragona last weekend.  It was breathtaking and inspiring.  Photos below:

Concurs de Castells, Tarragona Arena.  The Concurs de Castells competition takes place every October in Tarragona, Spain, in the arena formerly used for bullfighting.  The tradition of building castells, or human towers, started in Catalonia in the 18th century.

Organizing the Team.  During the competition, teams of castellers from different regions of Catalonia compete to successfully build human towers of up to nine levels.  Each team wears its own colors.

Building the Pinya.  The base of the tower, or pinya, is built first by team members standing closely together and locking hands.

Climbing the Tower.  The top level of the tower is formed by the enxaneta, a young child who climbs over the other levels to reach the top.

The Completed Castell.  The castell is complete when all of the levels are in place and the enxaneta reaches the top of the tower. Members of competing teams sometimes help hold the pinya in place.

Celebration.   Team members celebrate when all members of the castell safely reach the ground.

Montserrat and September Weather

At Montserrat, less than an hour drive from Barcelona, weird limestone mountains unexpectedly rise out of the plains.  The shapes were supposedly one of Gaudi's creative inspirations.  The village is also home to a 1,000 year old monastery that is accessible by a dramatic "teleferic" ride up the mountain.

Montserrat is reportedly home to some great hiking.  However, as we learned last weekend, September weather isn't quite as uniform here as it is in San Francisco.....henceforth we will be checking the forecast before we plan our hiking days, and we'll throw a change of clothes into the back of the car.

Mountain mist

The ride up

Mid-mountain station

Julie and Lindsay get soaked

 

La Merce and the Castellers

This week is the festival of La Merce in Barcelona. It's five days of music, fireworks, and Catalan traditions - dancing (the sardana), running around with fireworks (the correfoc), and building human pyramids (the castellers).  We saw several of these over the weekend - the coolest being the castellers.  They create a six level human pyramid, and the top level is little kids, who as of recently are required to wear helmets (which probably makes it totally safe.....).

In two weeks we are going to the national castellers contest in Tarragona. In the meantime, here's a few photos from the festival. 

(Full set is here:  2014 La Merce).

 

Norway: The Full Picture

I finished sorting through my Norway photos this week.  Made me realize again what a beautiful country it is.  A few samples below, as well as the link to the full set.

Tom's Norway set on Flickr


For those wanting the full details, read on:

We spent about ten days in the country.  We started out in Jotunheimen National Park at Sognefjellshytta, a very comfortable mountain lodge. Although we were only at about 5,000 feet of altitude, we were so far north that the scenery was alpine - above the treeline and hiking across tundra reminiscent of Alaska.  Stark and beautiful. From the lodge, we hiked up to the nearby Boverbreen glacier, strapped on our crampons, and spent the day climbing around on the ice.

We then drove over the pass to the town of Flam (with one of those little circles over the a, and means "little place between steep mountains").  From Flam, we spent two days kayaking through Aurlandsfjord and Naeroyfjord, the latter stunning enough to have been named a UN World Heritage site.  We also took a train up the mountain and biked 30 km back down to Flam, and toured some of Norway's signature stave churches. 

We ended the trip in Oslo, a beautiful, modern harbor city.  Before we went to Norway, we held a family viewing of Kon-Tiki, the account of Thor Hyerdahl's journey across the Pacific in a papyrus raft (both the original documentary and the Hollywood version), so visiting the Kon-Tiki Museum was a kick.  Other highlights were the Opera House, built to resemble a floating iceberg; Vigelandsparken, full of the crazy sculptures of Gustav Vigeland; and catching up with our Haas friends Steiner and Thomas and their girls in their fantastic home in Oslo.

Lunch break in Naerofjord

Hiking the glacier

Born Again

We had dinner and went walking in the Born neighborhood of Barcelona last night.  Fell in love with this city once more.

 

Lost in Translation: Spanish, Catalan, and Apple Piss

No doubt, one of the hardest parts about moving to a foreign country is the language barrier.  Not being able to speak, read or write results in "walking around confusion"; basically you are  unsure in almost everything you do as you go through your day.  Every activity is a challenge - reading menus, figuring out instructions, or just getting basic directions.  And we didn't arrive with strong Spanish skills - my four years of high school Spanish (many years ago) seems roughly equivalent to Leo's one year of middle school Spanish.  (My habit of throwing in Chinese words when I can't think of the Spanish doesn't help either).

This is another area where smartphones and new technology are a huge help.  We have become avid users of Google Translate, both on the phone and on the web.  We use Duolingo to up our spoken Spanish skills.  And the other day we heard about and downloaded a cool new app, Word Lens.  You just point your camera at a sign or a menu and it translates real time right in front of your eyes. It's very simple, great for solving the "walking around confusion" of living in a new country.

Of course, English is widely spoken in Barcelona.  I'm pretty confident we'd be struggling a lot more if we had moved to Almaty or Sana'a.  Still, there is one extra complication about learning the language in Barcelona - they actually speak two languages.  Everyone speaks Spanish, and just about everyone also speaks Catalan.  Most people seem to switch back and forth between the two regularly, and not even realize they are switching.  (We had a local friend tell us confidently that "all of the menus are in Spanish" at the very moment we sat down to dinner with a menu only in Catalan).

It's somehow comforting to me that modern technology is not immune to this dual language problem, sometimes with amusing results.  We tried that new app Word Lens on the Catalan menu at our club the other day, and this is what we got:

To be fair to Word Lens, they don't claim to support Catalan.  Still, we laughed out loud at "Compote of Apple Piss."  Would you rather have that, or "Splint of Veal with Herbs, Pepper, and Bad"?  Clearly, Catalan is as confusing to Word Lens as it is to us.  

We had the paella.

If you can't be at the burn....

After four years of attending Burning Man, we were missing our friends on the playa this week.  But events and friends came together to make sure we didn't feel lonely.  Our friends Marcos and Monica invited us to a party at their beautiful country house in Costa Brava.  As soon as we walked in, we saw our hosts and others from our Burning Man camp - a Bojon reunion.  What a great party - we ate delicious food, met wonderful people, and danced till 2 AM (and we left early....).

At Marcos and Monica's party.

At Marcos' recommendation, we stayed at the Hotel Trias in Palamos. In 1960 Truman Capote decamped at this hotel when he moved to Spain to write In Cold Blood.  Great beachfront (so many topless women we felt like we were at Critical Tits), pool, restaurant, and views from the balcony.  Kids and adults very happy.

View from our deck at the Hotel Trias.

Back from Norway

We've just returned from a week in Norway. A beautiful country - we spent two days in Oslo, one day climbing a glacier, and three days kayaking and biking through the fjords.  We also got to see our old business school friends Steiner Paulsrud and Thomas Pulpan at their amazing house in Oslo.

I'll post pictures later when I've had a chance to go through them, but here are two:

 

The Magic Fountain

We went on our first tourist excursion on our second night in Barcelona - to The Magic Fountain at the base of Montjuic.  It was both beautiful and cheesy - gorgeous setting, glowing lights reminiscent of the playa, jampacked with people, and music that would have been at home in a 1980s roller skating rink.  It did give me a chance to play with my camera; I had fun making more and more abstract compositions as the lighting changed.

For those who never tire of this sort of thing, full photos are here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomstahl/sets/72157646866010102

Add caption