Chapter 40: Weekend in Barca

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Sending this from like 2:30 AM in Greece bc I'm awake so I might as well.

Wednesday, June 8th

Headed to Barca! I woke up at like 7:30 and split a cab to the train station with another guy from my hostel. Then it was 5 hours from Sevilla to my favorite beach city.

I arrived at 2 something, grabbed some empanadas, and headed to Mike's place. After exchanging pleasantries, I took a 4 hour nap lol.

I wrote for a couple of hours after that before Mike and I met up with his roommates at the Irish Pub down the road. They headed somewhere else after that, while I met up with one of my friends, Sam.

Sam went to UGA and lives in DC now. Right out of undergrad, he did a 3-semester or so international commerce grad program. Which sounds cool, except semester 2 started in January 2020. He was supposed to go from Virginia, to China, to Barcelona, but they were in China for 2 weeks when Covid hit. Their program moved them to Barcelona, but then, as you may remember, Europe got hit too. So they spent the rest of the program remote from home.

Now two years later, their whole group met back up in Barcelona to finally attend their delayed graduation ceremony.

I met up with them at some bar new Plaza Catalunya, and we tried to go to the Dow Jones bar after, but it was closed. Oh well.

Thursday, June 9th

Mike and I grabbed some lunch and headed to the beach gym. After the world's shortest workout session, I stopped by a beach shop to buy a towel while Mike found a spot in the sand. Sam and Johnny (one of Sam's classmates I met last night) met up with us, and we hung out there for a couple of hours. Ben, the guy I met in Sevilla, came through as well. Turns out we were both in Barca for a bit. Small world.

My back got fried, poor sunscreen application.

All of Sam's classmates wanted to go out that night, so we hit one of the main beach clubs (Utopia? Opium? Idk something that sounds a bit scandalous) at like midnight. All was well and we were having a good time, but I lost track of Mike.

At 4 AM, I woke up to him yelling on the phone in Romanian. (His dad is Romanian, Mike was actually born there too). Mike was on his work phone with his dad yelling a bunch of stuff I couldn't understand.

Turns out that he ended up going swimming in the Mediterranean with some girl, and he left his phone and wallet on the shore in his shirt.

As you can probably guess, some beach goer ended up with a good Christmas present. So Mike was no wallet-less and phone-less (minus the work phone), and he was freaking out to his dad.

He finally went to sleep. A tomorrow's problem for sure.

Friday, June 10th

I hit the gym again Friday, but had a pretty boring day writing most of the day while Mike pieced his life back together. To his credit, he got a new phone set up quickly and had previously ordered a new credit card to Spain, and it arrived in the AM. My boy was back.

That night I met up with one of my buddies who lived in Barca, Gabe. I met Gabe on literally my second day in Europe last August at the Barcelona beach, and we've stayed in touch ever since. Good dude.

I met up with him and some friends at a local rooftop bar, but I had to go update some newsletter stuff after like an hour.

Then I headed back over there again lol.

I also met Gabe's Norwegian coworker, Kim (a dude), who was the funniest dude I've ever met. Everything he said was a gem, just a hilariously funny dude.

We went to some Irish pub, Gabe and I chatted for a while, and I turned down an invitation to a club bc I needed sleep. VERY MATURE JACK. FRONTAL LOBE IS FRONTAL LOADED.

Saturday, June 11th

My first order of business was head to the train station to grab a ticket for June 20th to Madrid. I'm round-tripping back to Barcelona after Greece with Devin (my 6'8 friend who is rejoining the Europe travels), then heading to Madrid for three days before Porto.

It actually only took me 15 minutes to get called to a ticket desk this time. Why? Because at the kiosk I checked "leaving today." A white lie, but it worked.

I grabbed some empanadas on the way back, woke up Mike, and we hit the gym by the beach. We ran back by the room, changed, then met Daan (Dutch neighbor) at the beach. He was their with one of their Spanish friends, Mark.

We chilled by the water for an hour or so, before Gabe met up with us down there. We threw the football around for a file, before a six year old chico came up and grabbed the ball. The kid threw it in the water, and basically played one-man fetch for like 20 minutes. Then we kinda played catch with him, except he hit the ball instead of catching it. Mike tried to coach him up.

Gabe and I grabbed some burgers, then I and I headed back to the crib. I wrote for a couple of hours while he met up with some friends from Toronto, and Ben and I met up with their group after.

All of us, plus Daan and Brendan (and eventually Gabe) met at a beer hall a couple of miles across town, before naturally ending up at some nightclub next door. This then led to me getting home at 4 AM and trying to get two hours of sleep.

But wait! At 4:30 AM, my little cousin Grady and four of his friends tried facetiming me like 5 times in a row.

As any good older cousin would, I answered, yelled at them to shut up, and blocked all of their numbers. Grady, if you're reading this, don't do that again.

Then Mike came in at 5, tried to tackle me, and passed out.

Really fun before a 10 AM flight! Super cool! Can't wait to go to Greece!

Catch you guys later.

- Jack

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