intuition...

well, I stopped for another few months before picking up the writing on this particular topic, simply what happened still troubled me deep in the night...

when travelling along the edge of the only route leading to the summit, I could feel the air was becoming drier, and temperature was definitely dropping. Luckily for us, we have brought enough winter clothing, but it still didn't stop us shivering once in a while after breathing in the cool, dry air.

When viewed from far, the temple was dwarfed by the massive broadcasting structure located nearby, but upon arriving at the front of the construction, one's attention was immediately drawn to the meticulously detailed front walls.

Standing on the porch, facing south, I could already see in the distance that darkness was slowly dropping its veil on the land below. As we were told by our friend that we could gain access to the top of the temple to catch the view of the city of Barcelona, we hurried in, and finding our way to the tower which led to the roof.

As expected, the interior of the temple was finely decorated. Dimly lit, and thus highlighting the stained glass decoration located along the masonry walls. Perhaps due to its location, or perhaps it's almost the end of the day, the place was sparsely populated. A few candles were flickering momentarily amongst low murmuring sounds in a language I could not comprehend.

To the left of the hall was an opening which gave way to another narrow corridor, which at its end, was the entrance to a lift which travelled to the roof.

I was still deep in thought on my previous deja vu experience, and suddenly, the name of the place flashed through my mind - Tibidabo...what an interesting name, I wondered what it meant...

there's a strange sensation within me which I couldn't quite place...but I could suddenly feel my heart was beating increasingly faster, a sign that my adrenalin was pumping...

...but why?

a case of deja vu...

have not updated this blog for quite a while, reason was because I didn't know how to begin with this particular entry...





let's talk about the idea of "déjà vu" first. you can read up everything you want to know on deja vu at the wikipedia, in my experience, however, it's about when I had that sudden feeling that the place looked familiar even though I have never visited the place the whole of my life. I remember such sensation only happened a few times in the entirety of my life so far, but my experience in Barcelona was one that would never be forgotten.

After visiting the former Olympic site in Montjuic, our friend drove us in his car away from the leisurely South towards the mountaineous North. As the car climbed through the winding path leading up to the hills, what came into view was rows of houses fitting sporadically along either side of the valley. A strange and somewhat chilling sensation shot through me, and I thought to myself, "this place looks familiar, somewhere I've been to...", just as I was trying to study the details of these houses, there was a picture flashed across my mind, a narrow path for coaches (horses), houses along side the steep valley, dimly lit by either gas light and candle flame...isn't this the same dreamscape that I came to many years before?

unknowingly, I was breathing heavier, and there were glimpses of fragmented images that were appearing at the back of my mind, whether they were out of my imagination or actual experience that I had before, I could hardly distinguish the two. Suddenly, the car stopped, our friend turned around and said, " this is almost midway to the top, let's stop for a while and have a look at the plain of Barcelona."

the view was definitely breathtaking, but what caught my eyes also were a church like construction at the top of the hill.

"That's where we are going," my friend pointed at the church.

a church at the top of the hill? i felt uneasy without knowing why...

homage to the Gods...

after having a satisfying lunch by the waterfront, our friends drove us up the south side of the city, and making our way up the hill of Montjuic, home to a number of famous museums, galleries (incl. the Fundacio Joan Miro), as well as the site for the 1992 Olympic Stadium.

also tucked in this majestic setting was the telecommunication tower designed by Sapnish Architect Santiago Calatrava. his skills in making the most ordinary objects into something out of this world was one of the characteristics of his works, and this particular one, was a monument, to all visitors to the place in the future of time, that would keep one in awe.

lunch by the Mediterrean Sea

as told by our spanish friends, people in Barcelona are expected to have lunch at a later time till...dinner time. so in order to get a table, it's a good idea to get yourself into the restaurant before the crowd started to gather, mostly after two in the afternoon.

paella is still by far one of the best dishes we had, and we had the chance to try out the seafood soup as well, which tasted exceedingly fresh.

though some people might have a preconception that the locals tend to attend matters in a laid back, relaxed manners, during our brief stay at this restaurant, all the waiters were extremely attentive, and were fast in bringing out the dishes. while it's obvious that the quicker a table of guests finished their meals, the more business they could make each day, but you can tell thru their expressions, laughters, interaction with the customers, and well welcoming gestures, that they are truly enjoying their jobs.

isn't it what a job ought to be about?

will try to dig out the name of this restaurant some later time...

at the Mediterranean Sea

being a coastal city, Barcelona has to its south, an extended stretch of beach. the time when we visited though is still very cold in the late winter, one can imagine the scene during the height of summer when the crowds flock to the beach.

at the edge of the mediterranean sea, if your eyesight is good enough, it might be possible just to catch the outline of the African continent, the coastline of Algeria.

Temple of La Sagrada Familia

Gaudi's final piece of work before he was tragically killed in an traffic accident. the church, or should we say the temple, was perhaps one of its kind in the entire world, while we have different churches around the world with varying design, they can still be somehow classified to a certain period or style of expression. but the Sagrada Familia was something entirely different and simply made ones jaws dropped to the ground!!!

we are curious on why the name "temple" instead the more common "church" is used throughout in Spain despite the fact that this is supposed to be a Roman Catholic Basilica.

three facades that it is supposed to have, Gaudi's completed Nativity facade is hugely different from the Passion facade. while both are remarkable piece of architecture, the question of whether the temple ought to be completed or to be left as originally incompleted to preserve the pureness of Gaudi's works remain to be highly controversial.

the Passion facade, completed by Gaudi, when observed closely, reveals immensely delicate work of art, but when viewed from a distance, can not help but think that it's the face of an unnamable being that only appears in the darkest of one's dreams.

the duality of the image in front was troubling...why was a place for the worship of God modelled in such way?

the vortex...

according to our spanish friend, the building they are living in is a pre-war (Spanish Civil War)building and it still maintains some very nice character. We think the place was absolutely marvellous!

this photo was the last photo taken on our first day in Spain. just loved the decorative balustrade so much! at the top of the staircase is a glazed skylight, when during daytime let in abundant of light to light up the stairwell.

spain is a very interesting country, while we have seen and learned a lot during our travel, the experience we had and the feeling we had towards it were so much different from other countries, hard to explain at this point, but hopefully can explain in more detail in subsequent blog entries...

it's like one's inner consciousness has been drawn towards, and connected to an invisible vortex...

the gothic cathedral

located very much in the centre of the old town area, the Barcelona Cathedral was being built from 1298 and was not finished until the late 19th century. set amongst the convoluted lanes and alleyways of Barri Gotic, the cathedral serves as a good reference point in navigating one's orientation. on the day of visit, the front facade was under renovation with scaffoldings all over having printed the main sponsor responsible for the works - Samsung of Korea.

that shows how much the equillibrium has shifted over the centuries...

upon checking on some background information, this was in fact an original site for a Roman basilica dated back to the 4th century, while pondering fate of the original structure, foundation and all that remains, found this rather interesting sign on the floor near one of the column in the Nave...

now, that looked pretty obvious as a sign indicating a location of importance...

a map? who needs a map?

when we were walking inside the Gothic Quarter, despite having a map bought from the tourist information, we managed to quickly disorient myself. if it wasn't for our Spanish friends to show us around, we could have lost inside the maze of streets.

strangely, once we put away our maps, and start to look at the buildings and its immediate surroundings, it becomes much easier to identify the streets and location as the area was well defined by various landmarks, open squares, nodes, intersection of streets. Relying on our primal sense rather than overflowing information makes more sense.

these days, aren't we presented with a little bit too much information for comfort? where's our instinct gone?

streets in Barcelona

streets were filled with people, how many were locals, how many were visitors, can't really tell. but the streets were vibrant with life.

In the old town area, particularly around the Barri Gotic, one can actually spend at least a full day there, and begging for more. Small shops which still has that certain individual character, not yet engulfed by the global brandnames, can still be found in inconspicuous alleys.

the La Manual Alpargatera, a local catalan shop specialised in handmade shoes, with its friendly staff was one such that would make you contemplate the lack of variety in our everyday shopping malls these days.

a dreamlike stroll...Gaudi's works

yes, it was like in a dream...the buildings were in an out of this world form, the sky was so blue that it was almost as if it were painted on, and the row of trees lining up either side of the road also have a distintive dreamlike quality, bare from the trunk and expanding into an intricate network of dry branches, like the claws of an ent from the fairy tales, reaching up from the earth below.

on Passeig de Gracia, Eixample's main avenue, filled with brandname stores like Loewe, Camper, Zara, one of Gaudi's important work, the Casa Batllo, tucked in rather conspicuously among others in the group of Modernista buildings in Illa de la Discordia.

this building is situated right next to the Passeig de Gracia Metro station.

it's view at night was even more captivating...

tapas, tapas, and more tapas, gracias!

cerveseria catalana, the place.

tapas, the food.

have never seen so much variety of tapas to choose from (er...probably that's because it's the first time we went to Spain, but in our later journey, we still couldn't find one that can compare to this!), and have never been so mouthwatering while waiting.

our first day in town, and our Spanish friends had so kindly taken us out to pretty much the centre of the most important sites for some of Gaudi's works.

there were cold tapas as well as hot tapas, calamari rings, melted cheese, air cured Iberian ham, tomatoe sauce bread (specialty in Barcelona!)...need to dig out my volcabuary book to list out the names again...

Felipe, Mariona, we need your introduction to the food, again!

Modernisme

no, modernisme IS NOT modernism. it's a movement began in Catalan, particularly the city of Barcelona. Ruta Del Modernisme, or translated as "Route of Modernisme" is indeed true to its name and is flanked on both sides with buildings and architecture which are representative of the movement. On Passeig de Gràciaeven, even the floor tiles, hexagonal in shape, forms a beautiful pattern that puts most cosmopolitan city in shame.

one of the important belief of such movement was that a society could be changed by art.

a very noble ideal....

questions: do people still have ideals in the time we are in?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adlab/420068943/

Hola! Me encata esto.

been planning for this trip for quite a while, and the fact that having some friends to visit in Barcelona further reinforced our decision making Spain our choice for our trip.

The idea was to spend two weeks in Spain, flying out from Hong Kong to Bacelona, making our way through Spain by trains or by flights, and eventually reaching Madrid as our final destination in our trip.

though we have spent some years in Europe in our previous years, we have never travelled to Spain before, despite having done some research on the country from guidebooks like the Lonely Planet, Eyewitness Travel, Spain has remained a country not so familiar, tapas, football, bullfighting, Gaudi, Dali, Piccasso...but what is it really like, the country and its people?

it's about time to find out.

upon arrival, one most striking difference was that I NEED to wear my sunglasses during most of the day becaue of the low winter sun, which reminds me of why my city of birth has denied us of the much needed sunshine!

you can visit our flickr page for more photos on the country: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adlab/

museum on the street.

another scene at Lee Tung Street, Wanchai, Hong Kong

if you want to study the history of a city, the best to do, other than spending days and nights at the library to read thru books is to visit it, walk the streets, taste the local food, study the buildings in the vicinity. well...this is how you would do when you visit any European cities. The buildings define the character and stand as a silent witness to the history of a city.

on the other hand, to catch up with time, it is also inevitable to redevelop the city especially when the pace of the economy is moving so fast...

hang on, is that really the case?

can the preservation of the city fabric coexists with the new developments?

Disappearing City

always wonder why do we need to tear down so much of our old district. from the economic perspective, this might be the easiest way of getting revenues for the government. the people were furious with the tax increase, value added tax...and the politicians went hysterical when the slight mention of the cutting of social benefits was heard...now there is a limitation as to how the government can generate revenues for all the social expenses, and one such way is to sell off land to the developers, thereby receiving land premium in return, creating more jobs by demolishing what is there, and building something entirely new through the employment of different trades of the construction industry. Of course, even if the selling off of the land is inevitable, the government can still organise architectural competitions in order to find the best solution based on a design perspective rather than purely from the financial point of view.

on the other hand, when we are complaining why the government has to tear down one after another old city fabric, we also have to ask ourselves, are we prepared to do more?

you can not create something out of nothing, it is about how much you are willing to trade.

***fictional writing below***

another sleepless night...

for weeks, the city has been under a blanket of haze, whether these were the result of consecutive days of high humidity or an omen of things to come, i did not know.

days ago, found this letter inside the mailbox addressed to a former occupant of the apartment i stayed. yes, a real letter! these days, what one would normally find in the mailbox were only bills that you ought to pay months ago, promotion leaflets telling you how slim you ought to, or from apparent charitable organization demanding you to pay up in order to save lives from the third world (only that if they didn't print the leaflets in colour, God knows how much they would have saved!). so to find a letter in the post box with handwritten writings came as a surprise.

there were a few things peculiar with this letter. First of all, the letter was addressed to, as mentioned, a former occupant of the apartment, which to my knowledge, was a loner for most of his life, and most important of all, was assumed dead years ago. I had limited deatils of the story, but rumours has it that during a trip to the mountains, he fell off the cliff, and nobody heard from him since...and that was twenty years ago. the other intersting aspect of this letter was that it did not have the sender's name but only an address. the address was in an old part of the city, deserted many months ago, and waiting to be taken down. yet, the postmark was recent, and more importantly, i have not seen handwriting of such calligraphic quality for a long time. if you held the envelope close enough, you could almost smell the distinctive character of the ink. and while doing so, there was the presence of a slight hint of light, ever so faint, but sweet perfume.

with the envelope in hand, i pondered on what to do with this. to send it back to the post office would only mean throwing it into the incinerator as it was a known fact that those building were to be torn down soon.

i decided to pay a visit to this place.

grabbed my torch and overcoat, i left my apartment in the middle of the night...

the day the clock stopped

on 12th November 2006, after serving for almost half a century, the Star Ferry Pier was to be closed down, soon to be demolished and make way for new roads, more commercial ventures.

while not trying to deal with the political issues here, there's always the question of whether the demolition can be avoided, and instead of an entirely new project, like our counterparts in the rest of the world, maintain part of the structure, and transform it to some other use. Financially, the startup cost would definitely be more, but it is exactly these city fabric that defines the character of our city, and in many overseas examples, they become some very succesful self-sustaining projects.

a trip on the Ferry was always a nice break from the chaotic city life, and to some, almost an everyday habit. now that the new pier, modeled in a very much "fake" exterior, is shifted so far out, its significance to the city and its dwellers will never be the same.

more photos can be found in our http://www.flickr.com/photos/adlab/ site.