So there we were, one museum and one coffee break into our cultural Saturday, when we found ourselves outside the Casa Mila, the building that we already told you was designed for the Milas by Sr. Gaudi himself. It’s the building with the wiggly-looking façade that you’ve most likely seen if you’ve seen pictures of Barcelona. Some of you even got postcards that depict it. There’s a bank in it now, and the bank has been nice enough to open a bit of a museum in part of this building.

In this museum, we were delighted to find a free exhibit with sculptures by this British chap named Anthony Caro. First, there was a little movie about how he works, narrated by the artist. That meant, of course, that it was in English with Catalan subtitles. We were overjoyed. A vacation from the illiteracy bubble, plus something approximating a TV show. Joyous. What this meant to the Catalans, though, was the same thing it would have meant to us to see a movie subtitled in English at home: you can talk during the movie, as loudly as you want, since everyone is just reading. It was fun nonetheless.

The sculptures, we thought, would really look nice in our apartment. Though they weren’t made of plastic, they were generally done in cheery primary colors. Most of them were comprised of huge hunks of steel from ship engines, airplane wings, or girders, welded together in various shapes. We thought and thought about what they might mean, but it was tough to focus with the attached cards saying things like, “Collecion privado. Maine, EE.UU,” which made us say things like, “Hey! That art’s from Maine! I wonder where?” as if maybe one of our friends who live in Maine might be hiding a priceless collection of modern art.

Then someone gave us a ticket for the continuation of the show across the street, so we wandered over there. In a separate building, the artist, working in tandem with a sculptor who worked in clay, had created a 25-piece statement on the fighting in the Balkans. It was loaded with allusions to various Biblical stories and Greek and Roman myths. Even better than cards that said, “Maine!” It was like a little puzzle, in which art had been specially designed to help us remember some fun facts and stories that we already knew.

We ran around like we were on a scavenger hunt, staring at different pieces – say, one intended to represent the tribunals at which mass murderers who had served in various armies were tried – and then darting off to find each other with reports like, “I found the one with the River Styx! Look! There’s the dog with three heads!” We were drunk on competence.

As you might have guessed, of course, that competence was short lived. Within a few hours, we were hopelessly lost as we tried to find a Japanese restaurant recommended by a member of my Spanish class. We tried two different addresses, calling from the second to determine that 1) we’re more illiterate in Japanese-accented Spanish than in other forms of Spanish, and 2) that the first address was, according to the man on the phone, the correct one. As we walked on, frustrated, we stumbled upon another Japanese restaurant. The Chinese restaurants in Barcelona look like something out of the Sunday evenings of our childhoods: garish paper lanterns, six-page menus with drinks like the “Suffering Bastard” and the “Harvey Wallbanger,” and red pleather booths. They are quite cheap and notorious for being the places that English language schools call when they want to host a Christmas party for their employees. The Japanese ones, on the other hand, are pretty much the same as the ones at home. The food is good and relatively expensive for here. But it was homey in a way that reminded us that whatever “American food” is, you don’t really go out for it, fried clams and buffalo wings being the possible exceptions.

An epilogue to last week’s story about the surprise electrical work done on our apartment:

Just the other day I was running out the door to my intercambio, something I’ll say more about next time. It’s essentially a language exchange in which two people who speak different languages and wish to learn each other’s arrange to meet and speak each language for half an hour or so. It’s a little weird but quite popular here.

Anyhow, there I was, late, when Gloria stopped me in the front hallway and asked if I wanted to have coffee. I told her I was running late and that I would be glad to have coffee later (or probably something like, “I’m slow. I want coffee more slow.” She knew what I meant.) She said, and I quote, “No me jodas,” which means, literally, “don’t f*** with me.” Incidentally, it uses the subjunctive mood. Anyhow, the verb, “jodar,” is one we learned only recently, and we were assured that, used in the phrase above, it can imply anything from “Oh, quit joshin’” to “I’m about to kill you,” depending on the tone of voice. She said it nicely, in a tone of voice that meant, “Please. We are going for coffee,” then added, “only five minutes.” I went for coffee.

She asked how the lights were doing. I told her they were fine. She said that the guy who insisted on messing with them, Rafa, was crazy. “Sure,” I said. “But he did a good job.” Actually, he didn’t do anything but make a lot of noise, but he was her friend, I figured, so I wasn’t about to say that.

“No,” she said, making the universal sign for crazy, a finger tracing a circle next to her ear. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s sick in the head. A drunk. He only works when he needs more money.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said, trying to convey sarcasm. That doesn’t really work for us in Spanish yet.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, like it was some big favor to invite a crazy drunk into our apartment to hack up the lights I had so carefully wired together.

“Ok,” I said. At some point when I didn’t notice, Gloria had ordered another round of coffees. It’s almost like the unit of time known as “five minutes” doesn’t really exist in Spain. It’s too small. Nothing happens in five minutes.

“He really didn’t like your lights,” she said, then continued in English. “He said that you were the bird…the bird from the Day of Giving Thanks. Un pavo. A turkey.” Then she laughed so hard that coffee almost came out of her nose. “He wanted you to pay him.”

“But I didn’t want him to fix anything,” I said.

“Ok,” she said, and then proceeded to ask me about Leah’s schedule, the real reason for the forced coffee. Gloria is both an avid student of languages and very concerned about our financial situation. She sees taking English classes from Leah as a perfect way to address both and has been trying to find a group of local women to take the classes with her so Leah can charge more. Having found none, she has recruited her daughter, who speaks perfectly good English. When she was satisfied that Leah would, at some point during the day, pass through the lobby so Gloria could talk to her, I was dismissed to my intercambio. But that is a story in itself. Perhaps next time.