A Taste of Chocolate

February 28, 2013-

The University of Barcelona was closed today due to a "manifesto" or strike the students were having. Most of my classes were cancelled so this weekend would be a four day weekend!

Just as I had mentioned in the last blog post, I would be crossing things off my Barca bucket list. Today we decided to stay clear of the university and visit the Museu de la Xocolata (the museum of chocolate) right around the corner from where we live. 

We met our friends at our metro stop and walked to the museum. I'm getting pretty good at knowing my way around Barca, so no, I did not have a map, and no, we did not get lost. If we did have a map I'm sure I would have found some way to get lost. 

The chocolate museum was a real gem! We went inside and bought tickets, which were a chocolate bar, and walked around the museum learning about how chocolate was made. After learning about how it was made, we continued through the museum to the chocolate sculptures. The sculptures were anything from the UP! house with the balloons on top (my favorite movie and by far favorite sculpture) to a Barca player (the professional futbol team of Barca) and they were all made only from chocolate. It really does take an artist to do something like that. They also had sculptures of buildings around Barca such as the Segrada Familia and one of the Arc (my roommate and I are obsessed with the Arc, don't know why).

I am looking in to taking a chocolate and cava (champagne) class offered by the museum in early April. This class enables you to try the chocolate and then try the cava and then combine them and observe the changes it causes. You also get to learn about which cava's and wines go with which chocolate. I am excited!

When we were finished with the museum we headed to find a place to eat lunch. As we were walking by the Arc De Triomf (down the street from where I live) we noticed a bunch of smoke and thought it was rather weird. A few seconds later we heard a large amount of sirens. Then, waves and waves of students sprinting and filling the streets. Panicked, we ran inside of a building and just stood there. We had no idea what was going on, but whatever it was, it wasn't good. We talked to one of the students and asked and they said there was a "demonstration" going on in the Arc park. Was this place having a manifesto too? We had no idea.

After the sirens dissipated we walked outside of the building and continued on our walk to find a restaurant to eat at. A minute later, we turned around to see about 5 "policia" vans with a massive amount of swat type members piling out. They were covered in all black, with gas mask on their faces. You couldn't see an inch of their skin. They were carrying what looked like batons. Then the sirens went silent. Probably so that the kids would come out thinking they were gone. 

We hid inside another store and a friend watched as they raided the last building we were in. Then we heard a gun shot. By this time the store owner closed the roll down garage door so that they could not come in. We hid there for about 10 minutes and then left because they had gotten back in the vans and continued to circle around the park.

 We still continued to walk to find another restaurant, but this time we headed to a neighborhood far away from where we had been: the "gothic quarter." We asked the police where a specific restaurant was and started to head there. As we were walking, on the side of the buildings was paint splattered, that looked like it had been shot by a paintball gun. Some of the buildings also had their windows smashed. The police had just started to arrive as we were walking by, so the raid had just finished. Scared to death and feeling so unsafe, I left the group and took the metro (yes, the dumb metro) home and stayed in my apartment for the rest of the day. 

Never again will I be going out when a "manifesto" is scheduled for ANYWHERE in the city. We didn't even know there was one scheduled for UPF (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a private university in Spain, near the Arc). I can only imagine what my school looked like today. These Spanish people don't mess around when it comes to rioting and education.

Today was probably one of the hardest days on me. I had never experienced anything like this before. My life has never been in danger like that before, it was probably one of the scariest moments of my life. I've never seen anything like it or been in that much fear, I was shaking. Being in a foreign country, not knowing what's going on and being in the middle of a riot was nothing I ever want to experience again. Thankfully our group made it out okay and home safely.

Chao!