Adéu Barcelona - Guten Tag Stuttgart!

That's right!

I packed up my stuff...once again...and left Barcelona for Stuttgart, Germany. Due to an outstanding opportunity, and after weighing our options, we made the difficult decision to relocate. It's not permanent but we will be here for a little while.

I'm excited for the change but, at the same time, I'm sad about having to leave everything that I've grown to love over the last couple of years about Spain. I'll especially miss all the friends that I've made along with the dynamism, excitement, and diversity of Barcelona. I've learned so much from and am so appreciative of everyone. Thank you so much! (I won't try to name everyone but you all know as you've all made huge impacts on my life as well as cameos here on the blog.) I will miss you all but I know that I'll see you all again very soon.

So, next up? Stuttgart. Up until a few weeks ago I really didn't know anything about the city or, with the exception of a visit to Frankfurt last year, Germany as a whole. Well, flash forward to now and I've learned quite a bit, which I'll be writing about over time.

As for the mechanics, we've found a great place to stay that's clean, nice, convenient to transportation, and comes with a great roommate. Can I just tell you how blessed I've been to have had some incredible roommates? It's true! Overall, it'll serve as a great base of operations for the continuing saga of whereisdarrennow.

So, I'll leave this post, which is both a sad goodbye as well as a exciting look to the future, with a few random photos around the center of Stuttgart that I took on our second day in town. This is the main shopping street, named Königstraße (koo-nigg-strahs-sah) or Royal Street, with the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) in the background. Note that the train station tower (at the far end) has a very large rotating Mercedes logo on the top. (More on Mercedes in a future post.)

Stuttgart's the sixth largest city in Germany with a (city) population of about 600,000 or so. The city itself is not very large or dense, especially when compared to Barcelona, but it is very green. The state that it's in, Baden-Wüttemberg, is the one of the country's main wine-growing regions (which I'm looking forward to learning all about). This photo, taken from the top of the tower at the main train station, shows just how much a part of the region that wine is. These vineyards are like a five-minute walk from the very center of town!

Further down the Königstraße is the Neues Schloss, or New Palace, which was built in 1746 and served as the residence of the kings of Würtemberg until 1807. In front of the palace is a huge, open area that's a popular place for folks to sit and sun themselves on nice days.

As was with Frankfurt, there's not much old architecture due to the damage from World War II. Most of what's here that looks older has been rebuilt to look historical. I know that the buildings aren't all old but I guess I don't really care. Seeing them rebuilt to celebrate the area's history is very cool. This is a twice-a-week farmers market that happens in the Schillerplatz. The church on the left is the Stiftskirch, which is the city's main protestant church.

It's scary and exciting to be in a place again where I don't speak the language and have to learn about a whole new culture. Well, besides Philadelphia, that is. :-) It'll be a fun and interesting challenge to learn the language, become part of the community, and make it a great experience. Oh, and hopefully I´ll learn (and remember) a bunch of German and how to type those "extra" German letters soon!

Una vez mas, muchas gracias de nuevo a todos en Barcelona. Os extraño mucho! Nos veremos pronto!

Telemonegal Television Show Taping

Having lived in southern California for almost twenty years, I've had the chance to see a bunch of movies and television shows being made. For example, just about a year ago, when I was back in Los Angeles, I went to a taping of my friend John John's T.V. show, The Daily Habit. Regardless, I'm not some sort of spoiled snob like some people in California when it comes to "the Hollywood thing". Nope. I still get a kick out of seeing movies and television shows being made and even the occasional star sighting. Just like you, I have that deep-down dream of one day "being discovered". I know that living outside of New York or L.A. has reduced the chances of me somehow becoming famous (one can still hope) or even seeing something getting made...

So, it was with great excitement when my friend Pau Whatsapp'd me and said that he'd gotten tickets to the taping (do they still use that word?) of a local Barcelona television show. The show, Telemonegal, is produced at the Barcelona Television studios in the Vila Olimpica part of town right near where I play soccer sometimes.

Just like everything else in Spain, the taping starts late - like around 9pm in this case. I'm not sure why it's done so late because it's on like a 30-minute tape delay. We checked in at the lobby and waited with about a dozen other folks in attendance to be led to the studio where the show is filmed. The space looks like every other sound stage that I've ever been on with the bright lights, false backgrounds, cameras, less-than-Ikea-quality furniture, and a bunch of employees hanging around.

Pau and I with some members of the studio audience waiting for the show to start:

About ten minutes before the taping started, the star of the show, Ferran Monegal, arrived on the set and started reviewing his notes. There was a brief on-air discussion with a newscaster who was working the show before his about the night's show. The show itself is sort of like a cross between John Stewart and The (Talk) Soup (but more serious and less political) where the host shows video of and discusses today's current political, talk show, and sports events during the first half of the show and does an interview during the second half of the show. In this photo, Monegal is on the left and, that evening's interviewee, ex-Barça player, Carles Rexach, is on the right getting his makeup done:

The show was a lot of fun even if I couldn't really understand some of it since it was in Catalan. Guess what! I got my 15 seconds of fame during the show. About a minute or so before the show started, Monegal asked each of us in the audience where we were from. I wanted to say Poble Sec but Pau said that I should say the United States. Well, every time the U.S. came up during the show, the camera panned over to me and showed my silly grinning mug for a few seconds (yes it feels like minutes and yes the camera adds at least ten pounds!). You can watch the show if you'd like as it's now posted at the show's website. My first cameo is at just over two minutes into the show.

Just before we left, Pau got his photo with Rexach and Monegal:

It wasn't until about five minutes later that I thought that I should have gotten my photo with them as well. Oh well, it was a very fun and interesting evening...they even gave us T-shirts! But I'm still waiting for an agent to call me! Didn't someone see me? I'm a star now, don't you know???

Thanks once again Pau!

Casaramona Textile Factory (Caixa Forum)

My recent visit to the Codorniu cava factory reminded me of a bunch of other great architectural work by Josep Puig i Cadafalch. At Codorniu he had designed the building where there is now the reception, tasting, and shop areas as well as some other buildings spread around Catalunya. One of them is the Amateller House, which is, unfortunately, located next to the Casa Batllo on the Passeig de Gracia in Barcelona (left is Amatller and right is Batllo):

I say unfortunately because Casa Batllo is amazingly spectacular and gets all the attention while the Amateller House is "just" beautiful unless you spend the time to really see all its detail work. The building was renovated by Cadafalch around 1900 as the main residence of the Amatller family who (still) own a local chocolate company. It now houses Hispanic art collection and is worth at least a few minutes at a minimum to appreciate the outside...but...this story's about another Cadafalch building...

Located between the Olympic stadiums on Mont Juic and the Plaza España is probably one of the most beautiful factories ever built. Designed by Cadafalch in 1910 as the Casaramona Textile Factory, the building complex and towers is a "wow" example of Modernist (or Art Nouveau) architecture from the early 1900s Barcelona.

By the way, my photos for this story won't do the building justice as they were taken on a cloudy day.

The front of the complex faces Mont Juic and has metal and glass canopy:

...as well as a very modern (and very white) "hidden garden" entrance that were added during the conversion to the Caixa Forum Museum in the 2000s:

I'm not crazy about the design of the canopy or the super modern entrance but the Caixa folks are really proud of it in all their materials. For me, it's just something to pass through on your way to get to check out the older parts of the complex. Once past the museum reception area you get to walk between and through the factory's original buildings.

The Casaramona factory was built to house a textile mill and incorporated many cutting edge at the time anti-fire measures because the owner's previous factory had burned down. My friend Pili, who's quite knowledgeable in fire prevention and propagation (seriously, she is an expert in this stuff), told me that the buildings were designed and spaced in such a way to reduce the likelihood of any fire that had started one area to spread to another area. Also, the two towers were actually large tanks that stored water to be used to fight any fires that broke out. You can see three different buildings and one of the water towers in this photo:

The factory's buildings were also designed to utilize (that newfangled) electric power, rather than coal or oil, and lots of natural light and ventilation. I especially like these skylights that allow light into the basement of the buildings:

I've been fortunate to have visited a bunch of textile mills all over the world and this one, by far, is the most beautiful. There are lots and lots of small details that make the whole complex lots of fun to see up close. For example, in this photo, you can see lots of ornate iron work, interesting curves and building elevations, as well as a cool chimney (the tan domed building in the background is part of the convention center across the street):

This mosaic, which shows Sant Jordi's dragon and a Catalan flag, along with its surrounding iron and brick work is extremely elaborate for "just" a textile factory:

The building was quite the hit in its day with the building itself as well as its architect winning several different awards at the time. Textile production at the factory lasted seven short years before the facility was closed down in the late 1920s. It was later used a warehouse and then as a combination police station and horse stable. It wasn't until right around the Barcelona Olympics that it was converted into its current use as the Caixa Forum museum:

One of my favorite things to do while visiting is to go up on the roof to see the bird's-eye view of the rest of the factory as well as the surrounding area. The roof, rather than being flat, has an undulating surface that's cool. I don't really have any good pictures of the roof or of its view so I decided to use this one from when Diana's mom and dad came from Colombia to visit us last spring and we were there:

The visit to Codorniu reminded me of so many other places in Barcelona that I've visited while living here. It's truly a spectacular and special city that has so much to see and do. The buildings and museum of the Caixa Forum are just another example.

Thanks again to Pili for the information about the building's fire prevention measures.