Tibidabo: The Last Temptation of Chaos

So I guess when interesting things happen, I'll use the blog. K?
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TIBIDABO: THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHAOS

Rather than heading off to the beach to join Patatas Bravas and Crema Catalana, the Barcelona men’s and women’s ultimate Frisbee teams, for a day of extreme disc tossing, this past Saturday four of my roommates and I decided to trek up to the highest point overlooking Barcelona: Tibidabo.

Did you know that the name “Tibidabo” is derived from a phrase that means “the Devil’s temptation,” referring to the fact that Tibidabo is the highest point in the city limits and that in the Bible, Satan takes Christ to the highest point and offers him all that he sees in exchange for ditching God? Well, it is.

The Barcelonians idolize Tibidabo in the name of all things holy and lucrative. At night when one looks up at the mountain, the church glows gold in the distance due to the industrial-strength lights bolted to the surrounding mountain side, and like a hideous technological beacon of death, the Barcelona radio tower stands silently nearby, as if in awe of Christ’s gilded temple. It’s incredible that we’d been here four months and hadn’t yet made the pilgrimage.

So we got a late start and were out the door by 3pm. Between stopping to admire graffiti, myself and Timo getting lost on the way to the metro stop we use every day, and Oli and Matt “accidentally” ditching the other three of us to take the trolley a quarter way up the mountain, we made a nice hour-and-a-half journey out of what should have taken 40 minutes.

Finally a quarter of the way up the beast, we were tired and alliances had formed: those who were traitors (Oli and Matt) and those who were not (Myself, Timo and Lawson). We decided to forego walking the rest of the way up, which we had suddenly realized would take DAYS and paid three euros for round-trip funicular tickets; God bless modern transportation. We also took note that there was a beautiful bar perched at this point that we would definitely patronize after paying homage to the Holy Spirit, the sunset and the hackey sack.

We bought our tickets from a little old man who helped us with our Spanish. We were surprised upon takeoff that he was also our conductor. During the five-minute trip up, we realized that we had been too quick to thank the modern transportation Gods; Matt almost soiled himself each time the funicular stopped or rolled a little backwards, but we ultimately made it without any accidents. Imagine our surprise when the little old man got out, took off his conductor hat and then showed us all through the station door onto the mountaintop. He was a one-mountain-man-show; in fact, we figured he was probably running the bar back at the bottom and had perfectly timed the burgers so he could flip them upon his descent. Nothing more Spanish than conserving manpower.

Conserving natural beauty, on the other hand, is not a priority. Case in point, the mini amusement park perched just below the church’s ledge. While the devout bow their heads above, the children scream their heads off below, catapulting through the air on roller coasters, airplanes, carousels and…construction cranes. Despite my uncanny desire to ride J.C.’s roller coaster, we did not enter the park, as it cost 22 euros to do so and would only be open for 20 more minutes.

On to more adult attractions, we were pleased that our late start had not prevented us from catching the sunset over the mist-covered Pyrenees. Ah, there is nothing more beautiful than a sunset, except perhaps, the sound of children’s laughter.

With the sun gone, the amusement park closed, the cold thoroughly set in and us thoroughly underdressed, the only thing to do was to play hackey sack on the church terrace amongst its bell towers. Little did we know the danger that lay ahead. After but a few moments of play, Matt issued a kick that sent the hackey straight into one of the bell towers. Hm, was the hackey just sitting up there under the bell or was there a deep hole under the bell, like a well, that had eaten the hackey? And who would have the courage to find out? Or should we just walk away?

Timo, the little monkey (which we call him because of his behavior when he drinks too much), added a new dimension to his nickname by clambering up the bell tower and jumping into a hole. We were sure that he would get stuck, that we wouldn’t tell anyone out of fear and lack of lingual capability, and that the headline in London would read “Brit starves to death on Tibidabo,” but Timo cut the headline off at the pass by surviving. The hackey was back; sigh of relief and rounds of applause from us, disapproving looks from other tourists.

Play continued until the sack went over the wall onto the stairway below and we made a new friend who threw it back up over the wall to us (after three tries). Play concluded when Lawson, in an attempt to complete the hack, almost went over the wall. The new headline: “Hackey sack implicated in string of deaths at Tibidabo.”

After a few snapshots in front of the church, we were ready to catch the funicular. But where was everyone? We were suddenly very alone on that mountain. As we approached the funicular, we heard a familiar ring…the departure bell. Man, we would have to wait 15 minutes. But oh, what was this? A train schedule. The last train departs at 6:15. And what is that? A clock reading 6:20. Interesting. Well then, which way to the walking path?

But there was no walking path, only a road without a sidewalk, a winding mountain road. We figured we’d rather take our chances with the cars and mopeds though, than with the animals on any of the forest paths we saw.

By the time we chose which direction to go in it was well dark and freezing. We realized how far away we were when we ran into an arrow sign with “Barcelona” written on it. Darn. We realized how dangerous the road was as we felt bits of life scared out of us with each passing moped and car.

Finally, we came to a fork in the road. Hm, which way to go? We walked out to the farthest edge we could, trying to see down the mountain to where each direction led. “Do you see the bar,” Matt asked. We saw nothing but Barcelona, far, far away. One road was not paved and led into the woods and seemed to go back to where the funicular had brought us from earlier; the road we had been on continued to the other side where there was a rail guard, deformed by countless cars careening into it, smashing hikers bodies between their vehicles and the twisted metal. We chose the gravel path into the unlit forest.

The moon shone brightly and then was quickly obliterated as we took our first steps under the forest canopy. “Six, I mean five TEFL teachers found dead in woods,” said Timo; “Man who can’t count found in Barcelona,” said Oli. “American girl saves all,” I added. We giggled to keep from wetting ourselves. “I think someone’s following us,” Matt said. “Shut up,” the rest of us replied. “Are we at the bar yet?”

To make the time pass quicker, we told scary stories. Just as we were about to wet ourselves, we came to another fork in the road…and then another and another and another. By this time we had been walking for an hour or more and had made five directional choices. While we were progressively getting lower and could make out the important glowing landmarks in the city below, we had no clue if were soon going to stumble onto our point of origin or onto a crazy hermit’s lair of death.

There was no time to worry about this because we had reached a dead end. As we ran through the dense foliage, falling over rocks and animal carcasses on what must have been a dry streambed, we all abruptly slammed into our leader’s body, the only thing that kept us from diving off the path that had suddenly led to the edge of a cliff.

So we trekked back to the last fork and went the other way, only to end up climbing through a fence into a factory yard where a man stood with a big dog. The man couldn’t have cared less about our presence and kept smoking his cigarette, but by this point we were feeling dramatic and therefore, ran the hell away from there screaming through the woods until we reached a stone staircase that could only lead straight to Satan’s Inferno. This being the obvious choice, we used our cell phones to light our path as ancient man must have used flaming torches to light his.

Out of nowhere, we were at the bar. “The bar!” Matt yelled. “The bar,” we sighed. Two hours and 15 minutes after departure, we had returned to civilization.

We were seated at a table where the posh waiter rudely took our order while all around us, dreamy-eyed couples alternately stared at the panoramic view of Barcelona and into each other’s...dreamy eyes. The only reminder of our jungle brush with death (besides our soiled trousers) was the leopard print skirt of a fellow patron speaking loudly at her mobile phone.

We attempted to go for dinner at the restaurant across the way, but in civilized territory, food is expensive. We ended up at a place called “Café & Té” that didn’t quench our hunger. So we settled on picking something up from “the Indian’s,” the only shop that would be open in our neighborhood at 9pm on a Saturday night. Nothing much exciting happened there, except Timo tried asking the proprietor (in Spanish) if he knew how to make hummus, which he didn’t...and that was a bummer because we’ve really been dying to make some hummus.

~Angela


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Photos from this expedition available at: http://community.webshots.com/user/ajruiter