Aventuras en Espana!: A Windy Hike

Today we took a daytrip to Montserrat. Montserrat is a mountain (mont) which looks like it has been cut by a serrated knife (serrat). There is a monastery which you can't go into because it is still actively used by the monks; a lot of hiking trails; a museum; and a cathedral with the Black Madonna in it (the Black Madonna darkened over time because of the type of wood or candle smoke-- one of Catalunya's patron saints though I didn't know that a woman could be a saint. I feel strange taking pictures in places of worship and even though I still take pictures in them sometimes, I didn't here).

When we left Barcelona this morning, the wind was whipping. Trash was flying through the air because the bags in trash cans were being overturned by the wind. We got on the bus to Montserrat (our school organized the trip so they were charter buses) and my eyes began to close immediately. I tried really hard to stay awake because driving out of the city is an interesting experience.

In the city, there's poverty, but outside of the city, driving through the countryside, there's rural poverty which looks different (of course, these observations are only from a distance because I've been on buses driving through the countryside). The shacks there are on (mostly) well-maintained plots of farmland but some of the people there have still placed objects on the roofs to weigh them down and keep them on. A lot of the houses are made out of scrap material. Driving through the countryside, the poor housing is often more apparent than in the city. In the city, it's easy to concentrate on the storefronts without looking up and seeing decrepit apartments.

Barcelona really isn't different from other cities. One of those rapid transit trains cuts through the countryside behind the farmers' shacks and, in the city, huge shopping malls with expensive stores are around the corner from houses that are falling down. These disparities exist in every city. They are easy to overlook, though, so I always try to be aware (to bear witness, I guess, and because I want to change this situation). That said, I couldn't help dozing off a few times on the ride.

We arrived at Montserrat and got off the bus. The wind didn't feel like wind, it felt like a block of air was being pushed against me. But it was such a gorgeous day and the mountain was beautiful.

This was what I saw when we first arrived. That building is the monastery. This is a Benedictine monastery which has been in existence for almost 1,000 years. Forty monks still live there.

This is a view from one of the places where we were hiking. This whole mountain was underwater at some point ages ago. As a result, there is a mixture of large rocks, small rocks, and reddish clay. The clay gets washed away whenever it rains so falling rocks are a big problem at Montserrat.