03.30.08

Barswingona -08

Posted in Lindy Hop at 8:51 pm by tesstess

I’ve been in Spain for the first time in my life. It was a little bit like the first time I was in France, in Paris, and had so tight with time that we ran around to all famous to-have-seen things and then ate at McDonalds. This time I spent my first day as a Tourist, had time to see Park Guell with the Gaudi houses, and then I didn’t see anything more. I didn’t even see the big cathedral!

This are my tourist friends, and also my flat mates during my stay. Torbjörn, Kalle and Katarina. Then the other Torbjörn came to live with us one day later. It was so nice to live with swedes, talk swedish and laugh at swedish jokes.

It started of well and we found the famous chair. It is in mosaic and goes around all this open place. Hard to see though under all tourists.

Torbjörn was a bit sceptic at first, but at last he followed the stream of tourists up at the top, and see how happy he became!

And we took all the same photos as all other touritsts.

This is Barcelona. And this is all I saw of the Cathedral and the sea.

More Gaudi stuff. Incredible those houses.

Well, there is one more thing I didn’t do these 5 days: sleep. Sleeping is a waste of time.

This is what I did: Dance courses (half Lindy Hop and half Authentic Jazz): 18 hours. Social dancing at night: ca 14 hours, and then yes I did some sleeping, but only 14 hours. In four days.

I was most tired the first day, then the dance gave me energy. It’s really like a drug, dancing. Even when I came back to work I was speeded for two days. Totally crazy.

It seems like people who are dancing every week are more tired than the ones dancing every fourth month (like me).

I don’t have so much pictures from the other four days, I was only dancing all the time. Anyway I’ll show you the few ones I got:

Torbjörn and Ingrid practicing on the course material just after a course.

Swedes trying to find shops which are open when we want to buy food, which is not when the normal barcelona population wants to buy food. Luckily we found a small store selling biological food, even if very expensive.

One of the nights there was a “group theme”. So we all dressed out as ship broken sails men. We had a lot of fun. At the dance floor it was easy to spot the swedes, they (we) were everywhere! And it was extra easy to see us since we and one other group from scotland (who came in kilts) were the only groups who had realized the group theme dress-code.

After some hours on the dance floor I had to change clothes. The jazz course which I was taking was showing the routine we learnt during the day. This routine was a sensual one, and I was not feeling very sexy in my salesman outfit. The mini-show went good. It was so fun to be on stage again, I really miss it. More than I thought I could. I often dream at night about Jump Session and showing. Well well, life goes on.

This is how the dance floor looked in general.

And this is me after my 18 hours of course. Tired body but very happy mind.

The last night I didn’t need to go to sleep since there were no courses the next day. The big dance floor closed at 2am, and then we managed to get a ride with a spanish guy to the after party. This place was more like a big living room than a dance hall and it felt like everyone in the whole camp wanted to go. It was hardly possible to move at all in there, the temerature and humidity was so high that the floor got water on and it became imposible to twist, and if you saw two square decimeters free on the dance floor, that was the time to do a swingout. At six a clock the floor was better and the space bigger. I had many really good dances.

It’s funny now when I have started to know a bit the european dance people as well, not only the swedish ones, and you see the same people coming to workshops. It’s a different frienship. Sometimes you don’t even know their name, you just know how they dance and that’s enough.

At some point that night we were worried about how to get home since the underground stopped at 2am. Well, at 6.30 in the morning the problem was no longer there since the morning traffic already had started.

After 2,5 hours sleep it was time for “lindy in the park” and all gathered and danced on a square to live music. I had lots of energy and could have continued many more hours. Don’t ask me what the people in the front are doing.
Slutet gott, allting gott. I’m already longing for the next camp!

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