Close encounters with the Royal Family

I am not sure if working at charities increases your likelihood of encountering a member of the Royal Family. But they do a lot of charity work, and the only times I have almost met a royal I was while working at a charity. Yesterday, Princess Beatrice visited The Children’s Trust. Back in 2010, although I wouldn’t have remembered the date if it hadn’t been on a website, Prince Edward visited that Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability when I was working there. In both instances, I had a close encounter of about 4 metres but no direct contact.

Photo Credits

Princess Beatrice: The Children’s Trust

Prince Edward: The Local Guardian

Time machine

I’m back.

Lots has happened.  July was gruelling.  My beloved went through the interview treadmill without the result we had hoped for.  Things were not optimal.  We know that all turned around from the previous blog post.  I could just go on from there, but since my future self is the primary consumer of this blog, I invested / am investing / will invest in a time machine so my future self does not to miss out on certain pivotal moments of our journey.

ENTER TIME MACHINE

SEPTEMBER 2016

Supply, Demand, Neurology, and Assistive Technology

Earlier in the year, I reduced my hours in my acute neurosciences post so I could include working part time in assistive technology back into my working life.  This change had two benefits.  One is that I was able to return to a highly specialised field in which I had built up some knowledge and skill that was slowly slipping away from me though atrophy.  But more importantly in our current circumstance is benefit two: it pays more.

This assistive technology post is one of those supply-and-demand situations that has people making more money doing a job that is not necessarily more valuable.  It is like farmers and house builders.  I mean, shouldn’t they be some of the highest paid people?  Farmers feed us all.  That is pretty much the gift of life, right?  And I would not let my wife live in any house I built. If it were just me, that's one thing, but I actually care about what happens to her. Most of us rely on the places we live as a sanctuary and a launching off point for our contributions to society.  So in both cases, the food and shelter, the people who bring them to fruition in my mind should make more than the people who live in the houses they build or who eat the food they produce.

I am not berating the value of my knowledge and skill in assistive technology. But providing skilled interventions on an acute neurology / neurosurgery ward is at least as valuable and providing assistive technology interventions. I would even suggest perhaps more valuable, as people just starting to come to grips with life following neurological injury are really at a hugely important and difficult crossroad in their lives, and the presence of the right support, encouragement, and coaching could have huge repercussions for all aspects their future. Of course my assistive technology also has the potential for far reaching implications, but generally, the people who have been referred for specialist assistive technology intervention are much more likely to have come to some sort of appreciation for the challenges they may encounter on the particular life path on which they find themselves. So in my mind, the acute neurosciences job should pay at least as much. Anyway, that very long, convoluted, and somewhat off-topic introduction sets up an otherwise one sentence blog post. I perhaps should partake of the one-sentence blog post more than I do. Oh well, that ship has sailed:

An opportunity came up to go full time at my assistive technology post and I think I am going to grab it considering my situation.

NOVEMBER 2016

Rooms of Requirement

We decided to move to a more affordable part of town.  The benefits go beyond placing us in a more secure financial footing considering our current situation. Moving to the south side of town cuts my drive time to work in half. But it has been so much more.

When we moved to the beautiful North, we were in a hurry and without a vehicle.  Turns out there were several less than ideal features that were not so apparent on they day we poked our heads into the window and decided to lease the Horsforth flat. One is being on the ground floor, the light from between the buildings carries a certain gloom with it through the windows. Second is the floor is uninsulated, meaning that no matter how warm the flat is in winter, any time your feet are in contact with the floor for more than 30 seconds, you are COLD. This includes sitting at the sofa or dinner table or toilet, washing dishes, cooking, walking anywhere... in short, if you are not in bed., you're cold.

The Morley flat is not only warm by contrast but there is a peace in this space that has settled our souls. The light is here is other worldly. At night, a faint orange glow trickles in from the street lights transporting us out of time and space. In day, the whole sky fills the southern and western walls of the lounge, filling it with enlivening energy. The shower has grey slate walls which grounds it into the earth while the flowing water trickles away the firm energy from that earthen foundation over and into us and then out into the rest of the universe. The very shape of the flat organises the life as we are living it under our particular circumstances. It is in the centre of the town and there are many conveniences as the door of the building opens into a pedestrian zone. It is exactly what we need at this time, and one evening it whispered to me its magical identity, a not-so-distant relation to the Room of Requirement. As with many magical rooms, it is guarded by a stone sentry, this one in the form of a statue of Ernie Wise located by the building entrance.  The sentry is off centre from his platform and leaning away from its centre. You could mistake this position resulting from a bunch of yobs trying to pull him over. Really what is happening is you are catching him moving out of the corner of your eye but he instantly freezes in place when you look straight at him. And the space next to him is due to the missing Morecambe statue lurking behind anyone approaching with intensions to harm the rooms' occupants.

DECEMBER 2016

Visiting a place called home

As our future is uncertain and I have lowest seniority in my new job, late November has presented itself as the perfect time to going back to Massachusetts . We had to cancel our trip last year due to illness, and summer is out of bounds because it is interview season.  Things are a bit in flux as we have only been in the new flat for a couple weeks.  I finished my acute neurosurgery post before the trip and am switching to full-time in my assistive technology post when I return. This will give us a chance to settle in the run up for a nice quiet Christmas, and my beloved is looking forward to having time to finish her book. There were many highlights of the trip but meeting my nephew for the first time sticks out.


ADVENT 2016

Permanent Job

The illusive permanent post that my wife has been chasing has come to fruition. Our trip home ended with my beloved doing a 4am interview by Skype. My brother-in-law volunteered his man cave as a location. Our life was in many ways on hold until this moment and now that it is here, there is something almost slightly disturbing to be in a life in which we are no longer pursuing this fickle sprite.

My wife’s new job starts in early January. You may recall that we just moved and I just changed jobs and we just returned from a trip. So things have been on the go.  Now in the Advent to Christmas, we have to find a place to live 200 miles away and get moved in with enough time so my wife has time to prepare for the job. It is a tight timetable. Added to that, since we just moved, we are locked into our current lease until at least March. We looked at several scenarios but the only realistic one is to separate so I can keep my job over the double rent period, and I can start looking for a job down south once we get her moved in.

JANUARY 2017

Dartford



So we settled on a place in Dartford. My beloved can get into work directly on the railway line and the rents are more reasonable because it is further from the Big Smoke. You cannot go 200 metres without encountering an enlarged image of or something named after Mick Jagger.  So there's that. It is quite suburban, a bit in transition: some areas with new buildings and other more dodgy areas waiting for demolition. We live in a neighbourhood that is quite nice and the shortest path to the railway station manages to keep to mostly inhabited areas.

FEBRUARY 2017

Driving

So with my beloved in Dartford and me in Morley, the principle activity of every weekend is driving. Since my workplace is a half hours drive closer to her, there is a certain logic to driving to / from my wife straight from / to work. So Friday evening I drive to her after work and I am using up my remaining annual leave to take the first two hours of every Monday off so I can leave at a reasonable hour (6am) and drive to work for a 10am start. The first one was fantastic. The second was great. Each week drawing a little more energy. Eventually, the feeling is whittling down to fatigue. I am so looking forward to not driving 400 miles every weekend.

MARCH 2017

The perfect job

Just before we finished setting up my wife in the new flat, a former colleague of mine, who I happened to run into so she knew I was moving back south, emailed me a job posting she thought was perfect for me. I was going to start my job search in earnest the next week but the closing date for this job was in a few days so I had to get to work on it straight away. It is perfect in many ways, not least of which is it is in assistive technology, the pay is decent, and it ended up starting right after the Rooms of Requirement are about to vanish into the aether. Yet another nearly impossible confluence of cascading events unfolding for me to occupy. It's getting to the point that I am afraid to tell anyone because I am starting to sound delusional even to myself.

EXIT TIME MACHINE

Photo Credits

Primer discovery: www.kevinmuldoon.com
Supply & Demand: www.paulcraigroberts.org
Ernie Wise statue: ixquick-proxy.com
Morley flat: us
Nephew: his mum
University of Greenwich: commons.wikimedia.org
Queen Elizabeth II Bridge (Dartford): en.wikipedia.org
A1: en.wikipedia.org
The Children’s Trust: www.thechildrenstrust.org.uk
Primer box: www.youmightfindyourself.com

The Eye of the Silence

There has been a period of silence on the blog, which this post obviously is breaking.  There will be another period of silence following it.  The silence up until recently is related to falling behind due to the choice to move, change jobs, and visit our parents in the good ole US of A, each right after the other, none of which I have blogged about yet.  However recently the continued silence has come for another reason.  We have found the holy grail: my beloved has landed a permanent job.  WOOHOO! And now in the midst of moving again and changing jobs again, the blog will have to return to silence for a while.  Don’t worry, there will be the usual amount of painstaking detail from the other side.

Photo Credits

The Holy Grail:  intriguing.com

Holiday

I don’t know if it’s a healthcare thing or every business does this, but in every job I have had in England (all five of them), the fiscal year ended on 31 March, which means we all have to use up our annual leave (that’s ‘vacation days’ in American) by 31 March or lose them. Even though I have lived here the better part of a decade, I still have not quite adjusted to the amount of leave we get. My leave, not counting bank holidays (that’s ‘federal holidays’ in American) has ranged between 22 and 27 days per year, which straddles 5 weeks. Whenever I tell my colleagues how much holiday (that’s ‘vacation’ in American) we get in the United States, they give me such a look of dismay. I get the distinct feeling they don’t believe me.  Prior to my occupational therapy days, I was an environmental engineer.  Nearly all of those jobs offered 10 days. I also remember getting 5 days somewhere, and I distinctly remember negotiating for 15 days when being offered jobs at the last two engineering firms before I switched careers. But now that I am writing this, I wonder if the English are also not adjusted to the leave they get because it seems we are always in the same boat: using up our days left in March before we lose them.


Photo Credits

Old English Beach Holiday: HQWallBase.pw

Orlando Vacation: Entertainment.ie

Before there are words to put to it

When you see an empty thought bubble, what do you imagine is in it.  I don't know about you, but I usually imagine words in there.  But, I am coming to a slow realisation that I do not think in language. Maybe none of us do, but for whatever reason, I have come to believe that it takes longer for me to move my thoughts into language than most other people. Actually, it is more than that. I actually do not naturally move my thoughts into language at all. Into doing or action is the first place I put my thought. It isn’t that I do not appreciate language or that I have not learned to operate language. I love a good speech or story or film. I love to play with language and to put words into unexpected contexts. But on a deeper level, language is just an overlay, and a rather limited and imperfect one, where much is lost in translation.

I get frustrated sometimes when people misuse language or fail to consider that language and thought are not synonymous. And as I reflect on why I change what I am doing in response to something my wife says before I verbally respond, sometimes even neglecting to verbally respond, not out of malice or out of some need to obscure my motive but simply because the language overlay does not engage: my mind just skips over the unimportant bit. Or when in the midst of a sequence of activities and suddenly asked for verbal information, my first reaction is to perform to the request rather than to construct a linguistic response. Not because I do not want to explain it in words. It is just that when I go for that kind of explanation, if find myself stopping to sift through language. But in fraction of a second I can just perform it, and it is done, no sifting.

As an experienced COTA, it is tempting to throw a label on this, perhaps even hypothesise a language deficit. But that would ignore that I have been like this all my life as well as my high level of academic and public-speaking performance.  Whatever this is does not reach the level of a deficit. My language is not broken, it just is not my first stop. I wonder if my infatuation with ballet and my subsequent passion for occupational therapy were somewhat informed by this predilection toward nonlinguistic thinking. I still can recall how overwhelmingly satisfying it was to express myself with life force through my entire body in the medium of dance. Just using my lips and larynx to express myself is so pale in comparison, like the the difference between the memory of a dream and the actual full experience of sentient reality. And although many therapists dare not to venture past physical and linguistic aspects of occupation, I would argue that the most beneficial outcomes in occupational therapy come from those difficult to quantify levels of acceptance and confidence in the latest and different incarnation of ourselves following a devastating event that comes from being and doing way before there are words to put to it. It has always been these aspects of the therapeutic process that I have found most intriguing.

Photo Credits

Thought Bubble: The Jason Jack
European Day of Language: Istanbul'daki Yunanistan

Job 2014

My current job is in an acute setting, which means I am working with people immediately after their injury. All of my previous experience has been with people who have moved beyond the acute stage. I have of course always been aware of acute settings, but awareness is very different from experience, and this experience has filled a huge gap in my professional life that has forever changed me for the better.

I am working in the Occupational Therapy for Neurosciences department, which sees people with neurological conditions such as Motor Neurone Disease and Parkinson's Disease as well as people requiring brain or spinal surgery such as to remove tumours, after a fall, or after a road traffic collision. It is shocking to see the sheer volume of falls and accidents leading to devastating brain and spinal injuries that are alcohol related. I feel like if ordinary people saw what I see everyday, they would be much more cautious about how much alcohol they consume.

In an acute setting, medical stability is the foremost priority. Once the clients are stable, they are discharged and then a new client comes in. So my interaction with most people is fairly brief. Occasionally, I even get to go to people's homes and set up equipment. And if the person is heading for rehab, I might get to have a session or two to get them ready for the more intense rehab they will get later.

I am often seeing people before they have had a chance to adjust to their new circumstances. And I saw more post traumatic amnesia in the first month of this job than I have seen in previous ten years. The work is fast paced and I rarely see the end result. But I can see the benefit of what I am doing in a more abstract sense, and I am pleased for the opportunity to contribute to my community in this way.

Photo Credits

Surgical Videos of the Brian and Nerves

Bath Aids

The Me I Wish I Was

My recent NHS post is completely true, but part of me wanted to moan about the challenges I am facing. I usually wait to write about struggles until I have had time to digest it and see the bigger picture.   But I thought it might be useful to admit in this very public space that I do in fact struggle with things.  So I am going to give it a try.

It has been helpful to reflect back on how I initially saw going full time in the technology service post as a negative, and it turned out to be the most professionally productive I have ever been.


It is completely unfair to compare my current job, which I have only had for a few months, to the longest job I ever had. A more fair comparison is the current job to when I was just a few months into the old job. But that memory of the start of that job is cloudy. Much clearer is my memory of working at my peak performance at the end.

I am writing this post to remind myself that I need to be brave, and I need to be patient. It took years to get my footing in the old job, and it all happened very gradually. But even when reflecting, I cannot help missing the most amazing team that anyone could hope to work in. It was so much easier to become a better version of myself when I was surrounded by an inspiring team whose members were constantly nurturing each other's potential. I wish I had the strength be the kind of person I was with them, now.

Photo Credit

Foothold

Working for the NHS

For a few months in 2008, I had the pleasure of working for the National Health Service (NHS) as a locum. For those who don't know, a locum is an agency worker, often covering a temporary staff shortage for a few weeks or months. But I have never worked directly for the NHS.

As with most British institutions, it is a simultaneously loved and the subject of harsh criticism for it's imperfections. As a foreigner who has much to be grateful for, I view my recent joining the ranks of the NHS as a way to say thank you to a country that has been so very good to me.

With the nearly constant stream of criticism that the press aims at the NHS, I was bracing myself for an atmosphere of carelessness and detachment , but I am happy to report that I am surrounded by extremely passionate and dedicated professionals who are working long and hard to provide a topnotch service despite being understaffed and under resourced. I am extremely proud to be in the NHS and hope my presence will contribute to people's lives in a positive way.

Photo Credit

NHS Logo: Basildon Healthcare

1948 Leaflet: Wikipedia

Get a job!

Over seven years ago when we arrived on these shores, I found a job in two interviews in less than two weeks. That experience misled me to believe I could repeat that performance at any time. I lost track of the number of interviews I got in 3 months. While it was fantastic to have that much interest, it was still incredibly stressful being unemployed in a society where worthiness is measured by price tags and purchasing power. How easily self worth slips away with net worth. I wish I could hold onto that feeling of just getting a new job. I am so grateful, and I am at my best when I am in the midst of sincere gratitude, which is a challenge to maintain amidst adverts (sometimes disguised as news) that encourage us to covet and to fear. How quickly my confidence fled when I joined the ranks of the unemployed, the discarded scourge of civilisation. It sure feels good to be back in employment.

Photo Credits

Bobby & Luanne: car-memes.com

Employed: extrapetitemom.blogspot.com

Lisboa!

I got to Lisbon to present at a conference for work.  It was fantastic.  Here are some of the sites my colleague Dante & I saw.  He took all the photographs except for the last one, which was taken by one of the conference volunteers.

Charity: The ultimate luxury

Before my current job, I had never worked for a charity. And when it all started, I was so happy to find anything in the field of occupational therapy that I didn't really take any notice. It is truly a privilege to work for a charity because the greater aim has a specific purpose that is not monetary. There is an almost palpable satisfaction that my daily efforts are not in the service of wealth. Maybe it is because I live in London, but it seems that everywhere I turn, everything is about accumulating wealth:  Everything is monetised. I can tell how good anything is supposed to be… an athlete, a work of art, a piece of land, a politician, a news program, a restaurant… by the wealth it generates or how much it costs. And I am constantly having goods and services dangled before me telling me that I am simply not enough unless I have the money to spend on this item or that event. Being focused on making someone else's life better most of the time is a real breath of fresh air. Even if I am just fooling myself into thinking that by working for a charity I am stepping outside of the pyramid scheme that is capitalism, I highly recommend it. It is the ultimate luxury… way better than a larger house or a thinner phone.

Patients evacuated as computer suite catches fire at Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in Putney

The computer suite in this headline is where I work. The fire happened on Friday.  In the last six years, I have spent more of my time in the therapy computer room than anywhere else. It has been the physical centre of my existence and the focal point of my career. Despite the last decade of working with people who are dealing with debilitating disasters in their lives, this comparatively small disruption is quite shocking and traumatic for me in the midst of my relatively charmed life. I am in shock, sad, and feeling a little lost, having no clear model of my future in the face of this event. The next few weeks will undoubtedly be more remarkable than I was anticipating.

Full article source: Your Local Guardian

Christmas Trees at Work

I think they speak for themselves really.  Main reception:

 An event room:

 Cafe:

 Another event room:

 Canteen:

My favourite is the tree outside the cafe that they decorated with big balls.  You can see them out the window.

From Surrey to Hertfordshire

The move went very well. In less than 24 hours from the movers leaving, we had a fully functional bedroom and kitchen. Having finely honed our moving skills such as we have, it seems wasteful if we don't move every week or so.

Riding in the vans with the movers got me considering about how privileged my life is. Gus was driving. Our removal was the second of his day, which took about 5 hours, not including driving to and from the job.  The move itself included an hour drive between flats and carrying our belongings up two flights of stairs. After that, Gus drove to Wimbledon in rush hour to park the van, so that probably took 1.5 hours, at least. After that he drove home to Wembley.  That's another hour.

I realise that my job is not for everyone. There are many difficult aspects including witnessing personal loss in a manner and on a scale most people in this very wealthy and prosperous nation never consider. I wonder if Gus could peer into one of my work day in the manner that I just peered into his if he would think how blessed he is to have his job. I cannot claim the ability to see into other men's souls. But I hope that vantage into mine shows true appreciation for Gus' contribution toward getting my beloved and me into our new home. Handling the entirety of other people's earthly possessions requires a certain amount of care, integrity and empathy, not to mention physical strength. I imagine some removals are the result of job loss, or divorce, or death of loved one. Gus has a very important job and ample opportunity to do lots of good for others. But for me, watching Gus very adeptly and professionally get my belongings from Surrey to Hertfordshire helps me to appreciate the contribution I get to make to my community in my job. I can only hope that Gus feels the same way.

Photo Credit: Moving Locations

Brighton

Last month I presented at my second professional conference: the British Association / College of Occupational Therapy Annual Conference, which was in Brighton. I decided to take my beloved back to there yesterday to have a little fun by the sea. When we arrived we walked down the hill straight for the beach, which was pebbles instead of sand: witness my tootsies to the left. Sitting on the beach in the not-so-warm-English-summer was actually quite pleasant. The sun made appearances at regular intervals from behind moderately-sized clouds lazily floating past, so it was not oppressively warm. So we sat quite comfortably on the pebbles. Eventually I stuck my feet in the cold Channel. I am not sure why parts of the ocean I have never been to before call to me to stick my feet in, but they do. Thankfully, I am deaf to this calling on snow and ice covered beaches. There were very few takers rising to the challenge of bathing in the channel. While walking barefoot in pebbles is not the most comfortable sensation, it was agreeable not to have to spend ages brushing sand off of and out of everything only to find that you somehow managed to stow away about of quart of the stuff.

After enjoying copious quantities of fresh air, we wondered over to Palace Pier, which is a cute little pleasure pier. We wondered around it, had a snack, and head over to The Lanes, an older part of the town that supposedly follows the street pattern from the 14th Century. The buildings are considerably more modern. The Lanes is now a shopping district. After a bit of shopping we strolled over to the Royal Pavilion, which was a royal palace. But apparently the arrival of the railway in 1841 made Bristol too accessible to the general public, so The Royal Family decided to summer elsewhere. The town managed to purchase the palace from the Government in 1850. As you can see (below), it is quite interesting looking. The arrival of prevailing winds made Bristol too accessible to heavy clouds, so our family decided to summer elsewhere.

Photo Credits

Palace Pier

The Lanes

Royal Pavilion

Occupational Therapy in London

Before I moved to London, I thought I spoke English. But now that I live here, I realise that what I speak is American English. The two languages are so similar that it is easy to overlook the differences. It’s the same relationship between Occupational Therapy in the UK and Occupational Therapy in the US: they are so similar that it is easy to overlook the differences. Many of the differences are not discoverable until you get into the nitty gritty details. But one difference was almost immediately noticeable. Three years ago, I took a post at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability and the very first thing I had to do before starting employment, even before my first day, was to pick up my uniform. That’s right, my uniform. You can identify most occupational therapists and their assistants in any London hospital by what they are wearing. Witness the duo at the top of the page modelling the Royal Bolton version... I love how that no two London train platforms are the same height but just about every hospital occupational therapist in London is wearing the same uniform. It probably makes no sense to anyone that this sentence sums up my impression of London as much as any sentence can. I am not even sure I understand it.

My reaction against the uniform was immediate and visceral. It isn't that my hospital has turned over every stone to find the poorest quality material available. It isn’t that the waist seems to be designed with a beer belly in mind. I guess I am just jealous that I don't have a beer belly given my enthusiasm for stouts, porters, and ales. It isn’t the lack of a long sleeve option. Most of you probably know that I never wear short sleeves in temperatures less than 25C (80F). It isn’t even the ‘bottle green’. I don't know where this colour came from, but I wish it would go back. It does not belong on a bottle, and it certainly does not belong on trousers. (The idea of this colour is on par with the idea of writing about fingernail recycling... Who would DO such a thing!) It wasn’t any of those things causing my reaction. It was this idea that the uniform was somehow antithetical to everything I thought about the therapeutic relationship. But as I try to articulate this feeling into actual sentences for this blog, I am coming up short. Sure, the uniform causes needless separation between my clients and me, but does it really undermine my humanity so much that I cannot establish a therapeutic relationship based on our common humanity? Certainly not! I think I hate the uniform because it makes a sort of hierarchical distinction that just isn't necessary. But that is likely my own cultural bias. I wonder if most native Londoners see it that way. I happen to see many things in London as needlessly hierarchical. But that will have to wait for a future rant.

The uniform has some positives, however. The biggest one for me was that it signalled my arrival into occupational therapy in London. I had finally figured out how to get hired into the field. It took a while to figure out where to look and how to present myself. The differences are subtle but enough to prevent you getting the interview or the job. That is why I am smiling in the picture: I am finally ‘in’. I also love the idea of not having to buy clothes for work and wearing out the hospital’s clothes instead of my own. And since the hospital launders them for free, it is a sweet deal.

Photo Credits:

Bolton Hospitals

Print to a T

Barcelona!

I was part of a team that presented a case study at the International Society of Augmentative and Alternative Communication July 2010 conference in Barcelona. It was my first professional conference presentation, my first time in Spain, and my first time seeing the Mediterranean. Everything about it was awesome! (Well, the absence of my beloved was not awesome, but everything else was.) The first night I wondered around the old city with my copresenter using Google Maps on his Android to try and find some other UK delegates at a bar. When we finally found them, we went out for tapas. Food was yummy & people were really fun and interesting.
We did our talk the next morning. The conference centre was right on the Mediterranean so at lunch I went out there. I was not keen to spend the afternoon in soggy socks so I did not step in. Even though the conference let out pretty late, there was still plenty of daylight afterward to see some of the city in the sunlight. I went to Las Ramblas, which is the heartbeat of Barcelona. It is street vendors and artists. Disturbingly, the only sign in English was this one informing me and other English readers that public urination is illegal. Figures! I go to the ONE European city where public urination is illegal. Anyway, just off of Las Ramblas are really cool, little winding streets, just like I imagined about old medieval cities as a child (which is what you do when you are a little kid in a country that is only 200 years old). I wandered in the romanticism of the idea of an old city until I found a restaurant. I asked the waiter to bring something Catalan. Apparently, that is a mushroom omelette starter with a sausage entrée. The bread course, starter, and the entrée each came with a whole tomato. Oddly enough, the conference did not serve lunch, and on both days somehow I picked local places with staff that did not speak English… so they were subjected to my awful Spanish… but it was fun to try. I found out on the second day that the European Athletics (Track & Field) Championships were happening. My copresenter went after the conference. I am glad that they were professional athletes because I was just starting to wonder if all German tourists dressed alike when visiting Barcelona.

I went to the old Cathedral (Catedral de la Santa Creu i Santa Eulàli) the next day during the lunch break. I have never seen such well-restored 13th century altarpieces. It was amazing. And the crypt had a ramp to it so that when you are seated in the nave, the central alter and the crypt have equal visual value. I’ve never seen anything like it. I couldn't bring myself take pictures inside the church even though it was allowed, so if you want to see it, you will have to go. Afterwards, I stopped by the Gaudi Cathedral (Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família) which is absolutely HUGE. It is a modern cathedral and is amazing to behold. It is still being finished because unfortunately Gaudi was killed by a tram. I can relate because I was also almost hit by one.