La Sagrada Familia: Barcelona, Spain

            The church bells rang a melodic tune at noon at the La Sangrada Familia in Barcelona Spain. Tourists whisked back and forth in front of the Catalan masterpiece as the clouds above started to darken a deeper and deeper black. I walked up top the main street with my tour and looked up at the massive structure. It was surrounded by gigantic cranes and ladders as the church is still under construction. The architecture looked as if a 6 year old child in arts and crafts scraped it together out of recycled red clay. To see a church however built in this size from a master like Gaudi, it was evident that this was not constructed by no child. It was constructed from a master.

            I followed my guide into the church and was amazed by the heart stopping design on the inside. The tour guide, who looked similar to a female Woody Allen, watched my tour group’s faces as we walked into the church as all of us had a similar, yet unique reaction to the beautiful work on the inside. Looking upward, my stomach drops at the sight of what really is a masterpiece of Catalan architecture.

            The posts that lurched from the ceiling looked like a white, concrete forest that reached down and grasped the granite floor and held on by the tips of its wooden fingers. The shapes were anamorphic and were very inspiring to me. It inspired me want to compose music on the spot in front of the several hundred tourists buzzing around the church.

            I listened to our guide talk passionately about the church and the madness/genius of the famed artist Antoni Gaudi. The tour guide was maybe 40 with dark black hair that had a single stripe of whit hair that ran down the off-center top of her head. Her dark, black-rimmed glasses magnified her dark eyes and also drew your attention to her face. Her face was multicolored, as she had blotched of white skin mixed with normal olive looking skin. It was maybe a birth defect or at least a burn scar from an incident. Looking past it, she was very beautiful and had a quite, reserved, nerdy quality that I found slightly attractive. Her English wasn’t the best, but she at least got her passionate points across.

            She started talking about the history of each part of the building as we passed. I took pictures along the way and found my self constantly getting separated from the group as I marveled by the beauty of the church. I would wander and wait till there were no tourists around and take a quality picture. I would then turn around to see that the tour group was long gone and I would have to go look and hope I could find them again. Luckily for me I always did.

            The tour guide would give us 15 min “on our own” time and I would go explore for my self. I went underneath the church where there was a museum. I would wander there and find fascinating exhibits about several subjects the related to the church and Gaudi’s work. In the museum, I would encounter lots of your tours that looked like they could have been high school field trips. I would lean in and listen top hear the languages they would speak (all of them being foreign to me). I would hear French, Spanish, German and so many others and marvel at the diversity of people that get attracted to this church. They all come to appreciate the brilliance of Gaudi’s work and soak up the local culture.

            Outside the church we waited outside for the rest of the group to meet up with us. We were warned of pickpockets in the area and so I tried to keep my hands in my pockets as much as possible. Looking around the front of the church, I would try to spot any pickpockets. I would imagine my self jumping in and preventing someone’s wallet being stolen and me being a hero. But then my logic would kick in and I would imagine myself intervening and getting a 4 inch blade shoved into my rib cage. I decide to just wait patiently for our guide to return.

            After she returned, we all pile back into the bus. The Spanish culture and especially the work of Gaudi had sparked my imagination. It’s a great, creative mind that can progresses forward to create new and exciting things. Seeing this church inspired me and made me realize the power and influence of a creative mind.          -DB