Spain

August 20–27, 2010

Why not plunge into the heat of Spain after the heat of the Caucasus and Kazakhstan? Either way, it’s better than hanging around in the Moscow heat.

Let’s hop on the Aeroexpress, which Manuel is polishing to a shine in preparation for our arrival, and dash to the airport.

Tossa de Mar

The entire city fits into this photograph.

A local traffic light.

A unique compact post box for mailing postcards bought in the souvenir shop. There’s a warning on it: this is not a waste bin, don’t throw litter in here.

Girona

A Girona traffic light.

Trash dumpsters.

An automated bike rental station.

Scaffolding joints are covered with plastic caps to prevent anyone from getting injured, like in New York.

There’s also a nice medieval part of the city center.

A trash can.

A rare detail, even for Europe: a century-old plaque of the Phoenix insurance company (like in Ganja and Tbilisi).

There are bundles of cables running along all the walls. Standing out from the bunch are plastic sleeves of an unknown purpose with strange antennas sticking out from both sides.

Figueras

Posts are all painted with red and white stripes here.

This is where you’ll find the Dalí museum, whose building resembles a new level in the Angry Birds iPhone game.

There are simple yet pretty commemorative/informative plaques all over the city.

Lleida

There’s no shortage of TV antennas on the roofs of Spain.

Pharmacy crosses always have a special fancy shape instead of just being composed of two intersecting rectangles.

A local peculiarity: the streets are so narrow that it’s often impossible to make a left turn from the left lane. So there’s an extra lane on the right from which people can turn left when the corresponding traffic signal lights up. It takes some getting used to.

Barcelona

The lightning bolts on electrical panel covers point upwards, like in New Zealand.

A visor-less Barcelona traffic light.

Posts are ingeniously designed: not only do they look like palm trees, but you also can’t post any flyers on them. Compare this to the Saint Petersburg example of the ugly metal mesh that is typically used to cover posts in our parts.

Stickers have their own traditional place here: on storefront roller shutters. Their entire surface is plastered with hundreds of stickers advertising locksmiths, metalsmiths, tow trucks, entertainment, and so on.

Barcelona is built entirely on a grid, like New York. But the corner of every building at an intersection is always cut off at a 45-degree angle, so all the plazas end up having an octagonal shape

There are hundreds upon hundreds of gorgeous octagonal plazas. And each of them has at least one corner with gorgeous Barcelona trash dumpsters.

The dumpsters are the most beautiful thing in the city today after the architecture.

In order to keep things tidy, dumpsters are always lined up in perfectly even rows. This is achieved in a most elegant manner: the sidewalks have special horizontal guides which garbage truck drivers use to put the dumpsters in place. As a result, all the trash in the city is parked in neat straight lines.