Barcelona – surely not the best place for conference, with its sunshine, Mediterranean seafront, colourful yet simplistic almost Scandinavian architecture with lots of window panes..........
..........,tempting tasteful and varied cuisine from fresh seafood to its Bellota jamon to roasted game, the wild and spicy wines, its world-famed football team, the “lazy” southern European speed of life with its long-debated Siesta, who want to and who cares about Conference?
Missed dinner, slept for a day to refuel myself before joining the big crowd of oncologists (believe there were? Over 30 of us) at the 7th European Breast cancer conference in March this year, I found one of the big issue in the conference being “omitting the red-medicine Anthracycline might not be the right thing to do in chemo for the disease”. There were also more results from new “Targeted agents” like mTOR inhibitors, PS3 kinase inhibitors, new HER-2 inhibitors etc. OK, no more medical stuffs after this.
Medical conference is not something light – especially when you are in such a wonderful city like Barcelona! After a day’s lectures, one “have to” join social programs or seek out for your favourite tour spots! Day 2 I went to Parc Guell following the group (where Woody Allen filmed part of his recent movie “Vicky, Christina Barcelona) and held Spanish guitars playing some Bach in a cave!!! What wonderful feelings – it would be even better if they played some Albeniz or Granados!!!
The Sagrada Familia will be as popular so long as it is not finished – Antoni Gaudi, not exactly my type of taste – was trying to put in too much motives and elements in one place – head of barley wheat; tree trunks; different geometrical shapes, patterns of flower petals and all the rest of it – even for a maximalist like me, it is too BUSY!!!
Camp Nou was such a sight – 80% of the 100,000 seats were filled that night when I went there to watch a match between the home team Barcelona Vs Osasuna. Most of the spectators entered the stadium during the last 10 mins before the game started.
It was, however, not a too exciting game though Messi, the world number 1 Argentinean player (Barcelona player no. 10) played fairly well but Henri (another Barcelona player no. 14) has definitely been deteriorating in performance. The home team won 2-0 that day though the visitor team played better, in my opinion in the first half.
Forgot to mention – during lunch after we just arrived on day 1, we were talking about the sunshine and the openness of south European, before the big window pane facing the Mediterranean Sea, a mid-age man cycled by naked! Alas – it was too late to take out our cameras!!
Day 3 was greeted by the cloudless blue sky so at late afternoon, I went back to my room to take a picture of the beach-view.
Wow, it was fantastic! But one down side of Barcelona being that from the very safe, rather inexpensive town, full of its own character, it has emerged to be a more typical, generic sort of metropolitan city full of pick-pocketers everywhere and becoming terribly expensive so too with its notable intrusion of international brand-names. Truly I think the later has replaced if not destroyed some of the city’s originality – it is full of construction sites and bulldozers all over the place!
The last night was greeted with a wonderful dinner at a more local restaurant serving fresh seafood and the langoustines from giant ones to small ones were all truly sweet to taste.
More lectures to attend during the morning on the last day, then found ourselves again, relaxing again under the blue sky lunching and wining besides the yacht pier. Who can recognize the doctors in this picture?
Barcelona – I miss you more as you used to be!!!
