A one way ticket to the UK for tomorrow please. Thanks.

So folks, the London library installation is on. Go go go!

An excerpt from our onsite report for Radio Ruigoord at Landjuweel on August 13th

A poet reading on Friday night (11th August) in the Dichter tent

It’s that shiny suit trio we loved so much playing Teenage Dirtbag in the middle of a field in Holland!

This band rocked. We will try and find their audio we recorded at Landjuweel too

The noises we recorded coming from this tent sounded interesting also!

These Dutch people eh? A sense of humour in all weathers

And as we promised back in our Barcelona post, now that we have a more stable environment (i.e. not in a tent in a field in Holland somewhere - though we are still somewhere in Holland we might add) here are the pictures from our installation of the library at Hibernian books . . . in Barcelona. Last week. Wow. It seems like last year after all the Ruigoord radio, mud and mess. And with our additional Landjuweel new library members, it seems our current Library Membership total has now risen to. . . tan tan ta raaah . . . where is the trumpet we recorded when we need it . . . 139. Can we make it to 140 fresh poetry souls? Very likely actually, since don’t forget, this week we are heading on over to The Poetry Society Cafe at 22 Betterton Street, London, where we will be installed, library, librarian, and likely a dash of mud, from 2pm onwards on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 16 - 18th August. Do join us. We think you’ll like it.

The librarian goes off duty for a spot of lunch

Librarian in situ at Hibernian books

Where we were at

Our library selection for the day

What have Hibernian got on their poetry shelf?

Two new library members share poetry. Ah

The owner of this haircut has left a comment on our blog re their library banishment. The haircut is still banned. They are our rules. But this does mean we can interpret them. So. Banned member in Barcelona, your haircut is banned. You are not. Feel free to make your way over to our upcoming London installation where your library membership is still valid

Ray from Hibernian books at work. Or playing solitaire

Can you tell we like signs?

And we post them everywhere we can*

* Fly-posting at Otradovice station, Prague

‘How to join a library’ - our Spanish sign

Don’t forget we have some good poetry to borrow

. . . that other libraries don’t want . . .

One donation to our library by Hungarian poet Kalman Farago when we visited Budapest. Luckily, for our librarian, not in hardback

Amsterdam arrival

So. Tuesday night we left Barcelona. Wednesday morning we woke up in Paris. Wednesday afternoon we arrived Amsterdam. And we are now about to go and catch a bus to Ruigoord (half hour from city centre) and try and find the Radio tent and a person called Silvia, so that A. we can get in to the Festival and B. we can sleep somewhere tonight. Tomorrow we are going to sign up some more Dutch library members - Barry and Anja had a private poetry library installation in their house last night, and signed up, so we are currently on two. Amsterdam has some catching up to do as we didn’t manage to set up the library when we were here the first time back at the beginning of June, so our librarian is ready to roll out the library stamps and get some wrist action in to up the ante in the membership stakes. At some point in the next 48 hours we aim to have installed the library amongst 4000 people at Landjuweel Festival, and also done a poetry and sound clips show on Radio Ruigoord. We just need to find the bus station right now, and perhaps some breakfast. Which will definitely not be cous cous. Or cheese sandwiches. We hope. You can click on the Radio link in the sidebar on the Ruigoord website to listen in to our show. And once again, we are writing from some internet cafe with the less than useful ability to log on to the internet, and not be allowed to upload a thing. So picture and audio updates will have to wait. Landjuweel Festival has no electricity whatsoever this year, so unless we find an internet tent with solar power (we wouldn’t be surprised with the Dutch though) we will post all this as soon as we find...anywhere! In the meantime folks, we have library members to seek out . . .

Bye bye BCN

Well, we just finished our final Barcelona Poetry Library installation, at the wonderful Hibernian bookshop, which brings us to a total of 15 library members for Spain, not a bad total considering how much we got messed around by the first few places we wanted to install the library in. So, all things works out in the end - this is one BIG lesson we learned here in BCN, and we’re grateful. Thanks for the sun, sweat and lazy, ambling time. We also got interviewed by Barcelona’s very own english language newspaper, BCN Week, which will be out soon . . . and we just tried to upload our photos for today but this internet cafe is not playing the blogger pop-up window game very well, so you’ll just have to wait to see what we got up to today. And now we gotta run to squeeze the books into our rucksack, swap our sweaty suit for some travelling gear and hop on a train the hell outta here to Amsterdam, via Paris. So, one picture which did somehow manage to get through the stuck ether is our current library total. Although, it just got bumped up by one as we were packing up at Hibernian, so actually we are on 133 EU members, not 132, but we’ll sort* this out in the next couple of days and upload the rest of the pictures and more news when we find a more stable home than a railway carriage. Vale. Hasta Luego BCN . . . Amsterdam here we come! Venga! *sorted in Amsterdam 14.08.2006

Library members! Yeah!

Monday August 7, 2006 15.30 PM

Just before we set up Monday’s library . . .

. . . take a look at yesterday’s fun. And six new members takes us up to 125 signed-up personas! Go Barcelona go!

Where our library was yesterday . . .

Open at Frank’s

All Frank’s books

Our library selection for the day

Our librarian in situ

Yes. It’s Frank

The ladies at Frank’s place

The writing on Frank’s wall

A Spanish miaow

A Barcelona window ledge

And finally . . . our first offensive hairstyle of a new member. She got BANNED!

We back in business baby!

Alrighty. One bed. Check. One poetry library still intact after hefting over half of Barcelona to find said new bed. Check. Venues for installing poetry library. Check. Let’s go! So, first up our librarian will be donning her suit and whipping out her signs, washing line of poems and 30 new titles for ye Barcelona citizens at Elephant bookshop, Creu Dels Molers, 12, 08004 BCN (metro poble-sec), on Sunday August 6th from 2pm until 8pm. Then on Monday and Tuesday we will be at Hibernian bookshop, Carrer Montseny, 17, BCN (metro fontana), from 4pm until 8.30pm on Monday and from 10.30am until 2.30pm on Tuesday. Then we are legging it over back to Amsterdam by train (as we cannot fly as the rucksack full of poetry books is way toooooooooo heavy) to go and do a live radio show at Landjuweel Festival at the awesome Ruigoord site we were at back when we started this whole shebang at the beginning of June. You will be able to listen to our live feed from their site when we start on air from Wednesday or Thursday next week! Rock on people! In the meantime, here is a little Gaudi, a little audio, and a little graffiti to prove that as well as finding beds in 12 hours we also shift our ass when it comes to our other work. And just before we go we have to say a little word of thanks to Jillian who helped save our ass with the bed shenanigans yesterday, and while we are at it, Frank, who is letting us use his laptop right now to update our blog. Thanks dudes!

Gaudi’s Casa Batlla

We are really diggin’ the graffiti round here folks

Barcelona Street guitar

Our first unhealthy couch . . .

So, if you’ve been following our intrepid librarian’s blog, you’ll know that she has been couchsurfing her whole way round Europe. Which means she has met some awesome, lovely people, who she hopes to stay in touch with wherever the hell she ends up. So, up until now she has been a happy bunny, but our Barcelona experience is turning into a bit of an unhealthy one . . . turns out our current couchsurfing host does not live with three other guys like his profile stated, nor does he have any form of hot running water, any kitchen facilities, and the first night we arrived we had to share his double bed as there was apparently another couchsurfer in the next room (who mysteriously never turned up). As of last night, at, ooh, 11pm, he also came back with 2 Lithuanian chicks and asked our librarian to leave. Now. Being the toothful, mouthful, stand-uppish kinda girl she is however, our librarian stood her ground and insisted that trying to find a bed in busy Barcelona at 11pm on a Thursday night, and with a poetry library in tow, was just not going to happen. So that’s where we are up to folks, and no library today for us, as hey, er, we still gotta find a bed! And we have 12 hours to go . . . We do have a meeting with the Slovenian Consulate General later this afternoon however so it’s not all rain. In the meantime, get in touch if you can help!

Imposible . . . vale?

. . . so we had one fiesty ready to rock librarian this morning, just raring to go and jump on out onto the Barcelona streets and set up today’s library installation at Horiginal cafe, restaurant and seller of poetry books for some random reason. Anyway, we made it on down to the place, and took the respectful step of going in first to alert the staff to our presence, reminding them that we had been given permission on Tuesday to come and do what we do. But there seemed to be a problem . . . porque ahora . . . es imposible. No reason, not much of an apology to our sweaty librarian, already in suit and with today’s selection of thirty titles sitting on her back in the mini-library rucksack, just a shrug of shoulders and that was it. Apart from a suggestion we could set up on the Calle. Well we know we can set up the street Mister, we can do that anytime, it’s just a little dirty and rather far to stoop for potential library members to scrutinise our books, so gee thanks but not today amigo. So we walked out. And headed on over to Placa Bonsucces, which is just round the corner, has a load of cafes where people hang out, and is a much better passageway for ye folks roamin’ around possibly interested in a free poetry library. So we set up on a small wall cum steps archway affair, in the shade (just) . . . and it seems like a good place. So manana, instead of el stupido Horiginal we will be here, same times (2 - 8pm) so come and find us! And apologies to anyone who came to Horiginal today and looked for us, but as we set up straight away somewhere else we couldn’t update our address info . . . and epsecially sorry to Rudolpho the Chilean poet who we met yesterday and who said he would see us today – come to Placa BonSucces mi amigo and we will sign you up inmediatamente! We also took some more pictures today of this damn hot city. Here we go:

More Barcelona graffiti

Biblioteca Jaume Fauster, near where we currently live

On La Rambla, people ‘dress’ up for the tourists . . .

. . . in the hope of getting a few euro cents . . .

While our librarian drooled over this 1941 typewriter with its own wooden box

Her friends have been doing some photoshop fun . . .

The Sounds of Europe II . . .

. . . just before we whack up our next podcast, we thought you might like a best of collection, or cacophony or might that be concatenation, whatever, of the sounds of the cities our travelling librarian has been to with her library and recorder. So here you go, the sounds of Amsterdam, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Munich, Paris and Barcelona coming up . . .

Amsterdam

A Dutch mic test

Erwin the Antistress Poet’s Belgian Baby at Ruigoord Poetry Festival, Amsterdam

Dutch frogs get mighty hot in a pond at Ruigoord poetry festival

Berlin

A German kettle on a stove in Berlin

Brazil vs. Croatia match, a crowd in a park go wild

Swedish football fans on a nightbus in Berlin

A Track by Berlin musician Dennis

A Track by Berlin musician Ichier

Dresden

Windy Dresden

The bells of Dresden ring out

Prague

A Czech train

A Czech train announcer

Vienna

The Sound of an Austrian ‘ooh’

Accordion in the Vienna Naschmarkt

Budapest

An accordion player underground in the Budapest metro

A Budapest train announcement

Water and wind and a starry, starry, night at Lake Balaton

How an Hungarian bird talks to an Hungarian cat

An Hungarian train passes through

How to confuse Michael Palin at a fashion show in Budapest by talking about poetry . . .

Budapest rain

Munich

Munich Thunders

Munich goes Brazil!

Street violin

Street violin II

Paris

Paris Thunders

Barcelona

A Portuguese band play in a Barcelona street

Donde esta la Biblioteca Poesia en Barcelona?

Esta aqui! Si, we’ve found ourselves some suitable premises and our librarian is hoping that the sun aint gonna shine too much and sweat her on outta her wool suit. A denuded librarian would not be a good sight. So, where we at huh? Well, manana, as in Thursday 3rd August, and also Friday 4th August, from 2pm til about 8pm or when our librarian gives up the ghost, our biblioteca poesia will be at Horiginal cafe + poesia Restaurant which is on Ferlandina, 29 en Barcelona.

Then we hope as of Saturday 5th August we will shimmy on over to Lletraferit Galeria, Llibreria y Cafe which is on Joaquim Costa, 43 en Barcelona, though we are waiting to hear the A-OK from the owner that they are down with this. So vamos aqui chicos y chicas y come join our library! Muy Bien!javascript:void(0)

Installing la Biblioteca Poesia en Barcelona . . .

. . . you would think would be an easy thing. What with Barcelona una cultura capital non? But it seems that las personas en las liberias that we tried were a little, shall we say, suspicious, and even though we talked to them in Spanish, did not dig our idea. Or want to suggest anywhere else. But after a three hour traipse around the area near Placa de Catalunya, we accidentally found ourselves on a street next to a cafe with its very own library. So we went in to ask. We got a phone number, rang up the chick who was in charge of permissions for this type o thang and explained what our librarian would like to do in her cafe. . . and so we have a meeting in about 2 hours with said owner to go over the full story and then hopefully we will be installed in Barcelona for the next few days and our blossoming librarian (finally tanned! No longer the white, pasty specimen espied between shelves of dark books at their ideal storing temperature of 16 degrees) will be able to offer you Barcelona citizens membership de la Biblioteca Poesia. So we will post our addresses for the library installation later today if we are successful! In the meantime, here are some Barcelona sounds, and some pictures of what we have seen so far. We also know we keep promising to upload our Germany podcast, but right now our librarian also needs to find a new couch as some Canadian couchsurfers are about to turf her outta her current couch and onto the street unless she can find a bed somewhere else . . . so er, get in touch if you can help! Our librarian doesn’t take up much room, it’s just her library that needs more space! Hasta luego chicos y chicas! Vamos!

The first thing we always do is find the local library!

The poetry shelves at Biblioteca Jaume Fuster

En la placa de Catalunya, this street band bring on the Barcelona beat . . .

Mirador de Colom

. . . which is so tall . . .

. . . it won’t fit in one picture

Barcelona graffiti

. . . which is great

By the docks at night

The fountain at Placa de Catalunya

Taking down the Mexican promo building, so it now looks like a mechanical insect

Where our couch host works . . . he is in the blue T shirt. And he is kicking us out from his couch today. Ouch.

Port de Barcelona

La Rambla . . . Barcelona’s famous street market. . . and tourists galore