jnorman

My boss has changed his mind and I won’t be moving to Barcelona. This is probably a better choice for my career, but I’m completely crushed. I really wanted to throw caution to the winds and go there.

When I was little, I would wander around the greenhouse being chased by Roger the guy who ran it. He was ever suspicious that I was picking the flowers. I never did. I did, however, catch frogs in the pond.

This is a nice place to visit, especially in the winter when you’ve forgotten how green smells. The bulb show is also nice, but always crowded and chaotic.

Walk in the door and smell the bread. Get here early in the day for a good selection. The pastries, other than the croissants are not as good as the bread which is really, really good.

I’m going to be moving to Barcelona at the end of this summer. I’ll be working near the Barceloneta, and need to find a reasonably priced one bedroom apartment. Are there any good agencies or websites that anyone can recommend? I will be starting to learn Spanish in the next couple of weeks (couldn’t find a class in Catalan around here), so by the time I get there it will still be pretty rudimentary, so if there are any good resources in English it would help as well.

I’ve never been to Roma. Friends went there on their honeymoon and from their photos and stories, I’ve been infected with an urge to go there. My Italian is pretty awful though. Maybe I should start working on that and it will give me the motivation to go to Rome to test it out.

I grew up here as a townie. If you want to know a little more about Northampton, I’d recommend reading Tracy Kidder’s book, Hometown. I wasn’t satisfied by its description of Northampton, but it is a more balanced look at a complex town than most I’ve seen. Not just an arts/academic town, there are families who have lived here for generations – blue collar, white collar, rich, poor, immigrant, and those who have been there since it was incorporated.

Enormous sandwiches. Wonderful people. West Philly community.
Sadly, Bob Koch, the third Koch family member to run the deli passed away on the 8th August 2005. The deli is reopening this week. Go, have a sandwich. Have a milk shake. Try to experience something wonderful before it is gone. 43rd and Locust.

Lived here for a month during high school. A strange university town. It was an apartment with all marble floors. Very cold.

Pulled out of eighth grade into the English school system. I said all the wrong things – I couldn’t quite remember to call my teachers Sir and Miss, I didn’t know the hymns, I spelled everything incorrectly, and I didn’t know how to write up lab reports. But it was still wonderful.

Wandering free in Tokyo at ten was a gift. I couldn’t speak the language, and there is nothing like this kind of freedom.