Barcelona, what's wrong with you?

Why keep building a church during more than a hundred years?

Barcelona, a top number in so many tourist guides, gives expectations. I found a city without character, two rough and dirty old cities, Barri and La Ribera, filled with prostitutes and criminals. Las Ramblas, a kitschy, commercial and totally uninteresting piece of street that can be found everywhere. Unkind people in service functions, restaurants slow and unkind like in Romania 1972, often with bad food. Ugly, bombastic and overestimated Gaudi architecture.

For more than one hundred years they keep on building the Gaudi church Sagrada Familia. For me a church is a place of quiet contemplation – not a neverending, noisy building site. What do they try to build and why?

One good thing to do: turn your back to this mediocre city and breath the glittering Mediterrenian. What's wrong with Barcelona – or what's wrong with me?