Barcelona

The first day, I woke up just early enough to sneak out while everyone was asleep (we had left behind a long night of planes and buses and trains and massive amounts food).  Walking out to Plaça Reial (a haven and hub for the traveling young and Catalunya’s homeless) and then onto the main street, with the image in my head of how alive Calle La Rambla was at 3am earlier that morning, I was half-expecting a sleepier promenade, tired from the night before, what with everyone still awake – selling, buying, eating – on the border of moonset and sunrise.  But no, I found a street as busy as when I had left it, as if it didn’t matter to this particular road what the color of the sky was.  Dark or light or a shade in between, Calle La Rambla is alive.

So I walked down the road, my cheeks feeling the sun for the first time in weeks (London is stingy with its sunlight these days), towards the direction of the Mediterranean.  On the way, I saw the last remnants of vendors emerging from the alleyways.  At the harbor, I claimed a bench and sat down.  It was not long afterwards that Señor Oracio joined me.  Oracio is a half-Argentinian, half-Italian man, about fifty years old, visiting Barcelona for a few days.  In broken Spanish, I told him I was a visitor, too, with friends, for the weekend.  If I understood him correctly, then the rest of our conversation was about how he has traveled most places except for the United States, him lamenting about the challenging process of getting a visa to go there.  Maybe, he said, if he had an Italian passport (his maternal grandparents moved to Argentina from Italy in their early 20s), he would not have this problem.

Port de Barcelona

When it was time, I walked back to Hostel Kabul to join the others.  And I have to tell you, the days and nights that followed were filled with some good times like I haven’t had in what feels like a long, long while.

Besides meeting some hilarious people at the hostel (a couple of sweet girls from NY backpacking for a couple of months, a large group of drunken Australian guys that know the lyrics to every motown and boy band songs known to man), the city itself is a gem of a place.  It felt like its residents were awake all the time, which made it an even more incredible experience getting lost late at night.  Barcelona is a place to get lost, if ever there was one.  But don’t forget to eat before 4pm, when the daily siesta commences, because you’ll be hard-pressed to find food of any sort of substance until 830 in the evening.  And it was such a treat to hear Catalan spoken everywhere!  The Barcelona I experienced is so decidedly Catalunyan first, Spanish second.  Simply put, I laughed a lot, ate a lot, learned a lot.  All this, of course, with more than a tinge of escapism.

As a glimpse into the weekend in Catalunya, here are some things…

Carrer D’Avigno

This street has a bit of an arresting past – as legend goes, this is where Picasso lost his virginity to a woman (women?) of the night.  Apparently, his famous Demoiselles D’Avignon (now at the New York MoMA) was inspired by ladies that worked on this particular calle.  Books have written that this painting is Picasso’s way of challenging, by way of cubism, the traditional perception of female beauty.  Though that may also be true, the Catalonians will tell you a different story – that, in fact, this painting is Picasso’s way of recording these women, living outside the law, with whom he spent intimate time.

Carrer Banys Nous

 “The best xurreria in Spain,” says Joanna, our comedic, chain-smoking Portuguese guide.  I haven’t been to any other xuxerrias in Spain, but these were the best churros I’ve ever had (and I’ve had plenty).  She also told us that nudity is legal in Barcelona and that Carrer de George Orwell is where it’s at if ever you find yourself needing some illicit medication…

And my favorite place in the Barcelona I encountered:

Plaça Sant Felip Neri.  Isn’t this beautiful?  Look closer – see those scars along the bottom quarter of the wall?  This is where General Franco’s squad used to execute people in the city.  They would line the people up along the wall of the church and shoot them – those scars are the imprints left of the bullets.  Franco’s Spain suppressed everything that was Catalunya.  He banned the language, the culture, life as only Catalonians could live it.

But I am not a morbid person.  This is only the first half of the story.  The second half is here:

In this place, this old, old place, that has seen so much, from Roman rule to the Spanish Inquisition to Franco’s dictatorship, hope still persists.  In these children, in their speaking in Catalan, lies the fruit of the sacrifice of the people who lined up against that wall.  The wall that held prayers uttered seconds before death now hear these children laugh in the language their ancestors died for.

I wish I could tell you in full everything that happened in Barcelona and, if you wished, everything I felt while I was there.  But it would be madness to even attempt to do that.  Suffice it to say, Barcelona certainly knows how to enliven and soothe a spirit as young as mine.