"Barcelona" a Barcelona Travel Page by jhoolko

What to say about Barcelona? My first city outside North America, the first city I got to know, the first city I could call my favorite place in the world, because I had finally begun to see the world. People told me not to go, that I wasn't going to get what I was looking for, that it was all parties and drinks and an overwhelming, tourist-filled metropolis, history being swallowed up by the torre agbar and street performers and pick-pockets. They told me I would do better in Aix. How would I learn Spanish when no one speaks it? How was I going to learn about Spain with the cultural intrusion of Catalonia? How was I going to eat when all the food is bad? Go to Florence, it's more you, go to Aix where you'll get to know the place, you're going to get lost in Barcelona.

And I did get lost in Barcelona. But it was not the lost they told me about, a drowing in a muddled, muted culture, a stumble through clubs and drinks and too many Americans and tourists and stag and hen parties, a life devoid of learning and uninterested in its own culture. It was a lost that I had only dreamed of, an obsession with the city and the lifestyles of its inhabitants, a realization of a different way of life, an exposure to a million little things that I never even thought about because I never knew they existed sitting in my dorm room in Los Angeles. It was a literal lost, a maze of tiny streets and cobbled back alleys, hiding roman walls and tiny granjas and teterias. It was a lost in not remembering why I would want to return to a life that I was at first reluctant to leave. It was being myself for the first time, and also for the first time, being inextricably intertwined in the bustling, moving, living being of a great old city.

The taxi ride from El Prat to Sants Estacio is less than thrilling. Alone, two enormous suitcases, unilingual. I wanted to drive by castles and palaces and ruins and crystalline beaches and women grasping tightly to men on vespas. This was Europe, right? This was the Mediterranean!

But of all the things that would happen to me over the next four months, this was the least exciting. What AM I doing I thought, as I scanned the open expanse of warehouses and factory buildings, dotted with cranes. What kind of a place have I chosen.

But all that changed so fast. I moved into my apartment in Gracia, two blocks from the Fontana metro station. Everything I expected started to appear, to seep out of the cracks of the city into my life. Candle-lit flamenco guitar sessions amidst the drying laundry on a rooftop over Placa del Sol. Meeting people on trains, sharing stories, travelling together. Sitting in the shadow of Sagrada Familia on an August day. Dancing in a hot shower of rain and fire during La Merce. Riding the metro with 50 rowdy FCB fanatics. Dinner until midnight. Cafe con leche on a terrace. Sweet potatoes and roasted chestnuts on All Saints. Baskets of fruit and cheese from La Boqueria. Te bajas aqui? on a crowded train. Bicycles through Ciutadella. Cava with an early lunch. Art on the street. Singing in the street. 2000 years of history. Honey in Placa del Pi. Candles in La Catedral. Everything I ever could have imagined, and 10,000 things more. It was like a dream that was over years too fast. And all the fears that people had imbedded into my head about a lack of Castellano culture was completely destroyed by the incredible presence of the Catalan culture that I had completely underestimated. The attitude of the city, the pride in its beauty and history and repeated survivial through cultural opression and the youth and the wisdom and the liberal nature of this ancient place were unbelievable. The newness added to the incredibleness of the old, and the old only grew more beautiful because of it.