Day Dreaming

I've been day dreaming about Barcelona recently.

Paris was beautiful, but it left me severely unsatisfied. I was perpetually cold and perpetually hungry and dying from lack of sunlight. Before i was in Europe, I loved those gloomy rainy days, loved to huddle under a quilt with biscuits and coffee and a book. But Europe cured me, completely and effectively.

We left Paris at nightfall, in freaking expensive couchette seats, on a train bound for Spain. We sat on the ground for the better part of that night, talking about life and everything about it, while ticket checkers stepped over our outstretched legs and gave us strange looks. I went to sleep tired, worn out by days of walking and frustration, and wanting to tear out my hair. I woke to sunlight and everything just seemed better suddenly, like the world had spun around and was giving me apples today. The train left us at Port Buo, which could have been in France or Spain, I still don't know which. We could see the sea in the distance and made for it like homing pigeons, through a sleepy little town, stopping only to pick up a croissant for breakfast. And there it was. The blue blue Mediterranean. Sitting there on that pebbly beach, with the sun on my face and the sea at my feet, after the weeks of gloom, from Warsaw to Amsterdam to Paris, ranks right up there in my "Oh! Bliss!" moments.

But anyway, I loved Barcelona. The city felt happy and laidback and serene. And it seemed to be a mild shade of brown. That was my main impression of Barcelona. Brown, and the sense that everything was soft. There is nothing rigid there. There are no right angles . It is a testament to the city's Arabic legacy, I think. The modern art which springs out of nowhere. We were ambling back to our hostel, that night, more than a little sloshed, making drunken silly conversation when suddenly we were confronted with huge rings rising into the air. I stared up for a minute, my mouth open. Then of course, I was struck by the fact that this was really NOT the way home.

I would like to live in Barcelona for a while. For a year or maybe two, I would like to live in a country where, in the afternoon life stops and siesta begins. There is so much of Spain that I want to see. The bull fighters of Madrid. Toledo and Avila. Valencia. Hemingway's mountains where his hero tries to blow up a bridge in the pursuit of love, freedom and communism. Granada.

Big hopes for someone who will in a month, acquire a job which will chain her to a desk for 300 odd days a year.

I love Dave Matthews Band. I do.