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Published: October 16th 2006
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Jo and Me, very happy
Jo and I always meet up before student council events to catch up and have some wine, and here we are about to go have fun! There are thousands of birds chirping in their cages on La Rambla on the Saturday morning as Ludo and I walk towards the Market to pick some fruits, cheese and sausage for our lunch. Barcelona is like that. One minute, you are jumping across an intersection, trying to avoid certain death by one of the thousands of vespas crisscrossing the streets, and then, you turn a corner and you are in the middle of an 18th century bazaar. The streets of the Cetuit are tiny, too small for cars, and the apartments tip over as if they are trying to touch the opposite roof at their tops. And then there is Gaudi, who Barcelona offered itself up to, her favourite child, whose creativity is unmatched in anything else I have ever seen.
When driving down from Vichy and Clermont along the main auto route, you jag across the Mediterranean in the south of France, before darting inland a few miles before the border. Then, you enter Spain with a rush, for it’s a twisting, turning, gut-wrenching journey through the Pyrenees. Gorgeous, dark, wooded and often cloud covered peeks jut from the deep valleys below in impossible ways. Each turn, and
Magnus and Greg
bde event, love these boys there are hundreds, yields another breathe taking vista one can never hope to describe. One peak yields a medieval church, with wrought iron spire and rusting bell. Another, a 7th century fort whose Moorish influence can not be denied.
Then, when you expect the landscape to continue forever, you reach the city, and all of a sudden, you are on the sea again, in a sprawling mass of apartments and villas and skyscrapers that inch their way up the surrounding hills. You breathe, and the air that fills your lungs is salty, yet fragrantly sweet all at once. And you get lost, oh you get lost a million times on those tiny streets, and trace your way back only to get lost again.
Barcelona is a city of performers, from darkly coloured men with guitars that sing those romantic tangos and flamencos that tear at your heart and make you want to grab the nearest man and dance as if the passion in you would never die; to clowns and acrobats that fly across the esplanades in brightly coloured tights.
The streets change from morning to midday to night, with early morning fruit venders, to the kiosks
and tourist joints in the afternoon, and then, as soon as the sun dips below the hills, the cafes and baristas emerge out of nowhere and the lights begin to twinkle and dance as if they are lit simply for you. Yes, the city is always changing, yet, with every step, it is not hard to imagine that it is a place that never alters, never changes course and you are back a century ago, three centuries ago, back to the Inquisition and then, further, to when the Romans first laid eyes on the harbour and decided to call it their own.
Then there is the food. And, while being mighty France's neighbor, they have produced their own. It is fresh and unpretentious, graciously offering itself up to you on terracotta plates with sweet wines. It is seafood and brightly colour paella, it is sausage and rosemary that grows wild in the arid hills, and it is so good you reach across the table to grab a bight of some that is not yours.
And when I feel I could stay there a live time, and see it new each day, I am brought quickly back to Vichy,
to the cafes and patisseries, boulangeries and school work. It seems fitting that only ten kilometers out of Allier, a dense fog should emerge. So thick we inched our way back, eyes pressed to the windshield in hopes we might see the lines of the road. It makes it seem as if it truly was a dream, and one should emerge on the other side and find they awake and at home. I find my cafe on a Monday morning and walk in to a familiar yet distant face that already knows that I will be drinking une petit creme and reading my magazine as long as I can spare. I feel as if I am being received by old friends. Sure, it is all very pretentious, very cute, but it is true and entangles me in its disorganized messy ways. I can not imagine ever leaving it behind and love it more than I can say.
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