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Published: January 1st 2007
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If 28 years have taught me anything - and they clearly haven’t - it’s that one night and one night alone each year is as bound to disappoint as Whoopi Goldberg at the box office. Yet as December slouches toward the finish line, I’ve still suckered myself into thinking that Barcelona 2007 will somehow avoid the sorry fates of Seattle 2006, Athens 1998, and too many New Yorks to count. All the elements for a rousing success are there: a year of happy, globe-trotting memories to reflect upon; a boisterous collection of travelers to share the night with; the backdrop of one of Europe’s great cities. Short of Mariano Rivera trotting out of the bullpen in the top of the ninth, few things could appear to be such a foregone conclusion.
You don’t have to work too hard to see where this is headed.
The local CouchSurfing crew has spared us all a few headaches by putting together a plan for the night. It’s an unruly mob of us that descends on Plaça Rius i Taulet by half-past ten. That 2006 should be sent off in a spasm of hard-drinking and grape-eating is self-evident to anyone who’s
spent New Year’s in Spain. Even more self-evident is how a gaggle of young backpackers with fast hands and loose lips can make a Spanish plaza look like a two-page spread from the Kama Sutra. At the heart of it all seems to be a trio of young Americans, who’d begun sloppily kissing each other the second they stepped off the train - eager to reassure Europe that American college girls are exactly the way they appear in
American Pie and
Girls Gone Wild. The carnage they unleash on the unsuspecting plaza in the hours that follow is a sad cocktail of unbridled hormones and, one suspects, long years of neglect. This being Spain, though, more than a few volunteers are lining up to join them - further proof that blond co-eds are as sure to get a party started as “Billie Jean.”
It’s a strange end to a strange year. That I’d be wrapping up ’06 in a clamorous plaza in Barcelona might not have seemed wholly improbable when the year kicked off; that I’d be sending emails to the Syrian embassy, hoping to snag a tourist visa for my trip to the Middle East, is a
sentence that’s just riddled with eyebrow-raisers. But here I am: surrounded by this strange brew of travelers, CouchSurfers, and riotous Catalonians, looking up to the bright clock face that’s ticking its way toward twelve.
We’ve worked our way through the wine; I take a few swigs from the box of sangria someone offers. I have a handful of grapes, in keeping with the Spanish tradition: for the last twelve seconds of the year, clocks across the country send off twelve long peals, while revelers stuff their faces with twelve grapes. Luis - a good-looking, flirty Galician whose libido stampedes through the streets like the bulls in Pamplona - is on top of a bench, trying to explain the ritual to newcomers. Someone’s trying to quiet the crowd, determined that this solemn New Year’s tradition be performed with the utmost gravity. Our silent, expectant faces appeal to the clock; our grape-filled palms grow clammy; one of the American girls - goofy and giggling - is determined to suck the lips off the German guy next to her.
We’re still waiting for the first bell to toll when champagne bottles begin popping around the plaza. A fine, sweet mist
is spraying down from a nearby balcony. Midnight’s come and gone; the clock is as quiet as Michael Richards Night at the NAACP. After all the build-up, the moment itself has poignantly passed without us. It doesn’t take too long for us to catch on, though: Luis, hastily improvising, clambers back onto his soapbox and counts off the twelve seconds as we cram grapes into our mouths. A drunken riot of celebration and groping commences. A half-dozen CouchSurfers - their lips contorting in an impressive group kiss - go tumbling to the ground. There are ecstatic cries from the balconies around the plaza. Someone’s gyrating around a champagne bottle.
What some people are willing to do with a mouthful of grapes, FYI, makes the rolling hills of Tuscany seem far less innocent than they look on the postcards.
The night is beginning to degenerate. That we’re trying to herd forty-plus drunken revelers onto the subway is complicated by the fact that half of Barcelona seems to have the same idea. Tempers are rising. A few young Moroccans - defiantly smoking cigarettes in a crowded subway car - set off a heated argument with a pack of Spaniards.
Someone’s girlfriend is getting squished against a door. A drunk woman, swaying wildly in the middle of the car, pitches left and right whenever the train starts with a jolt.
Things hardly improve when we get to the plaza. At midnight, I’m sure Plaça Catalunya and Las Ramblas were full of drunken cheer and
bonhomie; by 2am, they look a bit more like the fall of Baghdad. With the sort of calamitous energy that can only be channeled by large packs of drunk, horny men, Barcelona is coming apart at the seams. Fistfights and shoving matches are erupting on every corner; someone’s wallet gets snatched outside a phone booth. Girls are getting ogled and harassed…well, like any other night on Las Ramblas. In all the commotion I manage to get left behind - my reward for staying with a fellow CouchSurfer who, drunk and slightly ill, is waiting for her boyfriend to turn up. I spend a fruitless hour wandering the streets, trying to hunt down a bar whose enigmatic name - Aurora - meets with only puzzled smiles and hopeless shrugs from the people I ask. It’s the start of a year just like any other - a
sober disappointment, a bottle of champagne without the fizz. If there’s any consolation as I curl up on Robin’s couch, it’s that this past year was the best one yet; and if a wasted New Year’s Eve is any indication, 2007 should manage to leave it far behind.
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