Barcelona, Barca, or B-lona - A retrospective, September 6, 2004

---

---

This was the first trip I took to Europe as an adult, and my first trip for what would become my job by that November, so it's interesting to take a look back at my excitement, and the impressions I had. Enjoy!

Here I am, ready to be off on my trip! I'm packed, checked in, and waiting in the airport lounge for my trip. We should land in Barcelona in just over ten hours - I'm tired just thinking about it! But I'm excited too.

I love that the airport lounge has these huge glass windows where I can watch the planes land and take-off. They look so small in the sky, but they're so huge right out the window. It's amazing that they even make it off the ground at all!

It's interesting too, to listen in on everyone else's conversations around you and to try to figure out where everyone is going. When waiting in line to check in, the family in front of us was headed to Istanbul. It seemed such a long trip for the two little twin girls in their matching pink outfits to be making with their already tired-looking parents. And then, the woman next to me at the ticket counter with her seemingly endless list of transfers and connecting flights, who would finally end up in Amsterdam, before going on to the Czech Republic. It's all so exotic! Although, my Barcelona/Frankfurt destination is pretty exotic too. I can't wait!!

~Somewhere over the Atlantic~
When I was a kid, I used to think that it wasn't important to experience things in order to write about them. As I grow older, and experience more, it turns out that I was wrong. I find plane rides vastly different in person than what I ever could have dreamed up to write about them. I mean, I could easily describe the cabin, the size of the seats, make up a suitable in-flight meal and movie. But I find it's the people that really make up the flight and the experience. There is our flight attendant, whose dark features and our upcoming destination leads me to assume that she is Spanish. She looks tired, far more tired than the patience she extends to her more frustrating passengers. I can tell this is not her first flight today. Her sensible, black, rubber-soled shoes have seen more than one airplane aisle. Yet, though she appears seasoned, she is also young. It makes me wonder what her story is.

Then, there is the woman in front of me. I saw her lined face and typical American haircut and judged her to be just another tourist. Until she had a very fluent argument with another passenger in Spanish. I observed her more closely, watching as she spoke to her companions. She is the clear leader in her group of three, a "know-it-all" who feels the need to "share" her wealth of knowledge with her companions. I think she may hold this role in thanks to her grasp of Spanish and am curious to know who these other two women are, and if they always defer to her in this way.

We also have a tattoo-duo sitting in the center aisle, who switched seats twice so that they could sit next to each other and compare tattoo photos. They, themselves, are covered in ink, whose crisp lines seem to indicate only a recent affiliation for these arts.

We are also only two rows up from a little family of four, travelling with an infant and a toddler. They are Spanish, as I have overheard some of their conversation. The baby is angelic, with dark curls and huge brown eyes that focused on mine as I watched her in line for the bathroom. I smiled at her, but her big brown eyes just looked back at me, captivated at seeing a face she did not recognize. I waved to her and she wiggled her arm in response as if to say hello. These are my travel-mates to Barcelona. I wonder what their purposes are in going there. Some are returning home after holiday in the US. Others, like me, will be seeing Barcelona for the first time. Still others may be returning back to visit a city that they love, or people that they love. Everyone has their reasons, and I'd like to think that some of them hold a romantic mystique that will only be uncovered when I, myself, arrive in Barcelona.

---