In my own personal mythology, Barcelona is a city that looms large. I’ve loved it desperately and hated it completely. I swore I would never return, and then I did.
Barcelona is the city that made me want to live abroad.
I first visited during my semester abroad in Prague. During our spring break, I visited Paris (where my college roommate was studying) and Barcelona. It’s hard to remember now what drew me to Barcelona—just as it’s hard to remember what initially drew me to Istanbul at the end of that semester—but I’m sure it had something to do with Gaudi’s wild architecture, and sunshine.
This was the year that I’d started reviving my love of analogue photography, but at that point it was only a hobby and not an obsession, so I didn’t bring my film camera to Barcelona with me.
Barcelona changed everything. Though I traveled with a friend, we spent some time apart, and I was swept into surreal situations and exuberant experiences; after a late night out with dream-like strangers in a closed-down pizza bar, I decided that after I graduated from college, I wanted to live in Barcelona. It was March 2008.
That goal warped a bit over time, but never fully went away. I studied Spanish my last year of college, yet simultaneously went through periods of such longing for my Prague semester and my first trip to Istanbul that I loosened the destination. Maybe I wanted to live in Barcelona, or maybe Prague, or Istanbul, or somewhere else completely. I just wanted to live abroad, and travel. I worked at my university’s Study Abroad Office. I traveled around the Middle East and Central Europe for three months after I graduated. I talked about my goal incessantly. And In 2011, I returned to Barcelona, where my sister had just spent her study abroad semester. She and I embarked on a 6-week backpacking trip, and that’s when I committed to making my goal of living overseas a reality. (It took another year and a half, but I did it.)
That 2011 trip wasn’t only the catalyst for finally turning my talk into action; it was also the trip that completely turned me off Barcelona.
I’ve written about this before: Hillary and I returned to Barcelona at the end of our trip, her bag got snatched, she chased the thief down and grabbed it back, we spent the rest of our time in the city anxious and angry. When it comes to pickpockets, Barcelona is one of the worst places in Europe. That brush with rampant thievery was a tipping point: the sheen was gone. I was done with Barcelona. I had no desire to return.
And yet, I did. Of course I did.
I attended TBEX in Lloret de Mar in May, and my flight flew in and out of Barcelona. I only spent 24 hours there, but it was long enough to remind me what drew me to the city in the first place.
As I wandered the wide boulevards, I remembered all the things I loved about Barcelona. I remembered the quiet peace sitting atop Montjuic. I remembered the Modernist architecture popping up on unexpected corners. I remembered the colors and the fruits and the sea breeze. I recognized streets.
I made peace with Barcelona.
One day is not enough to revisit every old memory, but certain memories are made to be revisited. That late night in the pizza bar in 2008 was marked, in my head, by a large sculpture of a fat cat I’d passed on the way there; it was a token to the reality of that night. My sense of direction at the time was pretty lousy, but I knew I could find that neighborhood again if I could find the fat cat.
When Hillary and I were together in Barcelona, I insisted we make a pilgrimage to the fat cat. It’s in the Raval neighborhood, one that is rapidly becoming trendy but still made my sister nervous in 2011. The sculpture is by the renowned Colombian artist Botero, and revisiting the cat on my second trip to Barcelona added a nice little bit of poetry between that first life-changing visit and the second.
This most recent trip, I walked aimlessly with my friend around Barcelona streets until we found ourselves in a big open square. A square that was weirdly familiar. I stopped. I knew exactly where we were.
There he was. Botero’s Fat Cat, again. My muscle memory guided me back to that square, the scene where I’d decided to incrementally shift the direction of my life. I’ve never been so happy to see a fat cat.
Sure, I gripped my bag a bit more tightly this time around. But I also remembered how it felt to be fresh and delighted in Barcelona. Perhaps it was for the best that my time there was limited. Barcelona, for me, has never really been about the must-see sites; it’s always been about that feeling that set me on the path to the life I live now. How glorious to remember that feeling again.
No Comments