When I was little, I bought lots of things - tat, as dad described it. Inexpensive, transient goods that I would beg for, play with for a few weeks, and invariably discard. I was addicted to buying things; plastic, hard things I could hold in my hand and take home with me. To my younger self, these things - actual, physical things - were more ‘real’ than any experience, or food, that I could spend my pocket money on. That rollercoaster ride, that sandwich, that zoo - I’d enjoy it in the moment, sure, but then it’d be gone and I’d have nothing to show for it. Just less money, with no thing in exchange. Something smelled off to 10-year-old me. That was a bad deal.
As I grew up, I became less and less interested in plastic and hard things. I stopped trying to get stuff and started trying to do stuff. I decided, somewhere along the way, that my memories were just as durable as the plastic lightsaber, if not more. They don’t rust, erode, or break. Memories don’t get eaten by the dog, accidentally flushed down the toilet, or thrown over the neighbours fence, never to return. I liked this about memories. It satisfied the juvenile hoarder in me, the 10-year-old who wanted as many things as he could get his hands on. Here was a different commodity; I couldn’t hold it in my hand, but it existed in my head, and I got to create it myself, and it was all mine to keep. This made me happy.
Getting older meant that the experiences became more valuable. There wasn’t much I could do at 12, but there was a whole lot I could do - places I could go, people I could meet, experiences I could have - at 17, 18, 19. The 10-year-old was bursting at the seams, swimming on a dragon’s bounty of memories. Plastic things long forgotten.
Now I’m 20, going on holiday with my girlfriend. In Birmingham Airport, I had the chance to buy plastic, hard things again. When we landed in Barcelona, I had the chance to buy more plastic, hard things. But I had long since washed my hands with ‘tat’. I wasn’t interested. There was too much exciting stuff to do, too many things to see and experiences to have. That is how, despite the draining sterility of BHX, I was excited, excited to be going through bag drop and security, to be paying £13 for Toblerone, to be frantically running to the gate. I was excited because airport meant holiday, and holiday meant the promise of new things.
The first sensation of Barcelona is no different to the rest of Mediterranean Europe - like Lisbon, or Rome, it is hot. It is hot when you get off the plane, but not hot in the way the UK is hot in peak summer - swelteringly, oppressively hot. Barcelona is promisingly warm, a reassurance that nothing bad can happen and everything you could possibly need is right in front of you. It forces you into a good mood, a good mood that will be tested by; a shopkeeper calling you fat, a lack of air conditioning in the hotel room, a persistent sweating that cannot be quelled by deodorant. None of this has happened yet.
There are lots of tall buildings. Some of them are imposing, some astounding.. The Sagrada Família is of the astounding kind, the type of building that looks ten times taller than it actually is, that seems to bend your neck back for you until it just might snap off, and only then allow you to glimpse at the gold-flecked spires of its highest towers. It dominates the skyline, a North Star in a city which, despite the uniform layout, is surprisingly difficult to navigate.
In March, it is too cold to go in the sea, lest you wear two insulating wetsuits, or are from Bolton. Fitting neither of these criteria, we elected to walk along the pier, eavesdropping on Spanish conversations we didn't understand and averting our eyes from the elderly nudist intent on becoming a tourist attraction in his own right.
You don’t know what you’re missing until it’s gone, they say. Occasionally, though, you don’t realise how god-awful something is until you’re exposed to a better alternative; this is the case with the Barcelona Metro system. The trains come to the second, unfailingly. the tickets are cardboard, rechargeable, and for ten euros you can go anywhere in a specific zone, as much as you want, for ten days. Onboard, the handrails divide into two to avoid hand-bumping / flirting, and the stops light up to prevent confusion of one’s location or destination. This is a well-designed metro system - like everything else in the city, I wouldn’t be shocked to hear it was the brainchild of Gaudi himself.
el gordo
Well you’re big aren’t you🫃