The 10-hour train to Barcelona was painless. I was told the train would have a luggage car with hooks for bikes, but that was not the case. I found a nook, and after some effort, made the bike fitt into said nook. The noisy back-and-forth swaying of the train lulled me to sleep, and I woke up o the sounds of my five other sleeping-car roommates shuffling about. The train left me at a big station, and it was there that I got one of those feelings of, "what now?" I decided that going straight to Sitges, where my cousin lives, would be the best choice.
Sitges is 35km (20mi) outisde of Barcelona. It would be on the equivalent of Boston´s commuter rail. It´s a pretty, quaint, and seemingly peaceful little beach town. Walking around you can feel the lazy pace of the town, filled with mothers pushing their little kids in strollers, european tourist couples seeking as escape from the big city, and the large gay community that makes this their home. The stores in the center of town give you a similar feel: organic markets mingle with italian beach fashion, small galleries abut jewelery stores, and bars and restaurants abound and burst on the street. I can see why people would live here, only a 40-minute train ride away from Barcelona.
My cousin Jorge is a diver, and he works for big companies that are looking for oil in the sea. It´s called oceaneering, and he spends large chunks of time away from home. The day I arrived, he returned from a four week stint offshore, only to leave a day later with his wife, Eva, and their daughter, Paola, for a 3-week vacation in Miami and Cartagena. I caught him in that brief period of time. Despite what I thought, his oceaneering job sees him spending a lot of time on the surface guiding an expensive little robot that can dive down to 2 miles underwater. It sounds pretty cool, but the large chunks of time away from home are tough.
I spent Thursday in Sitges, and determined that I would not go into Barcelona until after my cousin left for his vacation. I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible, which was little enough as it was. They had already offered to let me stay in their house after they left, a very generous gesture which I happily accepted. So Thursday and Friday were very welcome days of mozying, seeing the beautiful Mediterranean from the balcony and also in person, and catching up with Jorge while playing with Paola. Although I have spent very little time with Jorge (he´s 16 years older than me and grew up in Cartagena), spending time with him and his wife felt very familiar. In his voice I can hear my uncle Rodrigo´s measured and thoughtful tone, and in his face I see his other brothers. His wife, Eva, is also a firecracker of a Spaniard who makes you feel at home with her big and warm smile. It felt wonderful to have this strong feeling of family so far away from home.
Sleep got the better of me (surprise, surprise), and I woke up home alone on Saturday. My cousins had left. With that same strange sense of, "what now?" that had struck me when I arrived in Barcelona, I started to get ready to head into the city for a day of tourism. Tackling a city of this size in a couple of days is a challenge, especially alone. Also, in a city this size, there is no distinction between travelers and tourists, making me uncomfortably close to one of those tourists who just consume culture. I don´t want to travel to Barcelona just to be able to rattle off a list of places I saw. But what else can I do? That list would be neither interesting nor worthwhile. Plus, realizing that there was no way to see, I mean really see, any significant portion of the city in two days, I decided to just walk around, get a sense for the city, and just try to make the most of it.
You don´t need to spend much time in the city to realize that art is valued here. From the multitude of street performers to the plethora of museums, from the beauty of the statues and fountains to the splendor of the buildings, there is little doubt that this is an artistic capital. The most visible art is Antonio Gaudí's unique, modernist architecture, whose wavy, organic lines jump out amidst the rigidity of the city landscape, yet still manage to not seem out of place, gracefully complementing and not detracting from the surroundings. Gaudí may be the most visible, but definitely not the most notable, competing with the likes of Picasso and Miró who also chose to call Barcelona home for some period of time. The Picasso Museum was the only one I entered, and it beautifully highlighted his progression from a very talented 14-year old into his 30s when he was already a household name.
If artists helped shape this city, it is not without some help from nature. A long, Mediterranean beach, warm weather in the summer and mild winters, and a few amazing hills overlooking the city all add to the allure. Gaudí was comissioned to design a park on one of these hills, Park Güell, and again his design complements the nature of the hill beautifully. The other large hill, in a giant park district known as Montjuic, houses a castle/fortress and many of the sites built for the Olympics. The beach is a place for people to unwind and take in some sun. Topless beaches are still a novelty to me, but here the toplessness was befitting of the laid back atmosphere. And the consistently nice weather keeps everyone happy, keeps flowers and gardens looking nice, and allows for lots of biking. For all these reasons, Barcelona is the first city that I have seen in Spain where I can see myself living.
Despite the wonderfulness of the city, on both Saturday and Sunday nights I was too tired to stick around for the nightlife. The fatigue had something to do with the many hours walking in the sun, but it probably had just about as much to do with how draining it is to travel alone. I think between both days I must have uttered fewer than a hundred words, and that mostly to clerks at train stations and convenience stores. I´m not sure what it is about being surrounded by so many people that makes it more difficult to engage any of them. In smaller cities and towns, I smile and make conversation easily, but in this big city after I smiled often people looked away or even moved a few times. Maybe it's because people see me traveling alone, or maybe it's because other people are already in good company, or maybe both. For whatever reasons, making friends as a traveler in big cities is tough, and I look forward to the rest of this trip.
Speaking of which, I have spent a lot of my morning typing this entry, but I need to get going. I am heading into Barcelona today only to head out, and hopefully spend the night somewhere in the northern outskirts of the city. Back on the bike, and back to the routine that my body has been craving for the past few days.
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