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barcelona by alexander j. whitman


In a city by the sea, sometimes feeling old is all in your head.



At the French border, we exited the train and followed other passengers like cattle onto a bus. The metal box veered up and down narrow roads forever. Just as we became certain we’d have to take the bus the whole way, it lurched to stop at a crumbling, stone train station. We followed the other travelers onto a rickety passenger car.

Guzzling bottled water, we bumped along half-asleep until the ride leveled out. I sat facing backwards, again, and Paul, my old college pal who made a point of trying to look less American than me, sat facing forward. We didn't speak. The train rattled along the Spanish countryside.

We arrived in Barcelona before noon with our giant backpacks and lost looks on our faces. The sober passenger train had taken us to within a single metro stop of our destination. We decided to walk instead. It didn't look very far on the map and I was almost always right about the map.

So we ambled down Las Ramblas toward the beach, our hands buried deep into the pockets of our shorts. Barcelona had been built up as the seediest stop in our travels. Las Ramblas was said to be a haven of gypsies and thieves. It wasn't that way at all, really. It was just sunny and kind of a beautiful city of mostly short buildings right there by the sea.

  
 


 
    Tourists grouped around performance artists. We turned right and two blocks later turned left. We checked in, pleased to see that the beverage machine in the lobby sold beer, and climbed the stairs to our room. The clinical feel of the stairs—cold and quiet—did not extend to our room.

Two tiny single beds occupied most of the space, along with a bathroom in which the shower emptied directly into a drain in the floor and no door offered privacy. The place was clean and comfortable, especially with the door open to the balcony. Midday was warm but not balmy. May was a good time to be in Barcelona.

We ate lunch that day at a crowded restaurant, behind the market off Las Ramblas. We drank beer from short glasses and chatted over the low rumble of Spanish and the clanking of flatware. Paul had the chicken and I ate fish, though I have no idea what kind of fish.

(This happened to me all the time. I knew the word for fish in Spanish, French, and Italian, but different varieties were lost on me and I generally accepted it. In Nice, I had been served a whole fried fish just the week before. Knowing some words but not all got me into trouble a few days later when a heaping plate of snails and pork fat arrived in front of me. I ate the snails and some of the pork fat. The waitress seemed sad that I hadn't eaten the fat. We chatted in Spanish about how people in Barcelona love to eat snail steeped in a plate full of pork fat.)

illustration
The next day, Paul and I decided that we needed to buy a guitar. Neither of us had played since arriving in Rome almost three weeks before. Barcelona, we soon thought, would be the place where made our fortune on the streets. Tourists huddled around the performance artists and all sorts of cornball shows.

The guy dressed like a Vegas Elvis—he stood motionless until people dropped money in his box, only to do a short impersonation of the King and then stand motionless again—was our inspiration. We hoped at least for drinking money. Paul wound up paying too much for a shoddy steel-string that we immediately named Carlos.

Before trying to play in Piaza Pi, where all the hot-shots played, we decided to practice in a tiny square—with no chairs or people—near our hotel. We ran through the Everly Brothers’ "Dream." I played guitar and sang lead and Paul provided first-rate harmonies. We barely knew the words, so we faked it.

In the middle of trying to figure out one elusive line in "Rocky Raccoon," a seedy middle-aged guy stumbled out of a nearby apartment and approached us. I thought he would either kick our asses or just tell us to knock it off.

 
 
    Instead, he invited us to a bar where—he assured us—he would get us all free drinks for songs. He was already drunk and it was the middle of the afternoon, but we agreed. He led us around the corner, across a square, through winding streets, and, finally, to a small bar where no one spoke English.

The bright sunlight from the street radiated through the door and lit the place, but not quite enough. We bellied up to the bar with our new friend. Beers soon arrived for all three of us. Shortly thereafter, the middle-aged waitress brought us each one meager tapa. She smiled as she handed them across the wooden bar. Our new friend talked with the owner and gestured to us. I held up the guitar and smiled. In moments, we were playing our limited repertoire, sitting on tall chairs at the bar.

The people at the bar loved us for about 10 minutes. At that point a group from the upstairs area, which looked down at the bar and the ante room like a balcony, started yelling for "Yesterday." We tried to dazzle them with another performance of "Dream." Our gentle Everly Brothers’ harmonies had no effect.

We tried "Rocky Raccoon." Nothing. We tried "And I Love Her." We even tried "Yesterday" with Paul on the out-of-tune piano past the tables. I was a little drunk. Paul and I started whispering to each other that maybe we ought to leave before we were forcibly removed.

We headed for the door. Paul and I both waved and I thanked the bar owner and the waitress. (Paul never could remember "gracias" for some reason.) We stopped just outside the door and our new friend caught up with us. He started talking about another bar he would take us to where, presumably, everybody hated "Yesterday" and we could play for a few more drinks. We declined and headed down the shady street next to the bar.

When we got just around the corner, we started running. I laughed out loud at how bizarre the whole thing had been as I ran down the street with the guitar, Carlos, in my hand. I never looked back to see if our new friend—the drunk, old guy—had followed us. My head floated just a few feet above me. In my mind, it was a scene from "Hard Days Night." The sunny, carefree days of youth had returned, if only for a moment.

We slowed down after a few blocks. I became aware that I wasn't sure where we were. Few people were in the street. There were no cars, as with much of the area around Las Ramblas where the cobblestone roads are too narrow. The only people we saw were dusty and frightening.

Something suggested to me that we had hit a red-light district during the day. Fat, fleshy women—perhaps prostitutes—yawned and stretched in doorways. Seeing them during the day was particularly eerie. Out of place. Paul and I walked quickly past them. When we rounded the corner onto a proper street, albeit only one lane, I realized we were only two blocks from our hotel.

We ducked into a shop and bought a few bottles of Estrella—there is only one brand of beer in Barcelona—then headed back to the hotel to smoke cigarettes, drink beer, and try to figure out "Yesterday." <



Alexander J. Whitman works at a skate shop in Santa Monica, CA.
 
   
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