Dispatch From Barcelona

Last month I was sitting in a restaurant in the Eixample neighborhood of Barcelona, eating lunch, when a very old man began tapping me on the shoulder.

It was mid-afternoon, on a Saturday, and I was there on vacation with Maureen. The old man was at the table to our left, grinning and holding up an engraved pewter disk about three inches around. He was nattily dressed in suspenders, pressed slacks and a crisp white shirt. He said something that I didn't understand--in Catalan, I'm guessing--before the woman sitting across from him spoke. "It's his medal, from the government," she said. "He's 102 years old."

Travel is all about experiencing differences. But not all differences are the same.

The first are the most obvious kind: unique things that you can experience nowhere else. Like the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's famed unfinished masterpiece. As much as travel books like to tout "hidden" aspects of cities and off-the-beaten-path attractions, sometimes you need to choke on a little tour bus exhaust and stand in line for an hour behind loud people wearing fanny packs because the path is beaten the way it's beaten for a reason. It's fascinating to walk through a grand cathedral mid-construction, particularly one as wildly artistic as this. We saw much of the Gaudi there is to see, all of it worthwhile (although the audio guide in Casa Battlo is absurdly enthusiastic, constantly referring to Gaudi as "history's greatest natural artist" or something along those lines). 

One thing puzzles me, though--Gaudi was of the Modernisme movement, a sort of Catalan Art Nouveau. People love it, just like everyone seems to like the wrought iron Metro signs in Paris and the Mucha posters that are all over Prague. Listening to a concert in Barcelona's jewel box of a music hall, the Palau de La Musica Catalana, is about as close as you can come to experiencing full synaesthetic overload without the help of highly illegal drugs. Why, then, don't people build Art Nouveau buildings now? It's not like the techniques are unknown. Yet the Gaudis are surrounded by blocks of nice but pedestrian buildings and nobody is making a new Casa Battlo. Are the forces of architectural fashion really so strong?

The second kind of differences are things that could be the same, but aren't. For example, at one point the little toes on Maureen's feet began to hurt--a new pair of sandals weren't entirely broken in. So we looked for a drug store. If we'd been here in DC, we'd have surely ended up in a CVS, i.e. the Worst Place In The Entire World. CVS is an affront to all that's good and decent, choked with sickening neon light, garish bags of poisonous food and a customer service experience that seems specifically designed to suck away your faith in humanity, bit by bit. But they've got a lock on the market and spread like fungus. (When the Dupont Circle art movie theater shut down last year--not the greatest place to see a movie, but still--it was replaced by a CVS even though there's another one, and I'm not exaggerating here, 100 yards away.) And the same is pretty much true everywhere, just substitute Duane Reade if you're in New York, etc.

Anyway, we walked around until we saw a green cross, the standard European sign for drug store. It was small, maybe one-fifth the size of a CVS. The decor was tasteful, the people behind the counter friendly and professional, and instead of Band-Aids we found a small tin of intricately wrought foam, fabric and adhesive bandages specifically designed for one and only one purpose: to alleviate sandal-induced pain on the outside of women's little toes. There's no good reason such a store couldn't exist in America. It just doesn't, because of various regulatory or business-related circumstances that could change. The world doesn't have to be the way it is, and sometimes it's the smallest things that make that most clear. 

The third kind of differences are those you don't see at all, because they don't exist. Barcelona is unique and interesting; that's why it's worth crossing an ocean to see. We spent two days driving through the Catalan hills, mostly looking at monasteries, some tucked away in high crags and others built in out-of-the-way valleys were monks still spend their hours in silent contemplation, pacing under curtains of stone. The city itself is, as Colm Toibin has written, "the only city in the world which was powerful during the fourteenth century and not afterwards." So the historic center is full of Gothic buildings and narrow passages that have been used for more or less the same purposes for the last six hundred years. There are beaches and stadia and museums and lots of restaurants that don't start filling up until near midnight. The wine is cheap and there's a certain appealing quality to everything that flows from an unusually rich culture that's maintained pride and identity despite centuries of waxing and waning subjugation. 

But no matter where you go people like to sit down with their families to relax and talk and eat on a mild weekend afternoon. 102 years old, and the man got up that morning, put on a good set of clothes, and headed out into the world for a walk and some wine and a good meal. The woman was his daughter and they were laughing and talking when we left. He was glad to be alive and wanted everyone, including the perfect stranger from another country sitting at the next table over, to know.