Largely Similar

How to describe Barcelona?

A city, then, of beauty and charm. Where the maps lie to you and pretend a twenty minute walk for a tall man on his own is five for a party of nine. The strenuous distances are reminiscent somewhat of Paris; the architecture of a Romantic-era New York. Buildings rise to seven floors easily, often more. All of them painted, floral architecture, a certain theatricality in their design which is taken to extremes in those that Gaudi had his fingers on, where the straight line is abhorred and one wonders how they do the plumbing.

London is a world away from this. Walking down La Rambla one is confronted by a sea of people. Mostly tourists, in all probability, with pickpockets and whores thrown in. The markets bustle and are unremittingly Foreign, although I do not have enough Spanish as yet to barter. That said, the prices for fruit and veg etc. are far less expensive than in the nearest supermarket to us, and far better quality. And you can get decent cheese there too. And all manner of fish, meats, olives, breads, sweets etc. – as would be expected.

Roads here go from the extremely small to the ridiculously large, and cars and motorbikes appear to battle it out for space on a free-for-all basis. Barcelona further differs from London in that it appears the same wherever you go. Walk down an average street in London and the place can change entirely. It’s a relatively short walk from the heady and operatic Covent Garden to the cool and pleasant Lincoln’s Inn Fields, then the same distance again north to the British Museum, and again to the British Library. The architecture may remain similar, but the makeup of the areas in organic, like the roots of a tree threading their way into your heart. Here there’s a lattice, a grid, where everything looks peculiar, beautiful, yet resoundingly the same. One could envisage everything I saw today from one street.

I miss London when I’m away from it, and its offbeat ways. It’s far more laid back here, less stress (if more hassle to get through the crowds). The marina is pretty beyond words, with rows of tall ships in the harbour, a large shopping centre that can only be reached by bridge – and best of all, no health and safety railings to stop people falling into the water. A cable car moving between three rusty-looking iron towers, taking the brave up a wooded hill in the distance. Murky water, however. A statue comparable to ours in Trafalgar Square near the marina too – theirs of the discovery of America, a hulking brute of a column, finery to its maximum potential, with lions flanking it on every side – but apart from this, the local architecture remained much the same. Beautiful, coloured as though the city has suffered a year of firestorms, but still oddly the same.

It’s warm enough here to walk without a jacket, although I prefer to for security. There’s a breeze on occasion, but mostly the wind is still, closeted by the buildings where one would expect it to be funnelled and focussed on where we live. Our apartment is colder than one would like; it’s cramped too, but enough I think for four people to live together in for three months. Thanks Christ for that, too. Any more and I’d have had to pull my own hair out and used it to garrotte myself. I don’t think I can stand being in Barcelona for longer. I can barely stand London that long without a break to the country. The stairs wind up and rustic, but are easy enough to climb, and the beds are soft, which is the main thing.

I celebrated being here today by buying an universal plug adaptor and a copy of Potter 1 in Spanish which I hope to translate back. Long shot, maybe. Tomorrow we start at the Institut del Teatr, but now sleep is required.