Goddamn, I LOVE Barcelona

Goddamn, I love Barcelona. I arrive in the airport and take the bus to the center, a mere 20 minutes and 6 euros to Placa Espanya, just a hop, skip, and a jump from my old friends Toni and Olga, who I met when I housed them during the Harlem Jazz Festival about 100 years ago. They are the most generous hosts, and have always offered to put me up, with whatever guest I have brought with me, and even now with a little girl, they still take such good care of me. They're the most delightful people and I absolutely adore them. I keep tring to talk to Erica, their little girl. She's cute as a button. I keep trying to talk to her, and she is a little freaked out by me, I think, because I keep speaking in Castillian spanish to her, and although she understands and speaks a bit of it, she's a Catalan speaker, and I'm sure whatever accent I've concocted from my travels isn't really helping. I finally find a little kid I want to talk to and she is freaked out. That's some irony!! I don't have a cell phone here, and I went to Toni and Olga's, but they weren't there, so I go to a little bar called KuKut and have my first clara of the trip. It's half beer and half fanta limon, and I know it sounds nasty, but it's fucking delicous. Light and refreshing. I wait, and the girl at the bar offers for me to use the bar's phone, which is located behind the bar. So they're making sandwiches, and I'm making phone calls. I finally get a hold of Olga, and I run around town shopping, getting gelato, wearing myself the hell out. I go back to the same bar, and order what I think is a small tapa of pulpo a la gallego, cross sections of octupus broiled in olive oil and sprinkled in salt and paprika. It's huge. I have to eat it all. HAVE TO. I take a small rest and head off to Olga's favorite neighborhood called La Born, a labyrinth of old gothic streets, with shops, restaurants, bars. I wander into Xampanet, an old bar that specializes in Xampanyet and Cava, both the Spanish version of champagne- one is sweet and one is dry. I step up to the bar, all by myself, and order some cava (I think) and boquerones (fresh anchovies). In walks some 40-something Spaniards with some 20-something looking Russian girls. They speak Spanish, but still look vaguely uncomfortable. I am convinved they are escorts. I tell them it's good, and I start talking to one of the guys. He buys a round of cava, and one appears in front of me as well. My russian heritage has come in handy! No one buys me drinks at home!! The guy I'm talking to disappears with the paid help, and I'm making a nice little home at the bar. Three tall blonde Danes walk in. They are trying to order a bottle of Xampanyet that they heard was good. I help them. Lars, Tor, and the third whose real name I don't remember. I don't remember because a couple of days ago, recounts Tor, that they started calling him "Corky," you know, from the show Life Goes On, from the early 90's, and they randomly will start singing "Oh-bla-di, Oh-bla-da" to him (the theme song from the show), and the guy has no idea who Corky is. Corky was the character that had Down's Syndrome. I start laughing the kind of laugh you have when you find something terribly funny, even though you know it's terribly wrong... and now you're uncomfortable with the fact that you're laughing at Down's Syndrome, but you JUST CAN'T HELP IT. I damn near peed myself. And every time they called him Corky, it would start all over again. Corky pulls me to the bar and points to a thick, squat stuffed asparragus. Asparragus is white in Spain, and usually pickled. Corky: “What IS that? A penis?!?” Me: “It's an asparragus, I think.” Corky: “How do you EAT that?” Me: “Well, I could SHOW you,” my eyebrows raised. Eruptions of laughter. Corky: “Actually, my friend Lars here has a HUGE penis.” Me: “No one really wants that.” Lars: “Actually, I have quite a normal penis.” I fucking LOVE these guys. And not just because they're buying better and better champagne, and have a very heavy hand, causing me to stumble back to the ramblas so I can very drunkenly hope that the taxi driver takes the direct route back to Toni and Olga's. The rest of my time in Barcelona is pretty uneventful... but I meet some really cool people! On the beach in Sitges, a primarily gay and beautiful beach town about 45 minutes away by train, I meet Dean and Jordan when I offer to take their picture. They're from Newcastle (I pretend I know where the hell that is) and I almost fall over when he says she's his daughter- he's terribly attractive and looks about 10 years younger than he is (she's 17). I tell him I teach kids her age, and he says “they must all be in love with you,” which is a particularly spectacular compliment considering I was topless at the time. Did I mention that every time I walk into a bar or a restaurant, the waiter calls me “guapa” (beautiful). I mean, I think they call every woman “guapa” whether she is or not, but even if this is just customary, I don't think I've ever quite felt so great about myself as I do in Spain. I go back to the Born district for dinner, and go to some random bar for tapas, as I had not yet had pa amb tomaquet, the ubiquitous toasted bread rubbed with smashed garlic, fresh tomatoes, olive oil, and salt. There's no space at the bar, so this wonderful woman Maria offers to let me sit with her. She's probably about 45 years old, speaks English, and we get to talking about my apartment in New York, and when I tell her that the woman on the coop board across the hall from me is keeping a good eye on me, she says, “Eh! Buy her a vibrator! That will cheer her up a little!” And then continues to tell me that the other day she went to visit her mom, and discovered that her mother had bought some lubrication and some “Chinese balls.” She then she said “what I good Idea! I'll get some Chinese balls!” So chance encounters bring me talk of asparragus penis and chinese balls. I tell Olga I want to try a different beach, something a little more empty, and I ask about Lloret de mar. She shrivels her nose in disgust, and says it's dirty, and horrible, and only Germans and the English want to go there. I used to think that American travelers had the worst reputation, and it seems after talking to a number of people, it's really the Germans and British that everyone hates. They show up at the beach, burn themselves to horribly unattractive shade of cooked lobster, get drunk all the time, take over completely. Woo-hoo! Of all the things we're not first at, “being a shitty tourist” I'm happy about. She suggests Sant Pol de mar, an hour train ride away. The train takes a path right along the coast, so it's really pretty, and I wonder why she chose this one over others. Iit is a hilly little town, and the beach is all pebbles, but soft ones. There's very few people on the beach, and the water gets very deep very quickly, so you can swim without going too far from your stuff. The water was spectacularly crisp, and I spent most of the afternoon jumping in the water, swimming around, getting back out, lying in the sun, lather, rinse, repeat. A perfect day in solitude. I've been to Barcelona 4 of 5 times in my life, more than any other city in the world, and every time I go, I find something totally new that I love- a store, a restaurant, a little catalunyan town close by. The people are really helpful, knowledgeable, and friendly, but are still big-city people. I picked up some beautiful confections from a boutique called bubo. Toni and Olga made a delightful dinner.... melon soup with jamon, a platter of cheese and more jamon, and sopressata, egg, and cheese, baked into a little bread in such a way that egg white erupted out, like a spongy little hat. So delicious!! I keep joking that I'm going to quit my job, move in with them, and be little Erica's nanny and teach her English. I might. I just might.