I had this perfect dream
This dream was me and you …

...this is what Freddie Mercury sang about Barcelona in 1992 at the start of Summer Olympic Games. It was my turn to whisper similar thoughts this spring after so many years of just longing to see a city with a miraculous architecture. Finally the big advantages of low-cost flying and affordable Internet lodging catapulted me, my wife and a family of very good friends to Barcelona.

Barcelona has an vibrant vitality, specific to large tourist cities. The public places, Rambla Boulevard, the narrow streets of the old city, the squares, are the stage of a continuous show, where the pedestrians become spectators and actors, and the scene is the street. You find there singers and players, guitar players singing sirtaki, ocarina players with songs from Argentina, xylophone players with music from around the world including Romania; plastic artists that paint and display their creations on the street, or are ready to make your portrait or your caricature; jugglers; break dance dancers; people dressed like human statues, standing perfectly still; acrobats; flower stands. A puppeteer with a small puppet in the form of skeleton made the puppet sing with jerky and funny movements in front of a microphone. Each Sunday in the square in front of the Cathedral there is a band singing the Catalun typical dance, Sardana, and people start dancing, forming many circles that move in unison. On Rambla we saw a religious procession, an allegorical car with the statue of Christ slowly moving accompanied by the music of a band. The street explodes with life, to the delight of the tourists and the locals. This public display of joy could be partly for tourist, but I strongly feel that it is also due to the Mediterranean air and the Latin roots. Actors make a quality show for small voluntary contributions, but the money is never asked for. And the police never interfere. Only twice I saw women begging, but they did it furtively, a clear sign that they would have trouble with the police, if caught.

The whole city is so rich in wonderful places, with old and new buildings. Seeing all of them, admiring all their beauty would certainly take too much time to the normal tourist. The only thing you could achieve is just walk around and be happy that beauty suddenly surrounds you. And the construction work never stops. The sky of the whole Barcelona is filled with cranes, like all the streets are rebuilt or renovated, a huge financial and human effort.

There is one name that has his fate unmistakably linked to Barcelona, Gaudi, the architect. His creations are all inspired by nature: trees, rocks, pine cones, shells, fish skeletons, waves of the sea, etc. Straight lines are completely avoided, everything is rounded, curved, has a volume, flows from one line to the next one. A staircase follows the natural rhythm of fruit pods; the space around a fireplace is an alcove, a secluded place where you can hide and enjoy the crackling of burning fire; the chimneys on the roof are like alien beings wearing Star War helmets. His buildings give the impression of fairy tails, almost of ginger bread castles. One of his masterpieces, La Pedrona, a bloc of flats, was built with the intention to be rented. Economically this was a failure, no one wanted to move into an apartment with rounded walls, where you couldn’t fit at all the normal rectangular furniture.

Another masterpiece of his, the Guell park, was the center point of an ambitious real estate project for wealthy customers. Unfortunately at the time there were not many willing to buy and only two houses were built in the end. Needless to say that today such a house, if available, would be only for billionaires. When you walk the alleys of the park you expect to see at any turn a fairy or an elf, so much you are transposed into a world of imagination.

The crowning of Gaudi’s career is Sagrada Familia, a cathedral dedicated to the Sacred Family. It wasn’t finished until the end of Gaudi’s life, and it will not be finished until 2020. The whole area is crammed with cranes that keep moving all the time. The tall towers of the cathedral and the inside columns with shapes like tree branches cannot transmit the feeling of majestic achievement only when you are in front of them, and see them with your own eyes. In a sunny day the sunrays passing through the stain glass windows give an eerie appearance to the canopy of tree branches reaching to the roof.

The food in Barcelona is very nice, and I am especially pleased that fresh seafood is always available. The town is filled with restaurants of all kind, but if you have a choice, go to the ones where locals eat. How can you recognize them? They are not placed on the main stream to tourist attractions, they are not very fancy, very probably the staff does not speak foreign languages, but their food is worth tasting. One example is Restaurante Kit, Travesera de Dalt, 24, tel 2 37 01 47, not far from Guell park. The national specialty, la paella, was not impressive for me, just rice with some other stuff in it, vegetables or fish or shrimps. Don't miss the jamon, the Spanish ham. If you want to see a real selection of food products, go to La Boqueria, just off Rambla Boulevard, the city market where you can find anything imaginable, fruits, meat, seafood. with all the picturesque hustle and bustle of busy customers and sellers. Here in the market you can stop at an open bar and have your lunch prepared from raw materials that are surely fresh.

In Barcelona there is a specialty, the tapas, that I read about and I was very curious to taste. In an old bar, Can Codina (Bonavista Str., not far from square Juan Carles), that belonged to the same family for three generation we were served tapas by a very nice old gentleman, the owner, who also filled all the other positions of the payroll. Tapas is not real food, but appetizers. You are given just a bite, it is sours, or salty, or spicy. Its major role is to increase your desire to quench your thirst and drink more and not to feed you. Local wines are very good, and sangria, a mixture of red wine with fruits juice, poured over orange slices of strawberries is really very tasty. The tap water, on the other side, is a little bit salty and we couldn’t use it even for tea or coffee, you get something with a rather bad taste.

Transport in Barcelona was a pleasant surprise. I expected a rather loose organizing, with delays regarded as normal facts of life. In reality the busses and the metro are very reliable and clean. Inside the city there couldn’t be a better way of traveling, and the metro trains are very frequent. If you come by plain you get a free train, yes, a free train, courtesy of Spanish railways that brings you to a connecting metro. One option available for tourists is to take a several days pass for whole Barcelona, that also gives you discounts when entering museums. The only thing you have to take care is to remember where you bought that pass. My pass stopped functioning out of the blue, and I had to go to the original place of issuance to get a replacement.

I always thought that Spanish is very easy to learn for a Romanian, after all both languages have a pronounced Latin background. I wanted to learn Spanish in one month, and I can honestly recognize that ... I failed. If you have the same idea when you go to Barcelona, don't strive too hard about it; the language of this part of Spain, Catalonia, is Catalun. The differences between the Spanish and Catalun are rather important. If you try English or French or German on the street, the chances are rather slim to make yourself understood, which was somewhat surprising.

Visiting Barcelona is not a trip, is an enchantment, and I made tons of pictures. When I looked at them to make a selection, I suffered at each one; each rejected photo meant another unshared experience. But if the Tourist Office in Barcelona wants to buy them, I can make some money. With these money I could buy something that I would really enjoy, a trip to Barcelona.

Timisoara

April 1st, 2008