In constructing a birthday wholely other than the usual, going to Barcelona in mid-summer came with family, friends and the night train from Paris to Barcelona.
A cabin picnic with wine and bread and cheese.
Closing the bar with two tee-totaling Saudis and their newly met alcoholic German friends.
Its always like that on the night train.
...
Barcelona is so rich its exhausting.
Every laneway, path or plaza is a panoply of textures, the buildings saturated with colour from the windows to the shutter-door-graffiti.
The rolling glint of bikes and scooters. The noise of buskers and hawkers.
I entertain the thought of living here, but wonder just how the locals manage to survive the constant buzzing flood to the senses.
...
Brandy poured by the bucket.
Shops that dont open till 10, or 11 or just whenever.
Tight laneways tangled and turning, thinning to nothing before bursting into squares and plazas large and small.
Spaces, chairs and every shadey somewhere filled with people sitting and talking... or just sitting, perhaps here is the respite from the perpetual technicolour tempest of the city.
And somewhere amidst all of this, a birthday.
33 I believe, with parents and old friends.
Some loved are missing, and even in the excitement it is hard not to feel their absence.
But there is Barcelona, and another day in the sun and sound to get lost among the alleys.
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