Barcelona

For just a blink in time, you'll have a new life.

You’ll be surrounded by new, brilliant people. 

You’ll make lasting bonds faster than you thought possible.

You’ll be exposed to new, incredible stories. 

You’ll get a small glimpse of the vital pieces that really make a city tick.

You’ll make a fool of yourself with the language over and over again.

You’ll make a fool of yourself in general; it’s what you do.

Your liver will de-friend you on Facebook.

You’ll be happy. All of the money and hassle will have been worth it.

Your perspective and understanding will change forever.

Then, it will all be gone.

For the longest time, that was what travel was for me.

When you’re away from home and exploring the world, appreciation is on the clock. You have anywhere between a few days and a couple of weeks to take in everything you can before you go home or move on to the next adventure.

First impressions can last a lifetime. Everything you may ever see, touch and know about a city is crammed into your fleeting time there. 

I guess you can compare it to reading a new book.

After you’ve read through one, it goes on the shelf with the others, taking its place in your memory forever. Maybe you’ll read that same book again, maybe you’ll fly back, but more likely than not, you’ll go in search of new books, new countries and new stories.

Just like books, the greatest places in the world call out to be appreciated again and again.

The great cities - the ones you feel connected to - are hard to leave.

I once flicked through a few pages of Barcelona in 2009 while hungover and tired at the end of a European tour. 

What I remember is the sun, Gaudi and the festivals.

I also remember sangria. Dangerous, unfathomable amounts of sangria.

I loved it all, but I never thought I’d come back. 

Then opportunity knocked.

Barcelona is now the place I’m calling home for a while and one of the great flukes of my life.

I’ve been lucky enough to find great accommodation, work from home and use it as a base to explore this city, the country and re-visit some of my favourite spots in Europe. 

This has changed my experience of travel in the best way. I’m off the clock. I’ve found more time to appreciate everything - a little longer than the usual blink.

For the past couple of months, one of my challenges has been to try and explain to family and friends what living and working here is like.

I could tell them that the weather is perfect every day, that the people are beautiful, complicated and inspiring and that the history is more interesting than I imagined. 

I wouldn’t be the first, nor the last.

I could also tell them that grocery stores here do not bag your shopping - a true blow to the 10 people waiting behind me while, for the first time in my life, I had to figure out which arrangement wouldn't destroy my eggs, bread and $200 worth of supplies. I have a new-found respect for the staff at Coles. What a nightmare.

Until you see this city for yourself, what I say would never really do it justice.

But nuts to that: let me tell you about my new town and its people anyway…

Live music and art powers the city and is the pulse of its streets. During beautiful summer nights almost every street corner is a stage.

Rushing and urgency are not things that happen here - You go at your pace, I’ll go at my pace and we’ll all be happy, stress-free and really late together.

They smile like my late grandfather used to - as if they’ve been holding in a hilarious secret for months.

Children still play together outside. It’s a shock to the senses. There are mini-Messis playing soccer on my street every day, weaving through people and cars until the sun goes down. 

Large crowds of people drinking together outside is not an event that requires police attention. They abhor drunken violence and pity the tourists that try to introduce it to them.

Sleep is a myth. From what I could understand from one local, it was outlawed at some point in the 17th or 18th century and everyone seems to operate fine without it.

A 'normal' dinner time is not a concept that receives a lot of attention. Nor are street signs.

They’re kind. They’re impossibly-patient. They’re always willing to help. 

They’re passionate about the things that really matter and guard them fiercely. 

Almost everyone I’ve met speaks five or six languages. There's a point in most conversations that I sit in quiet awe, then feel like a simpleton with my almost-one-language.

Las mujeres. Wow. They’re fun, intelligent, independent and ambitious - just in case the unfair levels of natural beauty weren't enough. The local men are luckier than they will ever know. 

Even in a city teeming with thousands of tourists every day, there is a real sense of community - a sustained focus on being together as much as possible. The buildings, the streets, the festivals, it’s all designed to bring people closer together - to create an atmosphere where people feel they belong. 

The best things in life are to be shared with those you love. For better or worse, Barcelona shares better than any city I’ve ever seen.

Sitting on my balcony at ridiculous o’clock last week, watching my football team hurt my soul from half a world away, I saw a perfect example of what makes this city so unique.

Making her way past my building was a classy, beautiful woman in her mid-to-late 50s, dressed immaculately. I'm sure she had come from the ballet, the opera or the wedding of 15th century royalty.

If she wasn’t sitting in a shopping trolley, completely drunk with her husband pushing her along, she could have passed for royalty herself.

She’d had a big night, that much was clear. She was relaxed, giggly and did that classic drunk thing where her whispering was somehow louder than yelling. 

The husband, a silver fox dressed in an immaculate suit, tried to quiet her down, but gave up and joined in as she began to sing. 

What a picture they made. He pushed her along, expertly avoiding the rough bumps in the old concrete, looking down on his inebriated wife with that loving, proud look you may see from a parent appreciating a child’s first drawing.

I know you’re only two years old, but your picture looks nothing like our house and you somehow got paint on your Dad’s new television set honey. But, I love you and at this moment I can’t explain how happy I am that you’re here and that I’m the one who gets to see these ridiculous things. 

His look translated to:

I know you’re only 62 years old, but your singing makes no sense and it will be a miracle if we make it home without you being very, very sick. But, I love you and at this moment I can’t explain how happy I am that you’re here and that I’m the one who gets to sing with you and push your drunken, crazy ass home. 

When you think you have Barcelona figured out, when you think you’ve seen it all, this city will send a beautiful, old, classy, drunken trolley couple your way at 5am.

This is the scene that encapsulates the book I’ve been reading these last couple of months. 

A book I may never put down.

Another tangent

Women are bad at telling stories.

They're really, really bad - there's no sugarcoating it.

I'm not saying all women struggle with the skill, that may be a little sexist and ignorant. What I'm saying is that between 99-100% of women have almost no idea what they're doing.

Girls, please don't get me wrong - we love you.

We love how you magically make our apartments smell like the fancy parts of a shopping centre we know nothing about.

We love what you've done with yoga pants.

Healthy food? We would never have figured out that was a thing.

We love having fun with you. We love making fun of you. We love a good, passionate, meaningless argument that we're never a chance of winning.

You're smarter than us, you're more mature than us. You're stunning. You're beautiful.

We can't believe you're still willing to be seen with us in public. Even after that whole Tony Abbott thing.

You challenge us to be better and get the best out of ourselves. We need you more than we'll ever let on. We're almost nothing without you.

But...

I can't begin to describe how hard it is to sit through your stories.

They're almost always bad.

The problem is simple - it lies in the tangent. The simple and painful inability to stay on topic.

One minute you're telling us about your day and a story about your friend, then you drift off to a world where we can't follow.

"So then I caught up with Judy. No, the other Judy. We met her at the restaurant where Bill had his birthday. It was the same restaurant where Carol and Steve broke up. Do you know what happened to Steve? I think he sold his business and got into personal training after the divorce. You know who else is a PT? My friend's room-mate, Joe. I wonder if he'd give us a discount on a few sessions. I could stand to lose the five kilos I put on during the Bali trip, but I know if I start getting into fitness I'll lose the time I put into reading. I'm loving that new book I'm on - it's from the same woman who wrote the ancient mystery series I went through last month. I hear the movie rights have been sold already and Tom Cruise is playing the lead - I always liked him in that movie. What was it? No, the other one in space. Oh! you know who really loves Tom Cruise? Judy! No, the other Judy."

We men stand there, ask you about your day, look you in the eye and do our very best to follow.

But it's hard - it's just too hard.

For a long time, I thought these stories were a test.

Surely, no one could tell stories like that on purpose? It must be a ploy to see if we're paying attention, right?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Now, again, I can't cast assumptions on all women, but I think they talk like this because they really, really enjoy it.

Bless them, they get really excited over a good gossip and after holding in so many random thoughts throughout the day they need to get them ALL out at once - absolutely no holding anything back.

There's no filter. No real care factor for the male listener. No planned-out delivery. No thought to how they sound.

I've met some fine exponents of the tangent, but none of them come close to the Queen - the "Tangentator" - my dear old mum.

When I'm back at the homestead or I'm chatting to Mum on the phone, I want to listen to her stories. I convince myself I'm locked in and ready for the ride.

Then, like every other time, I can't make it to the end - I fall short. I'm just not strong enough.

Every story branches out to another. The plot lines become impossibly-long.

I start out optimistically, but my mind finishes up in turmoil:

Ok, this sounds interesting and it relates to that thing we were just talking about.

Denise, who's Denise? STOP! Don't ask her. Nod and laugh.

The back story of some random needed to be explained. I hope this is relevant later. Don't say anything yet.

CODE BLUE! She's broken story ranks!

Ok, I think she's back to the original story.

No, wait, she's gone again.

How did we get to New York? What possible connection does it have?

Who is Bill?

Go back to the story.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Go back to the story!

Why are we talking about Dad's back hair? HOW DID WE GET TO DAD'S BACK HAIR?

Then, I'm gone. It's all over. The rest is white noise.

There's been one exception to this trait. One call I won't forget.

In October of 2014 I had a call from Dad's phone at 4pm.

I should have known it was going to be serious, because 4pm is prime Facebook game time for my old man.

It was Mum - she was on the way back from the hospital with Dad after getting results from a test.

"The news isn't good, I've been diagnosed with breast cancer," she said.

No tangent. Nothing. Just the cold shock that accompanies the C-word.

Everything since that day has been a blur.

Mum is one of the very lucky ones. Early detection. Early surgery. Fantastic care from medical staff who are the best at what they do.

The old duck has been knocked from pillar to post for the last six months and stayed strong through it all - in time, with some luck, she'll be healthier than when this all started.

We all have family and friends who have gone through it. There's always someone fighting a battle tougher than our own.

When those battles come, when the support floods in, it's the making of you.

I've never been a big fan of labeling people who are sick as 'brave'.

Being sick doesn't make you brave - nor does having your sickness treated.

What makes you brave is how you choose to battle the illness, how you choose to accept the support and help thrown your way, how you lead your family, how you maintain who you are and how you keep finding reasons to laugh all the way through.

Mum has been brave - she's been fantastic.

I've seen how needy she gets when she has the sniffles, so I was a touch concerned for Dad when she was first diagnosed, but I'm incredibly proud of her.

One thing I've noticed with Mum while she's been through her treatments is that her stories aren't quite as long and painful as they once were.

At first, I thought the chemotherapy was doing miracles and the Tangentator was cured, but that's not quite the case.

For the longest time, she lost a bit of her spark. As she's been forced to take a break from work and her life, she's also been looked at differently by her husband, her children, her family and friends. She's had to lead a different life.

Today is a big day for her - she goes through her final chemotherapy treatment. That life is almost over and with some more luck she can return to the one she left behind.

The rest of us will wait as the last six months becomes nothing but a footnote to the big picture.

When she's ready and those painful, never-ending tangents return, this whole saga will be just another story.

A story she'll tell really, really badly.