Dinky Di Barcelona Part One

*I began this a few days ago, so have aktch already been to Berlin and back. More on that later.*

The woman totters around behind the bar on thick wedge platforms, cork heels wrestling with the sticky intractability of a floor whose most intimate acquaintance is always spilled alcohol.

Poured into the kind of dress a flapper might have worn had the style tended towards vampish rather than boyish, and legs criss-crossed by the spiderwebs of nude fishnets, she gives the appearance of someone who does not quite seem to know where they are or what they’re supposed to be doing there, but keeps looking around to try and figure it all out. It’s as if somewhere between deciding whether or not she should damn it all to hell and just paint her living room walls chartreuse already or wait to consult the tarot first, she simply fell asleep in her living room and awoke to discover her shabby yet chic abode had been unknowingly converted into a dive bar catering especially to lesbians and the British; however, lacking the language with which to converse with either group, she now finds herself being forced to make endless cocktails in whatever glasses she happens to have lying around her kitchen while trying to resolutely explain to people that, look, she knows she lives on a ground floor in La Ribera (and that can be confusing), but tonight she was really just looking forward to dying her hair with teabags and watching the Astro show on teevee so could they all please vacate her house and leave a middlish old woman in PEACE for ONCE in her wretched life because if they REALLY want something to drink there are any NUMBER of illegal merchants in the street who would be only TOO HAPPY to sell them a few cans of “sexy beer” at a VERY reasonable price?

“Sorr-ee! No understandy! I want TWO *sticks fingers up in peace sign* mo-hee-toes POOR FAV-OAR SIV OO PLAY. Moo-choss grassy arse!”

At which she begins an under-breath muttering likely to last well into the next day and possibly beyond.

Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan Princess and I argue over whom our fair bartender resembles more. Sri Pri seems to think she’s reminiscent of Penelope Cruz’s character in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. However, I feel (given the demonstrative evidence on offer) that my argument is more compelling.

Ghowst-bustahs. No, I’m sawry, Venkman’s nawt avaaailable.

The Sri Lankan Princess has come to Barcelona en route to Berlin, where we will both be in a few days. In a crazy kind of reverse stereotype/amazingly self aware political correctness/unracism, it is *I* and not *she* who does they ferrying around on two wheels. Having secured for myself a few days prior the luxury of una bicicletta (while mine mourns my absence at home), I took no time in depositing Sri Pri on the back and proceeding as the two gadabouts that we are.

Amusing on day one and slightly diverting on day two, by day three I am prepared to outlaw all forms of dinkying, ferrying and/or transferring that involves two wheels, cobbled roads and a blazing hot sun. Navigating your way around bloated tourists for whom having a passport involves forgetting the rudimentary rules of functioning in society is hard enough without having to take into account the gravitational force of a pillion passenger.

Day two of Sri Pri’s visit sees us getting extraordinarily drunk at a late night tapas bar in La Ribera. With bellies full of sangria, we spend the next half an hour trying to remember which way is home and swerving along streets designed solely with the aim of confusing their inhabitants. I am reminded of the labyrinthine quality of Rome, a city in which the streets quietly move about like puzzle pieces, delivering you to the exact point you started at despite the fact you KNOW you have been walking straight for the past 45 minutes. As with there, I keep expecting David Bowie to pop up in some tights to hypnotise me with his devilish eyes.

Sarah…fuhget about the buyby.

Eventually we end up in another late night tapas bar, albeit one decorated in a thin film of grease and apparently labouring under the impression that fluorescent bulbs are the most preferable form of lighting for 2am on a weeknight. To Sri Pri’s discomfort, we encounter there one of those especially unfashionable forms of skinhead whose wardrobe naturally consists only of drainpipe jeans, long laced boots and a pair of braces purchased at least 20 years ago in the Eastern Bloc. Being white, I’m naturally only suspicious of his sartorial choices. But for a petite, dark skinned woman, I can understand that concerns probably extend beyond whether or not the lad has showered in the past week.

The difficulty of course with modern skinheads is that one can never tell if they are white supremacists, post punk anarchists waiting in vain for the revolution or middle class hipsters slumming it in public before going home to their carefully decorated hovel to congratulate themselves on having a subversive haircut. I observed a tableful of them the other day having afternoon tea with plates of yellow frosted cake, so quite frankly I don’t know what to believe.*

Regardless, it makes Sri Pri feel infinitely better when our skinhead traipses out into the night and we are left in peace with the rocket fuel masquerading as drinks and the tinkling soundtrack of a pokie addict disposing of his rent in a corner machine.

One thing I’ve learned about Spain is that they are fans of the free pour. While Australia doles out its spirits with the exacting fury of an autistic despot, in Spain the basic rule of thumb seems to be that as long as the spirit fills at least 50% of the glass, you’re doing okay. This translates into the kind of drinking experience which sees you fill the tiny cavern at the top with whatever mixer you’ve requested, close your eyes and pray for God’s mercy before taking two gulps of almost pure liquor. Having performed this little ritual, you will thus have adequate space in which to transform your drink from something that could power a small vehicle into something that becomes marginally more pleasant to drink. It’s truly brilliant, and one of the reasons why Spain has Penelope Cruz and we have Nicole Kidman.

Transfixed by the sound of the pokie addict’s soul being crushed, we remain in that grim watering hole for the better part of an hour before unwisely cycling through the jigsaw that is Barcelona – the Sri Lankan Princess reclining in style and me pedaling through the mental fog of ten alcohol units too many on streets whose incorporation of traffic lights is arbitrary at best.

TO BE CONTINUED.

* Apparently food concerns are quite common amongst skinheads if this is to be believed. I don't know. I always expected they had slightly bigger things to concern themselves with than whether or not peanut butter sandwiches are wrongtown usa.

Ser o no ser...esa es la pregunata.

I'm sitting in an apartment with the french doors open and the sounds of a Spanish street filtering in from below. Every so often comes the roar of a scooter shuttling forth from the traffic lights. The Spanish television may be supremely bad, but the balmy night air is more than making up for it.

Spain is unquestionably beautiful.

I spent most of today wandering through the gothic quarter, revisiting parts of it I discovered on my last trek through this city. My Chilean has disappeared to Madrid for a few days so I am At Liberty on the streets of Barcelona. This roughly translates to me making extreme mistakes in Spanish and most probably being taken advantage of by shifty shopkeepers who can tell that I don't know what the real prices of things are. Honestly, two euros for a couple of bunches of coriander? I KNOW YOU ARE ROBBING ME BLIND YOU SPANISH HARPY. Still, without the proper tools to argue, what can I do? Grin and bear it, and bide my time until I can take her down with an impeccable grasp of the vocabulary for "you are a thieving wench and I know what your game is."

When I arrived last week, the Chilean fetched me from the airport. He greeted me with a very manly hug and a bottle of water, because "I thought you would be thirsty after your long flight." He then took me to a local Peruvian restaurant for lunch and then to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. Indeed, he has been feeding and watering me quite adequately since I arrived. I'm just about to start sprouting flowers I think, possibly in some shade of cerulean.

On Thursday, Chile took me to the beach and laughed as I marvelled at all the magnificent breasts on display. Old, young, big, small, fake, real - they really let it all hang out here. He seemed mildly amused when I told him that such a thing would never occur in Australia. The Christians For Conservatism would have all their best agents on the job, filing calls to shock jocks all over the country to engage in a mass hand wringing over declining moral values and their devastating impact on children. I mean, imagine if a child were to go the beach and see actual breasts just.... there. NAKED. As if they were normal or something! As if they were in fact not something that children see all the time (because their mothers have no doubt continued to wander around the house topless, away from the prying eyes of the morality police) but were instead dirty funbags with the power to turn men into raging sex machines and steal the souls of innocent babes. Anarchy, social decay and eventual apocalypse would almost certainly be destined to follow. The human race as we know it would go tits up.

Anyhoo, Chile and I discussed the difference in gender relations between the two countries and their respective conservative values. I can't speak for Spain at all having merely a few weeks observation under my belt - and I'm sure there is rampant conservatism here in parts - but there is definitely a joie de vivre that is lacking in Australia. I don't think you could ever suggest to a Spanish person that work was as important as family, music, food or sex. They would probably laugh in your face, and then go and make a baby with someone while eating tapas off each others torsos.

I suggested to the Chilean that Australian men were different to Spanish men in that they weren't particularly adept at wooing women, and seemed to have a swaggering sense of their own right to exist. He said that it sounded like they were muy machista. But aren't Spanish men also muy machista, I asked him? Yes, he replied, but it's different. Here it's more about how women can't drive cars, which is why you can't drive mine.

I had to laugh. Hey, nobody's perfect. If someone's going to be supportive of me writing about gender relations and generally being a hoyden then I can't really complain if one of his few failings is that he refuses to let me behind the wheel of his precious baby. And I much prefer to read books while in the car anyway. If he won't let me drive, then I won't let him converse.

Besides, he's lovely. In a fit of pique the other day, I told him how frustrated I was at my poor (read: pathetic) Spanish. I tried to explain that it was frustrating for someone who makes a living from communicating, and generally probably does a bit too much of it if anything, to be unable to properly express herself to people. He kept reassuring me that it would all come with time, and I can't get angry because then I'll just give up. He said I have to recognise that it's a process and that the hard is what will make it rewarding in the end.

It's supposed to be hard! The hard...is what makes it great.

On Saturday, we went to Ocata (north of BCN) to engage in some specifically excellent activity. Chile's brother - a musician of grand talent and who spreads it around - was playing with one of his bands Dinatatak at a tapas restaurant on the beach. I don't mean one of those restaurants in the sense that Gringos is on the Glenelg foreshore, and if you're really lucky you can be verbally assaulted by some schmuck cruising outside the Grand before having someone puke on your shoes. This kiosk was set up on the actual beach, in a kind of cabana. The patrons sat on plastic chairs and tables, and the band played from beneath a tent like structure.

When we arrived, the moon was hanging low and full bellied in the sky, burning the colour of burnt amber. It reminded me of my favourite passage in the whole world, from Cormac McCarthy's The Road: "By day the banished sun circles the Earth like a grieving mother with a lamp." If the sun is a grieving mother with a lamp, this moon was the mother who watches over her well loved children until they fall asleep. The music, the food, the passion of the people watching against the backdrop of a beachfront of towering apartment buildings with laundry adorning the balconies - it all transpired to make for a perfect evening.

After Dinatatak was finished and the kiosk had packed up for the night, we all sat near the water and played music until the sun came up. With their crazy fingers, those musicians worked their magic on all manner of guitar strings as we laughed and sang and drank copious amounts of liquor. We finally tumbled into bed at about 9am, bellies full of sweet rum and hearts as full as that amber moon, the Spanish sun beginning its slow burn on a perfect Sunday in Barcelona.



Brother Chile is playing on Thursday night at a restaurant in Barcelona with his three piece. Because we've been practicing songs together on my ukulele (which he could play perfectly within about three seconds, rendering my own attempts pathetic and shallow) I'm going to sing a couple of songs with them. This is officially one of the highlights of my trip, because I both love to sing and am a showpony, and singing in English is at least considered far more acceptable than insisting on speaking in it because your Spanish brain is the equivalent of a retarded two year old's.

I was made that way....

Also, Brother Chile is just simply one of the nicest people on the entire planet so it's always a pleasure to do anything with him.

Ah, Barcelona. Right, Brother Chile is teaching me ukulele now. Time to be humiliated.

Barcelona bound

In anticipation of some hot romance and midnight beach swimming, I’m sitting in the airport lounge at JFK waiting to catch a plane to Bar-the-lona. I am almost 100% certain the Chilean is meeting me at the other end. At the very least, I’ll be staying with him for the duration so I shall be very strict with myself about learning some form of Spanish conversation over the next month.

This may or may not transpire entirely through a superior ability to order drinks, discuss the delicious qualities of Spanish food and praise the concept of siestas, none of which have yet been covered by the learn-through-irritating-jingles language cd I bought yesterday. I am now able to talk about seeing the colours of my life when picking out daywear (“mire los colores de mi vive!” sp?) but remain ignorant as to why this particularly floral turn of phrase is necessary in anything other than an off-Broadway musical number.

What I *can* be certain of is that I will likely never need the seemingly extensive construction site/building vocabulary that seems to form a large part of many of the Spanish textbooks available in this fair country. Whilst I’m sure there are some people for whom the Spanish translation of “that’s an effective way to sand a plank of wood” is helpful, I am not one of them. I make it my business to avoid discussing menial labour in English. I therefore see no reason to start conversing on the matter in Spanish, unless attempting to speak with handsome carpentry types in admittedly single entendres.

I imagine there shall be much flirting to be had – with or without the Chilean, as this is Spain after all and I am both human and cheap – but as we all know, the language of love requires not working vocal chords but simply a masterful grasp on the power of doe eyes and a lilting hip.

Speaking of doe eyes, I am sad to report that I have (as yet) failed to upgrade myself on this leg. I blame this entirely on the surly and frankly tiresome attitude of my check-in attendant. ‘Rotan’, if that IS his real name, could barely wait to tell me I’d exceeded my luggage allowance and gleefully watched while I was forced to empty half of the Strand’s back catalogue onto the airport floor. I am now carrying approximately 436 books on my back, none of which I shall read on the airplane as I plan to engage in some fairly committed drinking and then passing out. So they are effectively useless, and therefore I hate each and every one of them, even the David Sedaris ones.* On the other hand, I did manage to talk my way into the pre-flight supper club at the BA lounge and am thus gorged to the brim with garlic prawns and asparagus sears. The silver tongue, I has it.

With any luck, there will be some form of mindless movie on the TV menu starring Paul Rudd or an equally hysterical definition of handsome. I *don’t* plan on watching (500) Days of SummerNew Moon comes out. When I can summon the energy to think of it without wanting to kill both its stars and then the writers and then myself for good measure and then the stars again, I shall summarise it for you.

All you need know is it is the kind of addictively terrible schlock that needs to be discussed but not seen, because seeing it will destroy the remaining part of your soul that managed to escape the hamfisted hipsterdom of nauseating films such as The Darjeeling Limited, Lost in Translation and, the grandwizard of self indulgent hoohah himself, Garden State. Natalie Portman, Braff? Honestly? Honestly? With your chin? Also, Reality Check called and told me you need to stop skipping your appointments because he is sick and tired of your BS.

Right-o, voy a Barcelona. Tengo veintiocho! Quiero un bocadillo de quesa!


* Not really David! Don’t leave me!
if it’s on the TV menu, as I had the very great misfortune of seeing it with Dot the other night. We agree it could possibly be the worst film ever made, at least until