Brittle -- Barcelona, Spain

This post will be short. The cafe is crowded. My cappuccino was crap (which is why I drank it so quickly. I don't savor crap) and it was the most expensive cappuccino I have ever purchased.

When visiting Barcelona, do not indulge your caffeine habits at Cappukccino. You will be so, so disappointed and so, SO overcharged.

The music is bad American pop/hip hop/rap. 

Who plays RAP in a coffee shop? 

It that makes me want to take out my earphones and zone out to my 90 minute restorative yoga playlist.

Wait a minute... why haven't I done that yet? Doing that...

I miss my normal hangout. With the cute Spanish waiters and the stylish hipsters sipping cappuccinos with hearts and leaves and chocolate swirls. And cocoa powder.

I've never been to Portland, but I feel like an episode from Portlandia could have been filmed here. This is a happy chicken sort of place.

I've been in Barcelona for less than a week and I'm already attached to a cafe.

I want Alsur Cafe to be my place. I'd like to flirt with all the cute Spaniards and meet my hippie friends for hot chocolate (or whatever it is Spanish hippies drink). Umph. This is a sign that you're ready to slooooow down. How many beds in the past three months, Bourget? Forty? 

Hmmm... five months in Mexico. Five months of the same bed, the same routine and many of the same people. You'll be able to see some fruit from the seeds you plant. Just... see it. Be like, "Hey girl, you made something nice. And you even have the time to enjoy it. How about that?" 

How about that.

Paolo took me on a sunset adventure last night.

Only, it ended up not having a sunset (there were fat, Dr. Seuss trees in the way), but I got to see a side of Barcelona the Olympics of 1992 did not affect.

All of Barcelona's beaches used to look like this. Then the Olympics happened and the Spaniards decided to buckle down and make things purty. They buckled down so hard that their fake beach is currently the world's #1 city beach (followed by Cape Town and Honolulu).

Mmm, vandalism. Look at that cannon being so proud.

We sat on the back of a bench, ate a picnic of vegetarian stuffed peppers and watched the clouds change colors as the sun set behind the trees.

Having missed the sun, we went down to the beach to watch the full moon.

Sweet, sweet Barcelona wind... 

Barcelona is famous for its wind -- which is another reason I could move to this city and stay for more than two weeks. As soon as you find your way out of the maze-like narrow streets, you feel a cool breeze. A gentle zephyr that whispers through city park trees, laundry hanging out to dry, flirty skirts and indiscriminately through the stylish hair of locals and tourists alike.

On the beach, the wind is perfect. The salty smell of the sea wafts over you and goosebumps randomly pimple your skin as dark clouds dance about the moon.

Barcelona. Barthelona. Barcelona. Man. I wish I was the kind a hippie who knew how to play a guitar. I need to start practicing that wooden flute Sabina gave me... I want to make music right now. Barcelona beaches make me want to find a huddle of brightly colored dirty hippies and make music.

I contented myself with staring at the moon and wriggling my toes in the sand of the artificial beach.

God bless the Olympics. 

The Spaniards living in Paolo's walls were abnormally quiet (perhaps they were having a fiesta in the neighbor's walls) so I managed a longer than average siesta.

I've never really been one to believe that a full moon can wreak havoc on sleep schedules... but perhaps there's a fragment of truth to be found in that explanation... or perhaps I'm just stressing out about the post-Europe phase of my life. I know that the next chapter will be radically different... and that scares me. I'm used to things changing... but I have a feeling this next change is going to be bigger than most. And I feel unprepared and resistant. Brittle.

Fear makes me brittle. Fear of what's going on inside my body. The things I don't understand. Fear of making the wrong decision. Fear of not listening hard enough and missing the sounds of the birds because a hurricane is howling all around. A hurricane that numbs my senses (except for the aching in my thoracic spine) and plays my fears. 

How can I let go of this fear? 

Paolo took me to an actual maze this morning. He's a pretty sensitive soul and it wasn't difficult for him to realize that mine was becoming brittle around the edges.

So we sat in one of Barcelona's 68 parks (complete with maze) and talked about my fears.

This is a reflection.

Another reflection.

A bad cafe is like a rotten avocado. Nothing worse. Vile, slimy, scarf it down and hope that it's good for you. 

There are several reasons that, even though I've been hanging out around the Mediterranean for a few months, I could never live here for long (as in, more than a few months).

Reason #1: I love mornings. I love coffee shops in the morning. Morning to Aimee = 6:00 Morning to Spaniards = 10:00 (this is the butt crack of DAWN to Spaniards). So the only cafes open at 7:30 in Spain are of the uber-expensive chain variety that serve burnt, metallic tasting coffee to tourists.

Reason #2: The heat. I don't want to sound like F*cking 30 Degrees, but my goodness, this area of the world is toasty. Step outside and you immediately feel the urge to remove every piece of clothing from your sweaty body and collapse in the shade.

Reason #3: The noise. There's just too much of it (in Spain and Italy, at least). My previous host joked that I must have been Italian in my last life (because of my rather good Italian accent and my odd habit of always staying with Italians. In London. In Frankfurt. In Barcelona. In Montenegro and Croatia). Given my unreasonable love of Italian cheese and prosciutto, I'll give this idea some credence. However, in the life prior to the one spent consuming dairy products in Italy, I was definitely living in the mountains with my goats, waking up before the sun and the birds and making chevre (the only through line here is cheese) as the sun finally rises over snow-capped peaks.