"Please, no more Catalan," my wife, Barbara, protested. "You're
giving me a migraine." It was our first morning in Barcelona, and
things weren't off to a great start. As soon as we landed I
realized my faux Castilian wasn't going to get me far in this
fiercely proud, Catalan-speaking city.
It's a family sickness. When I was a kid, my schoolteacher mom
turned vacations into history lessons. Barbara is not that kind of
traveler. She is a creative wanderer who frowns on guidebooks,
preferring to stroll along waiting for magic to happen.
Barcelona is not an easy city to decipher. To understand her,
says Teresa Vilaros, a native who is a professor of Hispanic
studies at the University of Aberdeen. "You have to seduce her to
find her secrets; she shows herself only to a select few."
Clearly we were going to need help. The man for the job would be
a young American habitue of Barcelona named Jordan Susselman, who
fell so hard for the city when he visited in 2000 that he decided
to stay and unlock its secrets. In 2006, he started a tour company
called "Hi. This is Barcelona."
Susselman led us on a Barbara-style stroll through the old city,
focusing on offbeat sights most tourists pass by: The offices of a
Catalan hiking club, on Carrer del Paradis, which houses four
Corinthian columns from the Roman Temple of Augustus. A parking
lot, jammed with motor scooters, that Susselman proclaimed "my
favorite vista in all of Barcelona".
"The whole history of the city is here," he said, pointing out
remnants of Roman aqueducts, the crumbling walls of a Gothic
palace, an 18th-century church, an ornate modernista building, and
a jazz club and organic restaurant called Living.
Like Susselman, we wanted to discover the soul of this city
slung like a hammock between mountains and sea. And what could be
more soulful than the Boqueria market, with its riot of vegetables,
fruits and fresh, glistening fish?
Yet there is something even more compelling about Barcelona than
its markets and traditions: a pervasive sensuality that seems to
captivate all who enter its energy field.
Susselman led us through the jumble of narrow streets that
compose El Raval, once Barcelona's seedy underbelly; the barrio was
a source of inspiration for Picasso, as well as the setting for The
Thief's Journal, by Jean Genet. You can still engage the services
of one of the many hookers who line the streets, have your pocket
picked if you're not careful, and order absinthe in some of the old
bars.
But gentrification is under way: You can catch an exhibit at the
opened-in-1995 Museum of Contemporary Art, or get a massage at
Mailuna, a teahouse and spa. Or do as we did, and have tapas with a
nouvelle twist at El Jardi, a cafe tucked among orange trees in the
courtyard of the former Antic Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau,
a striking work of Gothic architecture where Antoni Gaudi, mistaken
for a beggar, was brought after being hit by a tram - and died.
After saying goodbye to Susselman, we decided to devote more
time to formal sightseeing. Our first stop was Pinotxo, at the
Boqueria market, known for its classic truita amb pataca (omelet
with potatoes), which we finished off. We then headed for the
Eixample, the city's open-air museum of modernista architecture.
Though everyone visits Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's haunting,
unfinished "expiatory temple" that he worked on for 43 years, until
his death, in 1926, we were more interested in his less ambitious
works, especially Casa Batllo, a newly refurbished house on Passeig
de Gracia.
The exterior is a magical homage to Sant Jordi Saint George, the
dragon-slaying patron saint of Barcelona, with a shimmering
Monet-like facade, an undulating dragon-scale roof, and columns
shaped like bones. The interior is even more seductive: A
free-flowing world of rounded windows and doorways and aquamarine
tiles that makes you feel as if you're floating underwater.
From there we headed to Gaudi's Casa Mila, an otherworldly
apartment building with cave-like walls and serpentine balconies,
capped by a surrealistic roof deck studded with white chimneys and
ventilators (which, allegedly, were models for Darth Vader and the
Death Star's guards in the Star Wars films).
After wandering Casa Mila's curvilinear passageways - there are
no straight lines in Gaudi's universe - we felt as if we had
stepped through the looking glass. The next thing we knew, we were
lost in the backstreets of Gracia, a mazelike neighborhood near
Barcelona's university. Her face brightened as we came upon Placa
de Rius i Taulet, a charming square with a 19th-century clock tower
and a gaggle of children chasing a dog around its base.
After the sun set, we found our way to Mesopotamia, an appealing
Iraqi restaurant in the heart of the neighborhood. As the Iraq-born
owner, Pius Alibek, fed us dishes he had learned from his mother -
including the house specialty, bulgur with minced beef, vegetables
and nine secret spices - I discovered another secret about
Barcelona: Nobody is exactly who they appear to be.
Alibek not only holds a PhD in comparative linguistics; he was
awarded a Medal of Honor by the mayor of Barcelona for his
promotion of world peace. What's more, he hosts his own program on
Radio Catalunya about cuisines of the world.
The next day was the Feast of St. John the Baptist (Sant Joan),
a holiday celebrated with fireworks and seaside bonfires. The art
critic Robert Hughes says that the key to the Catalan character is
the interplay between seny, which is usually translated as "common
sense", and rauxa, "uncontrollable emotion". At the Sant Joan
feast, Barcelonans experience rauxa in all its Dionysian glory.
When we ducked into Senyor Parellada, a restaurant on Carrer de
la Argenteria, between the El Born and Barri Gotic districts,
little did I expect that we were about to have one of our best
meals in Barcelona.
Everything was superb. The xai de Montseny - roasted lamb with
roasted garlic and creamy potatoes - was so tender that I moved it
to the top of my best-dish list, unseating the celebrated leg of
lamb at Chez L'Ami Louis, in Paris.
After dinner we got lost, but in the process happened upon a
block party where a salsa band was playing and a crowd of locals,
young and old, sat at long tables, downing pitchers of beer and
platters of grilled shrimp. Suddenly, the music slowed, and the
street filled with swaying bodies.
I took Barbara's hand and we began improvising our own soulful
version of the samba. This time, a silky breeze was blowing off the
Mediterranean and brilliant fireworks lit up the sky.
(China Daily December 27, 2007)
