So it's to be that our time in Barcelona ends as it had started. Two long trains between San Cugat and Barcelona Sants. Only now it's mid-day and not night, and we've had a lovely last little breakfast with Mama Pla and Irene. Chocolate chip cookie cereal, toast, Granini guava juice, the works. The farewells are fond and drawn out. We love our little family in San Cugat, and they love us, and they don't want us to leave. A part of me doesn't want to go either. Because after this, it will have been over a month and a half. And that return flight that seemed so impossibly far on the ferry over to the Holland, is now looming dastardly on the horizon. That part of me doesn't want the dream to end. It wants to roam the pridelands of Europe, live in this city and that. Meet people. Live as they do, with them, through them. See what they see, look hard, and wonder what they're thinking. The sensation's intoxicating, to be immersed in a different mindset, a different way of living and a different way of looking at it. A feeling that only blossoms more with unbridled joy at a new day's passing in each city we come upon. Barcelona is in full bloom.
And even though we're sad that we have to leave, and that it's all soon coming to an end, we're brimming with as much giddy excitement, as one could anyways lugging traveling bags around Barcelona Central Terminal. The air outside is a muggy Mediterranean sauna. And that tinge of salty sea on it doesn't cut sharp and brisk like it did in Santa Cruz off the Pacific. No, the Med's warmer and saltier, and so the smell marinates in the hot sun like a single note owed to a New York fish market in a summer stanza. It glazes over and sticks to your skin. So we get ice cream cones from McDonald's of course, and we sit down inside the terminal, with our bags at our feet. We wait. We can't catch a train east for another two hours. Side by side, in a row of seats that face another row of seats not ten feet away, we breath relief and lick and lap and suck down McDonald's vanilla cones that each cost a euro. We talk bof Barcelona, and then of Paris and the train. There's some confusion as to what city in southern France we should catch a sleeper train from, and alas, we're all high and silently still reveling at the ten grams of marijuana that Irene's brother had sold us for fifty euro. It's sitting deep inside one of our bags, I can't remember whose, wrapped in tinfoil and towels and dirty clothes.
In four seats across the way, there sits four old Spanish men, side by side. They're all in short sleeve button-downs tucked meaningfully into their respective khakis, rocking that classic old-timer look with rubber-soled Dock Martins, canes, and clean beige woven hats. Two of them are speaking to each other in Spanish, their emotions all the more animated by the deep lines in their faces and the slowness of their motions. They aren't agreeing. And the other two are just kind of sitting there, facing us, but not looking at us. Or who knows, maybe they are looking us. One of them's just sort of mumbling to himself, looking bitter, judging, vigilantly senile. He's leaning back in his seat with his chin down, almost resting on his breastplate. His beady little eyes slowly focus on the couple walking by, the family on vacation, and every so often, the four ice cream licking, silly-faced goons with American accents sitting across from him and his friends. I smile at him, but he doesn't smile back. Maybe he didn't see. The other old-timer's just sitting there, tired, not really looking at anything as if he had taken a step back to re-live the wild adventure that was his live. He seems satisfied, and when I look over at Mike, happily zoned out in ice cream land, and Max and Grant discussing the route options, the end of my lips can't help but furl. I close my eyes at the notion and laugh with a quick tut. And I smile again, to myself this time.
