Força Barça!
Sunday, May 29, 2011
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Last night was a good night; good food, good wine and Barcelona FC lifted the Champion's League trophy. I may have jumped around a little, and sent ill advised text messages to a couple of United supporters and I refuse to apologise for not supporting the English team, not least because my mother was born in Manchester and grew up a City fan before moving to Birmingham and being converted to Aston Villa as a teenager.
It's not just about the football team though. I first fell in love with Barcelona at the age of 15 on a combined Art and Business Studies school trip. I was enamoured from the moment we arrived, even after a 26 hour coach journey. We were staying at a small hotel just off Las Ramblas and it was everything I had hoped for. The rooms were small and basic, the lift was antiquated to say the least, and the staff were surly; to my 15 year old self, it epitomised everything I expected of Barcelona and it's continental sophistication.
I'm not entirely sure that the business studies part of the trip wasn't just an afterthought. I remember visiting a car plant for a couple of hours and a boat trip around the harbour, and I think the tour of the Nou Camp was technically classed as a Business Studies activity. Other than that we visited the Museu Picasso, Park Güell, Sagrada Familia, Fundació Joan Miró, a couple of other Gaudi buildings or generally just strolled up and down Las Ramblas, buying things from street artists or admiring the many displays of entertainment on offer, including living statues, fire-eaters and a unicyclist.
Mostly it was the sights though. Awesome is a very overused word, but standing in the great shadow of Sagrada Familia, seeing close up all the work and craftsmanship that has gone into creating something so magnificent, I truly was in awe. It's not just in the famous tourist spots that beauty can be found, although Park Güell is amazing, but it is all around. Everywhere you look, every time you turn a corner, there is another example of amazing architecture or a sculpture or even the wannabe male models posing casually against walls.
I think at this point I already considered myself somewhat of a sophisticate, having spent time in Paris and Saint-Étienne-de-Montluc. The French and subsequently the Catalans seemed so much more sophisticated and cultured; they drank coffee not tea, ate pastries for breakfast, stayed up late, had heated discussions about art and politics, threw festivals at the drop of a hat. I fell in love with the old fashioned, romanticised idea of Europe, and nothing I had found was going any way to dispel this view.
Although I now have a slightly more realistic view of the world, Barcelona retains it's place in my heart as my favourite city. The beauty of Barcelona never fails to grab me in the same way it did the first time I drove up Las Ramblas late at night as a 15 year old schoolgirl.
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