Will in Barcelona
The college age son (Will) of a friend since 1971 (Bill) was studying in Barcelona. Bill was visiting Will, and since Barcelona is a three hour train ride from Montpellier, it was an easy trip to meet B/W + ill.
Getting out of town was needed. My Montpellier circle is too small: work is in the home office, work in the yard, go to Brico Depot or Leroy Merlin (the Home Depots of France, although Brico Depot is more for contractors), go to the gym, go the pool, go to Gibert (book store), return home. Barcelona, for both its size and not being France, would mix things up.
It was also a rare chance to mix the sets in my life. The sets are: (1)Virginia (growing up and high school), (2)Vermont/Germany (university), (3)California (work), and now (4) France/Switzerland. There’s almost never been any overlap of friends and associates; Leigh (from late #1) has visited, and also Dave and Tony (both from #3). Otherwise, all lives have been in their own silo. Now with Bill coming was rare chance for an older #1 to overlap, however briefly, with #4.
Tapas, red wine, tapas, faux martinis, tapas, real martini, red wine, cognac, tapas, searching for paella, then finally cava. And always olives.
The first night, Thursday, we went to dinner at Will’s favorite tapas place. In addition to all the tapas, we started with glasses of cava, then went through two bottles of red wine. There may have been some more drinks. Afterwards, we went to one of Will’s nightclub/rave/mosh things, but Bill and I, three times older than everyone there, soon left to find a bar where we could sit and talk.
There was no proper drinking establishment near our hotels, the sort of place with leather club chairs, mahogany wainscoting, and Persian rugs. Instead we found a place that had a Formica bar, and in the back were vinyl booths. We went in.
I had warned Bill that on this side of the Atlantic a ‘martini’ was a brand name that was an aperitif, the choices being limited to red or white. There was no gin versus vodka, dirty martini, twist of lime, or shaken not stirred. Bill wasn’t worried; Bill never worries. When the bartender answered red or white to Bill’s martini inquiry, Bill used this as a teaching opportunity. He carefully explained to the bartender the makings of a martini. The bartender listened closely and carefully, nodding now and then. Bill finished, the bartender said he completely understood, and would bring the martinis to our booth.
The pint glasses that came contained a bit of flat tonic water, lime wedges, and a lot of gin. We went through four of these. Will and Will later joined us, and sometime later we went back to our hotels.
The second night, Friday. After dinner with the Americans (see below), we went to another one of Will’s bar/dance places. Bill talked to three or four nineteen year old women, then we made our way to another bar, and while there were no Persian rugs, there were a couple of leather chairs to sit in. We had one, then two, then three cognacs. Our waitress was lovely; I was sure she was Slavic, cheekbones and all, but we learned she was Italian. We (Bill and I, not the waitress) talked until closing, maybe 0200. When we tried to leave, the bartender blocked our exit until we helped him finish off a tray of shots – I can’t remember what.
Despite jetlag, having been in Spain less than forty-eight hours, Bill seemed in fine form as we walked back to our hotels. I mostly stumbled. I was worried: this was the second late night of hard drinking, and there was still one more night to go.
The third night we had two dinners. The first was at tapas bar recommended by the concierge at Bill’s hotel. Bill stressed to Will the importance of talking to locals, and not just relying on internet recommendations. Will may have rolled his eyes. The restaurant was full up, but the bar was open and we sat there. It was quite good, and Will was disappointed to be finding this wonderful tapas restaurant just as he was leaving Barcelona (Will was returning to the United States with Bill).
Because Bill refused to leave Spain without paella, we had to find a paella restaurant. That place turned out to be Elche, and it was excellent. Bill finally got his paella. Annie and I will go there on our next trip to Barcelona.
At both dinners the B/W-ills drank red wine, but for me, the safest was cava: clean, crisp, almost refreshing. Moreover, the restaurants serve brands of cava, all so good, that aren’t available in France.
Football and finance
On our second night we had dinner with the parents of another student studying with Will (also named Will). Someone found an Italian restaurant, and at 1900 we all met: Bill, Will, Will, parents Debbie and David, and moi. From New Jersey,. Debbie was a family lawyer, and David worked in finance.
In the course of the conversation the ‘Big 10’ came up, and Bill and David went down the college football rabbit hole. I forget about the coupling of sports and education in the United States. In France, in most European countries, sport participation is no linked to a school or college; if you’re a swimmer or soccer player, you join a local club.
In some ways I like the US system, because it makes it easy to participate in a sport since the facilities are nearby. Sports are a part of a well rounded life. But in other ways it’s a problem: an athletics department is a profit center within a school, and as such can distort that school’s priorities. It’s something I’ve written about before: see UVm’s roi .
Later David mentioned that their older son had studied industrial engineering. I remarked that was great, and asked what had he done after graduation? I was hoping for something along the lines of product design, human factors and ergonomics, or medical system engineering. None of these; their son now worked in downtown Manhattan in finance. Finance. I’m saying that like it’s a dirty word, right down there with hedge funds and private equity. Why did he not continue in the field he studied? The money. He’ll probably make a lot of money.
But the dinner was enjoyable. I miss Americans, and I enjoyed hearing about David and Debbie’s life; it was like hearing a language you used to speak, and had not spoken for many years, almost forgotten, then comes back all at once.
The dinner was enjoyable, but the food was not. I ordered a veal cutlet, and when the plate arrived there as a flagstone size slab of breaded, fried veal. I ate about a third of it, and Will, having finished his own plate, polished off the veal.
We agreed to go back to tapas the next day.
The pool and the bookstore
When visiting just about anywhere I search for a place to swim and for an English language bookstore. I already knew about the Hibernia English bookstore from previous visits. For swimming, Barcelona has number of 50 meter pools, both indoor and outdoor, any one of which would have been wonderful.
Not this time.
My path with Bill has not overlapped enough, and there was time enough for those other things. Annie and I will be back in the Fall – I’ll go then.
Women reading
On the train from Montpellier to Barcelona, I saw next to a woman who spent most of her time working on her computer. After an hour she put her computer away, and started reading a book, which had an Edward Hopper painting on the cover. On the return trip, there was a woman reading the same book (different woman, her own copy of the book).
The painting is “Gas”. The gas station is Mobile Oil, set on a country road, and the station itself looks Italianate with a small cupola; not sure how that was selected for the book cover. As I fan of Edward Hopper, I was curious about the book. I noted the words “Alaska Sanders” in the title, and after a search learned the full title being The Alaska Sanders Affair, a crime novel by the unfortunately named Joel Dicker.
On the last night, during our first tapas dinner, we all sat at the bar. One stool over to my right was a woman with pink/purple hair, reading Anthony Hopkins’ memoir. We talked about Hopkins’ movies: she liked “Silence of the Lambs”, I recommended seeing “Remains of the Day”. The reader was from Poland, had been in Barcelona for many years, and given that the restaurant staff kept talking to her, she clearly was a regular. She spoke Spanish at the typical rate of 200 words per minute.
Your tour guide today will be Bill
Working in commercial real estate, Bill’s job requires knowledge of contract law, zoning regulations, business financing, local and regional economic trends, new- and renovation construction costs, supreme inter-personal skills, and among others, an eye for building design and architecture.
This last was in force as we walked through Barcelona: Bill was in terminator mode, scanning, acquiring targets, processing, sorting, evaluating: noting the ochre façade of a building, commenting materials used in construction, wondering about the juxtaposition of the businesses (a tapas restaurant next to a jewelry store), estimating the foot traffic, admiring a balcony, contemplating a downspout.
I was game. When you have a theme (architecture) or are on the lookout for a view (photography), a visit to a new city is more interesting for the focus, not just random walking and looking. I’ve a bit of the same in me, and Annie has complained that sometimes I take more pictures of buildings than of the family.
Sunday morning, the adventure continues
Suddenly it was Sunday morning, time for everyone to leave.
Will had said there was baggage check at the Barcelona train station, but I was skeptical: that has not been the case in recent train travels through the train stations in Marseille, Zurich, and Basel. But he was right: all bags were put through a scanner.
Later, at the border, Spanish border control, well armed, came aboard and asked to see passports. I handed mine to a guard. He looked at the passport, looked at me, looked at the passport, then held it up next to my face. He then pulled out his phone and took a picture of the passport, stepped into the alcove between train cars, talking to another border patrol agent. After a few minutes he returned my passport, no enjoy your trip, no gracias.
That’s not happened before. Americans are more suspect these days.
Meanwhile, Bill and Will were visiting Paris, then to Lisbon for a few days. Neither city is known for tapas, but I’m sure they will find something acceptable to eat.
P.S.
We went to the Picasso museum and some other Barcelona sites.