Departure Bay

6.00 am: Diana Krall sings through my headphones as the new metro line takes me back home from the airport. It's a strange time of the day, a time I am usually asleep, or just gone to bed, but in any case not on a train on my way home. As the train goes through the stations a complete universe is unravelling before my eyes, the dark side of Barcelona, the side I had not thought about until today, although the silent consequences of its activity have always been there.

El Prat de Llobregat. A couple of dizzy, yawning latin-american immigrants get on. Changing shifts for the railway workers, the train slides past them, their day has started already but the darkest hour is just before dawn.

Belvitge. Three young nurses from the nearby hospital, climb up the wagon. Their shift has just ended, they are on their way back home, to sleep or perhaps take care of their youngs. They look exhausted but satisfied, maybe no losses at the clinic. Carrying on is what matters. Tomorrow is another night.

Estacio Sants, the commuting branchpoint. Most get off here. Off for a Thursday morning. Unlike a poet once said everyday is not like Sunday.

Passeig de Gracia. Gaudi's attractions are still sleeping, even the earliest of their morning visitors are still dreaming. People working at the hotels in the area, get off here. They strech their suites, tighten their ties, take a last look against the window glass. Perfect hairdo, awfull mood. They rehearse their morning smiles while it is still dawn and practise their "good days" while they dream of their "good nights". Their own time does not coincide with the sun's orbit around the rest of us.

Estacio Franca. Last stop. I get off, pass by the immigrants already lining up outside the immigration office next to the customs. Modern cities can't really distinguish people from commodities. The sky is now powder blue, dark spots mixed with the desperate attempts of dawnlight.

I stop and take a look at the train routes. A line connecting my place with the airport, where I just let someone go. Another one goes all the way to Paris. Soon I 'll be thinking about someone else there. The first sunrays, has just reached Barcelona at a rather obtuse angle. They are scattered into purple. I lift my head up looking for her plane. She must be up there now. I am still at my departure bay. A point on the map of the metro, of a city which is another point in a larger map. As time goes by, we scatter arround, we become points in a graph, no computer scientist will bother to study.

And our lives evolve by joining the dots.

The Battle of Ciutat Vella

Barcelona is a modern metropolis. It is full of all the things that make up the megacities of our times. That is, ambitious executives having lunch in the Port Olimpic, hoards of students having the time of their lives, avant-guard artists experimenting in complete freedom and tourists with the cameras having become an extension of their hands.

Somewhere in the backgound though, a metropolis cannot survive only on these kinds of people. It needs its hard-working lower class, its immigrants piling-up in their ant-like neighborhoods, that everybody detests but nobody could do without, not to mention a significant number of homeless people. Because the bottomline is that the mega-cities are to be fueled by inequalities. Their mode of function is such that you cannot have prosperity without attracting poverty, you cannot have fancy restaurants without being in need of the Algerians to work as waiters. Even modern architecture projects appreciate cheap labour.

The point is that this same machine-steering potential of inequalities erupts to violence more and more often. Last night we experienced one of this outbursts in the middle of the old city, the Ciutat Vella. People residing in occupied houses around the so-called "Forat de la Vergonya", (literally meaning "shame's hole"), started a demonstration against a plan put forward by the City Hall to economically exploit this "forgotten" zone. Actually, those who have lived there ever since this place was initially left in oblivion, just decided to be remembered. To remind to the rest of us, that "el Forat" has been there for so long before the real-estate sharks took notice of how much it has come to be worth. That it has been a neighborhood, a "barri" like all the others, with its people, its families living next to each other and children going to school every morning, before turning into the most rapidly expanding nightlife-theme-park with bars and restaurants packed one next to the other.

They took their protest to the streets. But as often happens in such cases, the mean was subject to the cause. During the protest they even fired a missile against the police and went so far as to throw paint-granades at the Museum of Modern Art, one of Barcelona's most emblematic buildings of the 90's era. Thus, as it happens with almost equal frequency in such cases of blind violence, the cause was eventually obscured by the means.

It nomore matters how these people were initially marginalized. If they choose to or if someone just decided it for them. They are now enclaved in a vicious circle, which they are very unlikely to escape, having to negotiate with that same system that they are confronting, having to put up with the exact same people they have once and for all rejected. This is a hard way they are very unlikely to take. They choose to oppose to all things they reject instead of trying to change them.

The easier way involves the rest of us. Those that get to appreciate Barcelona for what it appears to be away from realizing what it really is. But this turns out to be even more difficult. I spent yesterday evening having drinks in the middle of the Barri Gotic and had absolutely no idea about the "battle" until I saw it on today's news. It seems like we are living in our own happy "bubble" away from all that is going on. And finally, this drifting apart of the "two Barcelonas" is what makes understanding each other ever so harder.

Missing home...

It is not the place you miss of course. It is the people, friends and lovers that are left behind. And it is the all and all rarer occasions you can think of these people gathered together, while you are away. These moments you miss the most. And Saturday was one of these days.

Pearl Jam were playing in the OAKA sports hall, back in Athens. Some friends were there, others wished they could and were waiting at a bar downtown to listen all about the concert. I was in front of my computer in my room, having completely forgotten all about the event I have waited for more than half of my adult life. And then the phone rang, I saw Zoe's number and still had not made the connection until I heard her voice, screaming "Hi" over the rythmic introduction of "Wishlist". I talked a bit with Thodoris, who in a -more intense than his usual average- state of mental derangement, tried in vain to pronounce what must have been his best attempt to verbally express his exhilaration. Then they let me listen to the song for a good half minute.
Suddenly I felt more homesick than I 've ever been since I got here. During the following seconds, I did not only miss being at the concert. (Although Pearl Jam is probably the last of the mega-bands of my time -they just don't make them like they used to anyway- and the only one I still consider a must-see before I stop going to big stadium concerts and stick to classy theaters more suited for my early thirties...)

What I missed was the whole package. The days before the concert, listening to all of your university years-albums to warm up. The same morning, waking up with that special feeling that you don't have to do absolutely anything apart from staying well for the evening (the feeling you only get before big concerts and big football games!). Then the concert itself, jumping like crazy on the shoulders of your friends, going for a drink afterwards being hardly able to speak, stinking of sweat, beer and utter happiness!

Come to think of it, the things I miss are all the small pieces of the puzzle that constitutes my youth. It is hard for one to admit he is missing his prime at the age of 28 but how much differently am I supposed to interpret the fact that I long for all the things that were perfectly natural at 18? Maybe it is the longing for such moments or evenmore the fact you still get to experience them once in a while that keeps us young, even at 28!!! In fact, if I was to make a "Wishlist" of my own it would be largely occupied by loud laughters, huge concerts and hoarse-voice post-concert gatherings.

I was missing from OAKA last Saturday, but I promise myself it won't happen again.