Saturday, March 24, 2018

Barcelona, New Year's 2006

Adam's and my first trip to Europe. I'd been here before, this city of whacky art and hidden Spanish delights, but this was the first time I was here and happy. We'd flown in from London that morning, having spent all night awake to catch our o-dark-thirty flight from Stansted Airport. Then we checked into our hotel and slept all day, waking up in time to catch the city's last taxi to Placa Cataluyna, where the action was. They were drinking down there, hooting and counting it down, smashing bottles in the street.

Too loud. Too boisterous. Too much. Fear lurked in those dark gothic corners and so we retreated to an Australian bar where men chanted bebida bebida bebida. As we walked toward that place, hand in hand, life imperfect and fairly perfectly so, we heard this song. So did the guy who was smoking outside the bar where it was playing. When it came on, he blurted: "I get knock down!" and beat a path back inside.

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