The Tipping Point

It is no small thing to move to a new city and to get your head around it.  I have tried a few times to write about Barcelona, but I couldn't quite find my voice.  I know have written plenty about the places I've visited since I've started this blog, but this isn't a place I am visiting; I have moved my life here.

La Sagrada Famlia!  I have seen this once now, accidentally,
on my way to and from a bar (Photo Credit).

The problem of having a job in a new city...is that you have a job in a new city.  You are always fucking working.  You are in a totally different mindset, and unlike traveling, you cannot always find the time to experience the fullness of the city right away.  It is frustrating that in many ways, people who have visited Barcelona for a week (hell, a long weekend) know the city better than I do, even though I have lived here for months.  This is why I still struggle to answer when people from home ask me some pretty basic things, like:

"What do you normally do there?" 

or 

"What is Barcelona like?"  

The answer to the first question is probably a disappointment, because the expectation is that living in a foreign place, I will also be doing very foreign things.  But really, what I do is go to work and come home, tired, wanting to relax, and thinking about dinner.  Sometimes I go to the gym.  Glamorous, I know.  The answer to the 2nd question is usually a generic "It's cool!" because, well, it does seem to be a cool city.  But I lack in specifics because when I do get free time, it is very much still an exploratory process.  Far more often than finding or doing something cool in the city, I am confused about where exactly I am and the curmudgeon that lives inside me speaks up to wonder why I am in this new and distant restaurant or bar when there are plenty of other good ones that I already know about and are closer to where I live.

This was my metro stop when I first arrived to the city.  It is a
testament to Barcelona that the mundane aspects of my day
can look like this.

But there is a tipping point.  The longer you stay in a place, the more that place bleeds into your routines, and the more it will begin to populate your thoughts with its features and landscape.  I no longer look forward to going for a run.  I look forward to going for a run with my girlfriend, Jess, along the boardwalk in Barceloneta at sunset.  I don't ask for a Durum Kebap and a beer at the Doner place by my apartment anymore, but rather the waiter will ask me, "So, a chicken Durum and an Estrella?" when I sit down.  And when I stick my nose into my book on the bus/metro ride home, it is a new series of stops, starts, dings, and announcements that provide the cadence for whatever adventures, tales, ideas, or histories I am reading.

There is a deeper understanding of a city, country, or culture that comes with more time spent there, and it will begin to change you.  Slowly at first, and then all at once.  "How has this happened?" you will ask, "Was it the place?"  Yes, it was the place.  You have come to know this place in ways that a tourist cannot, and this broadening of your world cannot be undone. It has changed the way you see things.  "Was it the people?" you will extend.  Yes, it has most certainly also been the people.  The people are the best part, and will stay with you forever.  It has already become, in fact, impossible to separate the people and the place.  They reside in the same parts of your mind.  "Was it me?" you will lastly inquire.  Yes, it was above all else you.  Because in order for this to have occurred, you must have let it.  This is the hard part, because some places can be pretty weird.  And scary.  This doesn't mean you have become weird and scary (though it's a distinct possibility), just that you have come to accept a place for what it is, without your own expectations distorting it.

And then a funny thing happens: you will hear the same questions about the city as before, and you will still have a hard time answering.  "What is it like there?" people will ask.  "Where do I begin?" you will say.

I can feel it happening.