There were still some things to be done, some problems to be solved, before leaving the city. I arranged my mobile internet, checked my bag for the last time, closed the door behind me and handed in my keys just in time - or actually just too late but fortunately there was still somebody present at the shop where I had to leave them. Otherwise it would have meant another postponing day and when I walked to the shop with my new house on my back I secretly longed for it but at the same time desperately hoped somebody would still be there. I had postponed enough. And I was lucky. A good sign.
I can´t describe the moment after I left my keys and realized there was no way back. It was a split second only. Complete happiness and extreme excitement. I felt light as a feather. But things turned to normal straight away. It left some traces though. Some good energy to start with.
One of my favorite Barcelona spots was on my way out of the city and I chose it as the starting point of my journey. Not the house where I had just left from. Like many other places in this city, kindly supplied me by wonderful friends, it had made me feel at home but it wasn´t where I left from. It was just a temporary place to be. A place I might never stay again whereas the Place de la Virreina was a spot where I had returned to often since I discovered it on my first day in Barcelona and where I took shelter regularly in difficult moments.
I ordered a cafe con leche at my regular place and straight away got into a talk with a German couple from Dusseldorf. I was hesitant to talk, I just wanted to be in the moment and drink my coffee, but my walk is as much about talking to people as it is about walking and being in the world slowly and silently so I told them about my walk and how this was my place of choice to start from and they told me they had chosen it today to escape the bustling city and enjoy it in a more quiet way. Gracia is different in energy than the center is, that is one of the things I like about it. They said it reminded them of their favorite places in Dusseldorf.
I moved to a bench on the side of the square, not to be there but to realise I was leaving. It was a beautiful autumn day, brown leaves falling down from the trees. I watched a plastic bag slowly moving in the wind from one side of the Placa to the other side. The girl sitting next to me on the bench was reading a book with one hand in the pocket of her shorts. It was warm enough still for shorts. There were people with dogs, one was carrying a black wig in his mouth but when I looked a second time I realised it wasn´t a wig, he had the biggest moustache I had ever seen on a dog.
A girl passed by in a sweater with the word SELFIE printed in big white letters on a red square.
I felt the urge to start writing a story on my iPad straight away but I shouldn´t slow down more now so instead, in order to not forget, I made some notes in my new, almost empty notebook. A moleskine, the notebook I always use on my trips, the notebooks Bruce Chatwin used, he even gave this name to this particular type of notebook and he writes about it in his book The Songlines, how the small French family-owned company in Tours went out of business and Chatwin set about buying all the notebooks he could find before his departure for Australia, but they were still not enough. In 1997 a small Milanese publisher brought the legendary notebook back to life and gave it the name Chatwin had used. If you buy a Moleskine notebook now, you can find this story in the small pouch in the back of the notebook.
I made my notes, in pencil. Pencils never fail when you have a pencil sharpener or a knife on you. I took the last photo of myself in Barcelona, fully packed, fully dressed. And just before I left a small flock of the green parakeets I know from Amsterdam, where they are quite an exotic species, landed in the branches above my head and started chirping noisily. I took it as some words of goodbye and I put my bag on my back.
I walked. I saw a corner of the city I had never seen before. Walking all the way through, out of it, made me realise how big it is really. Leaving the last houses behind me, the sun already setting, I thought it was the last I would see of the city and I took my goodbye photo and placed it on my Facebook page. I entered the park, walked on sand, was surrounded by the scent of nature. It was getting cold and dark and I didn´t walk too far, climbed a small hill, found some bushes that formed a good shelter and decided to just roll out my mattress and sleeping bag. On my left there was green and the entrance into a vast natural area. On my right I saw Barcelona in the far distance. The Tibidabo amusement park with a beautiful new moon over it. I saw Park Guell, Montjuic to the far left and in the middle of it all the Sagrada Familia and the big cranes surrounding it.
Nothing beats sleeping under the stars. And although it took me a while to get comfortable, mainly because there was an animal roaming around, I felt safe enough and warm and tired. Happy to be out in the world again, slow and sensitive to the things around me.
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