September 11, Barcelona Style

September 11 means something entirely different here than it does in New York City, as I found out today.  We knew it was a holiday, but frankly there are so many that I had not paid much attention to the details.  So this morning we all troop out to the market so that Alec could introduce me to the vendors he had schmoozed last week, and to purchase supplies for the Sunday dinner we’ve planned to cook for Jaume, Lisa and their kids.  We have our shopping list, we have our roller cart, and we’ve promised the kids chocolate and churros at the place across from the market if they behave themselves.

On our way, we notice the abundance of Catalan flags hanging out of peoples’ windows and off of balconies.  “Oh, right,” says Alec, “It’s the National Day of Catalonia.”  You’d think we’d have put two and two together at that point.  But no, we walk the 15 minutes to the market, only to find it shut tight, the streets deserted.  Of course, we realize, a holiday here means that EVERYTHING is closed—restaurants, shops, supermarkets, you name it.  We think maybe the Carrefour is open since it’s so big.  It’s not.  There is one supermarket—the OpenCor-- that’s open on Sundays, when everything else is closed, so we go there, which basically means walking home and then another 10 minutes in the other direction.  Closed.  We find a bakery, for bread, and a small fruit and vegetable stand that’s absolutely jammed (the market logic does work for a few savvy shopkeepers)  for necessities. Hopefully the OpenCor will be open tomorrow so that we can cook for our friends.

Downtown everything—and everyone—is draped with the distinctive red and yellow stripes of the Catalan flag.  Catalonia is the region in which Barcelona is located, and the people here identify fiercely with their Catalan roots.  The National Day of Catalonia commemorates the 1714 Siege of Barcelona defeat during the War of the Spanish Succession.  I know, it’s a little difficult to wrap your mind around the concept of tying a holiday to a defeat, but there you have it.  As best I can tell, the day is an act of remembrance, paying tribute to the last time Catalonia was a nation. 

And many people today believe that it should still be so; there is animosity toward Spain, and the primary identity of many people is with Catalonia, not Spain.  In fact, all public literature, street signs, etc. is in Catalan, not Spanish.   Which is challenging if you are me and are already shaky in Spanish. And let me tell you, Catalan and Spanish are completely different languages.  The people who try and tell you that Catalan is a dialect of Spanish are the same folks that will attempt to convince you that carob is just like chocolate.  Don’t believe a word of it.

So I clearly need to dig more deeply into the history of this place we call home, for now. I’ll let you know what I find out.  Meanwhile, Barcelona will probably have a day of mourning tomorrow—FC Barcelona, our local, super-awsome soccer team lost their first game since 2008, at home.

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Bar Granja vs. the Brooklyn Bodega

Now that it’s September, our corner store is finally open.  Living in New York City, we are conditioned to be able to run to the corner and easily pick up a loaf of bread, eggs, beautiful flowers, or the one ingredient we are missing for dinner.  So I was relieved to find that the corner store exists in Barcelona, too. 

Here, they are called “Bar Granja” and they are all over the place. When it was closed in August, I figured it was a watering hole.  But it’s not.  I don’t know what “bar” means, because it does not serve alcohol.  “Granja” means farm in Spanish, and that gets closer to the root of the matter. 

At a bar granja, you can not only pick up key necessaries, like you can in New York, but also stop in for a light breakfast or snack.  The sign on our BG door advertizes desayunos (breakfasts) and meriendas.  A merienda is an afternoon snack and snack is one of my two favorite words in the English language, the other being “lunch.”

We can speak Spanish at our Brooklyn bodega; the kids know Don Pablo, who seems to be there all the time, pretty well at this point.

But here’s the difference:  “key necessaries” translates somewhat differently in Barcelona than it does in Brooklyn.  At my corner bodega, I can purchase any flavor of Haagen Dazs and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, at least 15 varieties of cereal, a dozen kinds of tea not including Lipton, a rainbow-colored variety of sports drinks, and lottery tickets.

The Bar Granja, too, sells bread, milk, and candy.  But despite its smaller footprint, the BG carries a number of items I’ve never seen in my local bodega.

Here are some things you can purchase at my corner BG:

·      A wide assortment of canned seafood, including sardines and clams

·      A decent bottle of wine

·      Bottled lentils, chickpeas and white beans

·      Cured meats and other charcuterie items

·      Several kinds of olives

·      A sit-down breakfast

But the biggest difference between the BB and the BG has to do with the “when,” not the “what.”  Whereas the bodega is open 24/7, the bar granja is a bit less available, and predictable.  Ours seems to be open in the mornings, but closed for a few hours in the afternoon, then open again for a few hours between maybe 5 and 8.

So I guess in the final analysis, the BB wins for utility, but I do like the personal connection we have at the BG.

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My Phallic North Star

The first time I went to my office, Alec was with me, so I mostly followed him.  Today I’m on my own.  I know this getting-lost-and-finding-my-way business is beginning to seem like the theme of the week, but it is a part of my daily life.  It’s easy to underestimate the amount of mental and psychic energy you need to expend being in a different place and a different culture—hearing and reading a different language, the different sense of personal space (it’s smaller here), remembering to push the green button on the metro doors so that they open (they don’t open automatically, so you can either watch a train pass you right by, or miss your stop if you’re not quick enough).

Anyway, I remember one thing Alec had told me on my first trek in:  walk toward the cucumber building.  Well, that’s what the kids call it, but there are other, perhaps more fitting monikers.  Use your imagination.  It works, I get there just fine.  I spend the morning reading a tenure dossier, which is a decent way to limber up my mind for intellectual thought again.

Tonight Alec is the family rep at the PTA cocktail party; given that we went out on Monday night, we elect not to traumatize the kids with the canguro again when they are still recovering from the last time.

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From the Barri Gotic to Diagonal

The air is fresh—almost chilly—when I walk outside with the kids to take them to school. I feel under-dressed in the t-shirt and shorts I had put on, assuming that this day, like all others before it, would be hot, hot, hot. Etienne schlepped some medication for me from the US, but forgot to bring it when we met, so she left it at her hotel for me to pick up. I decide to head down there to get it, and to do a bunch of other errands while I’m at it.

I sit at the computer and look up all of the addresses of the places I need to go—travel bookshop, shoe store, housewares shop—and carefully write out walking directions for myself. I take the train to Placa Catalunya and only when I am walking down Las Ramblas do I realize that I’ve left my directions at home. First Dolores quits on me and now this. But you know what? I got everywhere I wanted to go with barely a misstep. So perhaps my sense of direction is not as I thought it was. After my two surprisingly positive experiences getting around on my own, I am reminded of the first line of Dr. Spock’s classic book, Baby and Child Care: “You know more than you think you do.”

The Hotel Neri is deep inside the Barri Gotic, and after I pick up my passage I wind my way out and find myself walking through the antiques district. I duck into a shop that looks intriguing—Caelum (www.caelumbarcelona.com/caelumindex.html). It’s a small shop and tea room that sells honey, sweets and other products made in convents and monasteries. Pretty specific, no? I pick up a book called Sweet Barcelona: Los 55 Rincones Mas Golosos de la Ciudad, and head back out into the city.

After a couple more stops, I stop for a quick lunch at Cerveseria Catalana, a great little tapas place, for some patatas bravas (fried potatoes with a drizzle of spicy red sauce and a drizzle of aioli) and wild mushrooms sautéed with jamon. Have I mentioned how crazy good the mushrooms are here?

By this time, it’s getting hot again, and I shed my sweater. More errands, and then home. Barcelona is a terrific, walkable city and it feels good to realize I’m beginning to know my way around.

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Bitten

Our tails are dragging—singularly and collectively—in the morning. It’s the least I’ve slept since we arrived, which says more about how much I’ve been sleeping than how little. But it is an effort to get out and get the kids to their classrooms. “Going to school when you are tired is just unpleasant,” C.C. tells us as she makes a plea to stay home.

Milo refuses to go into his classroom but eventually gets through the door. Etienne and Hal come to our apartment for coffee and to catch up some more—they are to leave for Paris in the afternoon if their flight isn’t canceled. Apparently Sarkozy has asked for a 20% reduction in flights because there are protests against his proposal to raise the retirement age.

Finally, around 1 in the afternoon, I make it into my office for the first time. It’s a bright, clean, large space. The only problem? Alec’s office is right next door to mine—a little too close for both of us. When he sneezes, I say “Salud” without raising my voice and he hears me. Given all of the chaos of the move-in, neither of us feels comfortable asking for a change.

One of my boxes has arrived, and it feels good to unpack my books and contemplate reading something longer than a 5 page memo that’s not crime fiction. The building is brand new, and silent, with people quietly scurrying around connecting computers and phones. The neighborhood buzzes with new construction, although it’s not so interesting for lunchtime wanderings.

Alec picks up the kids so that I can have a bit more time to settle in to my new digs. Milo falls apart when he sees Alec at the door—another kid bit him today and, together with his lingering ear infection and general state of fatigue—it seems to have put him over the edge. He refuses to show us the evidence and won’t tell the name of the kid who chomped him. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he says.

When I arrive home, the three of them are nesting on the couch watching Ben 10. I’ve brought home Cabrales (a Spanish blue cheese) and make a salad of lettuce, toasted pine nuts, roasted figs and the cheese with a honey lemon vinaigrette to go with the steak Alec grills. I substitute sherry vinegar for the red wine vinegar called for, and I don’t have the pomegranate that’s part of the recipe, but it’s still top notch.

Let me know if you want the recipe…

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A Trip to the ER

A Trip to the ER

I am putting Milo to bed on Sunday night following the birthday bash when he complains that his ear hurts a little. He’s been fine all day, but when Milo’s ear hurts, it almost always means he’s got an ear infection. But he goes to sleep quickly, so I think nothing of it until about 11:30, when Alec and I are in bed reading. We hear the door to the kids’ room open and Milo comes in crying—actually, wailing is more like it. It’s his ear of course. We give him some Tylenol and put him in bed between us. He’s in a lot of pain, crying and squirming. Nearly an hour later, he is asleep and sleeps until morning.

Alec has his first real meetings at the office, all day today, so it’s all me. I realize that this is the first time in my life that I have missed a day of work because of a sick child. Not that anyone actually expected me at the office, but I had planned to go in this morning. I suddenly feel a kinship with all of my sisters who juggle this kind of thing on a daily basis.

After we drop C.C. at school, we go first to the bank, where we bought our health insurance, to see if the health insurance card for Milo is ready, and to get a list of doctors we can use. There is a temporary card, which they think will work, and the only list of doctors is in Catalan, but I think I can navigate it.

Back home, I start calling doctors, but the numbers ring and ring, and there is no answering machine or service that picks up. So I wait until 10, and then 10:30 when finally folks begin to answer. Some of them speak to me in Spanish, which is okay, but some of them speak to me in Catalan, so I do my best. As near as I can tell, no one can see him today. So in the end we drive to a clinic that has an “Urgencia” or emergency room. Perhaps it’s the neighborhood I chose, or the fact that it’s Monday morning, but the scene is extremely calm. No noise, no chaos. We sign in and then wait in a small exam room with a picture of Winnie-the-Pooh, which Milo likes. Within twenty minutes the doctor comes and, as we suspected, Milo’s got an ear infection. Nothing serious, but we need to get some antibiotics and drops on our way home.

By far the worst part of the experience is that Dolores, our GPS system, refuses to function as I pull out of the parking garage. My sense of direction is non-existent, and I rely totally on Dolores. I start to sweat, and snap at Milo when he begins to ask me a gazillion questions from the back seat. Alec calls as I am circling one of Barcelona’s many roundabouts for the fifth time. I snap at him, too, when he asks where I am and I cannot tell him. I shouldn’t be talking on the phone anyway, so I hang up and keep driving. Eventually, using the position of the hills and the sea, and a few street names I recognize, I find my way back to familiar territory, and we make it home in one piece.

We have a couple of hours to recover before heading out again to pick up C.C., so we have some lunch, rest, watch Bugs Bunny.

Our good friends Etienne and Hal are in town for Atlanta, and we have dinner plans with them. Etienne was my boss when I worked at the Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment in San Francisco, and even though she was the executive director and I was a lowly graduate student intern, we got to be good buddies. It’s been too long since we’ve seen each other.

So Andrea the canguro is making her second appearance. I break the news to the kids on the way home from school and, as expected, the reaction is not good. Better than last time, I think, but not good. Andrea brings her 10 year old daughter, Jennifer, which helps. We get them all out to the park so that we can make our escape. I’ll spare you the gory details of how the night went, except to tell you that we will be sending a representative to the PTA cocktail party this Thursday rather than both of us attending.

Meanwhile, dinner is excellent. We eat with Etienne, Hal, and their friends Cheryl and Jerry at Ca l’Isidre, a restaurant in the Raval that uses local, seasonal ingredients and cooks both classic Catalan dishes and more modern fare. http://www.calisidre.com/calisidre_en.html. I have a dish of amazing sautéed mushrooms to start—meaty and garlicky, followed by grilled prawns with sea salt and finally coconut milk ice cream. Alec has the goat.

Dinner lasts more than three hours, and it’s after midnight when we finish. The metro is closed, so we take a cab. Fortunately, all is quiet. Both kids are sleeping like spoons in our bed, along with Bunny, Snuffy Dog, and Blue Guy.

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Party on, Mickey

Two of the boys in Milo’s kindergarten class celebrated their birthdays, and the entire class was invited, along with parents and children. Once a kid turns 4 in New York City, the parents tend to view birthday parties as free child care. We drop our kids at the party, and dash out to grocery shop or get a quick workout in at the gym, and return just in time for pickup. Not so here. This party had an open bar for the parents, and at least one parent from each family attended.

For the kids, there were inflatable jumpy houses (the kind you can go in and bounce around in), a DJ, two clowns, face painting and Mickey Mouse! The father of one of the birthday boys is a doctor whose office has a big plaza, and the party took place there.

C.C. stood in line to get her face painted, following several girls who got princess tiaras painted on their foreheads. When she asked to be painted like a dinosaur, the face paint lady said no one had ever asked her that. “Dragon?” C.C. asked. “Lion?” “Tiger?” “Cheetah?” She ended up as a dog with a blue sparkly nose.

It’s truly an international school, and we met families with parents from Greece, the Netherlands, Italy, and of course Spain. Even a British family who lived in Park Slope, 3 blocks from our house, before coming to BCN last February. Many of the parents don’t speak Spanish, so English often ends up being the least common denominator.

After the piñata, an activity for which our kids were well prepared-- (Milo: “Mama, you know how to get lots of stuff when it’s not your turn at the piñata? … Sit right underneath it and grab everything that falls”)—and hearing the Black Eyed Peas

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