Baby pepitas
Ailments, mock meat, dogs: My first two months in Barcelona
So I did the thing. After seven years of the itch, doubting, feigning confidence then redoubting my ability to, and finally, finally, finally settling on a city - I’ve moved. And made it a whole seven and half weeks before my first cry.
Barcelona didn’t welcome me with its open arms, nor imbue my senses in the romantic, heady, Spanish fairytale I’d subconsciously promised myself I’d receive the instant I landed in Spain a la Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Instead, my first day involved spending 40 minutes trying to figure out how to exit the airport and find a taxi after collecting the remaining 70kgs of my luggage from the baggage belt, and devouring a sub while fighting to keep my eyes awake until my Airbnb was ready for check in.
Prior to the move, which seems insufficient to lump into a single prior experience and one I will delve into another time, I became even more intimately familiar with my cortisol, channeling Liam Neeson and Spy Kids to consider safety measures beyond what even my most unhinged friends considered only mildly-funny.
Viscerally aware of Spain’s anti-tourist agenda, I found myself preparing a backstory about having a Spanish dad, me being here to visit extended family and to work, and more importantly, to revisit my roots, lest the plague of water guns wielded by Catalans turned their attention to me as I was minding my own business in a cafe. As a generally risk-averse, type-A person with a tendency to crash and burn, I channeled as much energy as I could into ensuring I was protecting myself. Even emailing my mum every one of my close friends’ phone numbers in the event she wasn’t able to contact me (there’s a backstory to this involving a houseparty and an misplaced Facebook message, but that’s for another time). Joking about getting a tooth tracker implanted, but not really. Seeing if my AirTag could fit inside my sock into my Filas. And sharing each measure to the groupchat with responses promising that I didn’t need to go this hard, and I would be fine and safe. You get my gist. I didn’t just take matters into my own hands. I ensured my loved ones shared the load of my anxiety. It’s called community, guys.
Amidst two broken suitcases, a successful insurance claim, four cities outside of Barcelona, two and a half bouts of illness and several very, very patient and kind South Asian service providers, I am now sitting in my third apartment having processed the whirlwind of the last two months.
Seville had always been a dream. I studied opera theory in year 11 and 12, and listening to Figuero’s Aria from the Barber of Seville promised to deliver more of the charm than Barcelona had in the 15 days I’d been there. And boy did it deliver. After missing my first Eurail train of this European sabbatical, and on the precipice of a flu relapse, Sevilla arrived, its cobblestoned streets, bitter orange-filled air and Moorish-Christian-Andalusian architecture a site for my literally sore eyes. I craved having a film camera to capture the beauty through a lense other than my prescription glasses or iPhone. Apple was no match for this city’s oranges. My second night in Seville, I joined a mum and daughter from France at their table to watch a local flamenco show, which though I itched to record wasn’t permitted by the venue. Between olives con pepitas and blowing my nose every few minutes, the flamenco dancer and singer showcased their ode to Andalusia. Figuero’s groupie was happy, charmed, unaware of what was to come 60 minutes later.
You see, when you’ve been vegan for as long as I have, you cannot shed the trauma of growing up eating only chips and salad at restaurants - where vegan options beyond those weren’t on the menu until at least 2021. This is to say, for the past almost 10 years, there is nothing more I have craved than the magic, the beauty, and the satiation that is mock meat. Following eating what were the best tapas of my life that afternoon at a little restaurant on Carrer Feria called Veganí, I ended my second day in Seville by ordering a two-for-one deal of vegan chicken burgers to my hotel.
That night, both sleep and sanity eluded me. I was restless, confused, anxious and exhausted. Then 5am came and it hit me. After spewing in the ensuite metres from my bed, I spent the following two days in Seville in a fever-induced haze, tempered only by the immense kindness of my host buying and delivering fruit and kombucha to my room as I sweat litres upon litres into her guest room bedsheets. Everything was leaking. My flu had gotten worse, so my snot was on tap. My eyes couldn’t retain their tears. My mouth even started drooling, mocking (ha ha) my inability to eat by feigning desire for food. It really sucked. My near decade-long fixation with mock chicken came to an abrupt end. Having your stomach cave to the point where a mixture of your own bile and water wasn’t even digestible changes a person’s relationship to Beyond Meat.
I left Seville charmed, broken, yet have vowed to return in better spirits and with Uber Eats deleted from my phone. As I stared in the mirror between packing my toiletries at the husk of a person I’d become, I cracked a smile and said to myself with leaking eyes, “So you think I’m skinnnnnnny?”. The kombucha gurgled in my stomach and blueberries began to rot in the plastic bag next to my suitcase.
One of the first conversations I have when I meet new people is about star signs. Pseudo-science astrology has an anchored place in my heart and one which lives in a separate area to my rationalism. Being a Gemini isn’t as much part of my identity as it used to be, but regardless, I am one through and through. This is to say, my sleeping routine and schedule is as varied and unharnessed as anything in my life, and there is nothing that I can better attribute it to than being a Gemini. Our sign lives in extremes, and following my Sevilla Sickness, 5am became my bedtime instead of the rise time it had been for so many weeks prior. Rising on the precipice of late afternoon and dusk, I would make myself a vegetable soup back in my apartment in Barcelona, ingredients bought from the sweet Pakistani shopkeeper downstairs and hunch my shoulders over the stovetop feeling sorry for myself at the state I let myself get into. But I had to trudge on. Winter was coming, and I had booked flights to visit a friend in Sweden the following week.
Geared up in a ski coat and gloves, snowproof pants (it hadn’t snowed in south Sweden for days), a beanie and snow boots, I arrived at my friend Sumaiya’s apartment after an incredibly expensive layover in Copenhagen (I had been excited by the opportunity to try Danish food, had hopped to the nearest vegan restaurant in central Copenhagen, beaming at their lack of mock-chicken on the menu and vegetable-focussed meals. With my flu still in its residual stages, eyes aching from my brain ignoring my circadian rhythm and minimal idea of what a Danish Krone was, I ordered two vegetable toasts and a house-made lemonade between my flights, only realising that 250 Danish Krone was actually not equal to a few Australian bucks when Apple Wallet dinged me a notification for $54 on the way back to the airport). Sumaiya examined my outfit and laughed, coming to give me a hug dressed only in a kaftan and slippers while her sweetheart bichon frisé Nimbus barked for my attention. As it turns out, brown people can get accustomed to near freezing temperatures too.
My time in Sweden was still spent fighting against my sleep schedule, but buoyed by an incredible amount of family affection and time, home-cooked meals, surprisingly good coffee, local sightseeing, and a much needed trim of my hair in Sumaiya’s kitchen after she had put her baby to bed. Throughout the five days, both her kid and Nimbus vied for my attention, we shared Christmas gifts and went shopping, and I felt cherished, well-fed and cozy.
Following Sweden, I spent a few days in Barcelona before departing to Paris to celebrate New Years with one of my best friends who booked a last minute Euro trip for the holiday. Though it remains the city I hate most in Europe, and quite possibly the world, Paris did show me why it was called the city of love. I started experiencing flu symptoms on the 31st, which initially seemed like a second relapse of the first flu I’d contracted, but ended up being covid. In between body aches, headaches, running nostrils and a cough so deep it felt my sternum was disintegrating, a masked-up Aparna brought me food, orange juice and Panadol while also tending to her own flu. My soul ached so badly to be back home with my mum, unable to escape the brain fog and physical pain of the healing process. But Aparna’s constant check ins and support despite her own ailment brought me so much comfort I still can’t quite grasp in words how grateful I feel for her.
Though I want to attribute this to the setting, I must admit I actually enjoyed the premier season of Emily in Paris, which I downloaded on the train back to Barcelona after refusing to trudge through Netflix to find something worthwhile to watch in my post-covid haze. Emily, her horrible fits, unrealistic marketing miracles and shithouse French were my companion as I healed through the remaining days of fatigue in my new apartment back in Barcelona.
By then, it had been over a month since my travels had begun, and I was ready to press pause on catching flights and trains to stay put in the city I had actually wanted to move to. And that’s when the loneliness began to creep in. I’d anticipated it, of course. Journaled about preempting it as early as October. My friends who arrived in Barcelona only a few days after I did, had left, I had no more travel plans, and no one else I actually knew to look forward to seeing. The stretches of time I had alone, without a clear path on how to meet more people I could gel with, fearing surface level connections, made it easy to retreat to my introvert nature. I began to feel the effects of how difficult it was to tee up video chats and have-real time convos with friends back home. The ease of calling any handful of them while driving was completely obliterated - a practice that had become part of my routine in Sydney.
Initially, I bid my time with the self-care I’d had to neglect to tend to my immune system throughout December. One night I did a facemask to mitigate the amount of stubble my cheeks had grazed against having double kissed an inordinate number of people hola. The next, I chucked on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and spent over two hours waxing my legs, heating the strips up with a hairdryer as I sat on the floor half-naked in my apartment. Another night, I took refuge in a local cafe, forcing myself to read a Kazuo Ishiguro novel even though I had trudged through his last one, because it was the only seemingly interesting book in English at my local library (it’s been five weeks since and I’ve given up at page 73). I walked, hitting at least eight thousand steps every day, hitting my most walked steps (26,779) on a sunny mid-January Saturday, making up for the sedentariness of December. I shared meals with my new roommate, a 23-year old Indian sweetheart from Canada who like me was also on the veg-spectrum and reluctantly obsessed with Emily in Paris. My white Filas became decimated more in the two months I’d been here than in the 2 years I’d owned them.
I hung out with the one friend I made so far. Another Australian who had been living in London and moved to Barcelona not long before I did. Immeasurably kind, intuitive and a fiend for a good vermouth. Justin and I quickly developed a security in our friendship the way only those who meet other diasporic Australians on the other side of the world can. It surprised me how much I had come to Barcelona craving to meet people from different parts of the world, wanting a respite from being in Sydney, around Sydneysiders, yet my closest relationship was with another Inner Westarian. I liked how easily it was for Justin and I to get along, how we shared deep insights seconds before cracking a dumb joke, how he is spontaneous, carefree, despite not being vegan or even vegetarian, meets me where my dietary requirements restrict our restaurant options and extends every invitation to me.
One evening, sitting in Justin’s living room I met his friend Susie, also a writer from Australia, who is working on her first novel in Rome. Between bites of cake which Susie had made sure was vegan especially for me, and sips of barley tea and Rooh Afza, Susie spoke passionately about her work, specifically her love for her characters and told me that the writing process doesn’t stop even if you’re not actually writing. “You need the time to absorb things, especially when you’re in a new place,” she said. Funnily enough, it was after this conversation I finally found the energy (and courage) to revisit my own character in my neglected short story I began one too many moons ago. And lo and behold, the ease of writing became realised with every sentence, every paragraph, and every new experience my character encountered. Sometimes it is these serendipitous conversations with colleagues in creative spaces that remind you you are who you say you are, and for me, that has always been a writer.
It’s these small moments of community and connection and love that continue to tend against the void that is loneliness.
Recently, very recently, I have realised I’m shocked at how surprised I feel at my friends’ kindness. Lamenting about a particularly embarrassing experience a few weeks ago to my best friend, and again yesterday when I felt the weight of my loneliness compounding, she reminded me I was allowed to have down and silly moments, and that I especially was not a problem to fix. This term resurfaced for me again last night reading my friend Sheree’s substack, and what has inspired me to start my own.
I began yesterday morning like I had most mornings in Barcelona, by waking up in the afternoon. Walking from apartment visit to apartment visit, I sent my group chat a voice message, acutely missing their physical presence, and halfway through caught myself choking up at how it had been weeks since I’d deeply, fully, unabashedly hugged someone I loved. My tears streamed throughout the day, on the phone with my mum who replied with photos of Pixie, my 10-year old cavoodle back in Sydney, and shared how much she had (and still does) missed her own mum, my Nani, when she first moved abroad and what she did to abate her desolation pre-WhatsApp. That day, I cried again in front of my housemate, who immediately enveloped me in her arms and cracked a joke so funny different type of tears welled in my eyes.
Later that night, Sheree responded with a 12-minute long voice message, comforting me, soothing me, providing insights and setting me up with a friend she knew in Barcelona to expand my circle. Her voice note followed a surprise farewell video she had recorded for me before I left. A few days prior, I had messaged another group chat telling my friends how ‘friendsick’ I felt, and was immediately flooded with texts confirming FaceTime dates and photos and recounts of their days.
My heart ached at how I’d managed to be surprised at my friends’ kindness when they had proven to me time and time again how deserving I am of love.
I’m not one too get too sappy online anymore, following the development of my prefrontal cortex, but sometimes it needs to be said - actually, often, it needs to be said: your friends will save your life again and again and again. And you will theirs. The building blocks of community begin through platonic and familial love, both of which I am blessed to be surrounded by even thousands of kilometres on the other side of the world. And even more blessed am I to have the option and ability to call any one of them in a crisis. What a beautiful thing it is to be able to ask for care.
My friends have also told me time and time again my voice is one so well suited for ASMR, and though I haven’t professionally pursued this, I did listen back to my teary voice message in a moment of self-indulgence following my breakdown. I am not one to look in the mirror when I cry, in fact, I absolutely hate seeing myself cry. But hearing myself cry enables me to extend my vanity project beyond the visual sense. And I can’t lie, listening to my voice note weirdly boosted my confidence and sense of self - despite the leaden content.
So here I am, having spent so many days in the past two months unwell and in complete silence in a city where I know but one person, yapping online to relieve being physically apart from my usual audience. So focused on apartment hunting, job hunting and quotidian administrative and bureaucratic processes yet unable to shake the feeling of aimlessness. Regardless, willing to do everything in my power to temper the loneliness.
If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll remind yourself, anyone, everyone - hell, even remind me - that the practice of gratitude truly is mindset-changing and can help against the dread of feeling so alone. So, without much further ado, I present my list of insights, moments and things I have felt incredibly grateful to have had (or at least those that have led to hits in my groupchats) over the last two months:
Packing extras of my spray-on sunscreen to spray over make up.
How good I am at keeping myself hydrated, and yes I will always flex on this.
My friends keeping me in the loop with Sydney chisme.
Having left a heavily-worn shirt of mine for Pixie in her bed to smell me.
Being able to speak in Hindi with Pakistani, Indian, Nepali and Bengali shopkeepers and taxi drivers. My Hindi has genuinely improved more than my Spanish in the past several weeks. Feeling a sense of home here despite not being in Sydney or Delhi.
Having a heavy cooking hand and sharing meals with my housemate.
Seeing soooooo many dogs walking in Barcelona. Literally one every 200 metres. And all of sizes, colours, breeds. Barcelona is a dog lover’s dream and baby I am living it.
Reaching out to people I met the first fortnight I arrived to Barcelona, them returning my enthusiasm weeks later when I message them asking to hang out.
Hand feeding lorikeets in Parc Ciutadella.
Feeling the urge to write again (this is a big one).
Having my first and last date with an Italian. Out of the handful of people I’ve met here, more than one has recounted their grievances with the boot-country folk. Though I’m grateful I was able to swerve a kiss from this dude who ended up being uncomfortably presumptuous about my will to be his unicorn, the process of telling a dude you don’t want to play tonsil tennis with him is still so awkward to me, despite it being years since I jumped from L to B in the alphabet community.
Getting a FaceTime call from my best friend from one of our mutual friend’s bachelorette parties, all of them dressed deliciously with wine-stained lips, giggling, waving and blowing kisses to me.
Coffee. The sun. Strawberries and mandarins. The full moon. The basics are so back in rotation.
Experiencing one of the most intense eyecontactships at a rally for Palestine in Jaume in November that still makes my stomach flutter when I think about it.
Exploring Barcelona with a group of four other friends from Sydney several days after my arrival, spending time in the sun, taking photos, all of us being vegan and sharing meals with complete ease.
Meeting up with a brand new friend from Sydney I had never seen face to face before but had been following on Instagram for years. Spending the day together with her partner exploring Gracia, getting gifted bananas from a Bengali shopkeeper after we all exchanged words in Hindi.
End November in Barcelona still being warm enough to wear jeans and t-shirt.
Remembering to take my Vitamin D tablets.
Choosing to bring my journal from Sydney, despite my hand cramping whenever I write.
Hanging out with another expat from Sydney who offered to let me crash in her spare room after a night out, despite us only meeting for the first time earlier that day.
Trying and loving the Catalonian pa amb tomàquet, a simpler, tastier version of the classic bruschetta with smeared tomato.
Thermals and my anti-theft baby pink backpack.
Plucking out a minuscule yet blatantly spiky, black hair from between my eyebrows, with golden tweezers bestowed from my mum’s collection. Rubbing the bald spot. Soaking in the high of a successful tweeze.
The washing machine in my apartment also working as a dryer.
I don’t expect the pain of loneliness to vanish, even though surrounded by love. I’ve learned as an adult it is something we all endure. Having the patience to see it through, to acknowledge it, to capture small moments of glee despite its presence are the only things that alleviate it. It isn’t easy, it doesn’t necessarily get easier, and it’s nothing that I can expertly prepare for (unlike my safety measures). Remembering that despite the loneliness, I chose this route, opened myself to these challenges, and will come to bear the fruits of my pepitas; only because back home, I am surrounded by all the love I deserve.
Beautiful! Gorgeous! Moving!
I cannot love this more than I already do!!!!!!!