Dispatch 4 from Europe -- Hello Portugal!
Reader, we are back on this journey together. I took it solo in November, and in case you missed the first few parts they are here, here and here. Let’s dive in!
11/15
Yesterday was long and short. I said goodbye to Barcelona by waking up slowly in the flat, walking to the Mennonite bakery for a chocolate croissant, making coffee and taking a few last photos of the view from the terrace. I finished packing and left, had to walk around the corner to catch my car. Barcelona airport was packed with humanity, somehow November is a bigger tourist month than I’d assumed. I began to feel a sense of loss at leaving Spain, and it snowballed quickly — I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just the loneliness of being by myself amidst a huge crowd — maybe it was a sense that I was leaving behind a healing space.
I also felt some grief about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, wondered if they had come home through that airport after Franco defeated them. (It probably didn’t exist and anyway they mostly weren’t in Catalonia.) So I just felt alone, which was made worse by the other people in line at my gate when I asked a couple fo them if I could step away briefly to ask a question of the agent. A guy said “Just go ahead, it’s fine” and so I let go of my suitcase and stepped quickly to the agent desk a few feet away. Within seconds, I heard murmuring behind me and spun around to see all of the people in the line around my bag pointing their fingers at me as an airline inspector asked whose bag had been left there.
Thanks, snitches.
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