I didn’t understand how much I had in Barcelona until I had to leave it all.

Over my last supper, I told my host-mother that I had carried my lucky buckeye in my pocket every day since she had given it to me. She laughed and said it was obvious.

“Why?” I asked.

“Hombre,” she said, “because you’re very lucky.”

I asked why and she counted off four reasons on four stubby brown fingers.

1. “You’re always smiling.”

2. “You like what you study.”

3. “You got a chance to travel and see the world at an age when you were young enough for it to change you.”

4. “Your parents clearly love you a ton.”

I thought about it and realized that she was completely right, even if she had forgotten to mention my great friends and the fact that I'm damn good looking. I am very, very fortunate and in the most cliched sense, before living abroad I didn't take stock enough in what I had at home.

Then she asked me if I thought she was lucky. I had to think about it for a minute. She was widowed when both her children were young. Every day she visits her senile father in the retirement home she pays for by working overtime and he asks her how her deceased husband is doing. She is cynical and pessimistic when she watches the news; her son often tells her she needs to cheer up.

“Yeah,” I said, “you’re lucky.”

She waited.

“You have two great kids, you have a nice apartment, you like your job, and you still have your father.”

She cocked her head sideways and thought about it. “And I have a grandson,” she said, smiling.

As a goodbye present I gave Pol, her son, a bottle of rum and an alpaca wool hat I bought in Argentina that he had once told me he was jealous of. He was thrilled and tried it on in the bathroom mirror under his bright orange snowboarding goggles.

He opened the rum and poured three glasses. He called to his mom and we all went into the dining room. We looked down at the glasses and swirled our ice and didn’t speak: I was leaving in the morning. Paul shrugged.

“Salud,” he said, and we drank.

Luisa shuddered. “¡Que fuerte!”

Pol and I laughed but she was right, it was strong. After a while we got to winding down and saying bye and I thanked them both for everything they had done for me. Then Pol got to talking about the path of life: el camino de la vida.

“Every single person we meet,” he said, “makes us who we are.”

“I know,” I said.


Later, he came into my room with his FC Barcelona jersey and handed it to me.

“Now you have something from the best fútbol team in the world.”

I put it on and he smiled and so did I. I do not know what he was thinking but I was wondering if I would ever see him again.

“Merry Christmas, Curtis” he said.

“Feliz Navidad, tío.”


That night I stopped by the neighborhood bar, Marc's.

Marc put a beer and a plate of olives down in front of me before I had to ask.

When it came time to leave, “Marc, I go home tomorrow.”

He exhaled. “One last drink on the house?” he asked.

“One last drink,” I said.

He poured himself one, too.


Then I hiked up a mountain to an abandoned fort that is a good place to go if you want to impress a girl. She wore the right shoes this time. It was dark away from the lights of the city and we tripped on stones we couldn’t see as we walked up the broken path. When we got to the bunkers the only other people there were some Spanish teenagers smoking a joint—it was windy and cold and they were having trouble keeping it lit. The two of us sat down where we sat the last time, when the skyline was foreign and the city still unfamiliar. Our legs hung out over the concrete lip of the bunker and all of Barcelona was at our feet. I looked out towards the ocean I couldn’t see in the dark, past neon Christmas lights, and cars like ants with two lit eyes, and so many glowing windows with open blinds: each one the home of a person I would never meet or know but was nonetheless going through the exact same infinitely profound experience of being conscious and alive. I looked past the shadows of skyscrapers and hotels and the twisting spires of the Sagrada Familia. The lights twinkled and turned on the chilled air somewhere between their origin and my eye and everywhere I looked there was a memory. The moon was a crescent, like somebody had delicately carved out the rest.

Our hands were cold in each other’s.

“I’ll miss you,” she said.

I looked out over the city one last time.

“I’ll miss you, too.”

Then we got up and left and stumbled down the unlit hills until we were among the lights, too.


The next morning, from the tarmac and through my little oval window, I watched dawn break. My view was of a muddy field and a chain link fence.

A blog makes anybody an author.

Bildungsroman* is a literary genre which tells about the coming of age of a sensitive person who is looking for answers and experience. The genre evolved from folklore tales of a dunce or youngest son going out in the world to seek his fortune. Usually in the beginning of the story there is an emotional loss which makes the protagonist leave on his journey. In a Bildungsroman, the goal is maturity, and the protagonist achieves it gradually and with difficulty. The genre often features a main conflict between the main character and society. Typically, the values of society are gradually accepted by the protagonist and he is ultimately accepted into society – the protagonist's mistakes and disappointments are over.

*see also: Künstlerroman

"If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true,

that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice."

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five.