Eating Grapes

Hardly any people boarded the train at the sagrada familia station. But as the train headed westward, more and more people crammed into the train. I was pressed against the subway side door and felt a real sense of claustrophobia for the first time in my life. The Spanish didn’t mind being packed in. They were drunk and chanting songs. The air was very heavy with respiration... then the train halted a short eternity in a station. I felt like I was trapped in a boa constrictor mass of bodies. With every move I made, the smaller the space around me became. After a few minutes, people started exiting. Apparently a passenger fainted and was being attended to on the platform. I was happy to walk to plaza espana rather than be squeezed in an airless train. At the plaza, were 2 towers, a magic light fountain with lights and fire flares and fireworks displays above. When the clock stuck 12, with each bell toll, the revelers ate a grape. 12 in all for good luck. The plaza was very crowded. A little bit menacing. I was alone but surrounded by thousands... I stood between a family, and old couples, a group of middle aged women. It was my first New Year’s alone. My first new year in another land. I ate the bag of half rotten grapes my hotel provided for good luck. I spit the seeds out in the crowd... and took pictures of the people around me. Earlier that night I had aimlessly roamed the ramblas boulevard and it’s side streets and marveled how the center was occupied by the people between two rows of tall plane trees. The further north I walked the more deserted the city became. It seemed like everyone in the city was drawn towards plaza espagna like a magnet.