metro

Ode to the Metro

For someone who prefers to imagine the metro is, in fact, an aboveground service between buildings that just don’t happen to have any windows, I get a surprising amount of enjoyment from being on the underground.

Of course, any metro service has its fair share of eccentrics. Then there are the buskers, the transvestites (heading to my part of town at the weekend, Gaixample), the men selling fake designer bags, the pickpockets and far too many cockroaches on the way back on a Sunday morning after the underground has been open all night.

Anyway, I love it.

It’s the perfect place for people watching, eavesdropping and casual gawping. I overheard a Spaniard joke to his friend, saying “Watch out! Here come a herd of tourists”, and it’s really true. Groups of Germans, Americans and Brits hang around in packs, moving en masse from one tourist hot-spot to the next. Although it’s getting better moving into October, for a while it was quite easy just to get swept along in a tide of ‘guiris’. (guiri, noun. Normally derogatory term used by Spaniards to identify foreigner, usually from northern europe or the USA, who sticks out for their pale looks and ignorance of Spanish culture)

I have already picked up the very Spanish habit of mocking sunburnt northern europeans. I glance with disdain at anyone showing a pink nose, and chuckle inwardly at glimpsing white strapmarks contrasting sharply with a reddened décolletage. Even worse are the foreign visitors who come straight from the beach without even bothering to change out of their sarong and flip-flops. They couldn’t look more out of place in a carriage full of people commuting to work, who in any case wouldn’t head to Barceloneta for less than 30⁰.

Perhaps it was so easy to be caught up in their group because, much as I might pretend otherwise, I’m quite obviously a guiri too.