MY POINT OF VIEW 15 (by Tatiana Sisquella)
Today I want to take you on an excursion. Yes, that’s right, just like the excursions we used to go on when we were kids. So get out your lunch-box, put on some strong shoes and hang your camera around your neck, because we’re going to the mountains.
Barcelona has two big mountains: Montjuïc and Tibidabo. What’s more, these two mountains (depending on where you’re looking from) are face to face with each other, challenging and motionless, although in fact they’re constantly changing. They have both aged in different ways, and have shrunk more than a little (one at the top, and the other at the bottom). Years ago there was a fun fair on each of them, but, as often happens when two things are too much alike in the same city, it’s difficult for them to live in harmony. And no, I’m not talking about the Espanyol and Barcelona football clubs, although I could be, but that’s another subject. Let’s get back to strong emotions.
POINT OF VIEW 14 (by Tatiana Sisquella)
Most psychologists recommend that we have a daily routine that varies only very slightly. They say that this makes us feel calm and secure, and give us a stable reference point. Having fixed meal times, going to the gym on a certain day of the week or organising the fridge in the same way every week can be small gestures that make everyday life simpler. In the same way, the route we take each day to work, to university or to school has the same importance. It is a good idea to establish certain norms for this journey, since it is after all made at least 5 days a week. En route you very often see the same man on the same corner out walking his dog, the woman who has filled up her shopping basket to feed the whole family and is now waiting at the number 14 bus-stop, or the group of school kids taking advantage of the last few minutes before they enter class to chat about everyone and everything. Every day, practically the same images – not identical, but very similar.
The thing is that for the first time I was really aware of what it’s like to be a 4-day-tourist in a strange city. To begin with, there’s the stress involved in finding out about the places you have to see once you get there. Because that in itself is a double-edged sword. On the one hand you can’t avoid the Coliseum, the Pantheon and the Piazza di Spagna, but on the other hand, you feel the urgent need to discover the Rome that’s not described in the guides – a hidden café in some alley that only the natives know about, shops that don’t have branches all over the world and restaurants where they don’t care whether you’re Catalan, Japanese or Milanese: they still serve you good food.
To start with, a statistic: on a world-wide basis there are now more mobile phones than people. Putting your mobile phone into your bag or your jacket pocket has become as much an everyday act as cleaning your teeth (correction: there are more people who remember to take their mobile with them than who remember to clean their teeth, but that’s another question).
If you’ve been to Barcelona before, you’re bound to have been very near this square, which lies on top of a former medieval cemetery. Maybe this is the reason why, when you walk into it, you are filled with a feeling of peace and serenity that is difficult to find in other areas of the city. The Plaça Sant Felip Neri is right in the middle of it all, between the Cathedral and the Plaça Sant Jaume, in the heart of the Old City. Of course you could also have seen it without ever having come to Barcelona. The film “PERFUME” and the Evanescence videoclip for “MY IMMORTAL” both chose it as a backdrop.
