Vinito, Barcelona

For the very few of you who have followed this blog from the start, you will know that I started it with the intention of reviewing cafes around Spain and the UK. However, during that time there was an epic bus strike which thwarted my best laid plans and so it then merely became a log of my ramblings with a polite smattering of cafe action. So the Cafe Cat hasn't really been about cafes for a while, has it?

Well, today readers that is about to change as I introduce to you Barcelona's lovely 'Vinito'... the perfect spot for a quick hit of lovely wine in the evening. Located on C/Parlament it boasts a small, warm charm and is only a few doors down from one of my favourite cafes 'Federal', more of which I shall talk about in another post (if I ever feel twatty enough to whip my camera out in there!). 

C/Parlament is a street nestled between Parallel and Sant Antoni which offers a charming array of places to quench your thirst or satisfy your hunger. Vinito is one of them and offers shelves packed wall to wall with different bottles and spirits and there are large oak barrels filled with lusty wines, promising you a cosy tummy and a starry-eyed glaze. My personal favourite is the Rioja, which comes in at only 2.50€ for two glasses.

Perch yourself with your favourite pal at a tall table that spills into the street amongst a mass of merry bodies and sip gently as the warm mustardy light creeps through the claret bottles and illuminates faces. 

It is the perfect spot for a little wine, a little cheese and a great start to any evening before moving on to wilder plains. En route to Apollo (a gaudy club on Parallel) there is a zesty little pit stop where you can grab a cheap cocktail and have a mini-shimmy to the 50s rock and roll music they play or, for you cheap bastards, you can always pick up a sexy beer from a man loitering on a street corner.

What's more, is that Vinito also sells the wine by the litre for you to carry home and continue the fun for just a mere 1.90€. So, if the streets or clubs of Barcelona don't take your fancy, just pop the lid off your plastic bottle and pour away! They also have homemade Vermouth... perfect for Sunday lounging and a little hazy afternoon tapas action.

It's simple, really. If you live in Barcelona- get involved. 

Memories

The memory is a pretty incredible thing. Thousands of little fragments lie tucked and locked away. Some are ready in waiting to jump up and shake you by the shoulders and some slowly crawl their way into your eyes or nose or mouth and say 'remember me?'.
My random memory of the day is a song we used to song as children. In fact, it is quite common that my memories are about songs or poems because I seem to have an immense capacity for recalling them. And so I was just sitting here in the office, feeling a bit drab with my scarf tied round my head like an old woman (you have to entertain yourself somehow!) and as I was looking-up a client on the system whose name is 'Donna', I thought to myself 'No one is called Donna these days really, are they?' and then, like an army of marching soldiers, the following words started to stampede in my head and before I knew it, I was singing:

On a wagon bound for market
There's a calf with a mournful eye.
High above him there's a swallow
Winging swiftly through the sky.

How the winds are laughing
They laugh with all their might
Laugh and laugh the whole day through
And half the summer's night.

Dona, dona, dona, dona,
Dona, dona, dona, do,
Dona, dona, dona, dona,
Dona, dona, dona, do.


"Stop complaining," said the farmer,
"Who told you a calf to be?
Why don't you have wings to fly with
Like the swallow so proud and free?"

How the winds are laughing ... (chorus)

Calves are easily bound and slaughtered
Never knowing the reason why.
But whoever treasures freedom,
Like the swallow has learned to fly.

According to Wikipedia this song is a Yiddish theatre song from the 1940s and the word 'Dona' signifies God. I'm not entirely sure why we used to sing it and as a child, I felt awfully sorry for the little calf who was winging his way to death's door.



How strange and beautiful memories are!

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My Little Garden

Relationships. What a topic! When it comes to them I never seem to come eye to eye with other people to the extent that I know some people look at me and wonder if I'm either the patron saint of tolerance or just a little weird. When shit hits the fan or what not, the one person who I know is on the same wavelength as me is old pappy dearest- perhaps he has passed on his wisdom just as he did his love of boxes. We both love boxes and hugs for that matter... but I digress. Relationships. Yes.
When I meet someone I like, be it a love interest or just a friend, I automatically start sowing little seeds. In other words, I place a generous amount of investment in that person and, if that person happens to be exceptionally special in my opinion, I try to nourish those seeds into glorious greenery.
So, with that in mind, lets imagine my friends and loves as an allotment or a garden of lovely flowers. This garden is my baby and more often that not, where I spend a lot of my time watering and encouraging new flowers to grow. Sometimes I sit in the shade of a fully grown oak and look up at it with pride and share the tales of years of friendship gone by.
As a child, I would plant every seed I found with a true, honest and naive air and was soon to find out to my deepest dissatisfaction that there were some that were just weeds. I would try in vain to get them to become little buttercups perhaps but a weed can never change his roots.
After this I employed a certain caution but the problem always came to be that once I had planted the seeds and found out that they were troublesome, I couldn't just let them die. I had already decided that they could be in my garden and perhaps if they weren't willing to cooperate this season, they might rethink and change their minds after a long, cold winter. In my garden all plants, troubled or not, deserve to be supported and cared for and allowed to grow even if it makes demand upon my resources. And so it is that there are little weeds dotted all over my garden or, if not weeds, dubious looking flowers. But please do not frown upon them... I like to cultivate a wide variety of flora and fauna. This is where other people differ. If a lot of people I knew had a garden like I do and a difficult flower, they would probably let it die. Some people would be able to see the potential beauty in a flower but give up at the first sight of fungus. Such has been the way with a few of my more special flowers. People would say 'Why bother? This one is difficult and inconvenient and taxing to you' but that's not the way I will ever see it and I doubt I will ever change my mind. No matter how hard they have snared me with their spiky thorns, or whether the season has been tough, I still go back to water them until it is completely clear that it is a either a lost cause for the time being or a thriving success. And with those that place demand on my resources, if they are worth it then I will give them every last drop of water that I have.
I just want my flowers to be happy and safe. The small ones, the big ones, the weeds and the weirdos. After all, isn't perseverance what it is all about? Isn't that what love is?

El Raval (Barrio Chino)

(Pictures to come)

When I first moved to Barcelona, I lived with my boyfriend in a little bedroom in the Parallel area. It wasn't perfect. The neighbours would piss in the street (God knows why they didn't use the actual toilet), legless evil-eyed cats would limp about eyeballing my ankles, strange men would chase me with leopard print blankets and there was an armless man who would hold a cup in his mouth and shake it from side to side, begging for money with globules of saliva spraying in an erratic shower... but it had things going for it, too. There were some great nearby bars going by the name of Bar Cuntis, Bar Colon and the city's best strip club was just a stone's throw away. However, even with all this glory, we simply wanted our own place.
Sharing a room is not cool especially when it's so small that you have to sleep in one of those elevated double beds. Ours had a savagely angled ladder that threatened certain death or at least a severely grazed arm if you didn't heave yourself up quickly enough and slither along the mattress on your belly. Going for a wee in the middle of the night was like something out of Crystal Maze; navigating the swift roll, hang and drop to the floor with deft and agility.

We wanted somewhere bigger, somewhere perhaps with an office and a place where Rob Roy could easily walk the distance to work. We also wanted somewhere for a bloody good price... and so we looked high and low. We found the perfect flat overlooking a quaint square, which slipped through our fingers with only seconds to spare before we handed over the cash and after weeks of searching it then came to the point where we had to find somewhere or else we'd be joining the evil-eyed cats, dreaming of sucking on the achilles heel of unsuspecting pedestrians, as if it were our mother's teat.

And so, we had to go where we had explicitly been told not to go. There wasn't much other choice.

'Sally, please don't do it. It's dangerous and horrible' they said.

'I know people who have been murdered there' they exclaimed.

'It's full of drugs and prostitutes' they cried.

But we were not to be deterred. We HAD to find somewhere to live. And so we did. A rather sprawling two bedroom number, in fact. We packed up our little suitcases, said 'adios!' to the ladder of doom and I dragged and heaved our worldly possessions on a warm Spring day all the way to.... EL RAVAL.

Yes, that's right. I said it. EL RAVAL (aka Barrio Chino*). A place where pigeons and people more or less look and live the same.

Now, if you are from Barcelona, you will have one of two opinions. Either that the Raval is a vibrant hub of culture and upcoming brilliance or that it is a place to avoid as it if were a vintage flea of London from 1665. The latter opinion is one that has existed and festered for years. It is as deeply ingrained in some of the citizens of Barcelona as the yearly tradition of donning a bib and slurping on Calcots at the end of winter.

The notoriety of the Raval comes from the whispers of its dark, tangled streets. From my research I have found some marvellous descriptions of the Raval, which I found in an INCREDIBLE article*...


'...the district of sinners, crooks and toughs, a maggot hill, a cesspit and cavern, a den of criminals. It is fetishized, endowed with causal powers, apparently destroying all moral and physical life within it... a terrible centre for infection, the pestulant bottom of a sewer, with its smell of sin and affliction. Many of the area’s inhabitants mutated into a subhuman race. Everyone has funereal features, the look of having recently been in hospital, the appearance of death. They don’t eat. They nourish themselves with alcohol, morphine, ether, ‘coke’ and wine'--- he forgot to say kebabs and street beers!

For those of you who don't know the geography of Barcelona, the Raval is smack bang in the centre. Barcelona itself is renowned for its perfect grid system, where the streets are wide and easily navigable.
But the Raval (framed in an almost pentagon) is gnarly knot of twisted tales and history.

 Before 1830, the Raval largely consisted of fields, convents and small markets that provided produce to the city. It was walled-in, as were many areas of the city but with the Catalan Industrial Revolution came great change.

The Raval started to grow as tanneries and mills popped up and a complicated web of unplanned, unregulated and hastily constructed buildings began to emerge.A huge urban-industrial metamorphosis began to take hold as dwellings were erected at great height to accommodate migrant workers and their families. Darkness soon swamped the Raval with shafts of light merely punctuating the damp corners and highlighting the compact density and soup of poverty.

The Raval became the birthplace of the local working class and of the labour movement. Accommodation was fit to burst with multiple families sharing the same space and entire blocks of flats were provided with only a single toilet and a tap to share on the ground floor.
The Raval struggled and heaved within its medieval walls and in 1859, a glint of relief was promised by plans for an 'urban redevelopment' of the city. And so the iron grid system was born and parts of Barcelona were gloriously organised into wide streets with plenty of sunlight. Due to shortages however, the Raval was entirely overlooked and continued to hectically spill in a greying, restless sprawl all the way down to the docks. By 1930 the Raval contained 230,000 residents, which calculated as 103.6 people per square metre and ranked as the most populated urban area within Europe. Diseases such as Cholera, Typhoid, Meningitis and TB were rife and the Raval was yet to be drafted into more bleak misery after the First World War saw industry drawn to the outskirts of the city.
While the Raval defiantly retained its working ethic, its small and narrow space betrayed it as larger factories dwarfed Ravallian business. And so The Raval fought for survival and underwent a dramatic transformation from the hub of labour to the centre of leisure. Warehouses were rapidly developed into dance halls and taverns and drew many foreigners from the ports. With a high population of migrant workers and businessmen seeking pleasure, the sex trade began to boom. Opportunities for women were minimal and so it was easy to procure prostitutes from the city and thereafter from busy trade in the port. Opium also quickly infiltrated like poison in the water, snaring dealers and hooking vulnerable souls. And so, with its sulky labyrinth of darkness, it concealed sweaty, lurid secrets and raised fear in the hearts of the middle-class, who were happily enjoying their gridded, wide-street heaven.
The myth was secured that the Raval was the 'ulcer' of the city and needed cleansing of its disease, its sin and of its unique, sedulous and thriving identity.

And so this is where the Raval stands today. It is an area that refuses to be wiped of its character and remains a 'republic of the streets', boasting a wealth of gritty history and a murky charm. While I enjoy walking through the gridded, brightly-lit areas of Barcelona, there is nowhere else where you can see such
squalid, smirched splendour in the city. The streets in the Raval may be streaked with shit and piss but it is turbulent, thought-provoking and not as dangerous as it may first seem. There are still some streets that are to be avoided by night but by day, the Raval exhibits a huge multi-cultural hum and blends dirty beauty with art, soul and pumping, thriving, struggling veins of life. Walking through the streets you can feel the heartbeat under the paving stones and an exhilariting 'edgy' vibe. From moment to moment, everything is changing in a blur of colour and insistency. I take the same route everyday and it is never the same journey- I never know what to expect.

There may exist a difference of opinion with regards to the Raval but for the people who think of it as the decay of Barcelona, think again. Spend a little more time navigating the murky lanes and you will find shafts of light. There you will find telling tales of its mirth, its historical battle and of its mettle. It is by far one of the most interesting parts of Barcelona and its identity should be celebrated, not erased.


Refs and *s:

The Raval is also often referred to as Barrio Chino. Not because of the number of immigrants in the area (who are mostly Pakistani, Philipino or international students) or the high number of chinese shops, but because of a young journalist from 1925 who coined the phrase in a famous Madrid newspaper because the area reminded him of San Francisco's 'China Town'. More can be read in the links/titles provided below.

An Imagined Geography: Ideology, Urban Space, and Protest in the Creation of Barcelona’s ‘‘Chinatown’’,


c.1835–1936
Chris Ealham:

Picture found at link:
http://geographyfieldwork.com/ElRaval.htm

Final note:

If you are a tourist or faint-hearted, you absolutely HAVE to employ a good level of vigilence... we Ravillians know each other and mostly respect one another but if you are a strange face, mooning at the sights and feeling fancy-free you will get pick-pocketed and/or crushed by skateboards/bicycles/motorcycles/giant piegons...it's just a rite of passage and a Ravallian way of welcoming you warmly to the area...)

Dear Readers....

Dear Readers,

I am aware that I have been inactive.
I am aware that this pains you.
It pains me, too.
But never fear!
For I am to return...
A blog entry is underway.
It started with a simple idea, which rapidly lent itself to broader horizons, as ideas so often do...

So please, I beg you, bear with me while I read, research and write:

El Raval

Gracias, xxx

Tree On A Hill

We all have special moments from our childhood that we cherish and run through over and over again in our minds. Some of these are small, others quite large. Some are private and others are shared. These memories make us feel warm and content, no matter how trivial or silly they may seem to other people. Memories are like old friends that visit from time to time.

In my family, as children, we were lucky enough to have one grandmother living with us. It was like grandma love on tap! Her husband, our grandfather, had sadly died when my sister was only 13 days old, so none of us were ever fortunate enough to meet him although my mother tells me that he was a little crazy but super intelligent. I sometimes feel quite sad that we never got to meet and that he took all of his stories to the grave before we could hear them but life goes on and I am sure he has influenced our lives in ways that we couldn't recognise: through my mother and grandmother and the little pieces of him that they picked up and carried in their hearts.

As for my father's parents, Nana and Dodo, they lived in the Midlands in the city of Worcester with their ginger cat Sandy, whose tail had a rather large kink. We would pack up the car to drive up to see them a few times a year.

This car journey became a familiar routine for us and followed a set pattern time after time after time. It was 112 miles. It took around two and a half hours. We would always argue about who had to sit in the middle and Jonny and Lauren often reasoned between themselves that because I was the youngest, I had to go in the middle. They couldn't be negotiated with even though I was half a head taller than Jonny until we were about 15 and he shot up suddenly and towered over me, also marking the end of our epic fights- I'm surprised we never managed to kill one another! We broke almost every door in the house. But those are other tales...

There were certain landmarks that punctuated the journey and told tales of the mileage we had passed and throughout our lives we crossed them again and again. As we passed them, these places reflected the way we had been or the way we were as we went through milestones of our own lives and burst from children into adolescence and so that journey has become very dear in my heart. Each place holds dozens of tiny memories and fragments of our past.

As for the path the journey followed itself, I can never really remember the beginning of it. Probably because we were always sleepy but exicted and impatient to get there so it would take a while to relax. However, there was a small roadside cafe called 'Happy Chef' that had a big, smiley giraffe statue inviting you in. I don't think that we ever stopped there but his warm, orange face marked the halfway point (56 miles) and added to our anticipation. Once I saw him, I knew we were really on our way!

A little while after the giraffe we whizzed past the Golden Heart Inn. It's name was embossed in gold on black slate and it glinted with promise atop a slight hill surrounded by rich green grass and it always sounded so romantic and wonderful to my young mind. A gold heart, indeed! Imagine that.

Following shortly after came the Highwayman pub, which spurred thoughts of a scoundrelesque scallywag galloping up beside us, seizing the car and stealing our precious things. I would imagine myself battling with the raspcallion and beating him to the ground with my fists and saving the day (and my carefully counted holiday pennies).

As the anticipation mounted, the final inn we came to pass was the Air Balloon Inn where they would launch hot, puffing globes high into the sky and above the clouds. It wasn't often that we saw a lift-off but the promise that it hinted each time was magical. I would crane my neck to look up at the little dots in the sky with longing as they sailed on their gentle journey and as we swept quickly away.

The A-roads of England boast some of the finest sights and the A417 is no exception. Before we changed onto bigger roads, we would pull up to some roadside toilets, tucked away in a leafy green lane. The toilets were metal (hideous, scary times!) and so I would often nip into the wooded area nearby to stretch my legs and do my thing. We were getting closer and closer, I would think, and yet the best bits were yet to come.

We would travel along the roads at a steady pace (my mother likes to say that my father drives like an old woman) with the beauty of England passing us by in a blur and after we had clambered back into the car my father would say 'Hey you guys, carry on straight or take the scenic route?' we would all cry 'Scenic Route!'

Now, this is no ordinary scenic route. No sir. It's not just a few trees and some grass claiming to be gorgeous. This scenic route showcases some of Englands finest views, a sexy country pub and imparts a lovely feeling of peace as you slowly roll through the lanes and down the winding paths. Some of you may have read about it on the BBC last year. Birdlip. A place of outstanding beauty and the most frequently visited area by 'doggers' in the UK. But let's not stray from the point into such debauchery. I never once saw anyone 'dogging' and I'd prefer to forget that I ever read about such scandal tainting my childhood memories but, to be fair, you can't really blame those sex-fuelled beasties for wanting to overlook such a nice view during their business exchange.

Birdlip is ALMOST the best part of the whole journey. The views overlook Gloucester far and wide and you can see a ruler-straight Roman road cutting all the way through the countryside, invoking images of heavily clad men marching towards each other with determination and a taste of blood in their clamped mouths.

My favourite memory of Birdlip was in the winter of 1999, which was one of the last visits to Worcester before my Dodo died. I think we all knew that and so were particularly reflective and quiet on the journey. The weather was chilly and as we mounted the hill, the snow started to sift down upon us, as light as icing sugar and coated the car in a soft powder. We had to drive extra slowly to be careful and we listened to a lovely little song on the Titanic soundtrack, which matched the twinkling beauty of the snowflakes as they caught on the branches, dusted the treetops and laced everything in a gloriously hazy white. It was a perfect five minutes that I will never forget. For me, driving through Birdlip is possibly one of my all time favourite five minutes. The greatest little hideaway! The journey through Birdlip is so brief that it is almost like a deep breath is caught in your throat as you witness the splendour and then let it out into a sigh as you exit back onto the main roads, picking up the pace again and leaving it behind.

Now let me lead you to the greatest part of the trip. I'm sure you all have car journeys that you remember as a child. We used to play a little game on the way to Bournemouth. Who can see the sea first? We'd all be striving to win! Who can see the sea first? I can! (But Sally, we haven't even left Sandhurst...)

The same thing applied to Worcester. Only, as most of you know, there is no sea in Worcester. My friends, there is something BETTER than the sea.

Allow me to introduce to you, possibly the coolest landmark in England....

TREE ON A HILL!

Tree on a hill beckons gasps of admiration and wonder. Why is there just ONE tree on that hill? Who put it there? What does it mean? Who can see the tree on the hill first? How did it come to be so spectacular? Who can see the tree on the hill first? I can! (But Sally, you're sat at your desk drinking coffee...) Lets all stare at the magnificent specimen for it truly is a marvellous tree, with a fine brown rump of a trunk, a full head of branches and a bouquet of glorious green leaves.

Now you all may scoff at my worship of a tree. It's just a tree, I hear you say. But this is where you are wrong, people. Whittington Tump is actually believed to be an ancient burial mound and although it has never been excavated, it has generated interest for thousands of years. There are Roman coins and flints lurking around up there and everything, apparently. And do you know what? After all those years of passing by the tree on the hill and getting overly excited about it, we never once stopped to walk up and check it out. In fact, there were lots of things we never stopped to see. I suppose we thought we had all the time in the world.

One day... ONE DAY... I will walk up that hill and kiss the damn thing, I love it so. One day I might go and have a Sunday Roast in the Golden Heart Inn and then a balloon ride across Cheltenham. Sadly, I will never touch the big, kind giraffe for he has now gone to someplace I'll never know. More than anything, I want to walk up to the tree and sit under its heavy shade and look out over Worcester and to the distant sight of the Malverns and remember the times at Nana and Dodo's.

This tree marks the entrance to Worcester... it spells that there are only about 13 minutes (including a stop at the Tesco garage for flowers) until you reach Hill Avenue and then... 115 Bath Road. After you have negotiated a tricky parking spot on the pebbled drive if you listen hard enough you will hear the eager slam of the car door, feet crunching, racing to open the old wooden gate. You will see three little blonde children skipping excitedly down the stepping stones of the blooming garden, past the pond (watch out for that loose slab!) and you will see Nana's head through the kitchen window. You will find Sandy chilling out on the sofa and Dodo is probably in his armchair smoking his pipe.

115 Bath Road was a place with dairylea cheese sandwiches, Nana's finest soup (for which I never got the recipe, damn it Nana!), mini cans of Coca Cola and a beligerent old Dodo who liked to talk incessantly about the time he was a prisoner during the Second World War. We all gazed into our soup as he told the same stories over and over. How I wish now that I had listened! How fascinating, I should have said but instead I only asked him to pass the vienetta and proceeded to lick my bowl like a hungry cat, concentrating on consuming every last trace. The things he must have thought of us young, mindless children!

I often think about the garden and the greenhouse with the earthy smell of tomatoes, I think about the fish in the pond that I would feed with little pellets, I think about how Dodo would wring a cold, wet flannel over our faces if we stayed in bed for too long and as I think about all these things in detail, I realise that I never knew much about Nana and Dodo themselves. More than anything, the only thing I vividly remember about the two of them was that they would walk to the end of the driveway and wave us off until we disappeared from sight. We would snuggle into the back of the car, watch as the dusky outline of the Malverns disappeared from sight 

and return home.

115 Bath Road was sold in 2008 after the death of my Nana and we will never go there again. The journey that we once took so often will slowly change in subtle and then dramatic ways like we each have in turn and I wonder when, or if I will ever take it again. Whether this is the case or not, I will always have my memories of the time we spent there, the image of Nana and Dodo waving us away, the distant cry of 'tree on the hill!' and the promise that we will one day go there again.