Barcelona – My Old Self

Day 107. I don’t remember much about what I did in Barcelona, not even the travel fails. I remember a sun rather bright for the end of November.
I remember Park Güell.
I remember eating the best veggie burger ever, but I don’t remember where.
I remember a lot of pickpockets.
And the realization that my backpack didn’t seem heavy at all compared to Day 1, four months before.
But through these snippets of memories, I know I didn’t notice as much as I usually do, because I was too conscious of these travel days being my last.

Barcelona was my last destination of the trip, and even though I kept telling myself this wasn’t my last trip, I couldn’t help feeling nostalgic. Europe is a wonderful continent, filled with contrasts and surprises, and I’ll miss it a lot, yet what I kept thinking about during my last days was a thought unrelated to it. I was feeling nostalgic about myself.

Is that even a thing?

I kept seeing myself on that first day of the trip, arriving in Nice with my fears and abundance of travel tools, and I grew convinced that, when I might see France another time in the future, I would never meet that girl again.

We’re not that different. We’re just versions of the same person, after all, but that version is gone, and that made me feel nostalgic about life itself.

Every day, we have to say goodbye to the person we were the day before; we have to adjust to our new convictions and dreams and that may be both the most terrifying and the most hopeful concept on Earth.

So I don’t remember much about Barcelona.

I remember having the chance to meet with Júlia and Anna again, two marvellous girls I met in Annecy in the very first week of my trip, and maybe that contributed even more to make me think back about my old self.

I remember one thing Previous-Me thought when she left for Europe in August: “That trip should sate my appetite for travelling for a good 3, maybe 4 years. Enough time for me to finish University…”

And that’s where she and I are the most different. She didn’t know yet. She didn’t know there’s no way to sate a crave for travelling by travelling. It just left me wanting more. And I know I’ll do everything I can to see more.

Grand Total: 136 travel fails in 107 days.