I'd rather be in Barcelona

I had another one of my moments today.  One of my "get me out of here soon or I'll start crying and carrying on like a child" moments.  They don't happen often, though the triggers are pretty regular and predictable for me.  I really shouldn't have been surprised.

The subway stop I get off at every other Friday night to volunteer with a Bangladeshi Bible study some friends of my family run has advertisements from the Spanish tourism board in the stairwell where you go down to access the tracks, right before you decide whether you want to go east or west on the Bloor line (I "live" in Toronto).  There are two images, one is of a Spanish parasailor I believe she is, and the second is of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona with the tagline "Perfectly Unfinished" next to it in a flowing script.  It always makes me a little nostalgic when I see it, and those signs have to have been up there for the past three months; I started seeing them in December.  But tonight...  It really didn't help that I was listening to my Above and Beyond: Trance Around the World podcast, and by the time I sat down their track "Can't Sleep" was playing.  It was as clear as a vision: all of a sudden I found myself waiting at the Badal stop on the L5 blue line.  The exit on the other side of the tracks wasn't written in English, it was written in Catalan.  And as quickly as the "vision" came, it was gone, and I remembered that I was not in Barcelona but rather in Toronto, and I felt it.  I felt my heart weighing down my chest, my eyes drooping, with that realization that I was not where I felt I should be in that moment.

It was a mixture of the song (Though listening to trance music on the subway is a really bad idea for me in general, because it always ends up bringing back memories of Barcelona; for some reason most of the time I listen to trance I'm reminded of Barcelona.  I think my 2008 trip and waking up to the A State of Trance 2007 album ruined me forever.), the public transportation, and the plain and simple fact that I am, quite simply, not in Barcelona came together in a crazy blend of nostalgia, leaving me hit as if by a freight train.  How lovely.

I honestly don't think I'll ever get this out of my system.  I love the music too much, I love that city too much.  I don't think it'll ever leave my system until I manage to actually live there.  Sure, at this point I can navigate the city like a native despite the fact that I've only been there three times and for no longer than six days.  Sure, I feel like I live there whenever I'm there because I tend to avoid the tourist traps like the plague (I have still never paid a duro to visit any of Gaudí's monuments; I've only technically been to Parc Güell and that place is free, thank God) regardless of how pretentious that makes me sound.  But until I can actually get to truly experience the city the way it should be experienced: as a native, as someone who only goes in there for business/education and otherwise tends to avoid it (I want to live in Terrassa, hohoho), basically, until I can find something to dislike about it I will probably end up missing it forever.

Though to be fair, I still miss Bilbao and Getxo and I lived there for two and a half years.  So I guess I'll probably always end up missing Barcelona.  Meaning I will probably be spending the rest of my life wishing I were there.  Such is my destiny.